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Of Modern Poetry BY WALLACE STEVENS
Of Modern Poetry BY WALLACE STEVENS
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In 1879, on October 2nd, a legendary Modernist poet was born. Wallace Stevens, born and raised in the gorgeous state of Pennsylvania, Reading specifically, was the son of Garrett Barcalo Stevens and Margaretha Catherine Zeller. Fresh out of High School, Stevens attended Harvard University, then continued his studies at the New York Law School. At these schools, Stevens had made a place for his name. He had been involved in many school newspapers, being the editor, chief, and even president of the published paper. Wallace Stevens poetry was a huge part of the Modernist time period, and even was influential to how the movement was being shaped and interpreted as time went on. Modernism was a literary time period starting in the early 1900s, which …show more content…
Stevens had many pieces of poetry published and had earned awards for his writing. To start, he had written a novel of poems named the Harmonium. The Harmonium was his first ever published book of many poems. Years later, Steven’s had written a second version of Harmonium, which had increased the number of poems by eleven. Many of Stevens famous poems include “The Snow Man”, “The Emperor of Ice-Cream”, and “The Man With a Blue Guitar”. Stevens was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, Bollingen Prize, National Book award for Poetry, and the Robert Frost Medal. Wallace Stevens, a man of business, law, and poetry, had been very influential to the Modernism literary time period not only because of his poetry, but because of his …show more content…
Due to his many different pieces and the effort he had put into his work, he earned many awards. One of the awards he received was the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. This award is one of the many Pulitzer Prizes, and it is awarded, “For a distinguished volume of original verse by an American author”, and each winner is granted $10,000, Stevens won this award in 1955. Another award is the Robert Frost Medal. This Medal is “Awarded annually at the discretion of the Poetry Society of America's Board of Governors for distinguished lifetime achievement in American Poetry.”, Stevens was given this award in 1951. Also, Wallace Stevens achieved the Bollingen Prize for poetry in 1950, and this award is an achievement in American Poetry. Lastly, Stevens got the National Book Award for Poetry, in 1955. This award is given to United States Citizens on outstanding literary works. Within five years, Stevens had become more and more well-known and appreciated due to his
Upton Sinclair was born in Baltimore, Maryland on September 20th 1978. Sinclair grew up in a broken household; his father was an alcohol salesman and killed himself drinking. While his mother would not even think about drinking alcohol. So these personalities naturally clashed. So Sinclair found some solace in books, Sinclair was a natural writer and he began publishing at the young age of fifteen years old. Sinclair started off going to school at a small college by the name of New York City College. This was just temporary as Sinclair would need time and money to move higher up to a form of better education. So as a result Sinclair took the initiative and he started writing columns on ethnic jokes and hack fiction for small magazines in New York. The money he earned writing these columns allowed him to completely pay for New York City College, and eventually enroll to attend Columbia University. Sinclair worked as hard as he possibly could to get into Columbia University and he was going to do the absolute best he could while he was attending the University. Since Sinclair needed ex...
(1) Wallace Stevens was born in Reading, Pennsylvania on October 2, 1879, and became one the most accomplished poets of his era. His modernist ideology coincides with colleagues such as T.S. Elliot and Ezra Pound. In his life Stevens wrote many poems, collected in over ten major publications, and won the Pulitzer price in 1955 for his works. In his poem Study of Two Pears' Stevens describes two pears not only how they are, but at the same time as they are seen. Li-Young Lee was born in 1957 in Djakarta, Indonesia, son of parents with opposing backgrounds. After fleeing Indonesia through Hong Kong to the United States, Lee attended several Universities. His work is influenced by his childhood, his family history and individualism. His poem Persimmons' is about himself growing up in the United States, trying to adapt to this new country and it culture. But also the relationship with his father plays a role.
After graduating high school, he started attending New York University. In 1923, he won second prize in the Witter Bynner undergraduate poetry contest, which was sponsored by the Poetry Society of America. He won with a poem entitled The Ballad of the Brown Girl. At around this time some of his poetry was featured in the national periodicals such as Harper's, Crisis, Opportunity, The Bookman, and Poetry. The following year he again placed second in the contest and finally winning it in 1925. Cull...
Four years after the publication of the first edition of Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!, Wallace Stevens described a modern aesthetic form which necessarily acted against its own status as a (fixed) form1. "What will [temporarily] suffice" in "Modern Poetry" would replace, as the mind's object, what is--or, perhaps more faithfully to the modernist vision, what used to be. The poem of the motion of the mind in time would replace the poem of permanent meaning.
...nd his people, even if he was poorly received. He did not write for monetary gains, he wrote to inspire and celebrate the grandeur of his people. His style changed black modern poetry. He is a poet, a novelist, an essayist and most of all a revolutionary. He served as the prototype of the poet for the Harlem Renaissance.
Vonnegut was born on November 11, 1922, in Indianapolis, where he was reared. His father was an architect, as his grandfather had been. Though the family's fortune was eroded during the Depression-his father went without an architectural commission from 1929 to 1940-they were well-to-do. Kurt attended Shortridge High School, where he was the editor of the nations oldest daily high school paper, the Echo. (((high school quote)))
He remembers, while visiting his mother in Kansas, that she took him to an open-air theater on Independent Avenue. He said that the music seemed to cry to him, but then laugh at the same time. He would remember the feeling of loneliness with such power that he felt as a kid and turned it into a book called “The Weary Blues”, which got published in 1926. Before all of the poems got released as a collection though, one of his poems called “The Weary Blues” took off drastically before the others in 1925. "The Weary Blues" poem went on to win the prestigious literary contest, created by Opportunity magazine. Hughes was said to have wrote "The Weary Blues," a poem about a singer performing on Lenox Avenue, after a visit to Cabaret in Harlem. Hughes would then on try to change the ongoing racial discrimination with the power of jazz. Jazz was a huge musical influence on the African Americans, especially the ones in Harlem. Jazz to Hughes was a way to connect everyone, no matter his or her color, through simply a melody. Even though some white people at the time did not approve of jazz, some were actually quite fond of it and the messages decrypted in them. He wrote a plethora of other jazzy poems during this time like, “ Mulatto”, “Sport” and “Homesick Blues”. One of the most inspirational poems Hughes wrote during the Harlem Renaissance can be found in “The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes” called
Langston Hughes was one of the poets who published many works of literature during this time. He acquired a medal give by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People known as the Spingarn Medal in 1960. With this medal, he joined the ranks of famous African-Americans who spoke out or showed that racism was wrong such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Maya Angelou, Rosa Parks, and George Washington Carver.
Modernism can be defined through the literary works of early independent 20th century writers. Modernism is exp...
In order to accomplish this goal Eliot incorporated allusions into his work. These references added historical context and depth to his poetry. On the other hand Wallace Stevens opposed Eliot’s large reliance on allusion, calling it overly intellectual and a hindrance to the sound and rhythm of the poem. While Stevens’s portrayal of the desolate present was similar to Eliot’s imaginings, Stevens chose to focus on an American future rather than a European past.
Robert Frost is very successful poet from the 20th century, as well as a four time Pulitzer Prize winner. Robert Frost work was originally published in England and later would be published in the US. He was also considered one of the most popular and respected poets of his century. Robert Frost created countless of poems and plays, many of them containing similar themes. Some of the most popular themes found in his poems encompass isolation, death and everyday life.
Modernism is defined in Merriam-Webster's Dictionary as "a self-conscious break with the past and a search for new forms of expression." While this explanation does relate what modernism means, the intricacies of the term go much deeper. Modernism began around 1890 and waned around 1922. Virginia Wolf once wrote, "In or about December, 1910, human character changed." (Hurt and Wilkie 1443). D.H. Lawrence wrote a similar statement about 1915: "It was 1915 the old world ended." (Hurt and Wilkie 1444). The importance of the exact dates of the Modernist period are not so relevant as the fact that new ideas were implemented in the era. Ideas that had never before been approached in the world of literature suddenly began emerging in the works of many great authors. Two of the pioneer Modernist writers were Joseph Conrad and T.S. Eliot. The tendencies to question the incontestable beliefs embedded in all thinking and to focus on the inner self dominated. Old viewpoints were tossed aside to make way for the discovery of modern man's personal spirituality. Two works that are considered important forbears in the Modern period are T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland and Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.
It is a period when traditional values start to change.This movement causes innovations in science,art,culture,ethics,philosophy and psychology.It intends to find new or hidden meanings in the human experience.It’s main aim is to deal with new ideas.It is a break with the tradition.Modernist Poetry occurs between the 1890 and 1970.It’s key elements can be experimentation,anti realism,individualism.Experimentation means searching constantly.Anti-realism means to be against realism and concreteness.Individualism means to be an intellectual and to be an individual who has a self-confidence.The stress is mainly on the human mind rather than emotions.Many Modernist poets are from Universities,they appreciate their work a lot.It is a movement which is complex and diversed.It takes some of the important aspects from the movements.Modernism supports that every aspect from industry to philosophy should be interrogated.In this way,culture’s elements could be replaced by the new ones.The Modernist English poets write against the rules that are put by Victorian Poetry.They never deny the past poets or past works.They see themselves as they are respecting the earlier periods and other cultures.Their poems seem to be in longer form i...
Frost’s life was full of tragedies, yet he was still able to become an accomplished poet. According to Poets.org, Robert Lee Frost was born on March 26, 1874 in San Francisco. When he was only 11 years old, Frost’s dad, William Prescott Frost, Jr, passed away. The death of his father caused his mother, Isabelle Moodie, to move her family to Massachusetts. Frost became interested in poetry in high school. His first published poem was “My Butterfly.” This poem was published in 1894 in a New York newspaper called The Independent (Poets.org).
William Butler Yeats was one of the most famous poets of the nineteenth century. Even though William Butler Yeats wrote both Victorian and Modernistic literature, he still had a large impact on the modernistic style. “After 1910, Yeats's dramatic art took a sharp turn toward a highly poetical, static, and esoteric style” (nobelprize.org). Even though Yeats was considered a patriot, “he deplored the hatred and bigotry of the Nationalist movement” This concern was new in the Modernism era.