Modern

Characteristics: a revolutionary force, questioning what came before, anti-Romantic, subjective meaning, alienation from society, loneliness, procrastination (an inability to act), agonized recollection of the past, fear of death, the appearance of death, inability to feel or express love, world as a wasteland (poor environmental portrayal), man creating his own myths within his mind to fall back upon, sees world as fragmented

Major Themes: technology, violence and alienation, historical discontinuity, decadence and decay, loss and despair, rejection of history, race relations, unavoidable change, sense of place, local color

Styles: relied especially heavily on advances in narrative technique (narration is the essential building block of all literature), riddle/labyrinth-like, poems didn't always have to have a meaning

Lit. Devices: footnotes, allusions (Bible, myth, foreign languages, street life, and personal)

Authors: Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, Hilda Doolittle, T.S. Eliot, Marianne Moore, E. E. Cummings

Poem: Jehovah Buried, Satan Dead

E. E. Cummings

Jehovah buried,Satan dead,
do fearers worship Much and Quick;
badness not being felt as bad,
itself thinks goodness what is meek;
obey says toc, submit says tic,
Eternity's a Five Year Plan:
if Joy with Pain shall hand in hock
who dares to call himself a man?

go dreamless knaves on Shadows fed,
your Harry's Tom,your Tom is Dick;
while Gadgets murder squack and add,
the cult of Same is all the chic;
by instruments,both span and spic,
are justly measured Spic and Span:
to kiss the mike if Jew turn kike
who dares to call himself a man?

loudly for Truth have liars pled,click;
where Boobs are holy,poets mad,
illustrious punks of Progress shriek;
when Souls are outlawed,Hearts are sick,
Hearts being sick,Minds nothing can:
if Hate's a game and Love's a fuck
who dares to call himself a man?

King Christ,this world is all aleak;
and lifepreservers there are none:
and waves which only He may walk
Who dares to call Himself a man.