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modernism - Ezra Pound

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Robert Frost - Elizabeth Bishop all right Harvard problem well

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[A talking blue phone box] time is a pretty weird concept the past is full of cave people kings and

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queens and people hanging out in Coliseums in the future is going to be

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all about robot spaceships and flying cars but present-day reality is always

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different depending on what time you're living in modern means different things [Busy traffic jam]

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to different people like in the 1980s modern was having a cell phone like any

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cell phone and in 2010 modern means staying up to speed on the latest apps

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that track your calories or how many steps there are between your room and [People gathering at an ice cream van]

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the nearest ice-cream vendor around the end of the 19th and beginning of the

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20th centuries an entire literary and artistic movement was dubbed modernism

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some quintessential examples now Ulysses by James Joyce and TS Eliot's epic poem

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The Waste Land both deal a lot with personal identity while this period is [kid dressed as an astronaut]

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often said to have started around 1890 and ended roughly around 1945 and

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remember another little world-changing event that ended around that time yeah

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World War two the big one which also means that World War one took place

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during the modernist period so two world wars happen during this time I think [Machine guns firing]

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that might have affected the way authors were writing and artists were creating

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hmm yeah the writers and artists of the modernist era were quite interested in

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exploring the idea of self and coming to grips with what this might mean well in

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doing this self-examination modernist writers made conscious efforts to break [Skull x-ray picture in front of girls face]

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away from previous literary and social conventions and deliberately chose to

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write in new and at the time unconventional ways modernist literature [business man using a typewriter]

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is marked by fragmented sometimes tricky to follow narratives the stylistic

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choice echoes the disjointed state of society in the wake of the big wars

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additionally the writing moved away from traditions in societal norms like gender [little girl playing the piano]

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roles and practices such as religion modernist writers really paid attention

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to advancements in psychology philosophy and in politics they took these new

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theories and advancements to heart as grand new truths and used this info

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to shape what they were writing loss and self-consciousness were major themes

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in modernist literature these writers used allusions multiple perspectives and

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nonlinear time sequencing to create a type of literature that hadn't been seen [exploding head]

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ever before modernist Lit differs from postmodern

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lit the era of writing that followed it and has often talked about as a reaction

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to modernism postmodern authors threw it back to the styles and convention used [woman throwing her drink in a mans face]

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in the days of literature before modernism while modernist whole-heartedly

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believed in the theoretical information coming from the sciences post modernist

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said this stuff might or might not be true and we don't really care so who [geeky guy wearing glasses and a scarf]

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were these modernist writers well the godfather of the movement was Ezra Pound

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Pound is notorious for saying make it new which became like a battle cry among

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modernist writers he was responsible for creating a poetry movement called

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imagism which was all about using very detailed and specific images you know

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kind of the bread and butter of modern poetry yeah Pound did that he was also [buttering bread]

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really helpful in promoting the work of his peers Pound

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aided in launching the careers of amazing writers Robert Frost who we'll [old writer wearing reading spectacles]

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learn about in a few minutes William Carlos Williams this guy and

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Ernest Hemingway so clearly he was pretty awesome poet in his own right or

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at least people respected what he had to say about the art of writing Pound studied

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and drew from ancient Asian literary traditions and came up with his own [Paper of asian writing]

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translations of classical Chinese and Japanese pieces of writing he was into

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the music like flow of ancient writings and sought to mimic that rhythm in his

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[lots of people dancing] own work with a modernist twist of course some of pounds poems are crazy

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long and since we don't have time to read those epic contributions to the

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world of poetry we'll go with couple shorter ones while this first

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[Poem written on a piece of paper] poem is called in a station of the Metro believe it or not this is the whole poem

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in a station of the Metro the apparition of these faces in the crowd

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petals on a wet black bough and that's it no really that's the whole poems not

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kidding well the beauty of this baby comes in its simplicity [laughing baby in a basket]

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remember how pound came up with something called imagism how strikingly

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simple but awesome are the images in the poem we just read and only 14 little

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words pound is able to paint a gorgeous picture in the readers head well look [Pound painting a picture inside a head]

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closely at the words he chose apparition another word for ghost

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so the apparition of faces is like an unclear picture no one face stands out

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from the rest then we get to petals on a wet black bow well because he makes a

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point to say that the bough or tree limp is black the reader can assume that the [pink and white petals on a tree]

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petals are a light color white or maybe pale pink you know kind of like human

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skin so the black bow becomes the background of the metro station and the

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petals are light colored faces that all flow together until they commingle into

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one central image the point of this poem imagism [stamp of imagism]

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describing an otherwise commonplace scene in a beautifully poetic way

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alright let's take a look at another of pounds main works the river merchants

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wife a letter that's quite a bit longer than Metro so you need to pause the

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video to read it go for it one day [mumbles]

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[mumbling]

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[mumbling]

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all right in a nutshell this poem is about a wife of a merchant who misses [a woman sailing on a boat]

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her husband and writes him a little note reminiscing over how they met and

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what their relationship has been like so far perhaps the most striking symbol or

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image that stands in for something else that runs throughout the poem is time [a clock with time going by quickly]

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the narrator calls back memories that she shared with her husband when they were

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two small people when she stopped scowling and says that she desired my

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dust to be mingled with yours and when her husband dragged his feet when he had

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to leave her to go to work time is represented through these memories since [woman dreaming of past memories]

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the narrator is recalling specific things that happened to the couple when

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they were younger she gives the reader a brief timeline of the couple's

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relationship pound uses imagery in the use of memories to tell a story

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this poem is actually Pounds attempt at recreating what he determined was a

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[painting of a chinese woman] letter from a woman to her husband in eighth century China Pound didn't attend

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to literally translate the writing but used his own poetic license to make it

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his own so there's a lot more we could say about pound in his incredible poetry [a talking blue phone box]

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let's turn now to one of the poets Pound helped really make a name in a poetry

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game Robert Frost well Frost is best love for

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his nature poetry and has since become an even bigger name in the world of [JFK, Jackie Kennedy and Robert Frost sitting at a ceremony]

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poetry than pound was a farmer turned poet Frost wasn't interested in

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inventing new and unusual ways to write poetry instead he drew from and wrote

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about what he knew because of his personal experience as a farmer in New [A Robert Frost book on a shelf]

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England and well people just gobbled it up Frost won a mind-boggling four

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Pulitzer Prizes for four of them in his lifetime it was so good that many lines

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from his poems have been quoted used as song lyrics and emblazoned on placards

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that people actually hang in their kitchen

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possibly Frost's most famous work though it's up for debate is the road not

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taken' here we go and I two roads [mumbling]

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[mumbling]

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[more mumbling]

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[mumbling so the road not

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taken' is probably one of the best-known poems in the history of American poetry [people sitting on a bus reading a poem]

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it might even be the top dog in the pile of poems everyone knows and loves

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as I said Frost was really into nature and it shows up in one way or another in

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pretty much every one of his poems well the road not taken' is no exception to

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this rule from line one of the poem we're hit with nature imagery giving us the

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setting of a poem two roads diverged in a yellow wood well not only do we know [a man walking in the woods]

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that the speakers in the woods somewhere we know that the trees are yellow which

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likely means it's autumn in a symbolic way this could mean that speaker is

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about to make a big life decision in the autumn season of his life as they're you [someone thinking about making a decision]

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know approaching old age well a few lines later we are told that one of the

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roads bent in the undergrowth which shows us that the woods are pretty darn

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thick or is it that the speaker's big life decision is a tough one and will be [pizza or a salad]

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hard to navigate in the second stanza the speaker is weighing the options

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between the two paths one is more worn used and the speaker thinks that well

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the less used path would be a better try it could be insinuating the speaker's [hand choosing the salad over the pizza]

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contemplating making the decision that most people don't or wouldn't make given

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the same set of circumstances in this way frost is setting the speaker apart

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from the norm and without directly saying so is making the speaker [an empty plate of food]

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something of a unique character in the final stanza the speaker repeats the

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initial lines from the poem and left the reader in on their decision two roads

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diverged in a wood and I took the one less traveled by and that has made all

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the difference while as readers we aren't given the information about [highlighted section of the poem]

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whether or not the road traveled was the most fun or the easiest choice frost

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writes that has made all the difference well choosing the one less traveled by

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was significant in changing the speaker's life whether for better or [a man walking in the woods]

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worse we don't know but it's certain that this monumental decision held sway

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over the remainder of the speaker's days it would be easy to chill with frost so

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we did there for the rest of the day but instead

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we're going to turn now to the Lady of modernism Elizabeth Bishop

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As a youngster Bishop lost her dad and mom to death and mental illness respectively

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she had to live with whatever relative would take her in [woman answering the door to another woman]

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which caused her to have to you know move around a lot as an adult

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Bishop continued traveling and was lucky enough to be able to see a good chunk of [train travelling past a platform]

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the globe in her lifetime born in Massachusetts she spent several years

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living in Brazil with her lover Lota de Macedo Soares after Soares killed [A headstone]

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herself Bishop moved back to the US and started

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working at of course Harvard she won a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award

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[a newspaper with a womans picture] for her collection of poetry which are often said to be place poems or poetry

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that intensely focuses and describes a particular setting well Bishop's poetry

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also contains themes derived from her real-life love loss her identity as a

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woman a lesbian and an orphan I'll take a couple of minutes now and read filling [filling station poem written on paper]

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station [mumbling]

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[mumbling]

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[still mumbling]

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okay first of all don't hate the speaker yeah

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[woman standing in a factory yard] they sound kind of snooty at the beginning but give them a chance how the

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speaker gives us the imagery of this place is what really sets this poem

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apart from the others there are super observant to observer and as a reader

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we're left with a really clear picture about really oily gas-station the [a woman reading in an oily gas station]

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speaker repeats and repeats and repeats how oil soaked and dirty everything is

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from the station itself to the dad and his son to the grease impregnated

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wickerwork on the couch even the family dog gets the speaker's dirty observation [dog napping on a chair]

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oh right about when we're sick and tired of hearing the speaker go on and on about

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all the nasty mess they see suddenly there's a breakthrough a human element

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reaches through all of that dirt and grime to allow the speaker to understand [a sewing machine]

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somebody embroidered the doily somebody waters the plant you know what had

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started out as a snide condemnation of the way people kept up the appearance of

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their business has shifted gears the speaker is able to connect an actual [dad and son getting oil at the station]

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person with all of the simple things they've been describing which seems to

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change the entire tone of the poem the concluding line somebody loves us all

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seems to indicate that while the speaker might be appalled by the dirt and oil

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covered everything they're observing it's

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filling station this is still someone's place of business it's their home and

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[a talking blue phone box] being rude with judgment doesn't really serve anyone well modernism might have

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been a fleeting period in literary history but it made a huge impact on

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contemporary writers many of the greatest writers came from this era and

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poured out their fragmented nature love and image filled little hearts all over the page without modernism we couldn't have post-modernism the incredibly [bin being emptied]

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awesome literary movement we're all living in right now

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