Of Modern Poetry by Wallace Stevens - Robert Lindley's Blog

Of Modern Poetry
by Wallace Stevens 

Of Modern Poetry Modern Poetry in the World War Eras
By 1942, when "Of Modern Poetry" was published, Modernism as a literary movement had evolved significantly from its roots in the 1910s. In Modernism's first years, World War I was an unavoidable influence on writers everywhere, even if indirectly. Industrialization and world war were the major factors that led poets like Stevens, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein, and William Carlos Williams to vigorously break down and reinvent poetic standards that they saw as insufficient to make sense of the changing modern world. These poets responded to the war in their own ways, largely in that their aesthetics reflected a notion of a shattered or upended world order—"The Waste Land" of modernity, to use the title of Eliot's masterpiece.

World War I did generate a group of visceral war poets, primarily British, including Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, and John McCrae, all of whom served in the war—a group who form something of their own canon apart from the overall Modernist greats. However, a degree of ambivalence prevailed among many major poets on how to address the war itself, if at all: William Butler Yeats, a precursor and paternal figure to many Modernists, offered his non-commentary bluntly in "On being asked for a War Poem," writing, "I think it better that in times like these / A poet's mouth be silent."

Between the wars, Modernist poetry grew and changed. The fiery, experimental poets established distinct careers as each pushed the genre in different, new directions: perhaps it is most accurate to say that Modernism was revealed to have never been one cohesive movement, but a diverse array of writers with vastly differing techniques. When Stevens published Parts of a World in 1942, he had the vantage point to look back on Modernism as a movement. The decades of distance from modern poetry's origins make it all the more striking that Stevens chose at that time to write a "Modern Poetry" manifesto, defining the genre and essentially issuing commandments for it.


In many ways, World War II forced Stevens' generation of poets to reflect anew on their past work, as they found themselves in a dire global situation similar to when they were starting to publish. In this context, it is impossible not to read "Of Modern Poetry" as Stevens' response, in his own intellectual way, to the horrors of World War II. 1942 was a particularly bleak moment in the war, especially for America: Pearl Harbor had just been bombed, launching the United States into the war, and Nazi Germany was reaching the height of its domination over Europe. This apocalyptic turmoil is contained within Stevens' simple line, "It has to think about war / And it has to find what will suffice," emphasizing poetry's vital duty to help people find meaning, solace, or "satisfaction"—anything that "will suffice" to keep life bearable. Though this context is not addressed directly by Stevens, it is invaluable in clarifying why he writes so adamantly here about the need for poetry to face the real world, reach people, bring them together, and give them happiness......................