WEBVTT 00:11.520 --> 00:14.350 Professor Langdon Hammer: Now, 00:14.347 --> 00:17.797 this is not only a course for English majors, 00:17.802 --> 00:20.082 but for other majors too. 00:20.080 --> 00:22.460 The poets we'll be reading--well, 00:22.457 --> 00:25.427 they knew about science, music, politics, 00:25.429 --> 00:28.969 economics, and they presumed to talk about 00:28.974 --> 00:32.124 those things, in their poetry and out of 00:32.124 --> 00:33.744 their poetry too. 00:33.740 --> 00:40.080 My lectures are going to presume no special knowledge on 00:40.077 --> 00:45.497 your part. I see this as a course that's 00:45.501 --> 00:51.771 an introduction to the literature of a period, 00:51.772 --> 00:54.562 to modern poetry. 00:54.560 --> 00:58.500 We'll be studying several poets in some detail. 00:58.500 --> 01:06.290 The presumption is that they all reward and demand a certain 01:06.287 --> 01:09.717 amount of close reading. 01:09.719 --> 01:13.099 At the same time, I do mean to give you some 01:13.097 --> 01:16.787 sense of the period in which they're writing, 01:16.790 --> 01:23.550 some sense of modernism as a field, as one of the richest 01:23.546 --> 01:28.006 fields in English language writing. 01:28.010 --> 01:32.020 Finally, though, this really is a course in 01:32.021 --> 01:34.601 poetry, plain and simple. 01:34.599 --> 01:39.429 I mean to introduce you to particular poems, 01:39.434 --> 01:44.384 to give you ways to possess them, enjoy them, 01:44.380 --> 01:48.990 be puzzled or frustrated by them too; 01:48.989 --> 01:54.849 to learn something from them and to care about them and to 01:54.845 --> 02:00.695 carry them with you as you go forward after this class. 02:00.700 --> 02:05.820 So, that's a sense of what I want to accomplish in these 02:05.816 --> 02:09.686 lectures. It will mean reading a lot of 02:09.690 --> 02:13.130 poems and writing about them some. 02:13.129 --> 02:17.499 The syllabus you'll see notes the general topic of each 02:17.498 --> 02:22.348 lecture and the reading that I want you to have done for that 02:22.352 --> 02:25.042 day. There's a Midterm. 02:25.039 --> 02:29.529 That will be a short answer test that's intended to give you 02:29.533 --> 02:34.183 a chance to show how diligently you've been reading and coming 02:34.179 --> 02:38.239 to class. The Final will include both a 02:38.241 --> 02:43.961 short answer component and then some essay questions. 02:43.960 --> 02:49.930 There are two papers, a shorter and a slightly longer 02:49.931 --> 02:52.671 one. The first paper is going to ask 02:52.667 --> 02:54.977 you to write about one short poem; 02:54.979 --> 03:00.119 the second will ask you to write about two or more poems, 03:00.123 --> 03:04.993 or poems perhaps by two authors, or perhaps a poem and 03:04.991 --> 03:08.391 some other kind of text or image. 03:08.389 --> 03:13.119 The teaching fellows in this course, I'm lucky to work with 03:13.121 --> 03:17.411 and you are too. They are trained and have an 03:17.410 --> 03:21.940 interest in modern poetry, and this is a happy 03:21.944 --> 03:25.374 collaboration for me with them. 03:25.370 --> 03:29.650 As I say, we'll start to get our discussion sections 03:29.653 --> 03:33.183 organized on Monday and they should be set, 03:33.181 --> 03:37.131 I hope, by the Wednesday lecture next week. 03:37.129 --> 03:38.819 I want you to come to lecture on time. 03:38.820 --> 03:40.870 I did today, I started on time. 03:40.870 --> 03:46.460 I don't always do that but I'd like to, and I can if you come 03:46.464 --> 03:48.824 at 11:30. Bring your books; 03:48.819 --> 03:52.759 I'm going to be talking about the texts and I hope you'll have 03:52.755 --> 03:56.095 them open. And of course you will come to 03:56.103 --> 04:00.483 your discussion sections in the same state of joyful 04:00.477 --> 04:05.457 preparedness. As I say, the syllabuses should 04:05.457 --> 04:09.877 be accessible on the Classsv2 server; 04:09.879 --> 04:13.489 however, I've had problems with that in the past and you should 04:13.489 --> 04:15.409 please let me know if it's not. 04:15.409 --> 04:18.059 There are just two books for the course; 04:18.060 --> 04:20.660 they're both at Labyrinth. 04:20.660 --> 04:24.820 One is the first volume of The Norton Anthology of 04:24.824 --> 04:28.994 Modern and Contemporary Poetry, Third Edition. 04:28.990 --> 04:33.560 It's edited by Jahan Ramazani, formerly a Teaching Fellow in 04:33.564 --> 04:37.304 this course. There's also Elizabeth Bishop's 04:37.299 --> 04:39.349 Collected Poems. 04:39.350 --> 04:47.380 There will be a packet that you can order from RIS that gathers 04:47.376 --> 04:51.386 a few supplementary readings. 04:51.389 --> 04:55.409 There will be the visual images that I'm going to talk about in 04:55.410 --> 04:59.370 lecture, and that I will make accessible to you on the class's 04:59.366 --> 05:02.716 server. There are also audio recordings 05:02.720 --> 05:07.740 of the poets that we will be reading that come from Sterling 05:07.744 --> 05:13.114 and you can get to on the Center for Language Study website. 05:13.110 --> 05:19.420 All those things we can talk about more as the semester 05:19.422 --> 05:24.452 develops, and I hope you will talk to me. 05:24.449 --> 05:29.049 You can do that on email, you can do that in my office, 05:29.050 --> 05:33.740 which is downstairs on the first floor of this building, 05:33.737 --> 05:37.967 in LC-109. You can catch me after lecture 05:37.966 --> 05:42.616 or before. We can have lunch--all sorts of 05:42.622 --> 05:48.112 opportunities for talking, and I hope you'll take 05:48.108 --> 05:52.328 advantage of it. For Monday, we're going to 05:52.334 --> 05:56.764 start talking about Robert Frost, and I'd like you to pay 05:56.760 --> 06:00.080 special attention to his poem "Mowing," 06:00.079 --> 06:04.389 in the RIS packet, and to his poem "Birches" in 06:04.387 --> 06:06.257 The Norton. 06:06.259 --> 06:12.479 And as you read, pay special attention to images 06:12.477 --> 06:15.517 of tools, work, play. 06:15.519 --> 06:21.939 Read Frost's short poetic statement, prose poetic 06:21.941 --> 06:29.301 statement in The Norton called "The Figure a Poem 06:29.298 --> 06:33.348 Makes." So, The Norton 06:33.345 --> 06:37.745 Anthology, this book, this heavy book, 06:37.745 --> 06:43.535 I order it as a way to, well, reduce your expenses. 06:43.540 --> 06:46.440 Here's just one big book to buy. 06:46.440 --> 06:49.890 It also provides needed annotation. 06:49.889 --> 06:53.849 Modern poetry is in need of annotation. 06:53.850 --> 07:00.500 This new edition of this old book is an excellent one. 07:00.500 --> 07:05.180 You should read Jahan Ramazani's introduction, 07:05.177 --> 07:11.307 read his prose notes that preface his various selections. 07:11.310 --> 07:15.380 Having said that, there's really nothing so dead 07:15.381 --> 07:20.271 as The Norton Anthology, or ponderous, 07:20.274 --> 07:26.074 and I do order it with a little--well, 07:26.066 --> 07:30.446 some misgivings for that. 07:30.449 --> 07:34.809 The poems come to you abstracted from the contexts in 07:34.809 --> 07:38.749 which they were originally produced and read, 07:38.750 --> 07:44.820 from their place in a body of work, in a book, 07:44.817 --> 07:50.747 in a magazine, in a life that produced it. 07:50.750 --> 07:57.230 In order to counteract the packaged and monumental form of 07:57.234 --> 08:03.584 The Norton, I will be using Beinecke's and 08:03.578 --> 08:10.088 Sterling's resources, using Power Point digitized 08:10.089 --> 08:14.419 files. This will allow me to project 08:14.424 --> 08:20.764 images in class and for you to look at them later at home. 08:20.759 --> 08:25.449 There'll be files for not all but most of the poets that we 08:25.446 --> 08:30.206 discuss, and the aim is to give you some sense through those 08:30.213 --> 08:33.933 images of modern poetry in its historical, 08:33.929 --> 08:39.979 material dimensions, to represent it as something 08:39.977 --> 08:46.147 that was lived, and in many ways is living now. 08:46.149 --> 08:51.449 Now, the poems that you'll be reading, we'll be talking about, 08:51.452 --> 08:55.632 did not, of course, always exist in the form that 08:55.625 --> 09:00.355 you find them. Their first form was very often 09:00.358 --> 09:03.798 a manuscript. If you go to Beinecke, 09:03.804 --> 09:09.304 you can find – and we will go to Beinecke, those of you who 09:09.298 --> 09:14.518 want to come with me – and look at manuscripts that were 09:14.518 --> 09:20.098 early versions of texts that you now find in The Norton 09:20.103 --> 09:23.943 and other books. When poems that had gone 09:23.936 --> 09:27.966 through their processes of revision and so forth and came 09:27.965 --> 09:31.855 to publication, they very often were published 09:31.864 --> 09:36.554 first, not in book form certainly, but rather in Little 09:36.551 --> 09:41.761 Magazines that are now more or less lost to us today but were 09:41.760 --> 09:46.530 in fact the essential vehicle for the creation of modern 09:46.534 --> 09:50.834 poetry. What is a Little Magazine? 09:50.830 --> 09:58.660 Well, very often they were big – big in format and size. 09:58.659 --> 10:03.889 They were little because their circulation was small. 10:03.889 --> 10:09.049 These were the funded-on-a-shoestring magazines 10:09.048 --> 10:15.888 that rose up and very frequently faded away just as quickly in 10:15.888 --> 10:21.198 the 1910s and 1920s, and that were in many cases the 10:21.197 --> 10:25.247 first avenue of publication for Stevens, Eliot, 10:25.250 --> 10:30.760 Moore, the poets that you will be reading in this class. 10:30.759 --> 10:35.619 These magazines were acutely aware of their differences from 10:35.620 --> 10:40.480 the popular literary magazines of the nineteenth century, 10:40.480 --> 10:45.640 general interest popular magazines of the twentieth 10:45.641 --> 10:50.081 century, magazines with wide circulation, 10:50.080 --> 10:53.230 polite audiences. 10:53.230 --> 10:57.820 The Little Magazine was written by, addressed to, 10:57.817 --> 11:03.267 new young writers and artists, and they were determined to 11:03.265 --> 11:07.705 make trouble. Nothing, I think, 11:07.705 --> 11:16.645 captures the nerve of these magazines like the cover of 11:16.649 --> 11:22.589 Blast, which meant "kaboom," a 11:22.587 --> 11:30.157 magazine as a kind of bomb, or maybe a curse-damn you, 11:30.163 --> 11:34.363 blast. Pound was one of the 11:34.361 --> 11:39.521 contributors. Eliot's Rhapsody on a Windy 11:39.521 --> 11:45.561 Night appeared here in this number of the magazine from 11:45.557 --> 11:50.757 July, 1915 in the midst of the First World War; 11:50.760 --> 11:57.540 11:57.539 --> 12:03.689 Rogue – another, also from 1915. 12:03.690 --> 12:07.580 Notice the price – five cents. 12:07.580 --> 12:10.520 Stevens appeared here, in this magazine. 12:10.519 --> 12:14.619 You could contrast the roguish and fanciful, 12:14.618 --> 12:18.718 clearly done by hand, title of the magazine, 12:18.717 --> 12:22.527 with that machine-type Blast. 12:22.529 --> 12:27.979 Both of these are mischievous, oppositional magazines but with 12:27.983 --> 12:31.383 very different styles and attitudes. 12:31.380 --> 12:34.560 12:34.560 --> 12:40.810 Here's another, Broom. 12:40.809 --> 12:43.419 This is a magazine just slightly later. 12:43.420 --> 12:47.010 This is an issue of 1922. 12:47.009 --> 12:50.909 It's a cover by Ferdinand Léger; 12:50.910 --> 12:53.590 Hart Crane would appear here. 12:53.590 --> 12:59.200 Broom meant to make a clean sweep of things, 12:59.201 --> 13:03.691 a clean sweep of what had come before. 13:03.690 --> 13:07.790 It also clearly meant to have fun doing it. 13:07.790 --> 13:10.730 Oops, I have gone too far. 13:10.730 --> 13:13.310 This is the back of the magazine. 13:13.309 --> 13:16.959 I don't know how well you can make it out but there's a little 13:16.956 --> 13:21.536 broom guy there with glasses, playing air guitar with his 13:21.541 --> 13:27.611 broom, and I guess this is meant to capture the spirit of the 13:27.611 --> 13:33.581 contributors. Contrast that with the magazine 13:33.577 --> 13:41.287 that flashed there a moment ago, The Criterion. 13:41.289 --> 13:43.609 This is a long way from Broom. 13:43.610 --> 13:48.280 This is October 1922, comes out just before 13:48.279 --> 13:51.169 Broom is created. 13:51.169 --> 13:54.359 Here you've got a magazine that doesn't present itself as 13:54.357 --> 13:57.087 attacking anything at all, but rather as what? 13:57.090 --> 14:00.480 As setting the standard, The Criterion. 14:00.480 --> 14:03.690 It looks official, doesn't it? 14:03.690 --> 14:08.060 The editor is T.S. Eliot. 14:08.059 --> 14:11.979 This is the first number of the magazine. 14:11.980 --> 14:14.310 The magazine, in many ways, 14:14.313 --> 14:18.803 announced and facilitated Eliot's rise to a kind of 14:18.800 --> 14:22.390 cultural authority as a taste maker, 14:22.389 --> 14:26.139 and with it certain ideas of modernism. 14:26.139 --> 14:28.729 This issue here, October 1922, 14:28.727 --> 14:32.027 includes The Waste Land by T.S. 14:32.027 --> 14:35.687 Eliot. It also includes a little bit 14:35.692 --> 14:41.622 further down the page of review and essay by Valerie Larbeau on 14:41.619 --> 14:46.589 a new novel by James Joyce called Ulysses. 14:46.590 --> 14:50.680 That's some sense of the spectrum of magazines that are 14:50.680 --> 14:54.850 coming out, and all with different roles to play in this 14:54.846 --> 14:59.386 culture and that position their writers and poets and artists 14:59.391 --> 15:02.801 associated with them in different ways. 15:02.799 --> 15:07.899 Book publication can be just as interesting and it can tell us 15:07.898 --> 15:11.908 just as much about modern poetry as magazines. 15:11.909 --> 15:18.729 This is The Wind Among the Reeds, author William Butler 15:18.734 --> 15:23.664 Yeats, the year 1899, on the verge of the new 15:23.657 --> 15:25.967 century. It's a beautiful book. 15:25.970 --> 15:29.590 It's a book that wants to be beautiful, that's happy to be 15:29.588 --> 15:33.608 beautiful. It's rich in color and texture. 15:33.610 --> 15:36.730 It's designed, embossed, gilt. 15:36.730 --> 15:41.670 It's self-consciously Irish, Celtic. 15:41.669 --> 15:47.639 There's a sense that you're supposed to leave the bookstore 15:47.640 --> 15:53.610 with a kind of talisman that you have bought, with a Celtic 15:53.610 --> 15:56.810 charm. Contrast this book, 15:56.805 --> 16:01.135 Prufrock and Other Observations, 16:01.136 --> 16:06.376 the subtitle left off here of the cover of T.S. 16:06.379 --> 16:11.279 Eliot's great book, published in 1917. 16:11.279 --> 16:14.459 This is a different object, isn't it? 16:14.460 --> 16:19.360 Severe, unsentimental, dry, so much so as to be maybe 16:19.360 --> 16:21.810 even a little bit funny. 16:21.809 --> 16:24.869 And you laughed, right, and I think you're 16:24.866 --> 16:28.586 supposed to. It's not entirely serious, 16:28.588 --> 16:32.398 even as it declares its seriousness. 16:32.399 --> 16:38.119 If Yeats's book was so explicitly Irish, 16:38.117 --> 16:41.047 look at this book. 16:41.049 --> 16:44.649 It has no observable nationality at all, 16:44.647 --> 16:47.267 does it? A certain kind of, 16:47.274 --> 16:50.594 well, you might say impersonality. 16:50.590 --> 16:57.230 Its rhetoric is so flat and unemotional, so overtly 16:57.228 --> 17:00.148 unrhetorical. It is, in fact, 17:00.148 --> 17:03.238 a very deliberate and self-conscious repudiation of 17:03.243 --> 17:06.713 that late romantic aesthetic that Yeats's early book, 17:06.710 --> 17:10.380 and even the cover of that early book, represents. 17:10.380 --> 17:15.080 Prufrock isn't beautiful and its author is not a bard. 17:15.080 --> 17:18.630 17:18.630 --> 17:21.420 Another book, another book cover, 17:21.421 --> 17:25.081 The Weary Blues, by Langston Hughes, 17:25.084 --> 17:27.924 1926. Unlike Prufrock, 17:27.916 --> 17:33.076 this one is full of color and of course it is the work of a 17:33.077 --> 17:37.137 poet of color. The image presents the book not 17:37.136 --> 17:41.896 as a work of poetry at all but rather as a kind of music, 17:41.900 --> 17:46.250 as a book of Blues, and it associates its poet 17:46.250 --> 17:50.020 singer with honky-tonk piano players; 17:50.019 --> 17:56.499 not Broom's bohemian egghead air guitarist, 17:56.497 --> 18:04.687 but another kind of vernacular, another kind of celebration and 18:04.693 --> 18:08.133 another kind of music. 18:08.130 --> 18:13.190 It makes us think about black artists playing for a living in 18:13.192 --> 18:15.642 Prohibition Era back rooms. 18:15.640 --> 18:24.680 Now, poems, like books, project an image of the poet 18:24.676 --> 18:28.216 who produces them. 18:28.220 --> 18:32.750 While the poet is creating her or his poems, 18:32.753 --> 18:38.663 the poet is also creating a poet, a certain figure of the 18:38.658 --> 18:42.558 poet, a public image of the poet. 18:42.559 --> 18:47.099 And this is an evolving project, a work in progress. 18:47.099 --> 18:50.139 That's part of the work and part of the subject and part of 18:50.135 --> 18:52.015 what I will be talking about here. 18:52.019 --> 18:58.219 Let's look, for example, at a series of photos of Ezra 18:58.223 --> 19:01.973 Pound. Together, they tell a kind of 19:01.965 --> 19:06.695 encapsulated history of this central, fascinating, 19:06.704 --> 19:09.514 problematic poet's career. 19:09.510 --> 19:14.530 He begins as an aesthete. 19:14.529 --> 19:17.699 This is 1913, Pound in London, 19:17.696 --> 19:21.736 styling himself, isn't he, after those 19:21.737 --> 19:28.287 Renaissance artists and poets whom he would write about, 19:28.290 --> 19:30.900 translate in this period. 19:30.900 --> 19:37.580 It could be a miniature worn by a Provencal damsel, 19:37.581 --> 19:41.781 no? Well, here he is a little 19:41.778 --> 19:49.818 later, Pound after the war in 1923, sort of full flower of 19:49.824 --> 19:55.284 modernism, still a young man but he's got 19:55.276 --> 20:02.146 that cane, and he's in Paris where he would meet Eliot and 20:02.147 --> 20:07.207 work on The Waste Land with him. 20:07.210 --> 20:11.450 Well, fast forward twenty years. 20:11.450 --> 20:16.380 This is Pound, Pound accused of treason; 20:16.380 --> 20:21.360 Pound accused of treason by his country, accused of treason as 20:21.359 --> 20:25.359 he tries to bend the world to his vision of it, 20:25.359 --> 20:30.989 and he escapes trial only by reason of insanity when he is 20:30.988 --> 20:36.908 brought from Italy under charges of having made broadcasts on 20:36.912 --> 20:41.842 fascist radio, back to the United States, 20:41.844 --> 20:46.094 after an ordeal in a cage in Pisa. 20:46.089 --> 20:55.469 And he poses for this photo as an intake photo as he enters St. 20:55.471 --> 21:03.341 Elizabeth's Hospital for the Insane in Washington. 21:03.339 --> 21:08.489 In this final photo from 1971, back in Italy in Rapallo, 21:08.486 --> 21:13.906 well, here's Pound presenting us with an image of something 21:13.914 --> 21:18.784 that would have seemed impossible when he began, 21:18.779 --> 21:26.409 which is an image of modernism grown old, old and blasted, 21:26.413 --> 21:31.333 in many senses. Contrast this career, 21:31.334 --> 21:37.004 encapsulated in those images, with this one. 21:37.000 --> 21:39.520 Who's this? This is the author of 21:39.516 --> 21:41.806 Prufrock. In fact, this is the Harvard 21:41.807 --> 21:43.427 student who wrote Prufrock; 21:43.430 --> 21:48.230 Eliot wrote Prufrock largely when still at Harvard 21:48.233 --> 21:51.753 and in the years immediately following. 21:51.750 --> 21:59.870 Sexy? A little, maybe; those full, slightly parted 21:59.869 --> 22:04.619 lips, that windswept hair, the general J. 22:04.624 --> 22:12.894 Crew look. Notice the handkerchief. 22:12.890 --> 22:17.980 Here's the editor, great editor of the publisher 22:17.979 --> 22:21.989 Faber & Faber, thirty years later, 22:21.985 --> 22:28.045 or more, surrounded by books, the cultural arbiter of the 22:28.049 --> 22:33.469 English speaking world; T.S. Eliot at sixty. 22:33.470 --> 22:39.160 That hair is now slicked down, there are glasses between him 22:39.161 --> 22:42.081 and us. This is the young man who's 22:42.084 --> 22:43.534 become a monument. 22:43.529 --> 22:46.129 But really, the costume's the same one, right? 22:46.130 --> 22:50.080 There's the handkerchief. 22:50.079 --> 22:54.799 Pound's descent into infamy and insanity and indignity and 22:54.803 --> 22:59.033 Eliot's rise to the extraordinary cultural power and 22:59.029 --> 23:03.999 prestige that he occupied and that is represented by this and 23:04.001 --> 23:07.391 many other photos, well, these are key stories in 23:07.390 --> 23:09.910 modern poetry and they're interestingly interlocking, 23:09.910 --> 23:11.890 just as their two lives were. 23:11.890 --> 23:15.150 23:15.150 --> 23:17.740 Another modern poet. 23:17.740 --> 23:25.170 This is an old woman called Marianne Moore who became a kind 23:25.171 --> 23:30.841 of civic icon, who became a celebrity even, 23:30.839 --> 23:35.689 as an eccentric New Yorker who wore tri-cornered hats and went 23:35.687 --> 23:40.467 to baseball games and the zoo, and here appears in, 23:40.466 --> 23:46.276 well, her hair braided and wrapped around her head; 23:46.279 --> 23:50.819 fanciful, virginal, kindly, safely out of fashion, 23:50.824 --> 23:56.204 full of a kind of civic virtue, the embodiment of a certain 23:56.203 --> 23:59.453 kind of popular idea of poetry. 23:59.450 --> 24:03.120 And you can't read it but there's a kind of stamp of 24:03.118 --> 24:06.928 approval here from the governor Nelson Rockefeller. 24:06.930 --> 24:10.620 Think of how far away this is from Ezra Pound in St. 24:10.624 --> 24:12.294 Elizabeth's Hospital. 24:12.289 --> 24:15.169 This is another image of modern poetry. 24:15.170 --> 24:20.210 But Moore's hair was not always done up. 24:20.210 --> 24:25.670 This is the image of a child, also named Marianne Moore, 24:25.673 --> 24:29.153 with delicious, prodigious locks. 24:29.150 --> 24:35.050 It reveals maybe a little bit of the power and extravagance 24:35.045 --> 24:40.935 and glory that you feel in her poems but that she preferred 24:40.941 --> 24:47.651 always to restrain and bind and control in extraordinary ways, 24:47.650 --> 24:51.600 and not always to hide. 24:51.599 --> 24:54.909 One of the enduring works written in 1922, 24:54.911 --> 24:58.631 the amazing year that The Waste Land and 24:58.625 --> 25:03.385 Ulysses appeared and The Criterion started its 25:03.390 --> 25:07.430 publication--one of those amazing works is Marianne 25:07.428 --> 25:10.818 Moore's poem called Poetry. 25:10.819 --> 25:14.379 You've got a sample of it on your handout. 25:14.380 --> 25:20.550 Moore, who revised her poems, just the same way she ended up 25:20.552 --> 25:24.822 binding her hair, republished this poem 25:24.824 --> 25:30.704 eventually in short form, very short, where three pages 25:30.699 --> 25:34.289 were reduced to two sentences. 25:34.289 --> 25:35.999 The first two sentences you see: 25:36.000 --> 25:38.880 I, too, dislike it: there are things 25:38.877 --> 25:42.577 important beyond all this fiddle. 25:42.579 --> 25:47.019 Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, 25:47.023 --> 25:51.993 one discovers in it after all, a place for the genuine. 25:51.990 --> 25:56.180 Some of what she cut out of the poem, cut out of its later 25:56.179 --> 26:00.589 version, is a list of what she had in mind as the genuine, 26:00.589 --> 26:03.899 as examples of it, which is the first quotation 26:03.903 --> 26:06.293 there; again, on your handout: 26:06.289 --> 26:09.709 The bat, holding on upside down [and so 26:09.711 --> 26:12.051 on] A flea, the base- 26:12.050 --> 26:16.750 ball fan, the statistician-- nor is it valid 26:16.750 --> 26:19.190 to discriminate against "business documents and 26:19.190 --> 26:23.570 school-books"; all of these phenomena are 26:23.573 --> 26:27.343 important. The drive to include the 26:27.341 --> 26:32.221 world--Moore's omnivorous poems claim for poetry all the 26:32.224 --> 26:36.404 subjects that she mentions here and indeed many, 26:36.398 --> 26:39.668 many more. All these are new, 26:39.668 --> 26:43.128 modern subjects. Because they represent 26:43.126 --> 26:46.816 dimensions of experience formerly excluded from the 26:46.822 --> 26:50.512 elevated, idealized discourse that is 26:50.513 --> 26:56.123 poetry, dimensions of experience excluded as prosaic. 26:56.119 --> 27:01.649 Moore is quoting here in that phrase "business documents and 27:01.652 --> 27:05.782 school-books," as she tells us, from Tolstoy, 27:05.778 --> 27:09.298 a prose writer. But she goes further than 27:09.303 --> 27:13.143 Tolstoy in her commitment to the seemingly non-poetic. 27:13.140 --> 27:16.470 She will not only include Tolstoy's prose, 27:16.465 --> 27:21.325 she will not even discriminate against business documents and 27:21.331 --> 27:26.261 school books. Moore exemplifies in this way a 27:26.255 --> 27:32.655 key aspect of modern poetry--its radical heterogeneity, 27:32.660 --> 27:38.890 its will to mix many kinds of materials and discourses, 27:38.889 --> 27:45.809 to make poetry reach out from the rarified and limited domain 27:45.811 --> 27:53.081 of the poetic to keep including more and more of the world. 27:53.079 --> 27:58.489 The next quotation on your handout--this is another example 27:58.487 --> 28:02.317 of this. I won't sing for you or give 28:02.317 --> 28:06.247 you my Italian, but these famous lines, 28:06.250 --> 28:11.040 "London Bridge is falling down, falling down, 28:11.035 --> 28:16.285 falling down" and so on, these come from the conclusion 28:16.293 --> 28:19.023 to The Waste Land. 28:19.019 --> 28:23.909 They thrust together different texts, different languages, 28:23.907 --> 28:27.677 writing from different historical periods, 28:27.680 --> 28:33.400 all there, compressed in that remarkable mad song that 28:33.395 --> 28:35.655 concludes the poem. 28:35.660 --> 28:40.690 In the next quotation, Eliot tells us that a various 28:40.688 --> 28:44.418 and complex civilization, such as ours, 28:44.424 --> 28:48.234 produces, he says, various and complex results, 28:48.226 --> 28:52.616 as if inevitably, lest we think that there's 28:52.621 --> 28:59.161 anything particularly forced or outlandish or willful about his 28:59.158 --> 29:05.588 own remarkable poetry in lines such as those I just quoted for 29:05.591 --> 29:07.741 you. Eliot was there, 29:07.741 --> 29:11.271 in that essay on the metaphysical poets that I'm 29:11.268 --> 29:15.048 quoting from, defending as necessary what is 29:15.054 --> 29:19.884 the primary characteristic, not only of his own poetry, 29:19.880 --> 29:25.440 but really of modern poetry generally, what is often called 29:25.440 --> 29:28.540 its difficulty. Whatever else it may be, 29:28.542 --> 29:32.102 everyone's always agreed that modern poetry is difficult. 29:32.100 --> 29:34.760 You will probably too. 29:34.759 --> 29:38.009 By "difficult," it is meant, I think, well, 29:38.010 --> 29:42.500 first of all that it is in some sense set apart from common 29:42.498 --> 29:46.528 speech, as a specialized and highly 29:46.530 --> 29:50.300 self-conscious use of language. 29:50.299 --> 29:55.019 Eliot would go further and say that there is no common form of 29:55.022 --> 29:58.122 modern speech, and that's the problem. 29:58.119 --> 30:01.509 According to Eliot, the modern world lacks a 30:01.507 --> 30:05.127 center, a kind of set of collective beliefs and 30:05.131 --> 30:09.781 commitments that would enable communication between us. 30:09.779 --> 30:12.399 Modernity for Eliot, as for Moore, 30:12.397 --> 30:15.567 as for Pound, is marked by a profusion of 30:15.569 --> 30:18.769 languages, both national languages such as 30:18.770 --> 30:21.940 French or Russian, which turn up in The Waste 30:21.940 --> 30:25.060 Land; also, a bewildering array of 30:25.055 --> 30:29.005 specialized types of discourse, technical genres, 30:29.008 --> 30:33.038 varieties of speech, business documents and school 30:33.044 --> 30:37.784 books. There's an extraordinary sense 30:37.778 --> 30:43.008 of verbal chaos, a kind of word hoard that 30:43.010 --> 30:48.370 modern poetry and modernism--generally, 30:48.369 --> 30:52.749 a kind of linguistic environment of great complexity 30:52.748 --> 30:56.868 from which modern poetry and modernism emerge. 30:56.869 --> 31:02.099 This is an image called "Rotterdam" by the artist Edward 31:02.099 --> 31:05.109 Wadsworth. It's a woodcut image from 31:05.111 --> 31:07.801 Blast. I like it because it's a kind 31:07.799 --> 31:11.359 of image of the modern city that makes the modern city look like 31:11.361 --> 31:13.531 language, look like letters, 31:13.534 --> 31:18.354 look like a kind of scattered alphabet, a kind of babble. 31:18.349 --> 31:23.139 It's a kind of picture for me of the linguistic environment, 31:23.141 --> 31:25.741 if you will, of modern poetry. 31:25.740 --> 31:30.460 Behind this environment are the great social processes of 31:30.462 --> 31:35.612 migration and modernization that produced that new urban form, 31:35.607 --> 31:39.217 the metropolis. All of the poets we read, 31:39.223 --> 31:42.693 even that New England hayseed, Robert Frost, 31:42.686 --> 31:46.146 begin their careers in metropolitan centers, 31:46.149 --> 31:49.209 primarily in London and New York. 31:49.210 --> 31:53.600 "All that is solid melts into air," Karl Marx said, 31:53.599 --> 31:57.809 evoking the accelerating transformation of modern 31:57.813 --> 32:00.363 economic and social life. 32:00.359 --> 32:04.759 The metropolis is the center of this unsettled world that Marx 32:04.755 --> 32:07.765 describes. Coming to the metropolis a 32:07.770 --> 32:12.820 hundred or ninety years ago now entailed, for the writers that 32:12.815 --> 32:16.085 we'll be reading, as much as for anyone else, 32:16.089 --> 32:19.089 a kind of break with a world that they had known, 32:19.089 --> 32:23.499 a break either with a native language – this is what the 32:23.501 --> 32:27.911 emigrant or the expatriate experiences – or perhaps with 32:27.913 --> 32:31.013 native ways of speaking and knowing, 32:31.010 --> 32:34.170 familiar spheres of reference. 32:34.170 --> 32:38.670 Life in the modern metropolis was de-familiarizing. 32:38.670 --> 32:41.810 It de-naturalized language. 32:41.809 --> 32:46.679 Where there are many languages in use, language comes to seem 32:46.683 --> 32:51.723 arbitrary rather than natural, as the product of convention; 32:51.720 --> 32:56.070 not as something you're simply born into but something that you 32:56.070 --> 32:59.930 learn, something that is made and that can be remade. 32:59.930 --> 33:04.410 This is a presumption of all the poets we'll be reading. 33:04.410 --> 33:10.190 Modern American writers and artists immigrated famously to 33:10.192 --> 33:12.122 London, to Paris. 33:12.119 --> 33:15.799 Another key event in the making of modernism is the great 33:15.796 --> 33:19.536 migration of African-Americans from the rural south to the 33:19.539 --> 33:23.069 urban north. Langston Hughes's poetry comes 33:23.066 --> 33:27.936 out of this experience in a community of black intellectuals 33:27.935 --> 33:31.975 and artists it created specifically in Harlem. 33:31.980 --> 33:37.290 And you'll see on your handout two quotations from poems by 33:37.289 --> 33:42.389 Hughes, the first, "125^(th) Street," giving us 33:42.392 --> 33:49.872 well, here, images of black life in the rural south transposed to 33:49.871 --> 33:52.741 Harlem. There's in those images, 33:52.741 --> 33:56.571 I think, a kind of utopian promise that the familiar, 33:56.569 --> 34:01.709 ordinary pleasures of rural life can be recaptured in a new 34:01.708 --> 34:03.478 society of plenty. 34:03.480 --> 34:07.010 But there's also something hallucinatory and troubling 34:07.007 --> 34:11.197 about those images and vaguely disturbing that's brought out, 34:11.199 --> 34:15.119 I think, in the related, famous poem, 34:15.123 --> 34:21.233 "Harlem," on the next side of the page where if we've had 34:21.226 --> 34:28.436 faces as food in the first text, something possibly reassuring, 34:28.440 --> 34:34.910 those faces begin to look like dangerous objectifications in 34:34.911 --> 34:42.371 the second one where that raisin in the sun threatens to explode. 34:42.369 --> 34:45.679 Metropolis is, in modern poetry, 34:45.675 --> 34:51.855 set against a backdrop of war and violence and conflict, 34:51.860 --> 34:57.960 and modern poetry, as it absorbs the world of the 34:57.955 --> 35:04.935 metropolis, absorbs that violence and energy as well. 35:04.940 --> 35:08.560 The metropolis, well, it's a place of 35:08.564 --> 35:13.104 ambivalence, a place of promise and of threat, 35:13.095 --> 35:16.715 of exultation and also of dread. 35:16.719 --> 35:20.939 This ambivalence that I'm describing is at the center of 35:20.938 --> 35:23.238 modern literature generally. 35:23.239 --> 35:26.999 And the metropolis is crowded with language, 35:27.001 --> 35:31.111 crowded with faces, but there's also a pervasive 35:31.113 --> 35:35.843 sense of absence and of loneliness and of loss captured 35:35.838 --> 35:40.998 also again paradigmatically in The Waste Land, 35:41.000 --> 35:45.470 and I've included there more lines from that poem. 35:45.469 --> 35:48.779 "The nymphs are departed," Eliot says. 35:48.780 --> 35:54.150 Eliot's speaking of a spiritual and imaginative state. 35:54.150 --> 35:57.580 Modern poetry arises, in Eliot's case, 35:57.575 --> 36:02.385 with the death of God, with the loss of a theological 36:02.390 --> 36:08.470 justification for life, with a sense of disenchantment, 36:08.467 --> 36:14.697 a sense of depletion, depletion of meaning and value. 36:14.699 --> 36:18.849 The metropolis which uproots people, takes them away, 36:18.853 --> 36:22.933 takes them out of traditional cultures, also uproots 36:22.926 --> 36:26.676 traditional religious belief and practices. 36:26.679 --> 36:30.139 Eliot's poetry, the poetry he created out of 36:30.138 --> 36:34.158 this experience, is a poetry of spiritual agony. 36:34.159 --> 36:37.029 Modernity is, in his work, 36:37.031 --> 36:43.001 a condition of social and psychological fragmentation 36:43.003 --> 36:49.043 which is both a private, personal dilemma and a public 36:49.042 --> 36:51.672 one, as he understands it. 36:51.670 --> 36:57.750 Compare to Eliot's city, Eliot's sense of the city, 36:57.751 --> 37:01.211 this one. This is a photograph by Alfred 37:01.212 --> 37:03.762 Stieglitz, City of Ambition. 37:03.760 --> 37:10.330 This is the modern city, not as a scene of fragmentation 37:10.325 --> 37:17.245 or despair, but rather a place of ascent and aspiration. 37:17.250 --> 37:27.250 It's also a scene of crossings, bridging past and future. 37:27.250 --> 37:30.240 This is a photo by another American photographer, 37:30.240 --> 37:32.920 Walker Evans, a photo of Brooklyn Bridge. 37:32.920 --> 37:34.920 You recognize it. 37:34.920 --> 37:41.480 And here is another, another image by Evans of the 37:41.475 --> 37:45.105 bridge. This one comes from a page of 37:45.107 --> 37:49.207 Hart Crane's epic poem The Bridge, 37:49.210 --> 37:54.420 and a book that you can go find at the Beinecke, 37:54.419 --> 38:01.069 a remarkable edition of Crane's poem where Evans's photos, 38:01.070 --> 38:04.640 grand photos, appear as almost miniature 38:04.643 --> 38:09.873 images surrounded by white space, as you get some sense in 38:09.865 --> 38:13.365 this image. In Crane, in his great poem 38:13.373 --> 38:17.643 The Bridge- and here's another photo by Evans, 38:17.639 --> 38:20.929 this time of Crane on the rooftop of the apartment 38:20.934 --> 38:24.304 building in Brooklyn, 110 Columbia Heights where he 38:24.295 --> 38:26.845 lived and where he began the poem, 38:26.849 --> 38:29.689 with the bridge in the background. 38:29.690 --> 38:34.970 In Crane, the emphasis is not on what is lost in modernity but 38:34.965 --> 38:37.815 what is found or what might be. 38:37.820 --> 38:42.480 Here's another quotation from your handout, 38:42.478 --> 38:45.838 number 7: New thresholds, 38:45.840 --> 38:48.450 new anatomies, wine talons 38:48.449 --> 38:51.839 Build freedom up about me and distill 38:51.840 --> 38:55.190 This competence to travel in a tier 38:55.190 --> 38:59.870 Sparkling alone within another's will. 38:59.869 --> 39:05.749 Modern poetry is difficult and these are difficult lines. 39:05.750 --> 39:08.060 "New thresholds, new anatomies", 39:08.057 --> 39:10.957 well, that's not such a hard concept; 39:10.960 --> 39:15.210 that's an image of what the modern promises for Crane, 39:15.208 --> 39:19.298 and indeed those Gothic arches of the bridge seem to 39:19.296 --> 39:21.216 emblematize for him. 39:21.219 --> 39:26.149 Yet, Crane's poetry in those lines I just read really are 39:26.150 --> 39:30.640 difficult, just as Eliot and Pound are difficult, 39:30.639 --> 39:37.699 but not because as in those poets Crane presents us with 39:37.699 --> 39:43.859 obscure references or languages unknown to us, 39:43.860 --> 39:47.350 or learned allusion. 39:47.349 --> 39:51.969 Instead, what's difficult in Crane is a kind of compression 39:51.974 --> 39:55.854 in his writing. They show us a poet taking 39:55.846 --> 40:01.166 language apart and putting it back together in new ways, 40:01.169 --> 40:04.749 new configurations, new anatomies. 40:04.750 --> 40:07.700 Crane is full of mixed metaphors; 40:07.699 --> 40:11.369 you're not supposed to mix your metaphors and he does, 40:11.371 --> 40:14.511 all the time. "Wine talons," there's one. 40:14.510 --> 40:16.800 "Wine talons," what are they? 40:16.800 --> 40:18.980 Well, think about it. 40:18.980 --> 40:25.330 Perhaps you too have felt wine talons grip you unexpectedly 40:25.327 --> 40:28.717 sometime and carry you aloft. 40:28.719 --> 40:35.409 The metaphor suggests ecstasy, the exaltation of modern life, 40:35.408 --> 40:40.088 that aspiration imaged in Stieglitz too. 40:40.090 --> 40:45.640 It suggests that ecstasy is like wine, and wine is like an 40:45.636 --> 40:50.856 eagle clasping you; it's prey in its claws. 40:50.860 --> 40:53.920 And keep in mind when Crane wrote those lines too, 40:53.923 --> 40:57.303 it was illegal to buy and sell wine in this country. 40:57.300 --> 41:02.960 modernity, in Crane's strange, gorgeous poetry, 41:02.958 --> 41:08.118 is all about getting high, about elevation, 41:08.124 --> 41:13.464 exultation. Crane was an alcoholic. 41:13.460 --> 41:22.820 And if you study this photo, you can see the qualities of a 41:22.816 --> 41:28.136 man struggling with alcoholism. 41:28.139 --> 41:34.049 This friendly and even dignified face has prematurely 41:34.052 --> 41:38.202 white hair. His cheeks are veined. 41:38.199 --> 41:43.969 Being drunk became for Crane a kind of grim literalization of 41:43.970 --> 41:48.010 the freedom that came with being modern; 41:48.010 --> 41:53.300 and that vision of freedom is something that his poetry 41:53.302 --> 41:59.082 preserves for us and carries forward for us and continues to 41:59.083 --> 42:01.243 give us as a gift. 42:01.239 --> 42:06.639 Contrast his images of joyous or demonic assent with the 42:06.638 --> 42:11.348 images of catastrophe, of descent, of collapse in 42:11.349 --> 42:15.569 Eliot, "London Bridge is falling down." 42:15.570 --> 42:21.660 The decay of Christian belief and practice is not a loss but 42:21.662 --> 42:26.312 rather an opportunity for poetry, in Crane. 42:26.309 --> 42:30.829 He says in The Bridge, he asks the bridge to lend a 42:30.829 --> 42:35.189 myth to God, and he suggests that this is something that 42:35.189 --> 42:39.389 every age must do because our names for God are always 42:39.391 --> 42:44.371 metaphors, poems, something imagined, 42:44.368 --> 42:49.358 acts of speech. Crane shares these general 42:49.360 --> 42:52.280 ideas with Wallace Stevens. 42:52.280 --> 42:56.300 This is Wallace Stevens, Wallace Stevens who said, 42:56.298 --> 43:00.398 "Poetry is a means of redemption", and meant it. 43:00.400 --> 43:06.290 Stevens began life as a choirboy and as a Christian, 43:06.290 --> 43:12.410 but his work is all about replacing Christian theology 43:12.411 --> 43:15.471 with poetry. For Stevens, 43:15.474 --> 43:21.044 when modernity takes away God what it does is unveil the 43:21.040 --> 43:25.710 poet's Godlike powers, a power to create the world 43:25.713 --> 43:29.603 through imagination, imagination which created God 43:29.603 --> 43:31.353 in the first place. 43:31.349 --> 43:36.039 In Stevens, modernity shows us that the truth of religion was 43:36.041 --> 43:39.091 always a fiction, a fundamentally poetic 43:39.090 --> 43:42.950 construction. Stevens's world is secular and 43:42.949 --> 43:47.249 non-transcendental, and he is fully at home in it, 43:47.250 --> 43:54.700 so much so that he lives the life of a bourgeois businessman, 43:54.699 --> 44:02.769 as an executive of the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, 44:02.769 --> 44:08.779 a great Connecticut burger and poet. 44:08.780 --> 44:12.870 Stevens celebrates the bourgeois world over and over 44:12.873 --> 44:17.853 again in a poetry that is about and itself enacts our perpetual 44:17.849 --> 44:22.669 recreation of reality through the mind and its special medium 44:22.665 --> 44:27.195 – language. Stevens understands tragedy, 44:27.200 --> 44:32.900 but he is a comic poet, a humanist who is concerned to 44:32.899 --> 44:36.339 preserve and exalt the human. 44:36.340 --> 44:41.290 The relativity of truth, the profusion of languages, 44:41.294 --> 44:46.734 these things that afflict Eliot are a source of faith for 44:46.734 --> 44:50.984 Stevens. Modern poetry seeks absolutes, 44:50.978 --> 44:56.828 what Moore calls the genuine, what Crane calls the myth of 44:56.828 --> 45:01.548 America, the voice of the thunder in Eliot; 45:01.550 --> 45:08.350 Stevens's supreme fiction; Pound's Cantos, 45:08.345 --> 45:11.125 a poem that would, as he intended, 45:11.127 --> 45:14.337 include history. Modern poetry is, 45:14.336 --> 45:18.206 in all these ways, Promethean, astounding, 45:18.211 --> 45:22.371 arrogant, enormous, imprudent, visionary. 45:22.369 --> 45:27.509 But it also contains other positions, alternatives that 45:27.507 --> 45:32.737 open those over-sized cultural ambitions to critique, 45:32.739 --> 45:39.819 to imaginative alternatives of many kinds. 45:39.820 --> 45:43.890 And these are suggested, I'll suggest briefly, 45:43.891 --> 45:47.511 by the last two poets we'll read – W.H. 45:47.511 --> 45:51.761 Auden, to begin with here, pictured as an Oxford 45:51.764 --> 45:54.754 undergraduate, ever cheeky, 45:54.750 --> 46:01.700 who has written on the side of his photo, "The cerebral life 46:01.704 --> 46:05.834 would pay," dry, cool, pragmatic; 46:05.829 --> 46:12.179 and Elizabeth Bishop, young in this glamorous George 46:12.179 --> 46:14.669 Platt Lynes photo. 46:14.670 --> 46:18.900 While modern poetry in many of its forms strives to master 46:18.901 --> 46:22.751 reality, Auden reminds us, there on your handout, 46:22.746 --> 46:26.436 cautiously, that poetry makes nothing happen. 46:26.440 --> 46:30.540 While Stevens represents the poet as a kind of God, 46:30.539 --> 46:34.229 Bishop sees the poet rather as a sandpiper, 46:34.230 --> 46:38.050 that little bird skittering along the shore, 46:38.048 --> 46:42.308 not in control of the world but subject to it, 46:42.309 --> 46:47.159 subject to its continual fluctuation and awesome powers. 46:47.159 --> 46:50.979 Bishop's sandpiper poet, there in your handout, 46:50.978 --> 46:54.878 is obsessed with the mere details of experience, 46:54.878 --> 46:57.948 those sand grains, quartz grains. 46:57.949 --> 47:02.359 Her aim is to get along in a world that is dominated by 47:02.359 --> 47:06.849 shifting forces that can be registered and reacted to by 47:06.850 --> 47:09.300 poetry, but not explained. 47:09.300 --> 47:13.710 This is, I think, really also a version of poetic 47:13.710 --> 47:19.310 activity that has some sources in and has a lot in common with 47:19.314 --> 47:25.354 Robert Frost's, as we will see on Monday. 47:25.350 --> 47:27.000 Thank you.