Literary Analysis: Modernist Movement

In the spirit of Huxely, I decided to change course at the beginning of this week since I was unable to finish my Literature Analysis book I had originally started reading.

We will be looking at Poets and Poems:

  • Wallace Stevens- "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"
  • e.e. cummings- "anyone lived in a pretty how town"
This movement can be characterized as a revolution in science, global politics, technology, and literature.In the 20th century, more questions were asked and the experiments that coincided started to develop many of the ideas of the line of questioning that most people still consider the best. Revolutionary movements of sometimes a loss in faith in the government forced many writers to investigate our leaders and many people were shocked by the scandals that were uncovered.

"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird", demonstrates cubism which is also used in Modernist architecture, in which the author tries to share the world in as many points of view as possible. Both this poem and "anyone lived in a pretty how town" write a bit about the seasons and weather, because the Modernist poets sometimes focus on nature in order to emphasize individuality. In the many e.e. cumming poetry readers will see the breakage in language down to component parts. For example,

 someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance

This emphasizes the pieces of overheard conversation that readers find intriguing and makes the audience think about what the author is trying to explain. And the repetition of the stars rain sun moon
 including the changing of season in each line repeated similar to the sky's description creates an environment. Although the poems I have read are short the poet always creates scenes in which the reader can relate life to these mixed up phrases. Life is just a lot of mixed up points of view creating realities that are different for each individual therefore many poems are used to express the greatness of individuality and the imagery is not as personal and the Blackbird in a tree can reflect the meaning of a Raven or at least reference..

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