Name: _________________________________________________________ Period: _____
MODERNIST MOVEMENT IN POETRY
Advanced Reading and Writing
Bellwork, Day 1:
Define the term MODERN.
What are some contexts in which we might use the term modern?
What characteristics do you think should be listed under Modern World?
Pre-Modern World
Modern World
(Romantic and Victorian Periods)
(early 1900‟s)
Ordered
Meaningful
Optimistic
Stable
Faith
Morality/Values
Clear Sense of Identity
What modern events, attitudes, or inventions do you feel have been powerful enough to
create a fundamental change in human nature?
Read the following Pre-Modern poems. Record your observations of these
poems on the “Thirteen Ways” Chart (following page).
The Daffodils
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
Sonnet 43 from the Portuguese: How Do
I Love Thee?
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, -- I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! -- and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1850
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
William Wordsworth, 1804
Discussion Questions:
Compare the setting of “Daffodils” to the city scenes, factory scenes, and the
World War I devastated landscape. What symbolic differences can you identify?
Wordsworth has faith in his ability to recollect the field of daffodils as a way of
filling his heart with pleasure. How might one’s “inward eye” have changed in the
early 1900’s?
How would these speakers feel if they lived during the early 1900’s?
Do these two poems “sound” modern?
Introduction to Modernist Poetry — http://edsitement.neh.gov/view_lesson_plan.asp?id=615
“Thirteen Ways”
Student Name ___________________________________________________ Period: _______
Read the romantic poems “Daffodils” and Sonnet 43. Later, read the Wallace Stevens poem
“Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” and compare it to the romantic poems.
“Daffodils”
Speaker
Landscape
(Setting)
Role of Nature
Sense of God
or Divinity
Topic/Subject
Sonnet 43
“Thirteen Ways”
Bellwork, Day 2
Look back on your notes from yesterday. What do you consider to be the change in
the early 1900’s that had the biggest impact on society? Explain why.
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)
Born in Reading, Pennsylvania
Attended Harvard University
Wanted to move to Paris to become a writer
Instead, attended law school and became a lawyer
Became vice president of Hartford Insurance Co.
Composed poetry in his off time from his job—on his way to and from work, in the
evenings, and on the weekends
According to the website Poets.org, Stevens’ poetry exhibited a “wholly original
style and sensibility: exotic, whimsical, infused with the light and color of an
Impressionist painting”
He believed in “the transformative power of the imagination”
Modernist Technique: PASTICHE
Definition according to Merriam-Webster Dictionary1. a literary, artistic, musical, or architectural work that imitates the style of previous work
2. a musical, literary, or artistic composition made up of selections from different works
Another way of thinking of pastiche is to imagine a collage (not college). A collage is a
collection of pictures that have a common theme.
Read Wallace Stevens’ poem “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.” (following
page)
How does this poem demonstrate the technique of pastiche?
Write your observations of this poem on the “Thirteen Ways” chart.
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the black bird.
II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.
III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.
IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.
V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.
VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?
VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.
IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.
X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.
XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.
XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.
XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.
Wallace Stevens
(1917)
Write a Modernist Poem Modeled on “Thirteen Ways”
YOU TRY
IT!
Compose a poem modeled on Stevens’ poem
“Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.”
Remember that this poem is a “collage” of
different thoughts about blackbirds (technique
known as pastiche). Choose a topic, then
compose at least 5 stanzas that each contain
a different “snapshot” of the topic. Title your
poem “Five Ways of Looking at
______________.”
Finish your „Five Ways” poem as homework if you do not finish in
class.
Turn it in on a separate piece of paper.
Bellwork, Day 3:
 Re-read “How Do I Love Thee?” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Why is this poem a love poem?
 Look back on your definition of “modern” from a couple of days ago.
Is Browning’s sonnet a modern poem? Give specific reasons for your opinion.
Discussion Questions for Marcel Duchamp’s painting, “Nude Descending a
Staircase”:
 Can you identify the subject of Duchamp’s painting?
 What adjectives can be used to describe this painting?
 How are time, space, and movement depicted in this painting?
 Think about the poems we read yesterday (“Daffodils” and “How Do I Love
Thee?”). Does the point of view in the painting resemble a Romantic sensibility
or a Modernist sensibility? Explain why.
T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)
Born in St. Louis, Missouri
Attended Harvard University
Spent time in Paris
Settled in England in 1914, became a British citizen
Worked as a teacher, then as a banker
Was mentored by poet Ezra Pound
Considered a genius avant-garde poet
Important Modernist poem was written by Eliot in 1922, “The Wasteland”
From 1930 on, was considered the most dominant poet of his time
According to the website Poets.org: “[Eliot’s] poems in many respects articulated
the disillusionment of a younger post-World-War-I generation with the values and
conventions—both literary and social—of the Victorian era.”
Won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (Excerpts)
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question ...
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
10
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the windowpanes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the windowpanes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
……..
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair-(They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!")
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin-(They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!")
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
……..
And I have known the arms already, known them all-Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
……..
20
40
65
And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
100
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor-And this, and so much more?-It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
"That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all."
110
……
I grow old . . . I grow old . . .
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
120
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
130
T. S. Eliot (1917)
From: Introduction to Modernist Poetry — http://edsitement.neh.gov/view_lesson_plan.asp?id=615
Prufrock Analysis Worksheet
Read the work by T.S. Eliot, then answer the questions about the pertinent lines
listed below:
“The Love Song of J.
Alfred Prufrock”:
Lines for Close
Analysis
Lines 1-13
Lines 1-13
Guiding Questions for Students
Who is the speaker of the poem and to whom is the poem
addressed?
Where is the speaker? Describe the time of day, place, etc.
What parts of the poem support your answer?
Lines 1-15
Identify two similes in the opening stanza. How do these
similes add to the tone of the poem?
Lines 15-23
Identify the primary metaphor in this stanza. To what does the
poet indirectly liken the yellow fog?
Lines 37-48
What is the speaker’s emotional state at this point in the
poem? What are his primary concerns?
Lines 62-66
Whom is the speaker describing?
Lines 120-125
Has the speaker finally admitted his primary concern? What
effect does “growing old” have on the speaker’s socializing?
Lines 129-131
What is the speaker’s final tone?
Discussion Question comparing Duchamp’s painting “Nude Descending a Staircase”
to “Prufrock”:
 Consider Marcel Duchamp’s painting, “Nude Descending a Staircase” while you
read lines 37-48 of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”
How are the subject of the painting and Prufrock similar?
Discussion Questions comparing Browning’s love poem to “Prufrock”:
 Compare Browning’s love poem to Eliot’s love poem.
Is “Prufrock” really a love poem? Why or why not?
 What elements get in the way of Prufrock’s “love”?
Elements of the Modernist Movement in Poetry
Based on the lessons of the last three days, compile a list of the elements of Modernist
Poetry: