Modernism – Page 2 – Interesting Literature

10 of the Best Marianne Moore Poems Everyone Should Read

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Marianne Moore (1887-1972) was one of the most distinctive and accomplished modernist poets of the twentieth century. Along with William Carlos Williams and Wallace Stevens, she stands as the greatest American modernist – of those poets who remained in America (others, such as T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and H. D., left the States for Britain).

Indeed, Eliot himself called her work ‘part of the body of durable poetry written in our time’ and praises her ‘original sensibility’, ‘alert intelligence’, and ‘deep feeling’. Below, we introduce ten of Marianne Moore’s best poems.

The Lost Modernist Epic: David Jones’s The Anathemata

In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle salutes the lost modernist, David Jones

Which poem is being described here? Published in 1952, this long modernist poem might be described as a modern ‘epic’ poem. It is highly allusive, drawing on, among others, Arthurian legend, Jessie Weston’s 1920 book From Ritual to Romance, and the opening words of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales.

A Summary and Analysis of Wallace Stevens’ ‘A Postcard from the Volcano’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘A Postcard from the Volcano’ is one of Wallace Stevens’s most famous poems. It is also one of his more accessible. The poem was published in Stevens’s 1936 collection Ideas of Order. You can read ‘A Postcard from the Volcano’ here before proceeding to our analysis below, which homes in on the poem’s form, language, imagery, and themes. Although it is more straightforward than many of Stevens’s other poems, there is still much to discuss and unpick.

A Short Analysis of William Carlos Williams’ ‘This Is Just to Say’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘This Is Just to Say’, a 1934 poem written by the American modernist poet William Carlos Williams (1883-1963), offers itself to the reader as a note left by the poet to his wife. Is this all ‘This Is Just to Say’ is: a note of apology Williams penned to his spouse for eating the plums out of the icebox? Or is there more to this poem, which helps to explain its status as one of the most famous, most quoted, and most parodied poems of the twentieth century?

You can read ‘This Is Just to Say’ here before proceeding to our analysis below.

A Summary and Analysis of Wallace Stevens’ ‘Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird’ appeared in Harmonium (1923), the first poetry collection of the American modernist poet Wallace Stevens, although it had originally been published in an American magazine, Others, in 1917.