A SURVEY OF MODERNIST POETRY BY LAURA RIDING AND ROBERT GRAVES LONDON WILLIAM HEINEMANN LTD. 1927 NOTE This book represents a word-by-word collaboration; except for the last chapter, which is a revision by both authors for the purposes of this volume of an essay separately written and printed by one of them. CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I. MODERNIST POETRY AND THE PLAIN READER’S RIGHTS 9 II. THE PROBLEM OF FORM AND SUBJECT-MATTER IN MODERNIST POETRY 35 III. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE AND E. E. CUMMINGS: A STUDY IN ORIGINAL PUNCTUATION AND SPELLING 59 IV. THE UNPOPULARITY OF MODERNIST POETRY WITH THE PLAIN READER 83 V. MODERNIST POETRY AND DEAD MOVEMENTS 110 VI. THE MAKING OF THE POEM 131 VII. MODERNIST POETRY AND CIVILIZATION 155 VIII. VARIETY IN MODERNIST POETRY 189 IX. THE HUMOROUS ELEMENT IN MODERNIST POETRY 223 X. CONCLUSION 258 INDEX 293 CHAPTER I MODERNIST POETRY AND THE PLAIN READER’S RIGHTS IT must be assumed for the moment that poetry not characteristically “modernist” presents no difficulty to the plain reader; for the complaint against modernist poetry turns on its differences from traditional poetry. These differences would seem to justify themselves if their effect was to bring poetry any nearer the plain reader; even traditional poetry, it is sometimes charged, has a tendency to withdraw itself from the plain reader. But the sophistications of advanced modern poetry seem only to make the breach wider. In the poetry of E. E. Cummings, for example, who may be considered conveniently to illustrate the divorce of advanced contemporary poetry from the common-sense standards of ordinary intelligence, is to be found apparently not only a disregard of this intelligence, but an insult to it. Such poetry seems to say: “Keep out. This is a private performance.”