"Of Modern Poetry"

I know that this relates to a poet that we covered in class quite awhile ago, but I recently read this poem by Wallace Stevens for my American Poetry class and thought that it fit into the modernist movement quite nicely. I thought I'd share!


"Of Modern Poetry"

The poem of the mind in the act of finding
What will suffice. It has not always had
To find: the scene was set; it repeated what
Was in the script.
 
                      Then the theatre was changed
To something else. Its past was a souvenir.
It has to be living, to learn the speech of the place.
It has to face the men of the time and to meet
The women of the time. It has to think about war
And it has to find what will suffice. It has
To construct a new stage. It has to be on that stage,
And, like an insatiable actor, slowly and
With meditation, speak words that in the ear,
In the delicatest ear of the mind, repeat,
Exactly, that which it wants to hear, at the sound
Of which, an invisible audience listens,
Not to the play, but to itself, expressed
In an emotion as of two people, as of two
Emotions becoming one. The actor is
A metaphysician in the dark, twanging
An instrument, twanging a wiry string that gives
Sounds passing through sudden rightnesses, wholly
Containing the mind, below which it cannot descend,
Beyond which it has no will to rise.

                                         It must
Be the finding of a satisfaction, and may
Be of a man skating, a woman dancing, a woman
Combing. The poem of the act of the mind.


The poem opens with the idea that Modernism seeks to break from what was expected, or what, "Was in the script" (line 4.) It is the idea that, for previous poets, the ideas of what they were supposed to say and how was already planned out and here was not really a whole lot of "finding" or creativity going on, and repetition was common. This fits with what we learned in class, where Modernists seek to undo what the past dictated and wanted to repudiate the commonly held assumptions about what art and literature/poetry was.

This is further emphasized at the beginning of the second stanza, where Stevens talks about a new theatre and constructing a new stage. Moreover, he goes into detail about how this new stage should be constructed. He says that "the past was a souvenir", which fits with a modernist idea (especially articulated by modernist T.S. Eliot in "Tradition and the Individual Talent") that, while forging ahead into new modes of art and expression, the past cannot be forgotten and should still be recognized. The past of traditional poetry is here represented by a "souvenir". Also in this stanza, Stevens presents the idea that, farther than recognizing the past, poetry should also recognize what is going on in the present and react to it. This is asserted in lines 6-8, where he says that poetry should be "living" and able to meet prominent people and think about war. "It has to think about war"(9), especially, reflects the modernist reaction to express the changes that participating in the war made on culture.

The next part of this stanza concentrates on the modernist idea that art is meant as more than mimetic or something to merely look at/read. Namely, it expresses the fact that much of modernism centered on creating a reaction in the reader that had nothing to do with interpretation and was natural. This is shown in the poem by the idea that the "actor", or poet, "speak words that in the ear,/ In the delicatest ear of the mind, repeat..."(13-14.) Here, "delicatest ear of the mind" can represent the extreme inner mind, or subconscious of the reader. Thus, the claim is that poetry should appeal to someone's subconscious, which is free from surface interpretations and meanings thought to be garnered from mere representations. This is also expressed when Stevens talks of the audience listening "to itself, expressed/ In an emotion as of two people, as of two/ Emotions becoming one"(17-19.) Apparent here, again, is the modernist tenet that art/literature/poetry should aim at the inner being of someone and affect him or her subconsciously, without that person really having to actively pursue a meaning.

The last stanza of the poem emphasizes this, with, "the finding of satisfaction"(26.) Also, the actions presented in skating, dancing, and combing serve to exemplify, "The poem of the act of the mind"(28). In this last stanza, Stevens is portraying the idea that poetry is more than words in a page- it should be directly attached to the workings of the mind. It should not involve analysis, and should instead directly produce true response.

It was fun to look a poem from a modernist writer and see so much of what we have learned about regarding the movement as whole apparent in his writing, and moreover, in his philosophy on writing. It provided a direct example of what the modernists did, and how they sought to get across their messages. Modernism is interesting, especially when directly expressed in a medium such as poetry.