To be honest, I do not feel like I know very much about 20th century American Literature. I know that there were many different styles of writing during this time including modernism, post-modernism, and naturalism. I know of some others that were and are popular from this era including John Steinbeck and Zora Neal Hurston. Despite having read many books, I feel as though I am not very knowledgeable about this period and I think this is mainly due to my not having reflected on these readings enough.

I hope to gain a lot from this course and understand more about American Literature. I feel like American literature is underappreciated, maybe I’m the one who hasn’t appreciated it enough. In the past, I have enjoyed and praised British literature extensively and I have immersed myself in studying it, but despite reading and enjoying American authors I have not expanded on this interest. Even authors that I have read and opened my mind to so many new ideas and feelings, I have not truly appreciated enough to read more of and give back the time to reflect on the ideas and feelings that presented themselves to me.

I feel drawn to authors and works of the Modernist period, but I realize now I am not very familiar with the works of poetry. I am more inclined to read novels and short stories than I am poems, but I have read The Wasteland. I was surprised by how close knit the modernist community was and how involved they were in developing and supporting each other’s work.

After reading the biographies of Pound, Eliot, H.D. and Lowell and the introduction to Modernism, I feel that my generation today resonates with a lot of their feelings of discontent. The modernist period covers pre-World War I until just short of WWII, but the authors continued to write. Their pessimism is the same as what we feel after growing up in a post 9/11 society. I also think the precepts of fascism that Eliot, Pound, and others in the modernist movement supported are popular today, but we might not openly label them as such.

Something I find interesting and confusing in regards to modern poetry is Imageism and the contrast between the definition for it and the masterworks of this time. Imageism is meant to directly address the “thing,” without being superfluous, and create a rhythm based on the object not on any set standard. This is seemingly more free form, but constrained by the challenge of not using unrelated text. I think this form of poetry would be more accessible to readers, more commonplace. I find this interesting because the masterworks of T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Virginia Woolf (another modernists) are not accessible to the common reader. To read their masterpieces one has to has an extensive background in languages, literature, and cultures. I think this is a defining trait of the modernist period. The shorter works and earlier works of these authors are relatively accessible and introduce readers to this movement, but they grow increasingly complex.

Hello Readers,

This is my first blog post. I’ll mainly be posting things for my American Literature course, but if I feel inspired I may create multiple pages and feeds and organize them appropriately. Anyway, I hope you leave comments and reviews on my posts because I love hearing what goes on in other people’s heads.

Best,

Chris McKnight