Modernist poetry exhibits many distinctive characteristics, including invention. The meaning of “invent”, however, is somewhat ambiguous. Guy Rotella stated that “invent” is a modernist poetics term meaning to “create or create by original thought and ingenuity; to devise or contrive anything false or fictitious, fabricate or feign, make up, or otherwise alter reality.” It can also refer to discovering something already existing or creating something new, such as fiction. He also believes that:
Both the current senses ‘invent’ have different emphasises. The first definition is celebratory, confident: we are freed from the tyranny and absolute to create our own truths. Fear marks the second definition. Our creations are not guaranteed to be absolutes. Postmodern American poets respond to these issues in various ways. They do this by continuing to seek out nature for answers to their epistemological as well as esthetic questions.” This statement is fundamental to modernist poetry. Rotella refers to the poets’ anxiety and fear about their “impositions or desires”. They fear that their subjective views of reality are being projected onto it. This is a key point to remember. This essay will discuss five poems from Robert Frost and Wallace Stevens. The essay will argue these poems as modernist poetry. Robert Frost’s poem “Mowing” is the opening of this poetry analysis. This sonnet first appeared in 1913, one year before the First World War began. Frost believed poetry could be compared to metaphors. Frost believed that poetry is identical to metaphor. Frost can be read in many ways. The title of the poem “Mowing” immediately brings to mind an image that depicts someone mowing something. Is the theme of the poem consistent with the title? Frost begins the poem with an image showing a silent wood, which is only able to make one sound. This sound is from a scissor, which is used to mow grass. Frost describes the sound of the scissor as “whispering to ground”, but he doesn’t describe it the way one would normally. Frost probably finds it normal because, as I said, poetry is metaphors. The woods are silent, so we can suppose that the scythe may be whispering. This is something that humans also do when there is silence. Because the poet is uncertain about what or who the scythe might be whispering about, he wonders. The poet weighs a number of options, including “the heat from the sun” and “the lack of sounds”. The theme is often questioned at this point in the poem. It can be difficult to determine the theme here because it is important to look at the specific elements of the poem. The poem focuses mostly on the labours of mowing or whispering of the whip. He mentions his “earnest love”, which is what stands out. “The sweetest dream that labour has is also a poem by the poet.” The poet has a deep affection for the practice, and especially the scythe. You feel a sense that the scythe is gentle, because it whispers. This is almost an exaggeration, since the scythe does not seem gentle. It is used for cutting down plants and “scared bright green snakes”, so it was not gentle or whispering, contrary to what the poet thinks. This reminded of modernist poetry’s notion of invention. Frost’s poem depicts Frost seeing the scythe, almost as though he has lost sight of his true love for it. Rotella has mentioned that Frost uses nature in his story to answer epistemological questions. He mentions that poetry can be metaphorical as Frost believed. Poetry therefore has an “epistemological, educational and moral value”. Next up is the poem “Of Modern Poetry”, written by Wallace Stevens. This poem was published in 1942 at the start of the Second World War. This poem was written at a time in which science and technology were more popular, but when modern poets like Stevens or Williams were more interested in “subjective and moral issues”. Rotella also argued that modern poets are more concerned with their subjective perceptions of reality. “Of modern Poetry” is by far the most important. The title says it all. Already the first line conjures up many ideas. Steven refers to “the poem in the mind” as poetry that is created in one’s head. The rest seems to focus on the changes in poetry that occurred during World War II and when modern poetry was born. This is the core theme of this poem. The title could be a hint. Stevens refers to poetry being “in a act of finding/what will suffice”, and the adaptations poets must make during that change. Stevens supports this idea by stating that the poem didn’t have to find anything, it was already there. Before the change, there were rules for how poetry should be written. This change is described by him as “a theatre has changed”, which means that poetry’s environment changed. This refers to the entire world during World War II. He said that poetry “must think about war / and must find what will satisfy” and that it should “learn to speak the language of the area”. Any poet in that period of war had to adapt and learn from the changes. This is how modern poetry was born. Poetry must now “construct new stages” after this process of adaptation and change. This means that poetry must “construct a new stage” and create its own rules to describe modern poetry. It is quite interesting to see the way he explains modern poetry’s process and what it is using a theatre with actors. Both poetry and acting can be considered art. They both express the creator’s imagination. Like poetry, metaphors and poetry are metaphorical. Modern poetry also contains the inventing of the poet’s questions and ideas, which is linked to imagination. Therefore, this poem focuses not only on modern poetry but also on its imaginative side. Stevens says in the last lines that poetry must/be the pursuit of satisfaction. What exactly is the “satisfaction” Stevens refers to? It is up to the reader to discover this satisfaction through their subjective imagination. Students do this, I believe, when they analyze the modernist poem and offer their own interpretations. We return to the original poem in the final line. Stevens refers to the “poems of the act and mind”. Just as he spoke of poets in his first line, the final line may be about the reader. Stevens also wrote the poem “Tea on the Palaz of Hoon”. This poem was published 1923. Particularly, this poem is subjective because it uses personal pronouns constantly. A “hoon”, or reckless person, is often used to describe hooligans. The speaker’s loneliness is obvious in this poem. There are many interpretations of the statement that the speaker made about his descendant being “in purple”. Although there are many meanings to purple, I will be focusing on its meanings in terms of creativity, peace. pride, wisdom, and peace. He refers to his loneliness in line 3. However, he is still a human being. This speaks to what purple is. Wisdom to know that feeling alone is okay and to embrace that part you have. The second stanza asks the speaker to question himself and all around him. This speaks to how subjective and personal this poem really is. While he does question himself, he says that he’s “the compass on that sea”. In this context, “compass” refers to a symbol of guidance and traveller. This line conveys confidence and pride. The speaker can be seen wandering through his imagination and mind in the poem. The speaker may say, “He was the world inwhich he walked”, which means that the speaker was imagining his surroundings. He created everything he saw/he heard/felt, and that was only because he did it. He has made or invent his own world and is able to find pace there. Stevens did an admirable job creating a world in which the speaker can be free to imagine. William Carlos Williams’s fourth poem, “The winds increase”, is the fourth. This poem was published in the time period between World War 1 & World War 2. Based on Williams’s poems and the Poetry Foundation I can confirm that he’s a sincere writer. Williams is direct and doesn’t use metaphors. The poem is quite different from previous ones in that it has a different format. We know the significance of this poem’s form. While the poem is more difficult to read due to its form, it has an aesthetic benefit. The title implies that the poem is about nature and wind. The poetic image of the poem appears to be being blown by wind. Rotella stated that Williams is a modernist poet who “turns to nature to answer their epistemological questions and esthetic concerns”. Williams emphasizes the theme by using the form of his poem. Williams describes poetry in his own style, just like the other poems. Williams uses nature instead of Stevens’s other art to describe poetry and poets. Williams speaks of the “tulip’s bright/tips / sidle / toss” Words are like tulips carried by wind. Williams uses words such “flow”, “blow!” and “motion” to compare and contrast things with wind. This is the main theme of the poem. Who or what is he talking about the wind? He seems to relate the wind and poets. It is easy to imagine a poet who becomes lost in his writing and loses sight of the theme. Another example is a poet who lets his imagination take over and escapes real life. This is because modernist poets view nature as intrinsically better than our reality. This is a plausible idea, considering that many modernist poets (Williams, Stevens, Frost) wrote their poetry during the second World War. Williams creates his reality to escape from our reality. This poem has a similar theme: “What is / a poetry?” Stevens asks “What is a poet?”. A poet could be someone whose words can force their way into your mind and heart. Poetry can have a profound impact on your life. Their words grasp “the ground/a route/to the final leaftip”, which makes them a poet who leaves a lasting impression on readers. Williams’ “A Sort of Song” is our last poem. The poem was published one year prior to the end of World War II, in 1944. The analysis of this poem should be concluded with the mention of invention. As Stevens’s poem “Of Modern Poetry”, this poem connects poetry with music. This poem, unlike “The wind increases”, is very simple to read. Poetry is like a song, as the title suggests. He sees poetry as “slow, quick, sharp / strike, quiet, to wait, or sleepless”. It is also possible to link one’s own words with this particular poem due to its simplicity and ease of reading. It is not “sleepless” as it contains no words, but it still has meaning. The punctuation used in the poem is somewhat strange. Line 7 has a hyphen. Line 9 contains two sentences. The first sentence includes one word. The second sentence begins with brackets. Because a song is “composed”, this one-word sentence stands out. Williams links the composition and writing of songs. Williams creates his own view of the writing and editing of poems here. It is modernist-like. This is why he used the exclamation “invent!” to emphasize this concept. This punctuation style was also used by the poet in order to highlight how the song-writing process works. The process is messy and not perfect at the beginning. Williams’s poem is given a sense that it is real, and this is a hallmark of Williams. The poems mentioned above clearly fit within modernist poetry’s realms. Rotella noted that modernist poetry relies on the invention of new ideas. These poems accomplish this in their own right while remaining true to modernist poetry. They are able to express their subjective ideas on certain topics, and their poems also contain epistemological questions. The Wind Increases and Mowing are poems that focus more on nature’s relationship to reality. Poetry like “Of Modern Poetry”, Tea at the Palaz of Hoon,” and “A Sort of Song,” however, are more focused on the imaginative and artistic aspects of modernist poetics. The common thread that ties them together is the inventiveness and subjectivity of each poet’s poems. These poems are also influenced by the historic context, which is evident in close inspection.
