天净沙 · 秋思马致远约 1250-1321 至1324 间

枯藤老树昏鸦，小桥流水人家，古道西风瘦马。夕阳西下，断肠人在天涯。

断章 —— 卞之琳

你站在桥上看风景， 　　 看风景的人在楼上看你。 　　 明月装饰了你的窗子， 　　 你装饰了别人的梦。 1935 年 10 月

---How about American Poetry in the 20th century?

so many images

The Main Features of Modern American Poetry

• The beginning of modern American poetry in rebellion against Victorian poetry and against the conventional technique of the time.

• A poetic renaissance in the United States

First issue of magazine Poetry (Chicago 1912)

Modern American Poetry

• Chicago poets

• Imagist

• New England poets

break with the past

Diversity is its major feature.

• Representative poets:

Chicago Poets

Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)

Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931)

Edgar Lee Masters (1869-1950)

• Whitmanesque free verse

• Focus on common labors and people (male power, city and so on)

Main Features

......Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth,half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.

Chicago (Carl Sandburg )

Imagist Representative poets:

Ezra Pound (1885-1972)

T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)

Amy Lowell (1874-1925)

William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)

• Reject traditional poetic form and meter and Victorian diction.

• Imagism ( express impressions through an image; produce free verse; use suggestion rather than complete statement. )

Main Features

• Emphasize techniques such as fragmentation, ellipsis( 省略 ), allusion （暗示） , juxtaposition（并列） , ironic and shifting personae, and mythic parallelism

• Strong and conscious break with traditional forms, perceptions, and techniques of expression,and its great concern with language and all aspects of its medium.

In a Station of the Metro (Ezra Pound)

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough.人群中这些面孔蓦然涌现 , 　　湿漉漉墨色树枝上的花瓣 .

New England Poets

• Representative poets:

Robert Frost (1874-1963)Edward Arlington Robinson (1869-1935)

• Main features:

• The subjects came from daily life of ordinary people. New England was the main setting of poetry.

• Their themes were about the wasted, blighted, or impoverished lives.

• They used the traditional verse forms and made their poems of modernist themes more easily understood by the public.

• As a public event it gave expression to the values, the aspirations, and the pride of the community;

• As ritual it dignified the proceedings occasioning the poem;

• As language it had the power to inspire and entertain.

Social Functions

THE END