Ezra Pound(1885-1972)

The poet most responsible for defining and promoting a modernist aesthetic in poetry.

Biographical Facts

born in Idaho. US.

educated mainly in Pennsylvania

Living in London, Paris, and Rapallo.

Died in Venice, Italy.

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Life Experience

involved in Fascist politics return to the United States until 1945 arrested on charges of treason for broadcastin

g Fascist propaganda by radio to the United States during the Second World War.

was acquitted in 1946, but declared mentally ill and committed to St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C.

Life Experience

Won Bollingen-Library of Congress Award for the Pisan Cantos (1948).

Won his release from the hospital in 1958.

Returned to Italy and settled in Venice.Died in 1972.

Contribution to Literature

Launching Imagism, a movement in poetry which derived its technique from classical Chinese and Japanese poetry--stressing clarity, precision, and economy of language

His Literary Influence

He advanced the work of major contemporaries, such as W.B.Yeats, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, H.D., James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, and especially T.S.Eliot.

Major Works

The Cantos (the encyclopedic epic poe

m)Hugh Selwyn Mauberley The Pisan Cantos

In a Station of the Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough.

Wallace Stevens(1879-1955)

One of the most significant American poets of the 20th century

Biographical Information

born in Pennsylvania, son of a prosperous country lawyer,

enrolled in 1893 at Harvard College, began writing poems and plays,

leaving Harvard without degree in 1900, entered New York Law School, graduated in

1903, and was admitted to the bar next year,named a vice president of an insurance

company in 1934.

Literary Career

Influenced by imagism and French symbolism, he wrote poems while working as a businessman.

published his first collection of verse, HARMONIUM (1923), at the age of forty-four,

From the early 1940s he entered a period of creativity that continued until his death.

He turned gradually away from the playful use of language to a more reflective, though abstract style.

Important points

His work as a corporate lawyer did not much affect his role a lyric poet

Stevens managed to balance between the pressure of numbers and calculations and the poetic imagination,

In 1946 Stevens was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters, in 1950 he received the Bollingen Prize in Poetry, and in 1955 he was awarded both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.

William Carlos Williams

1883-1963

American Author and Physician

Biographical Factsborn in New Jersey, U.S. 1883. received his M.D. from the

University of Pennsylvaniasustained his medical practice

throughout his lifeDied in Vienna, Austria, 1963.

Literary Career

met and befriended Ezra Poundone of the principal poets of the

Imagist movementsubject matter was centered on

the everyday circumstances of life and the lives of common people.

Poetic Features

Relaxed colloquialismVivid PresentationEloquent passages of

beautifully controlled rhythm and phrasing

Robert Frost(1874 - 1963)

The most popular 20th Century American Poet, A four-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize.

Biographical Information

Born in San Francisco in 1874, died in Boston in 1963.

After his father's death in 1885, young Frost left California with his family and settled in Massachusetts.

Attended high school in Mass., entered Dartmouth College, but remained less than one semester.

Map of the United States

Biographical Information

Did odd jobs: teaching school and working in a mill and as a newspaper reporter.

Attended Harvard College as a special student but left without a degree.

Over the next ten years he wrote (but rarely published) poems, operated a farm in Derry, New Hampshire, and supplemented his income by teaching at Derry's Pinkerton Academy.

Literary Career

At 38, he sold the farm and took his family to England.

In England, his efforts to establish himself as a poet was almost immediately successful. A Boy's Will was published 1913, followed a year later by North of Boston.

Favorable reviews on both sides of the Atlantic resulted in American publication of the books.

The Frosts sailed for the United States in February 1915 and landed in New York City.

Sales of his books enabled Frost to buy a farm in Franconia, N.H.; to place new poems in literary periodicals and publish a third book, Mountain Interval (1916); and to embark on a long career of writing, teaching, and lecturing.

Frost’s poetic theory

He emphasized on the dramatic qualities of poetry.

He believed that all poetry is essentially metaphorical.

He insisted that poetry cannot be forced into being.

He thought that poetry serves as a means of giving patterns to man’s existence.

Major Features of Frost’s Poems

He was an essentially pastoral poet often associated with rural New England.

He used the rural world as a source of symbols, whose philosophical dimensions transcend any region.

His adopts traditional verse forms, plain language and everyday speech to explore the complexity of human existence through treating seemingly trivial subjects.

Frost's most popular poems:

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy EveningThe Road Not Taken, After Apple-picking Mending WallBirches

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

- Robert Frost

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.His house is in the village though;He will not see me stopping hereTo watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queerTo stop without a farmhouse nearBetween the woods and frozen lakeThe darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shakeTo ask if there is some mistake.The only other sound’s the sweepOf easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,But I have promises to keep,And miles to go before I sleep.And miles to go before I sleep.

Points of the poem

1. The analogy between the specific experience of the rural travelerthe general experience of any individual

whose life is so frequently described as a journey; a journey including pleasures and hardships, duties and distances.

2. Theme of the poem: The poem is primarily oriented towards the pleasures of the scene and the responsibility of life.

Understanding of the Poem

Metaphors:Promises – Our own promises or duties

that we must fulfill. Miles - experience we must travel through

before deathSleep - death

Interlocking enclosed rhyme

The first stanza rhymes in “aaba” and “b” becomes the new repeated end rhymes in the second stanza. That makes stanza 2 rhyming in “bbcb”. Similarly, the third stanza rhymes in “ccbc”, whereas the very last stanza rhymes in a consistent “d” which brings the poem to a harmonious end.

The Road Not Taken

-Robert Frost

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,And sorry I could not travel bothAnd be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I couldTo where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fairAnd having perhaps the better claim,Because it was grassy and wanted wear;Though as for that, the passing thereHad worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally layIn leaves no step had trodden blackOh, I kept the first for another day!Yet knowing how way leads on to way,I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sighSomewhere ages and ages hence:two roads diverged in a wood, and I -- I took the one less traveled by,And that has made all the difference.

Understanding of the poem

Realistic nature description Portrayal of basic qualities of human

nature.

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,Some say in ice.From what I've tasted of desireI hold with those who favor fire.But if it had to perish twice,I think I know enough of hateTo say that for destruction iceIs also greatAnd would suffice.

Scientific Interpretation of Fire and Ice

Some think that the earth may be burnt up by the sun (fire),

Others say Ice Age will kill life on the Earth.

Spiritual and Psychological meaning of the Symbols in the poem

1. Fire - a symbol of desire, or love Helen of Troy Cleopatra, Egyptian queen

The two beauties had wars fought over them.

2. Ice - a symbol of hatred

These are the two weaknesses of human beings that are as destructive as natural disasters

Questions for further discussion

How Frost display his poetic theories in the three poems we have learned?

Sum up Frost’s major poetic style in your words, and illustrate it.