Blog Entry #4- More Modernist Poets

  In complete honesty, I struggle to find a definition for modernism by reading the given poems. To aid myself, I have looked up the definition, in order to understand what I am looking for. According to “Dictionary.com”, modernism is “a deliberate philosophical and practical estrangement or divergence from the past in the arts and literature occurring especially in the course of the 20th century and taking form in any of various innovative movements and styles.” After I read this, I could understand where my confusion was originating from.

  I do not usually read poetry. Because of this lack of history, I don't really know what a regular poem is supposed to look like, especially from the timeframe which these were written in. Reading over the poem, I can now see that there are many, abstract lines that don't have a visible correspondence with something that is “real”. For example,

“No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;

Am an attendant lord, one that will do

To swell a progress, start a scene or two,

Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,

Deferential, glad to be of use,

Politic, cautious, and meticulous;

Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;

At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—

Almost, at times, the Fool.”

  This passage makes nearly no sense to me. Because of an immense lack of context, I can only assume that the author is trying to say that they were never meant to be successful, nor will they ever be.

  To conclude, with this analysis into the poetry, I can come to the inference that modernism is anything that challenges the traditional history of a medium. This could be anything, including, but not limited to art, music, poetry, architecture, speech, and design.