This is a discussion post for our class… it will need to be 300-400 words. The direction are as follows….
This week you are reading a lot of poets – poets who can be sectioned off into two basic schools. 1) Poets of America and 2) Modernist Poets. Frost has often been called “America’s Poet” because of his subject matter, concern with nature and the common man, regionalism, and easily accessible language. Modernist poetry, like the work of Eliot, is very different. It disrupts our sense of linearity, relies upon a lot of academic background knowledge in myths and tradition, uses higher language, and claims that the poem must be concretely rooted in “one thing”.
Keeping those two categories in mind, discuss the following 1) How does Frost use these poems particularly to develop that sense of Americana that we find in the work? Why do we see this as distinctly American? 2) Referencing your Modernist poet Eliot, discuss what you think are the defining modernist traits that the poet exhibits.
This week we read the following..
Frost – “Mowing,” “Mending Wall,” “After Apple-Picking,” “Birches,” “Fire and Ice
Sandburg – “Chicago”;
Moore – “Poetry,” “The Mind is an Enchanting Thing”
Eliot – “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
