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Modern American Poetry: Politicized poetry (Pushing back on white…

Modern American Poetry: Politicized poetry

Pushing back on white supermacy

Pushing back on supremacy through traditional form

Mckay

A Jamaican American poet writing during the Harlem renaissance

Frequently wrote about his love of Jamaica, feelings of alienation

McKay often wrote within the confines of traditional form (like sonnets) but he wrote about radical and politically charged issues like lynching and police brutality.

In Mckay’s poem “If We Must Die” Mckay writes with a very traditional form- a Shakespeare-esk sonnet- but uses powerful diction and imagery and creates a highly charged call to action.

He is working within a from that was established by British poets and used by American’s- and therefore representative of the system of white supremacy( white men dominated art).

 Instead of writing about flowers or a love interests (like those men before him did) he is rallying people. He uses an extended metaphor of dogs to portray white people working to harm black people, “Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot/While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs” This metaphor shows the brutality and animalistic ways in which white people were “hunting” black people.

McKay is pushing back against the system of white supremacy by calling it out within it’s own language and form.

 Throughout his poem McKay makes numerous demands. He claims” if we must die, O let us nobly die” and “Though far outnumbered let us show us brave” and “dying, but fighting back!” . Here McKay is using the traditional line of sonnet to encourage black people to fight back. He says that they deserve to die like human beings and even though there is a system bigger than them working actively to harm them, black people must be brave. He says even though they are dying and they are being harmed by white people they must continue to fight for their rights.

The significance of these statements within this traditional form is huge, McKay is speaking not only to black people to inspire them but also to white people in their own language/culture (the English sonnet) to show black resilience.

Poets as rebels for change: Radical poems pushing back on Existing Systems to foster change

Pushing Back on Patriarchy

through Images / characters

Imagist- one of few (only) prominent women within the movement

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Natural language 
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Direct treatment of the thing, sought to create space for women characters/speakers in her poetry.

In her poem Helen, she writes in free verse, and introduces a feminist tone to imagism.

“All Greece hates/ the still eyes in the white face” (1/2) describing how the Greeks disliked Helen and her cold face. She is challenging the way poets traditionally write about women. Poets before her wrote mostly about beautiful, pure women, often spending stanzas elaborating on their feminine and maternal features (their smiles, hair, their hearts and laughs)

Helen has  “still eyes” and a “white face” she has a lack of emotion or feeling, comparable to a corpse.

“the lustre as of olives/ where she stands/ and the white hands”(3,4,5). Looking at just this line for a moment H.D plays into the notion of the traditional “woman” whose white hands and white face are traditional qualities of female beauty. However reading it in combination with her initial image, " the still in her eyes" one sees how she flips the convention on its head. HD is using traditional language in an untraditional way, white does not mean pure and beautiful, but cold and dead

While she takes part in imagism new radical approach she still nods traditional poets by playing with their style. She rhymes such as, “ stands” and “hands”, “still” and “ills” and “laid” and “maid”. While these rhymes seems similar to older poets like  Robert Browning in ‘My Last Dutchess”, the context between the two vary greatly, Browning Dukes complains of his duchess’s flirtatious behavior unacceptable for a woman. While H.D presents a women as untraditional, and complex. HD presents Helen as grim-faced woman, who pleases neither the onlookers in the poem or male poets ideas of what a female should be.

Edna Milay

Millay wrote poems about woman with blunt sexual desires and often were ironic/sarcastic

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From Maine 
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Had strong a progressive (for her time) political leanings

Made her ideologies evident in her work

I being born a woman and distressed, even the title hints to a ironic undertone of the speaker.

Acknowledging that “I” the speaker is a woman right off the bat Millay makes the speaker mocks herself, almost to say as a woman she is inherently distressed.

She continues to elaborate on this woman and her desires, " Am urged by your propinquity to find/Your person fair, and feel a certain/ zest” Here she explains that her kind (woman) through all her needs, is sexually drawn to this person near to her.

She takes this desire even further claiming, “To bear your body's weight upon my breast” to describe the desire to feel this persons naked body against hers. This was a pretty radical move for women to write about. While men had been writing about their desires and objectifying women (the endless comparison to flowers). Millay flips the traditional way of talking about sex on its head, she comes right out and makes her speaker a woman who wants to have sex with someone that is geographically close to her.

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Moore

Marianne Moore
-Moore worked as an editor before she became a poet
she was modernist and often used wit and irony in her poems

In Moore’s poem “Silence” she uses a quote from her father to express a sense of irony

Within her poem she creates a space for a woman to outsmart a man in this instance the man is her father

The father character is a loquacious man- his quote takes up most of the poem. At first glance this looks like a poem about a father telling his daughter how to host The turn of the poem centers around the speakers reaction to him, while it appears she is reinforcing his claims about guests, she is in fact using his own words against him "The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence” silence indicating a restrain.

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Brooks

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First black women to get a Pulitzer
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Wrote about everyday stuggles of those near to her

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From Kansas 
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Mentored by Hughs 
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If I could I would somehow feature Brookes in the middle- as she embodies the ultimate form of intersectunailty, with race, gender and form.

Brooks pushes on white supremacy in Sadie and Maud telling the story of an accomplished black woman who ends up alone and unhappy. Brooks doesn’t mention the race of her characters until the end, which is a technique that causes the reader to confront their own prejudice

In her poem Sadie and Maude she establishes two characters and tells their very different life paths.

Brooks uses low diction and very direct, connected and literal lines. “Maude went to college” and “Sadie stayed home” (1/2). She establishes two women who approached young adulthood differently. At first this is not an issue, just different ways of living, but soon Brooks reveals Sadie is the one who feels happy, as she combs without leaving a “tangle” every

“stand” (again the s sound continues). Sadie is one of the most lively and content people or “ the livingest chits in all the land” (7/8). These stanzas show how the speaker is casting a positive light on Sadie, who voided the educational path but found some form of satisfaction.

Here Brooks is playing into the American idea of hard work, Sadie did what she was supposed to do worked hard and went on to pursue her degree and how she has earned her happiness.

In the end we learn Mauds surprisingly tragic fate., “Maude who went to college is a thin brown mouse” (17/18) Here we see an introduction of race, Maude is not white but brown perhaps an African American women. Here we see Brooks talent emerge, she worked within the confines line and story to tell us about a woman. She uses diction to make the reader side with Maud she played into traditional American values about hard work and success. Once we reach the end we are sad to the character unhappy and alone but Brooks discretely pulls in the fact that she is not white. Brooks works against white supremacy by proving a point that even with a college degree, women and women of color still face enormous struggle .

Fighting Patriarchy through Langauge

Stien

Gertrude Stein

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Modernist poet
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Had a Parisian salon
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From California  
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Friends with many other famous modernists, like Picasso and Matisse

Pushed back on patriarchy by inventing a style that opposes that of the male poets before her. Stein isn’t concerned with direct or indirect treatment of any one thing. Her poems explore a stream of consciousness as well as a playful element. In her poem Susie Asado she creates a melody, her first two lines repeat “sweet” and the tittle of the poem mimics their sound.

She is creating her own beat, repetition of the “s” in the reoccurring “sweet” and its presence in “Susie” is quit lyrical. The tittle and the reoccurring name in the poem, Susie, a women. Given that much of this poem is made of random snippets of larger thoughts the evidence of a gendered character seems very purposeful. The combination of “sweet” repeated with Susie, plays up some those outdated values about women’s roles (to be kind and likeable).

Additionally “which is a told tray sure” when read as a sentence is incompressible but when read aloud and slowly with brakes between each word, this lyrical stream continues. The “s” sound is picked up again in the next line with “the shoe this means, slips, slips hers” helping the lyrical element go on. This sentence appears to be a sentience but doesn’t actually say anything specific or make sense.

In the next line, the sound scheme counties “ when the ancient light grey is clean it is yellow, it is a silver seller”. This sentence is slightly more coherent and we get this larger sense that something is changing, light grey becomes clear and then yellow.

line 10 we really begin to see Stein emerge as a feminist “Incy is short for incubus”. Incumbus is a demon that rapes women. With the entrance of this horrible figure, Stein begins to insert a sense of trepidation. This fear is carried in the next few lines with lines like,  “trees tremble” as though nature is shaking from terror. Additionally “old vats in bobble” presents an image of something being stuck and unable to break free. But then Stein brings in a hopeful line “shade and shoving and render clean” here something is stepping up to be protective. The woman is not harmed by this demon, within her made up form, stein allows this woman and women to be safe.

pushes back on traditional ideas of imganistiin in poetry through form

Wallace Stephens

Wallace Stephens –

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Crucial figure to American modernism
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Spent life as a insurance agent separate from poetry

Brought fourth new ideas about the relationship between wilderness and civilization

In his poem “Ancedote of the Jar”, Stephens explores the relationship between a man made everyday jar and the outdoors.

He pushes back both on traditional form and ideas about imm

igration

 The poem has 3 stanzas four lines each. While there is some rhyme “The jar was round upon the ground” Stephens doesn’t establish any set pattern and therefore there is is no rhyme scheme. At times the poem appears to be in iambic pentameter “and round it was  upon a hill” but then shorter lines like “surround the hill” move away from this meter entirely, almost as though Stephens is doing it on purpose

- - - - Uses many European references, to depict a decaying world
        
        Elliot pieces together, phrases in other languages, philosophical concepts, and images to show civilizations destruction.
        
        Comparible to Ezra Pounds station at the metro, must look at the poem within short lines, “It has no windows, and the door swings/ Dry bones can harm no one.
        
        In order for these lines to be clarified, they need one another, the wind settles in a chappel
        
        The chapel has been destroyed and all that left are the bare bones
        
        The door is moving in the wind but no one is around so no one can be hurt. and This place is desolate
        
        So desolate even the ghosts have disappeared, the swinging is therefore just the wind
- - - - Toomer
        
        Jean Toomer -Biracial poet, Harlem renaissance, had new ideas about race informed by his identity as a biracial man- differed from other black poets in Harlem renaissance as he saw a need for unity between races
        
        Used modernism to write about the role o
        
        Song of the Son Toomer writes about the lost culture of African Americans and how its vital to hold on to, in order to yield progress. In this poem a lost son returns to help surface and emphasize the culture of those before him
        
        Uses songs about nature to push for the important of preserve-ance of black culture.
        
        He uses repletion and “ and let the valley carry it along” to connect nature to this song. Let the Valley carry/ maintain important black legacy
        
        Thy son, in time, I have returned to thee/Thy son, I have in time returned to thee Repetition is used to create a melody, a song
        
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      - through personification
        
        Hughes
        
        A black poet and activist
        
        Heavily influenced by jazz
        
        One of the most prominent figures of the Harlem Renaissance
        
        In Langston Hughes’ poem, “A Negro Speaks of Rivers” he uses personification and song to push back on white supremacy and show black pride.
        
        • Hughes equates rivers with the Black experience. Hughes demonstrates how being black at its core is about persevering and growing, he derives a sense of pride from this experience..
        Hughes’s first two lines “I’ve Known rivers”(1/2) here is asserting his pride but also his knowledge. The white audience at the time (around the 20’s) felt they were superior to black people and Hughes confidently assures them otherwise. He begins talking about rivers and their importance, “rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins” (3)
        • Rivers are the center of any human society, in order to grow things, to live, to transport, there most be water. Then he explains, “my soul has grown deep like rivers”(4). While Hughes uses “I” he is speaking of the collective African American experience. In this line he is explaining that Black people are as crucial and go back as far (historically) as rivers.
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    - - Frost
        
        Robert Frost- helped establish an American brand of modernism
        
        Spent a great deal of time in new England though not actually from here, a Californian
        
        A modernist
        
        Wrote a lot about rural life
        
        embrace. For Frost the people themselves who were standing in their own way “it was we. We were withholding…”(10) Frost continuously refers to a “we” and in doing so breaks the fourth wall, he pulls the audience into the poem to make them feel a sense of belonging.
        
        In “The Gift Outwright” Frost personifies American land to explore the American identity. He starts “the land was ours before we were the land, she was our land…” (1) He declares the land as a woman “she” and therefore something to be possessed. He explains that while the collective we lived here, we were not American yet. Through this line Frost demonstrates how the first Americans struggled to be American and not exiled Englishmen existing on American soil. Frost continues this narrative “possessed by what we now no more possessed” (7) to exemplify how the settlers still felt they belonged to England even though they had fled to the new world and were new Americans.
        
        Frost calls the land “she” presumably personifying indicating it’s, a woman that the American people were struggling to fully
        
        For Frost there was time when we were not Americans, but we went through a journey to become Americans. As he attempts to explore the heart of American identity he invokes the gift metaphor the idea that what makes America special is that it’s a gift we give to ourselves (we had to fight a war and overcome).
        
        focuses on the struggle between the white settlers and their identities and doesn’t so much explore that with the native people. Towards the end of the poem however touches Frost touches on the tragedy of war. He explains, “the deed of gift was many deeds of war” (13) and shows that American’s were able to embrace their identities and become America by fighting war.
    - - Willaims
        
        William Carlos Williams
        
        an imagist, modernist
        
        worked as a doctor
        
        Political through language attempted to radicalized the way we write poems
        
        Pushing back on “European” ideas about language and tried to insert new American brand- wrote about common day to day life
        
        Worked in a new line (triadic)
        
        Uses a lower diction than other imagists (like Elliot) to create a day to day casual all American tone
        
        Poem “this is just to say” written in a short line with no punctuation, line breaks evoke a sense of sarcasm
        
        It’s also important to look to the setting to see how Williams poetry is all American, takes place in a very run of the mill kitchen with an icebox. The speaker shares the home with other people, likely a lover of some kind.
        
        Represnitive of working class America, busy schedules, not eating at the same time, has to leave a note, working class
        
        Apologizes, day to day setbacks of living with others, eating their food
        
        Williams is continuing imagism’s mission but simplifying it more by talking about ordinary American matters of daily life.
- - - - Pushed back on patriarchy by inventing a style that opposes that of the male poets before her. Stein isn’t concerned with direct or indirect treatment of any one thing. Her poems explore a stream of consciousness as well as a playful element. In her poem Susie Asado she creates a melody, her first two lines repeat “sweet” and the tittle of the poem mimics their sound.
        
        She is creating her own beat, repetition of the “s” in the reoccurring “sweet” and its presence in “Susie” is quit lyrical. The tittle and the reoccurring name in the poem, Susie, a women. Given that much of this poem is made of random snippets of larger thoughts the evidence of a gendered character seems very purposeful. The combination of “sweet” repeated with Susie, plays up some those outdated values about women’s roles (to be kind and likeable).
        
        Additionally “which is a told tray sure” when read as a sentence is incompressible but when read aloud and slowly with brakes between each word, this lyrical stream continues. The “s” sound is picked up again in the next line with “the shoe this means, slips, slips hers” helping the lyrical element go on. This sentence appears to be a sentience but doesn’t actually say anything specific or make sense.
        
        In the next line, the sound scheme counties “ when the ancient light grey is clean it is yellow, it is a silver seller”. This sentence is slightly more coherent and we get this larger sense that something is changing, light grey becomes clear and then yellow.
        
        line 10 we really begin to see Stein emerge as a feminist “Incy is short for incubus”. Incumbus is a demon that rapes women. With the entrance of this horrible figure, Stein begins to insert a sense of trepidation. This fear is carried in the next few lines with lines like, “trees tremble” as though nature is shaking from terror. Additionally “old vats in bobble” presents an image of something being stuck and unable to break free. But then Stein brings in a hopeful line “shade and shoving and render clean” here something is stepping up to be protective. The woman is not harmed by this demon, within her made up form, stein allows this woman and women to be safe.