ENG 781 Length: 7-8 pages Essay 1: For the first half of the course we’ve been s

ENG 781
Length: 7-8 pages
Essay 1:
For the first half of the course we’ve been studying the works of modern poets and gauging the critical narratives that define or describe modernism. The consensus until the end of the last century is that modernist writers reacted to the rapid, unprecedented change in their own times by creating works that were ironically distanced, complicated, allusive, elite, focused on myth, and fearful of the changes of their present moment. Well… we’ve read a handful of the poets generally considered modern. Does this narrative fit? For this essay, pick a particular poet from the first half of the course (the modernist half) and use direct citation and quotation to answer this question: Does this critical narrative of modernism accommodate this particular poet and why/why not?
Here are the poems to use to support
Moore
https://poets.org/poem/poetry
https://poets.org/poem/paper-nautilus
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=19680
https://poets.org/poem/baseball-and-writing
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=13109
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=26068
Syllabus for course descriiption:
Modern Vs./And Postmodern
The typical narrative of modern/postmodern poetry runs roughly as follows: writers, artists, and other thinkers responded to a sense of an unprecedentedly rapid technological, political, social, and economic change by producing artworks that mirrored the intellectual disruptions such change engendered. The end of the 19th century saw the decline of the rustic village and the emergence of the industrialized large town or small city. The nation’s involvement in World War I combined with the aforementioned rapid changes produced an attitude of radical skepticism if not outright despair that found outlet in aesthetic productions that attempted to contain the chaotic energies of the time by adopting a stance of depersonalized, apolitical, ironic distance. Poets sought an active remove in order to develop ways to account for the fragmented whole. New forms of critical engagement (New Criticism) arose to account for this new strategy or art form and in doing so codified it in such a way that it found cultural acceptance. After World War II, however, and after about 20 years (give or take) of modernist/New Critical hegemony, emerging poets found ironic distance, depoliticized writing, intricate formalism, and impersonality to be confining traits. What emerged were several sometimes competing, sometimes complimentary, claims for poetics that came after, followed from, diverged from, or some combination thereof, some codified thing called modernist poetry. Most of the critical writing at the time emphasized the ways mid- to late-20th century poets broke away from their modernist forebears. But that overlooks the complicated ways writers can draw from other writers. This course is ultimately going to be concerned with testing the narratives of modern and postmodern writing. As you read these poets ask yourself: “Is this narrative a useful tool to account for shifts in 20th century poetry, or does it miss important ways that 20th century poetry operates?”