What do you like about modern American poetry?

[Dark Lady]

I really hope this doesn't overlap any other threads too much. I did have a quick look through the Wallace Stevens one in particular to make sure, but it seemed to be predominently extracts of his poetry.

My problem is this: I have my finals for uni impending and am not feeling too bad about them (yet). However, I'm the sort of person who needs to connect with a text in some way (even if I don't like it) to write well on it. I would really like to write about poetry for one of my questions in my Modern American Literature paper, partly because it looks good to have a range and partly because I like writing about poetry in exams as it's easy to remember quotes!

For my other papers I'm fine with the poetry aspect but for Modern American...I don't feel like I can connect with the poems! I love TS Eliot but I was planning on writing about him in a different paper. Other than Eliot I feel like I'm missing something.

If anyone can tell me why it is that they really like modern American poetry it might help me look at it differently. I'll probably write on William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, and Wallace Stevens as I know more of their poetry but any comments may be helpful. I just want to find an angle in. At the moment I feel like I'm just looking at words on a page when I read these poems and not like I'm connected in any way to what I'm looking at.

[quasimodo1]

to Dark Lady, To say in a few sentences why a person would like American or contemporary American poetry would be like describing your experience with a lifetime of weather, or nature. It is all over the linguistic artistic map. If contemporary is more the subject of your question... try reading e.e. cummings before you generalize about Wallace Stevens. A good site to get started with is www.poetryfoundation.org and just browse. Also the thread "fragments of contemporary poetry" will give you a feel for many great poets and some of the fragments have links so you can read the entire poem. If you need some more links, let me know... there are MANY. q1

[Stargazer86]

I think I posted something about this recently in another thread..
Modern poetry is really hit and miss for me. For the ones I like, it has to be something I can relate to and really feel the atmosphere. I have to be able to picture it.
One of my favorite poets is Allen Ginsberg. He has this poem "A Supermarket in California" (I think that's the title) where he's walking through, dreaming about Walt Whitman there with him shopping. I'm quite a day dreamer myself and I felt as if that poem could really identify with the way I view a lot of things when I'm out and about. Just off in my own little world. The descriptions make you feel like you're there and inside his head. Robert Hayden is another good modern American poet. He wrote the very chilling "Night, Death, Mississippi". Definately worth checking out. Good luck on your project

[mayneverhave]

Does the OP mean modern poetry, or modernist poetry? Modern poetry is poetry that is contemporary, while modernist poetry is poetry that is associated with the modernist movement, and includes figures like Stevens, Eliot, and Pound.

[Dark Lady]

Does the OP mean modern poetry, or modernist poetry? Modern poetry is poetry that is contemporary, while modernist poetry is poetry that is associated with the modernist movement, and includes figures like Stevens, Eliot, and Pound.

Yeah I was a bit vague about that, sorry. I guess the poets I'm specifically looking at are what you would call American modernists. Not quite Eliot and Pound 'cause they sort of abandoned the US for Europe so they're more just modernists. I mean the guys who stayed behind (I know some of them visited Europe but they didn't live here for long periods). The one's who wanted to create something distinctly American and went away from the traditional European cannon. Maybe the fact that I don't get it is because I'm not American. I really like TS Eliot; he was probably my favourite poet for a while (but then I got into William Blake big time).

It may just be as Stargazer86 said; I like some of it if it speaks to me but I just don't 'get' the rest.

Sorry if I'm rambling in this post but I just had my first exam and I think my brain has decided to switch itself off until the next one!

[Eugenie]

I like a few, a very few American poets very much. But for the main part of my chosing, I prefer English or Russian or Greek poets, they touch me in a way American poets do not.