The Cambridge companion to modernist poetry

About this book

This Companion offers the most comprehensive overview available of modernist poetry, its forms, its major authors and its contexts. The first part explores the historical and cultural contexts and sexual politics of literary modernism and the avant garde. The chapters in the second part concentrate on individual authors and movements, while the concluding part offers a comprehensive overview of the early reception and subsequent canonization of modernist poetry. As well as insightful readings of canonical poets, the Companion features extended discussions of poets whose importance is now being increasingly recognized, such as Mina Loy, poets of the Harlem Renaissance, and postcolonial poets in the Caribbean, Africa, and India. While modernist poets are often thought of as difficult, these essays will help students to understand and enjoy their experimental, playful, and fascinating responses to contemporary social and cultural change and their dialog with the arts and each other.