paper option #11
Consider Frost's "Mending Wall." To what degree can it be said that this
poem is modernist? Does it
take up the issues we have decided modernist poems take up? What position
does the poem implicitly take on the
subjectivity-objectivity question? Where does the poem fit in the
modernism/anti-modernism debate? Many people argue
that Frost in general, and this poem in particular, is anti-modernist. Is
that true of "Mending Wall"?
supplemental/optional
readings:
Cowboy poetry: 'Robert Haas, who
teaches
American Poetry at Berkeley, went to a cowboy poetry reading in Wyoming. "I
was abashed and hugely amused," he says. Haas compares the poems he heard
to the popular newspaper poems of the 19th century. "I guess you could say
that modernism took poetry away from ordinary people, and cowboy poetry is
one way of taking it back."'
