Week 2 notes

The World Wars, the Great Depression, the rapid acceleration of the pace of existence in the modern world. These are the factors that we have been discussing as we consider the Modernist literary movement. This artistic movement, which extends beyond literature and poetry to include art and music, responded very deliberately to these influences.

Imagism, a poetic style practiced by Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, and H.D. (among others), sought to capture sensory moments one might encounter in the modern world. Without giving the reader an interpretation of the moment, the poet creates a vivid picture and leaves the reader to decide for him or herself what to "get out of it." This style supported the belief that people, at any given time, can only have fragments of the whole world available to them, and that they then, individually, create their own understandings of those fragments.

Over the course of the week, while reading and working to analyze a selection of Imagist poems, students have been honing their observation skills, describing what they see in their homes in greater and greater detail, working towards creating their own Imagist poems.

In the coming week, we will expand our work with Modernist poetry by reading T.S. Eliot and a selection of Harlem Renaissance writers.