Of Modern Poetry Comments

Yes poetry changes time to time, splendidly written verse is this. It’s a poets poem.

Love the way it expressed the difference between the historic poetry and the morden poetry.., , great write..,

Love this poem. It gave me chills it touched apart of me that I've not known just by reading a poem online.

As Daniel Brick correctly notes in his post, this poem is meant to address what has historically become known as modernist art, not merely what is modern and contemporary in time. There was an upheaval in society's perception of the speed at which world events took place beginning roughly with the industrial revolution and really coming to a head with the horrors of the great war (World War I) . Stevens argues in this poem that the pretty pictures, the expected rhythms and rhymes are no longer adequate to describe the events and emotions of this modern world. You cannot rely on the old scripts and simply repeat them with new variations. The way we live in the world became fundamentally different and the art that could apply and appeal to these new circumstances had to be new. Had to be addressed to the actual living understanding that takes place in a mind in the act of being present and finding a way to conduct itself amongst the newest of this world and its advancements. An art form, a work of art itself has to be as alive and in the moment as the author and the audience both. To achieve that symbiosis is the goal. Not by looking back at the old forms and the old works, but by perspicaciousness requiring insight and not a little bit work and active interaction. That investment is paid off by subjective internalization of the work. A transcendence that suffices to carry us forward and anneal some the wounds of ignorance and division. This is one Stevens more didactic poems and from that angle not really one of his most satisfying, in my opinion. But it holds keys to reading some of the seemingly more opaque and metaphorical pieces he wrote, because just about everything he ever published touches on the theme explicated here.

Its past was a souvenir.... thanks for posting.....

An instrument, twanging a wiry string that gives Sounds passing through sudden rightnesses, wholly Containing the mind, below which it cannot descend, Beyond which it has no will to rise................................................................... well observed modern mind of poets.

FIRST THINGS FIRST: not all poetry written in the present time is MODERN POETRY. Much of it is nowhere near Ezra Pound's requirement: MAKE IT NEW. The word MODERN refers not just to a shared passage of time, but a conception of THIS TIME and its particular needs. At very least the Modern Poem has to address, it not solve our current issues: it must suffice in fulfilling that task, or it's just pretty language and a nice but arbitrary way to pass the time, not to understand it or transform it. Neruda write about the ancient Incans killed by the Spanish: I COME TO SPEAK IN YOUR DEAD VOICES. He will be their witness. Stevens is saying something similar: Moderrn poetry must be so revelatory, so intimate, so personal that people reading think they are writing it. That the poetry and its meanings are already inside them, it they listen to the orphic depths of poetry which are fundamentally true.Stevens is always assuring is we have access to the same poetic depths he does, and we too can write the poem of the mind.

It has no will to rise! ! Thanks for sharing this poem with us.

he probably just writing and writing whatever comes to his mind

An interesting and meaningful write on what is expected from a modern time poem and how it should speak and on what subject. Really an informative as well as educative too. Enjoyed the beautiful presentation in lyrical form. Thanks for sharing.

On a literal level, this poem can be very confusing. It speaks about a poem “of a mind in the act of finding/ What will suffice.” IMHO, Stevens is not talking about a poem in the act of finding, he is addressing a mind in the act of finding. Of course, the ambiguity is deliberate. Grammatically, one could follow down, substituting either “poem” or “mind” for “it, ” and one would be correct using either. Still, how good could a poem be if it is only looking for what will “suffice? ” Shouldn’t a poem reach for excellence instead of something that will merely suffice? Similarly, shouldn’t a mind stretch toward excellence? The answer of course is yes, we should—we must—strive toward excellence. But along the way, we must first find and accept what will “suffice.” It appears to me the “mind in the act of finding” is searching for truth, solidity, comfort, freedom, certainty—all the things that philosophy and theology have sought since the time of Socrates. In our relativistic time, what will suffice for truth? What will grant us comfort and yet allow us freedom? In previous eras, the “finding” was not necessary. The church, the government, society, or some other institution, provided what would suffice. One didn’t need to think about such things. One accepted the prevailing doctrine, the faith of our fathers. Now, however, that has changed. We must construct a new stage, we must be on that stage, and we must “speak words that in the ear, /In the delicatest ear of the mind, repeat, /Exactly, that which it wants to hear, at the sound /Of which, an invisible audience listens, /Not to the play, but to itself…” The philosophy, the code we find for ourselves, must fit. It must appeal to that “delicatest ear of the mind.” This is the measure of what will “suffice.” It must resonate with us, and produce “Sounds passing through sudden rightnesses…” In short, “It must /Be the finding of a satisfaction, and may /Be of a man skating, a woman dancing, a woman /Combing. The poem of the act of the mind.” What will suffice may come in the simplicity of life itself; in the emotions of daily living.