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Reading Modernist Poetry PDF

243 Pages·2010·3.432 MB·English
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Praise for Reading Modernist Poetry “The impressive achievement of Reading Modernist Poetry is that it so accessibly explains the poetry (including Yeats, Eliot, Pound and William Carlos Williams) and the very wide range of theories that have been invoked to account for its complexity. Its method is to start from the basics and then proceed in a common-sense manner, and yet it uses that mode to explain why the poetry rejects common sense and insists on the necessity of difficulty. The end result is not only a book that students will be able to use very fruitfully (and its comprehensive section on ‘Further Reading’ will also help in this respect) but also a genuine contribution to the criti- cism of modernist literature.” Ian Gregson, Bangor University Reading Modernist Poetry Michael H. Whitworth © 2010 Michael H. Whitworth. ISBN: 978-1-405-16731-4 99778811440055116677331144__11__pprreettoocc..iinndddd ii 11//2277//22001100 22::2277::3333 PPMM Reading Poetry The books in this series include close readings of well known and less familiar poems, many of which can be found in the Blackwell Annotated Anthologies. Each volume provides students and interested faculty with the opportunity to discover and explore the poetry of a given period, through the eyes of an expert scholar in the field. The series is motivated by an increasing reluctance to study poetry amongst undergraduate students, borne out of feelings of alienation from the genre, and even intimidation. By enlisting the pedagogical expertise of the most esteemed critics in the field, the volumes in the Reading Poetry series aim to make poetry accessible to a diversity of readers. Published: Reading Eighteenth-Century Poetry P atricia Meyer Spacks, University of Virginia Reading Modernist Poetry Michael H. Whitworth, Oxford University Forthcoming: Reading Sixteenth-Century Poetry Patrick Cheney, Penn State University Reading Romantic Poetry Fiona Stafford, Oxford University Reading Victorian Poetry R ichard Cronin, Glasgow University 99778811440055116677331144__11__pprreettoocc..iinndddd iiii 11//2277//22001100 22::2277::3333 PPMM Reading Modernist Poetry Michael H. Whitworth A John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Publication 99778811440055116677331144__11__pprreettoocc..iinndddd iiiiii 11//2277//22001100 22::2277::3333 PPMM This edition first published 2010 © 2010 Michael H. Whitworth Blackwell Publishing was acquired by John Wiley & Sons in February 2007. Blackwell’s publishing program has been merged with Wiley’s global Scientific, Technical, and Medical business to form Wiley-Blackwell. Registered Office John Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, United Kingdom Editorial Offices 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK For details of our global editorial offices, for customer services, and for information about how to apply for permission to reuse the copyright material in this book please see our website at www. wiley.com/wiley-blackwell. The right of Michael H. Whitworth to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher. Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The p ublisher is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold on the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Whitworth, Michael H. Reading modernist poetry / Michael H. Whitworth. p. cm. – (Blackwell reading poetry) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4051-6731-4 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. English poetry–20th century– History and criticism–Theory, etc. 2. American poetry–20th century–History and criticism–Theory, etc. 3. Reader-response criticism. 4. Poetry–Explication. 5. M odernism ( Literature). I. Title. PR605.M63W47 2010 821′.9109112–dc22 2009037996 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Set in 10/13pt Galliard by SPi Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Malaysia 1 2010 99778811440055116677331144__11__pprreettoocc..iinndddd iivv 11//2277//22001100 22::2277::3344 PPMM For Roxanne and George 99778811440055116677331144__11__pprreettoocc..iinndddd vv 11//2277//22001100 22::2277::3344 PPMM Contents Preface and Acknowledgements ix 1 Introduction 1 Part I Subject Matter 17 2 Reflexivity 19 3 Landscapes, Locations, and Texts 32 4 Explorations of Consciousness 44 Part II Techniques 57 5 Interpreting Obscurities, Negotiating Negatives 59 6 The Sound of the Poem 71 7 Allusion and Quotation 83 8 The Language of Modernist Poetry: Diction and Dialogue 97 9 Literal and Metaphorical Language 108 10 Mythology, Mythography, and Mythopoesis 118 11 Who is Speaking? 130 Part III Form, Structure, and Evaluation 141 12 Form 143 13 Subjects and Objects in Modernist Lyric 155 99778811440055116677331144__22__ttoocc..iinndddd vviiii 11//2277//22001100 22::2288::0011 PPMM viii Contents 14 Temporality and Modernist Lyric 167 15 The Dramatic Monologue 177 16 Modernism, Epic, and the Long Poem 191 17 Modernist Endings 203 18 Value and Evaluation 212 Glossary 222 Further Reading 224 Index 234 99778811440055116677331144__22__ttoocc..iinndddd vviiiiii 11//2277//22001100 22::2288::0011 PPMM Preface and Acknowledgements Reading Modernist Poetry begins from two convictions: one, that even at its most forbiddingly difficult, and even at in its most pessimistic moments, modernist poetry can be a pleasure to read and to interpret; the other, that modernist poetry’s resistance to interpretation is one of its distinctive fea- tures. The book aims to introduce readers to interpretative processes r elevant to modernist poetry, and to larger questions concerning the nature of poetry in the modern age. It includes close readings of canonical modernist poems, but it does not intend to deliver ready-made interpretations. Of course inter- pretations are offered along the way, but it is hoped that the reader will return to the textual evidence and feel free to offer contradictory readings. In its choice of texts, the present book is conservative in its choice of modernist poets: the most frequently quoted are Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, W. B. Yeats, T. E. Hulme, H.D., and William Carlos Williams. Many of the poems may be found in anthologies of modernist work, and where the texts are available in Lawrence Rainey’s anthology Modernism (2005), the book provides a page reference. However, the book’s emphasis on interpreta- tive processes means that the reader should be able to make independent interpretations of less well-known material. Some means of circumnavigating the challenges of modernist poetry ultimately avoid what is interesting and enjoyable about it. Literary inter- preters often use received wisdom about the author’s beliefs or stylistic preferences to guide their interpretations; interpretations which contradict the prevailing view are rejected as invalid or improbable; or difficulties are resolved by reference to something outside the text. While the present study occasionally makes reference to a poet’s wider oeuvre, its primary focus is on the texts. Another means of circumnavigating difficulties is to reduce poems to their subject matter: to make the poem the vehicle of a “message,” or to make it “about” a contemporary issue. Modernist poets 99778811440055116677331144__33__ppoossttttoocc..iinndddd iixx 11//2277//22001100 77::4411::4455 PPMM x Preface and Acknowledgements had opinions, it is true, and they were fascinated and sometimes appalled by the modern world. But they were also aware that to reduce poetry to the bearer of moral content was ultimately to make poetry redundant. To encounter a poem with a preconceived idea of what it is “about” is to be equipped with a filter which will remove its complexities, its contradic- tions, and its music. Accordingly, although chapters 2–4 concern subject matter, the book is not organized by it. The reader must decide for him- or herself what any given poem is about, and must be alive to the poem’s resistance to such reduction. For similar reasons, the book only tentatively places modernist poetry in its social and historical context. It does, however, indicate points where a certain approach to reading will almost inevitably lead to contextualiza- tion. To understand a poem is to understand its language. Language changes through time, and words in different speech communities develop their own specialized meanings. An understanding of a poem’s language necessarily leads outwards to social and political questions. The Introduction outlines the significance of modernity to modernist poets, and how it shaped their poetry. The three chapters of Part I approach three kinds of modernist subject matter, and aim to foreground the ways in which these themes were developments of existing literary themes. In expressing ideas about poetry or about the city, a poet was doing so in a language which had been established by earlier authors. Although such poems successfully express or depict, they also open a window on language. Part II considers smaller details such as rhythm, diction, and allusion, while all but the last chapter of Part III consider larger questions of literary form. While the book encourages the reader to begin with the words on the page, any reader’s interpretation of words is shaped by his or her expectations about the larger shape of the poem. It would be possible to read chapters 12–17 before chapters 5–11, and certainly there would be value in returning to Part II in the light of the later chapters. The final chapter concerns the question of value: though academic readers of poetry are not routinely encouraged to express opinions about value, evaluative criteria silently inform everything we do; the chapter suggests ways in which those criteria might be articulated explicitly. Acknowledgements W. H. Davies’s “Days Too Short” is reprinted by permission of Kieron Griffin as trustee for the Mrs H. M. Davies Will Trust. 99778811440055116677331144__33__ppoossttttoocc..iinndddd xx 11//2277//22001100 77::4411::4455 PPMM Preface and Acknowledgements xi I am grateful to Roxanne Selby, Jenny Ferguson, and Derek Ferguson, for their comments and advice; to Emma Bennett and all at Wiley- Blackwell, and to the copy editor, Belle Mundy; needless to say, such errors as remain are mine. Note on the References In-text references to “Rainey” are to Modernism: An Anthology, ed. Lawrence Rainey (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005); references to “Bakhtin” are to Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981). 99778811440055116677331144__33__ppoossttttoocc..iinndddd xxii 11//2277//22001100 77::4411::4455 PPMM

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