A Survey of Modernist Poetry by Laura Riding

THE vulgar meaning of modernism, especially when the word is employed as a term of critical condemnation or by poets themselves as a literary affectation, is modern-ness, a keeping-up in poetry with the pace of civilization and intellectual history. It is thus used by the reader or critic who makes a sentimental association of poetry with the past, and perhaps with a particular period of the past, as an epithet for ‘new' poetry which seems irreverent of the general tradition; and, in the other extreme, it is deliberately adopted by individual poets and movements as a contemporary programme. Poetry in this light becomes a matter of temperamental politics, with a conservative flank opposed to a radical flank; and an imaginary battle ensues in which the main issue is lost sight of: may a poet write as a poet or must he write as a period? For modernism, in this perverted sense, likewise becomes a critical tyranny, increasing contemporary mannerisms in poetry instead of freeing the poet of obligation to conform to any particular set of literary theories. There is, indeed, a genuine modernism, which is not a part of a ‘modernist' programme but a natural personal manner and attitude in the poet to his work, and which accepts the denomination ‘modernist' because it prefers this to other denominations; also because there is a conspicuous force operating at great odds to free the _poem_ of many of the traditional habits which prevented it from achieving its full significance. Keeping in mind this conspicuous force, more excuse can be found for ‘modernist' as applied to the poem than to the poet; as _poems_ is a more accurate, less prejudiced term for _poetry_ (a vague and sentimental idea in relation to which _poet_ is a more vague and sentimental idea still). But even into this more genuine aspect of poetic modernism creep some of the prejudices of perverted modernism -- into its criticism especially. It has, for example, an intolerance toward contemporary poetry which confesses no programme, a suspicion, more properly, of poetry which does not seem to profess a literary cause; and a self-protective sympathy for manifestations of modernism in the past -- the present vogue of eighteenth-century poetry is largely inspired by its quaintness, which, however affected, was in its day an up-to-dateness.

For no matter how restrained, how impersonal a literary attitude may be, it is difficult for it to resist the temptation to convert and to receive converts; and modernist poetry, whatever its purity, is especially in danger of succumbing to this temptation to convert, because it is much attacked, and to receive converts, because there are always literary loose-ends anxious to acquire character and standing by attaching themselves to a cause.