Silent Reading, 20 min

Modernist Poets

• Read the Modern Poetry Intro in the textbook, pp. 645-647.
• In groups (assigned), read the following poems:

1. Ezra Pound (648), "The River Merchant's Wife" and "The Garden"
2. T.S. Eliot (655), "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
3. William Carlos Williams (665), "The Red Wheelbarrow," "The Great Figure," and "This Is Just to Say"
4. Marianne Moore (671), "Poetry" and Archibald MacLeish (673), "Ars Poetica"
5. e.e. cummings (675), "what if a much of a which of a wind," "somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond"
6. Carl Sandburg (848), "Chicago" and Allen Ginsberg (881), "Homework"
7. Edgar Lee Masters (851), "Richard Bone," "'Butch' Weldy," "Mrs. George Reece"
8. Arna Bontemps (855), "A Black Man Talks of Reaping" and Claude McKay (880), "America"

• Create a short presentation for your poet(s). Include each of the following on separate pieces of construction paper.

1. Background info on your poet(s)
2. Narrative situation of your poem(s)
3. Identify/describe each of the following devices for your poem(s): tone, imagery, symbols, metaphor/simile. Include the line(s) as examples.
4. Describe why your poet(s) fits into (or differs from) the Modernism movement. Discuss their use of free verse, imagism, symbolism, etc. Refer to specific information from the introduction where possible.