Poets, especially since the beginning of the twentieth century, have often sought increasingly new and radical ways of writing about the world. Modernists, Futurists, and postmodernists (among other schools and movements) have played around with language and form to create daringly original experimental works of poetry.
Below, we introduce ten of the greatest experimental poems produced in the last century or so. Our own Oliver Tearle, the founder of this blog, attempted to document the events of 2020 in an experimental poem ā a sort of contemporary update of the modernist method ā called The Tesserae, and his interest in earlier examples of experimental poems culminated in his own attempt to write one. This is, if you will, his āessential reading listā for experimental poets.
1. StĆ©phane MallarmĆ©, āA Dice Throwā.
Alongside the vers libre experiments of Gustave Kahn, French poets at the end of the nineteenth century were playing around with verse form, and this example of free verse from Stephane MallarmƩ is somewhat different, and can be regarded as an early example of concrete poetry. The poem was published in 1897, and uses much blank space between the words and lines of the verse. Follow the link above to read an excerpt from the longer (20-page) poem.
2. Mina Loy, Songs to Joannes.
Loy was born Mina Lowy to a Hungarian Jewish father and an English mother in London in 1882 (she changed her name to āLoyā when she began submitting poetry). She studied art in London, Munich, and Paris, and her poetry reflects the continental avant-garde art that she encountered during her travels and studies.
Futurism is an important influence on Loyās 1917 work Songs to Joannes, a long sequence that might be regarded as a modern, feminist take on the old Elizabethan sonnet sequence: here, the female poet addresses the male subject (Loyās Futurist lover, Giovanni Papini), offering a frank and radically new take on the āloveā poem.
We discuss this poem in more detail here.
3. Hope Mirrlees, Paris.
The next two works on this list ā also by female modernist poets ā have both been likened to T. S. Eliotās The Waste Land, although this first poem, written in 1919 and published a year later, predates Eliotās famous poem by three years.
Paris: A Poem also makes Eliotās 1922 poem look almost traditional by comparison, so radical is Mirrleesā use of French avant-garde techniques ā learned from Apollinaire, among others, whom she knew while living in Paris. This long(ish) poem focuses on one day in Paris, 1 May 1919, seeking to capture the sights and sounds of the post-war metropolis using collage, unusual typefaces and spacing, and other innovative techniques. Virginia Woolf, who published the poem, described it as a nightmare to typeset ā and itās not hard to see why!
Discover more about this remarkable poem here.
4. Marianne Moore, āMarriageā.
Published in 1923, a year after Eliotās The Waste Land, āMarriageā is a long(ish) poem by one of American modernismās greatest poets. And like The Waste Land, Mooreās poem is allusive, taking in Shakespeare and the Bible as the poet explores the obligations
and meaning of marriage (Moore herself never married). The poem is radical in both its form (modernist, free verse) and politics (we can label Mooreās treatment of marriage āfeministā).
5. T. S. Eliot, Sweeney Agonistes.
This unfinished work is amongst Eliotās most daring, original, and experimental. Is it a dramatic poem, or a poetic drama? Only two scenes from the work were preserved, subtitled āFragments of an Aristophanic Melodramaā when Eliot published them. Sweeney, a figure who had appeared in several of Eliotās earlier poems, is a sort of modern-day Neanderthal, who talks about ādoing a girl inā in the most sinister manner possible, in a work which seems to be pushing the boundaries not just of verse but good taste ā¦
6. E. E. Cummings, āl(aā.
Cummings (or perhaps that should be ācummingsā, after the poetās self-styled rejection of capitals) was one of the most distinctive American poets of the twentieth century, whose work built on the earlier modernists such as Williams. A slender thing, this poem comprising a single sentence (if it can be called a sentence), with the phrase āa leaf fallsā placed parenthetically within the word ālonelinessā. Probably inspired by the Japanese haiku form, this beautiful E. E. Cummings poem suggests a link between the eternal concept of loneliness and the fleeting motion of a falling leaf.
7. Ezra Pound, The Cantos.
Not so much a poem as a vast āragbagā of poems (to borrow Poundās own word), The Cantos vary hugely in quality, although the Pisan Cantos, which Pound composed while a prisoner of the US in Pisa in 1945 just after the end of WWII, are the most critically acclaimed sections of this 800-page book. Our advice is to begin with Canto I and wade through: Pound begins in medias res with a multi-layered poetic account of Odysseusā journey into the underworld to seek counsel from Tiresias. Although the episode is from Homerās Odyssey, Poundās version of this story is told using a sixteenth-century Latin translation of Homerās poem. You can read the opening canto by following the link above.
The poem thus immediately foregrounds Poundās interest in multilingual poetry, the way such stories resonate for different cultures and eras, and the link between Odysseusā summoning of the dead and Poundās own use of dead poetsā words in his own work. Weāve analysed the opening canto here.
8. Edwin Morgan, āThe Computerās First Christmas Cardā.
In this poem, the Scottish poet Edwin Morgan (1920-2010) gives us an unusual Christmas poem supposedly āwrittenā by a computer, and its attempt to produce the simple message āMerry Christmasā. A humorous poem from the 1960s about the early technology of the modern computer, itās also a nice way into the experimental world of Morganās poetry.
9. David Jones, The Anathemata.
This is without doubt one of the most challenging experimental modernist poems of the last century ā because Jones, a Welsh poet and painter, fuses poetry and prose, ancient British myth with modern poetic style, religious and secular themes, and much else. Itās not as well-known as William Carlos Williamsās Paterson or Poundās The Cantos, but itās just as great an achievement in Anglophone modernist poetry. You can listen to Jones reading an excerpt from the poem by following the link above, or buy the whole book.
We discuss this poem in more detail here.
10. H. D., Helen in Egypt: Poetry (New Directions Books).
This 1961 poem is on a similar scale to Ezra Poundās The Cantos ā and H. D. had been an associate of Poundās during his Imagist phase in the years leading up to the outbreak of the First World War.
But this epic poem is on an altogether greater scale than the Imagist poem, and takes as its theme the alternative theory that Helen of Troy was not a Greek princess but an Egyptian woman. An important work of late modernism, and one of the great epic poems of the twentieth century, Helen in Egypt fuses the modernist novel with experimental poetry and even classical drama to create a work that is a true one-off.
Discover more about this fabulous work here.
I’m still trying to get a (affordable) copy of this!
https://interestingliterature.com/2021/10/best-radical-experimental-poems/?replytocom=57484#respond Which book do you mean Michael?
H D Helen in E – and I’ve just managed to get a copy!