"it begins, again, with not being afraid of technology."

[jazzfish]

Back in the late nineties I took a class on Modernist Poetry from Len Scigaj ("ski plus jive minus the V"). It was, I believe, the only class I didn't fail during the Failing Time. It's where I got my love of modernist poetry (Auden excepted, and I've even found myself warming up a little to him), and my fascination with H.D. and with Eliot's The Waste Land.

At one point we watched a video of people discussing The Waste Land. One of the people on the video was Hugh Kenner. He had a long face, horn-rimmed glasses, and a mop of grey hair, and he spoke with an odd impediment[1], and he was so very excited and happy to be talking about Eliot. I have no recollection of anything he said, it's just the general sense of his exuberance that's stuck with me.

Scigaj and Kenner are both long gone, but thanks to a Twitter conversation between PNH and Jim Henley, I've learned that Kenner was not only a Modernist critic, he also wrote a book on Chuck 'Looney Tunes' Jones and one on Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes ("which I think I understand better than Fuller did"), and a column for Byte Magazine in the eighties. He frequently turned up on one of the early online chat boards.

Language Hat's obituary, and an interview with Kenner from 2001.

Fascinating guy. Tiny world.

[1] I found out recently that he'd been mostly deaf since the age of five, from a childhood case of flu.

Comments

[thanate]

I pretty much missed studying poetry entirely after about elementary school-- I picked up an affection for Eliot from my post-college roommate (well, except Sweeny) and am fond of a couple Auden things I've run across. I'm not actually sure what counts as modernist, but with those to start with possibly I ought to look further. Any recommendations?

[jazzfish]

Modern Poetry as taught by Dr Scigaj was roughly from 1900 to 1950; anything later was 'contemporary' and taught in ENGL4506 next semester. He skipped Ezra Pound because Pound is impenetrable, especially for undergrads. Instead we started with the Imagists, WC Williams and HD and others, briefly reversed for Yeats the throwback, and then plowed on through Eliot, Auden, Wallace Stevens, and doubtless others I'm forgetting. ee cummings, for one. The Harlem Renaissance figures in there as well: I think Langston Hughes may have been involved the second time I took the class.

Imagism is... it's Williams's icebox-plums or red wheelbarrow. It's usually short, it's concrete, it builds a description in words. From the Imagist epic (yes) Paterson, "Say it, no ideas but in things." It's what made non-rhyming poetry accessible to me, so I've got a soft spot for the Imagists. Williams is your best bet there. HD (Hilda Doolittle) is also excellent but a bit more obscure (both the poet and the poetry).

I like Eliot because he packed *so much* into The Waste Land. Every line opens up two or three associated... riffs, or references, or something. HD's _Trilogy_ is similar.

I call Yeats a throwback because he seemed to be trying to write classical poems on Irish mythology, though they've got a lot of Modernist sentiment as well.

Little of the rest has stuck with me, other than Wallace Stevens's "The Emperor of Ice Cream" and "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird." We didn't cover Dylan Thomas in class, I came to him on my own, but I'm partial to him as well.

Hope that helps!

[thanate]

Thanks! I've met a bunch of these anecdotally but didn't know they ought to be filed together, and I don't recall seeing anything by Hilda Doolittle, so I shall have to look her up.

It occurred to me slightly after christmas that I ought to have tracked down a copy of A Child's Christmas in Wales to read to the Megatherium, instead of doing The Tailor of Glouchester over and over again. (There was a couple-week period where small books made for far better naptime reading b/c they were easy to keep out of reach...) Oh well, next year. :)

[jazzfish]

"What the heck is Modernism anyway" is a fraught question. :) Near as I can tell the answer is something like 'a violent reaction against centuries of tradition.' (e.g. Dada and Cubism in visual art, Rite of Spring in music, Imagism in poetry.) The general timeframe of 'first half of the 20th century, give or take' is as good a guideline as any.

Ooh. Thing is, Tailor of Gloucester is *perfect* for Xmas with a small one. It's got that lovely Victorian/Edwardian language and rhythm, and also great illustrations. CCW has great language, but (the versions I've seen at least) substandard artwork.

[thanate]

It is an excellent thing to read, and after the sixth or seventh time through, I start to feel that perhaps there are other excellent things.

She hasn't quite gotten the hang of looking at the pictures yet; books come in toys (which adults are not invited to help her play with) and things that other people read (sometimes to her.) Some of the latter have pictures, but often that's frustrating, because you're trying to get her to look at a book, but you won't let her turn handfulls of pages.