The 1940's and 50's in Canada witnessed what Munroe Beattie calls "the renaissance of the culmination of the modernist movement". What he means is that modern poetry began in Canada in the 1920's, but didn't see its full flowering until the 40's and 50's. We were slower to change than our American and British counterparts. But perhaps it is in our nature to be cautious of passing fads. (Certainly that is the way we are portrayed in Due South - polite, circumspect if not downright cautious, rule-bound, yet courageous and intelligent in our own unique way!)
How would one define modern poetry? First of all it was a reaction, as most movements are, to the previous, Romantic Movement that was distinguished by elaborate, ornate language, traditional forms, and naturalist themes. The distinguishing characteristics of Modern poetry include: a speaking voice, everyday diction, vivid, concrete images, the use of new rhythms such as jazz rhythms (Robert Hass, the American poet states "new rhythms are new perceptions"), and line lengths that depend not on set meters (what Pound called the metronome) but rather on the musical phrase. Later in the century, Charles Olson argued for a line length that depended upon the length of the breath.
Modern poetry was not only distinguished by new forms, but also by new subject matter. The moderns turned away from the idealized nature themes of the Romantics and found their subjects in the new urban setting and in the complex subjects of industrialization, alienation, and existentialist experience.
Free verse dominated modern poetry and proved an effective field for exploring the devices, techniques, and themes of the era. Free verse (vers libre), in contrast say to blank verse (which Shakespeare used - iambic pentameter, but unrhymed), is non- restrictive, though some poets argue that it has its own set of rules. M.H. Abrams, in his excellent A Glossary of Literary Terms illustrates what the best of the poets using free verse both give up (drive, beat, song) and substitute (visual clues, juxtaposition, tension, suspension) with examples such as this very short poem by A.R.Ammons:
Small Song The reeds give way to the wind and give the wind away
Abrams notes that the poem recalls and exploits traditional meter by using four equal lines of three words each, divided into two stanzaic couplets. The first line of each couplet ends with 'give' not only to create tension and release in the suspended syntax of the verb-phrase, but also to create surprise at the shift of meaning from 'give way' to 'give... away'. And notice, he states, how the form of the poem mimics the resistance to the wind in the recurrent strong stresses of the first line (The r‰eds gçve /wæy) and the graceful yielding to the wind in the succession of light iambs in the second stanza (And gçve/ the wçnd awæy). You can see how the poet crafted this free verse as carefully as any sonneteer. The Canadian poet Margaret Atwood has a similarly crafted poem; the first poem in Power Politics, which unequivocally sets the tone for the collection:
you fit into me like a hook into an eye a fish hook an open eye
Here Atwood is using the contemporary devices of the short-lined, conversational, ironic form so beloved by many modern poets. She too uses the form of four lines, two stanzaic couplets. Her poem also depends upon a surprising shift, much like Ammons' poem, but here it is an ironic shift in meaning from the gentle, cooperative hook and eye of a traditional piece of clothing to the politically charged fish hook/ open eye. The power of the last line reminds me of an earlier poem by PK Page called "Young Girls" in which she too uses a powerful image of the hook:
Too much weeping in them and unfamiliar blood has set them perilously afloat. Not divers these - but as if the waters rose in flood - making them partially amphibious and always drowning a little and hearing bells; until the day the shore line wavers less, and caught and swung on the bright hooks of their sex, earth becomes home, their natural element.
T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound argued that free verse did not mean that everything and anything goes; one must replace the traditional forms with devices that enhance the poetic texture of free verse. They still engaged patterns of repetition, the musical phrase, complex rhythms, and alternative rhymes (other than end rhyme).
But not all the poets liked free verse. Robert Frost said that using free verse was like playing tennis without a net! In the modern era, then, traditional forms such as the sonnet, sestina, villanelle, did not disappear entirely, as many of the poets continued to hone their craft in these as well as the new forms.
Montreal was a hotbed for modern poetry in Canada. But not exclusively. Other cities such as Toronto produced important modern poets: Dorothy Livesay, E.J. Pratt, and later, Raymond Souster, among others. Modern poetry was encouraged by literary journals such as Canadian Forum, New Frontier, Contemporary Verse, by two smaller magazines, Montreal Preview and First Statement, as well as by anthologies such as New Provinces, Ralph Gustafson's Anthology of Canadian Poetry (1942), Canadian Poets (1943) and Canadian Accent (1944).
Copyright (c) Heather Pyrcz 2001. All rights reserved.