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summary: =Mina Loy, “Modern Poetry”= Points – The new poetry is American—America is a linguistic melting pot of dialects, thus linguistically . . .

Mina Loy, “Modern Poetry”

Points

• The new poetry is American
  • America is a linguistic melting pot of dialects, thus linguistically creative
    • “where latterly a thousand languages have been born”
  • Think of jazz, the musical equivalent of American poetry
• Quality of this new language
  • A composite, living language
    • Against “God’s English” preserved at universities
  • America lends poetry “vitality”
  • Has to occur quickly, so must be a speedy language
    • Because it’s fast, it must be flexible
• Modern poetry is characterized by free verse
  • Freedom from traditional meters
• Personality leads to individual rhythms
  • Individuals express themselves through particular uses of meter
  • Nevertheless, don’t get distracted by them
    • Still need the “eternal” in a good poem, so look past “eccentricities”

Relationship to Modernism

• Gives kudos to Ezra Pound, “impresario,” for turning modern poetry from a “nebula” to a “constellation”
• Points to American poets: Moore, Williams, e e cummings, H D
  • Creates a new canon
• Tries to reconcile the “eternal” with the here and now (cf Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent”)
• American linguistic modernity as speed: relic of Futurism

Quotes

• “Poetry is prose bewitched.”
• “The structure of all poetry is the movement of an active individuality makes in expressing itself.”
• Poetry is “the direct response of the poet’s mind to the modern world of varieties in which he finds himself.”
• “Pound, the purveyor of geniuses”