Poetry
(from Civilization in The United States)

In Poetry, Pulitzer Prize–winning poet and critic Conrad Aiken surveys the remarkable transformation of American verse in the early twentieth century.

Writing during the rise of modernism, Aiken rejects attempts to define American poetry through one movement, region, influence, or aesthetic. Instead, he presents a literary culture overflowing with competing voices: realism, imagism, psychological experimentation, social consciousness, color, rhythm, and radical new approaches to poetic form.

Along the way, he considers the work of poets including Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Amy Lowell, Edgar Lee Masters, Carl Sandburg, Wallace Stevens, H.D., and Edwin Arlington Robinson. Aiken celebrates the extraordinary energy of the period while questioning its excesses, lack of discipline, and uneasy relationship with literary tradition.

His conclusion is surprisingly optimistic: American poetry may still belong to an immature and fragmented culture, but its vitality, range, and willingness to experiment suggest an extraordinary future.

Originally published in the influential 1922 anthology Civilization in the United States, Poetry is a fascinating snapshot of American modernism at the moment it was taking shape.

Narrated by Eleesha Lewis.