Modernist poetry

In this essay I seek to explore the icon of the Fighting Cock movement (Khorus Jangi) and of its Manifesto, " The Slaughterer of the Nightingale, " in order to consider its implications and imagistic allusions. In outlining the background of the Khorus Jangi and associated movements, I discuss the imagery of the khorus both in ancient Iran and globally, and in the context of the ideology of the Khorus Jangi. The Manifesto is discussed and analyzed and it is seen that the khorus prefigured the Manifesto, and heralded the appearance of a new movement in painting, as distinct from what had already happened in surrealist and modernist circles in writing. The manifestation of surrealist and modernist ideology in imagery seems to have been a response to this wake-up call of the Khorus Jangi.

Aida Foroutan, “Why the Fighting Cock? The Significance of the Imagery of the Khorus Jangi and its Manifesto ‘The Slaughterer of the Nightingale,’” Iran Namag, Volume 1, Number 1 (Spring 2016), XXVIII-XLIX.

https://www.irannamag.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/1.1-English-Foroutan-Iran-Namag.pdf

Deutung und Bewertung des Rilkeschen Lebenswerkes, insbesondere seiner »Duineser Elegien«, sind nach wie vor durch eine erstaunliche Unsicherheit gekennzeichnet. Dies erklärt sich wohl vor allem aus der weitgehenden Vernachlässigung bewußtseins- wie literaturgeschichtlicher Zusammenhänge in der bisherigen Forschung. Die Arbeit stellt daher die »Duineser Elegien« in den Kontext von Rilkes Gesamtwerk und versucht, ihre Eigenart und ihren Rang vor dem Hintergrund der deutschen Lyrik zwischen Jahrhundertwende und dem Beginn der zwanziger Jahre zu bestimmen. Da sie dabei die wesentlichen Züge der europäischen Modeme einbezieht, enthält die Studie auch den Entwurf einer Geschichte der modernen Lyrik und leistet einen wichtigen Beitrag zur Formulierung eines Epochenbegriffs der »Modeme«. Mit Hilfe ausgewählter philosophischer wie literarischer Texte der Zeit skizziert sie ein Entwicklungsmodell, das den französischen Symbolismus, die deutsche Jahrhundertwende, die »klassische Modeme« und die Avantgarde (Futurismus, Expressionismus, Wortkunst und Dada) in ein überzeugendes Verhältnis zueinander bringt, und zeigt Grundstrukturen der modernen Lyrik auf.
In ständigem Wechsel mit diesen Kontexten werden die »Duineser Elegien« eingehend analysiert. Nach rezeptionsgeschichtlichen und rezeptionsästhetischen Vorüberlegungen untersucht die Arbeit im Detail das Motivgeflecht des Werkes, Rilkes Verwendung von Mythos, Metapher, Vergleich und Symbol sowie die Bauformen des Zyklus und die intendierte Leserhaltung. Sie weist nach, wie Rilkes Deutung der condition humaine, sein neuer Wirklichkeitsbegriff und Subjektivitätsentwurf, und der poetische Diskurs der »Elegien« zusammenhängen und grenzt sie von den radikaleren Experimenten der Avantgarde ab.

This essay examines how James’s distinction between “personal”
and “institutional” religion in The Varieties of Religious
Experience informs modernist literature. Specifically, it points to
the inescapably social dimensions of “personal” forms of religious
experience, demonstrating how modernists such as E.J. Pratt –
once Canada’s leading poet – extended James’s notion of personal
religion in relation to his pragmatic philosophy. I place James in
conversation with modernists such as Pratt to challenge scholars to
consider anew not only the nature of James’s literary influence, but also
the many forms of religious expression that shaped the cultural
landscape of the twentieth century.

These poems, composed in Somali and in English, provide a poetic reflection of the recently emerged debate on the theme of Caddaan Studies which means "White Studies". The criticism and counter-criticism contained in the debate dug so deep into life nerve of Somali Studies that over a thousand people participated. The poems, under the title "Inaugurating Caddaan Studies" were composed with a critical observation of the debate.

Amy Lowell was long ago thrown into the heap of amusing literary footnotes. Critical perception of a writer is one with the critical construction of that writer. No matter how obvious the point is to a post-structuralist crowd, it is in examples such as the moulding of Lowell’s posthumous image that the monstrous injustices we are capable of become apparent. But consider the difference between Dickinson as spinster recluse, or as “Vesuvius at home”. Consider the difference between Woolf as tormented angel, or as fun-loving criminal (see the ‘Dreadnought Hoax’). Now consider Lowell as a fat cigar-wielding lesbian joke, or as a universally seductive, awe-inspiringly astute, creatively exceptional, and absolutely compelling Diva.
....................
“Amy Lowell, Diva Poet”. FWSA online. published 21 Nov 2013.
Review of:  Melissa Bradshaw. 'Amy Lowell, Diva Poet'. Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate, 2011.

In Rainer Maria Rilke’s Neue Gedichte (1907-8), the poet’s attempt to render objective experience becomes a crisis of lyric capability, for each poem marks the difficulty of encountering an object without projecting the poet’s self onto the object.  In this article, I reconsider this fundamental crisis in Rilke’s poetry by arguing for what I call a form of lyric narcissism, a poetic self-estrangement that results in a compensatory over-enthrallment of the self.  Rather than reading narcissism as a feature of the expressive lyric self, my argument redefines narcissism in Rilke’s poetry as an aesthetic inability to relate to objects.  Although this limited relation to the object provokes a crisis of representation, it also maintains a distance from the object.  The “subjects” of his poems are not so much the thing described as the poet or speaker’s attempt to describe it.

To the reader: Please note, I removed this paper because I cover the same material greatly expanded in my book, published February 25, 2020, titled Duchamp's Pipe: A Chess Romance between Marcel Duchamp and George Koltanowski.
Published by North Atlantic Press, Berkeley, California and Penguin Random House NY, February 25, 2020.
The book may be purchased here:
https://www.amazon.com/Duchamps-Pipe-Romance-Between-Koltanowski-ebook/dp/B07JYTP2NJ/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Duchamp%27s+Pipe&qid=1588472856&s=books&sr=1-1

or here:
https://www.northatlanticbooks.com/shop/duchamps-pipe/
or here:
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/605086/duchamps-pipe-by-celia-rabinovitch/9781623173562

Thanks for your patience, please email me with any questions you have about the book's content.

About Duchamp’s Pipe

Art, chess, and an $87,000 pipe frame an inside look at the relationship between Dadaist artist Marcel Duchamp and chess Grandmaster George Koltanowski

Spanning three decades, two continents, two world wars, and the international art and chess scenes of the mid twentieth century, Duchamp’s Pipe explores the remarkable friendship between art world enfant terrible Marcel Duchamp and blindfold chess champion George Koltanowski. Artist and cultural historian Celia Rabinovitch describes each man’s rise to prominence, the chess matches that sparked their relationship, and the recently discovered pipe that Duchamp gave to Koltanowski. This tale of genius and resilience offers fresh insights into the essence of the gift in the bohemian underground. Rabinovitch invites us to discover the chess wizard and a Duchamp slightly off pedestal–and ultimately more human.

Note to readers that this article was employed by Christie's New York as the primary research for the Marcel Duchamp Pipe in its online auction catalog:
My article is cited on the Christie’s online website under the lot notes for the Marcel Duchamp Pipe, and may have been used by other writers without permission or citation.
//www.christies.com/lotfinder/Sculptures-Statues-Figures/marcel-duchamp-pipe-5993805-details.aspx?lid=1
“As Celia Rabinovitch has related in her exhaustive study on the present pipe, Duchamp and Koltanowski first met in 1923 at the Belgian Chess tournament and later again in Duchamp’s famous defeat of the chess master at the Chess Olympiad in Paris in 1929. They would come together in New York in 1942 (both had left Europe due to the outbreak of the Second World War) and founded the Greenwich Village Chess Club (see C. Rabinovitch, Duchamp a Smoking Pipe, From Marcel Duchamp to George Koltanowski, March 2015).”

Cummings' collage-poems exhibit an extremely fragmented visual-verbal surface that must be "played" and in some sense reconstructed by the reader. But this fragmenting also enables and reveals symmetrical mathematical and rhetorical structures. Some of his poems incorporate reality fragments or overheard conversation, as in Guillaume Apollinaire's poèmes conversation but embedded within a tightly-controlled verbal-visual structure. The aim of these structural devices is to create aesthetic wholes, but also to create life or movement. This paper will examine several collage poems that illustrate how this movement is created.
Résumé "Floating particles of paper" : les poèmes collage de E.E. Cummings Les poèmes collage de Cummings présentent une surface visuelle-verbale extrêmement fragmentée qui doit être "jouée" et en un certain sens reconstituée par le lecteur. Mais cette fragmentation permet et révèle également des structures symétriques, mathématiques et rhétoriques. Certains de ses poèmes incorporent des fragments de la réalité ou de conversations, comme dans les poèmes conversation de Guillaume Apollinaire mais noyés dans une structure verbale-visuelle étroitement contrôlée. Le but de ces procédés structurés étant de créer des ensembles esthétiques, mais aussi de créer vie ou mouvement. Cet article examinera plusieurs poèmes collages qui montrent la manière dont ce mouvement est créé.

Alfonsina a été traduite trois fois en anglais depuis 1987 (deux petites anthologies, puis Mascarilla y trébol), elle a été traduite en italien, mais pas en français, contrairement à Alejandra Pizarnik, à Olga Orozco et à plusieurs créatrices actuelles. Elle fait partie de ces personnalités littéraires dont la vie agitée et la fin tragique cachent l'œuvre, et il est grand temps que cela change. Voici près de vingt ans que je me proposais de réaliser cette traduction et quelques mois que je l'ai commencée. Je viens de l'achever au début du mois de mai. Il restera une relecture générale, des corrections de détail...
J'ai renoncé aux dodécasyllabes par lesquels il est souvent commode de rendre les hendécasyllabes espagnols. Laurence Breysse m'a convaincu d'éviter un excès de chevilles qui embarrassaient la diction d'Alfonsina, qu'elle en soit remerciée, même si l'impair me reste un peu douloureux, néo-classique impénitent que je suis! Et Alfonsina déclamait avec une certaine emphase —contraste marqué avec des contenus surréalistes, imagistes, souvent énigmatiques et/ou ironiques et grinçants. Bernardo Schiavetta dialogue avec moi sur des détails, toujours importants, je l'en remercie! Comme le disait Alfonsina elle-même dans son Avertissement: certains de ses textes "considèrent le détail comme un organisme indépendant."

The expression of modern existence as a disconnected entity with shocking and distressful consequences is reflected in the writings of many modernist writers, but it seems to take centre stage in the poetry of T. S. Eliot. The decline of values and the multifarious problems of the twentieth century have caused modern man to create parentheses that detach them from each other, from society, from nature and even from themselves. This paper examines the horrifying consequences of life in a chaotic and disconnected universe on human existence from the perspectives of frustration, despair, and alienation. From a Structuralist theoretical standpoint, the paper analyses the poetry of Eliot with the aim of showing that the poet explores and employs rhetorical tropes and linguistic codes that present individuals whose lives have been torn apart as a result of political, economic, social and religious crises. Social limitations and individual inadequacies have pushed modern man into hopeless ...

Morgan’s Collected Translations (1996) is one of his most substantial achievements. This chapter looks at the trajectory of his translations from, and use of, poets of European modernism, in various forms, in a range of political contexts and languages, and in the continuing dialogue, or open conversation, of Morgan’s poetic practice. Amongst the dozens of poets Morgan has translated, five stand out – Eugenio Montale, Sándor Weöres, Vladimir Mayakovsky, August von Platen and Attila József – because Morgan has dedicated a separate volume to each one. This chapter shows that by engaging with modern European poetry, and with these five poets in particular, Morgan was able to develop his voice in a number of important ways.

This essay takes its title from a 1959 essay by Robert Langbaum called "The New Nature Poetry." Langbaum's essay was a pioneering foray into the vast and complex topic of modernist nature poetry: as such, it provides us with a convenient and logical starting point for an investigation into Cummings' nature poetry. Langbaum's essay makes two large claims: first, that in contrast to the Romantics' religious veneration of nature as teacher, guide, and nurse, the nature poetry of modernists like Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, Robert Frost, and D. H. Lawrence stressed "the mindlessness of nature, its nonhuman otherness" (102). To that end, modernist poets avoided projecting "human feelings into natural objects" (104). In other words, they avoided what critics call the pathetic fallacy. The paper explores ways in which Cummings' nature poetry fits (or doesn't fit) Langbaum's paradigm of the nature poetry of American modernists.

Pero de Magalhães de Gandavo redigiu pelo menos quatro versões de sua obra sobre o Brasil: dois tratados e duas Histórias. A principal alteração realizada na passagem dos tratados para as Histórias foi a supressão de elementos disfóricos na descrição da colônia portuguesa e a inclusão de lugares comumente empregados por cronistas ibéricos nos relatos sobre o Novo Mundo. Este trabalho pretende analisar como a descrição da natureza e dos povos nativos do Brasil se equilibra entre a experiência do viajante e os topoi clássicos retirados, por exemplo, de Heródoto e mesmo da poesia bucólica. Para tanto, partirei dos emblemas-poemas de Oswald de Andrade no livro Pau-Brasil, que se apropriaram e recriam frases da História da província Santa Cruz, de Gândavo.

In this article I employ the Kierkegaardian categories of three distinct stages of existence (aesthetic, ethical, religious) to show that J. Alfred Prufrock, the famously elusive protagonist of T. S. Eliot's first great poem, possesses many features characteristic of what the Danish philosopher described as the aesthetic mode of living. The article begins with a concise outline of the aesthetic existence, and then goes on to describe the ways in which Prufrock's character corresponds to Kierkegaard's analyses. Prufrock's opacity to himself and others, his inability to relate meaningfully to anything lying outside of himself, his futile self-introspections, ultimately leading to a solipsistic insulation from the world, spectral musings on situations which never occurred, and which are unlikely to happen in the future, all make him an embodiment of the melancholy-stricken aesthete. Prufrock's self-involvement is further underscored by the textual organisation of the text. His predicament is made visible through the use of recurrent lines and images, incantatory passages which are deliberately hazy, as well as tentative advances and retreats of the vaguely intimated narrative arch of the poem. All of these features serve to create an aura of solipsistic unreality of Prufrock's universe. Finally, I come to the conclusion that the drowning of the main character described in the final lines of the poem demonstrates the futility of the aesthetic life.

This essay is an expansion of my contribution to 'Kurt Schwitters and his Cultural Landscapes', a Public Lecture/Lecture Performance co-presented with Dr Martyn Hudson on Feb. 3, 2020, as 'Negotiating a Cultural Landscape: Writers and Artists in the Lakes', a series hosted at the Ambleside campus of University of Cumbria. The lecture featured selected aspects of Kurt Schwitters' Merz legacy: the short prose piece "It is dripping down…" (1945-47) (Fig. 1) and three poems: Frohe Tage/ London Symphony (1946), London Onion (1946) and PIN (1947). These were chosen from Schwitters' literary output during his time in Ambleside to explore how he maintained emotional and material connections with his former cultural landscapes.

This article analyses the place of nihilistic philosophy in W. B. Yeats's notoriously opaque work A Vision. Despite often being cast as a failure, A Vision is considered fundamental to a comprehension of Yeats and his writings. While much work has been done to illuminate this obscure text, criticism has not yet adequately addressed a trio of integral philosophical influences on Yeats and their presence in A Vision. This article shows that Yeats employs the 'old' nihilistic attributes present in Baruch Spinoza's substance monism, Immanuel Kant's transcendental idealism, and Georg Hegel's Absolute Spirit to propose a foundational metaphysical system and reimagine the concept of 'deity'. Yeats enthusiastically read each of these three philosophers, counting them amongst the most significant thinkers he studied. By interrogating the deific properties of the Thirteenth Cone, this article argues that old nihilism shapes Yeats's system in A Vision and more broadly, illustrates the poet's understanding of generative nothingness, a concept that Spinoza, Kant, and Hegel considered the underpinning of epistemological reality.

The Modernist age of poetry saw writers exercising freedom in creating the structure and content of their poems. The era was one riddled with confusion and uncertainty. This came out through the expression of art, poetry and literature. One can observe the same in the paintings of the modern period. From Max Ernst’s bizarre and surreal paintings to T.S. Eliot’s “heap of broken images” in The Waste Land the modern age saw the rise of madness being expressed on paper. It marked a departure from spirituality and the death of hope. One of the major landscapes and settings dealt with in the poetry of the age was the city. This essay will attempt to analyse the Modernist representation of people and the city as an ugly, detrimental factor and setting in Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and Jim Morrison’s The Lords Notes on Vision.

Scholars and critics often credit the Syrian poet Muḥammad al-Māghūṭ (1934-2006) with being one of the founders of the prose poem in Arabic, although he himself was not an invested prose poet and insisted on maintaining his distance from its practitioners and theorizers. Nevertheless, without engaging directly in the polemics of the Arabic prose poem, the Māghūṭian text, particularly in its attitude towards language and subject matter, was instrumental in opening up the Arabic poetic register. And it is with this taunting of the established poetic aesthetic that al-Māghūṭ contributes, even if unintentionally, to the prose poem as a subversive and expansive interrogation of the limits of poetry in Arabic. This article presents some major features of al-Māghūṭ's poetic stance and traces his legacy of poetic detachment in the works of younger poets, particularly the Egyptian poets of the nineties such as 'Imād Abū Ṣāliḥ (b. 1967), Īmān Mirsāl (b. 1966), and Usāma al-Danāṣūrī (1960-2007).

غالبا ما يشير النقاد إلى الدور التأسيسي الذي لعبه الشاعر السوري محمد الماغوط (1934-2006) في مشروع قصيدة النثر العربية مع أنه لم يلتزم بمصطلح "قصيدة النثر" وحافظ على مسافة بينه وبين جهود معاصريه من كتاب قصيدة النثر ومنظريها. دون أن يشتبك مباشرة مع الجدالات التي أثارتها قصيدة النثر، كان نص الماغوط، خاصة في لغته الشعرية وفي مقاربته للموضوعات، فعّالا في طرح فهم مغاير لما هو شعري في اللغة العربية. بنبرته الساخرة وبلامبالاته بالنظرية وبالنقد ساهم الماغوط وإن كان عن غير قصد في مسائلة تخريبية وتوسيعية لحدود الشعر في اللغة العربية. تشير هذه المقالة إلى بعض ميزات موقف الماغوط الشعري وتتتبع أثر هذا الموقف في أعمال جيل لاحق من الشعراء لا سيما من تطلق عليهم تسمية (جيل التسعينات في مصر) أمثال عماد أبو صالح (1967) وإيمان مرسال (1966) وأسامة الدناصوري (1960-2007).

In 1946, after many years in exile, Kurt Schwitters (who had moved to Ambleside in 1945) and Raoul Hausmann (since 1944 based in Limoges) resumed contact. The pair had not corresponded in some time, and they decided to put together a small magazine; they eventually settled on the title PIN for the publication. PIN aimed to offer art and abstract poetry to a new generation. The project was initiated in the autumn of 1946, then found itself in trouble. Schwitters thought he knew just the person to publish their little magazine: E.L.T. Mesens, a Belgian-born Surrealist who had in 1938 settled in London, where he became director of the London Gallery. Mesens was not a major publisher, but he published the London Bulletin and organised exhibitions of Surrealists as well as an exhibition of Schwitters' own work. However, Mesens did not want to publish the work, and this led to its demise. The PIN magazine did not make it to publication, but in 1962 a heavily annotated edition was published by the Gaberbocchus Press, led by Stefan The-merson, and in 1986 a second, bilingual edition was released by Anabas-Verlag.

It has become customary to show that, though Hope Mirrlees's _Paris: A Poem_ (1920) was neglected for nearly a century, the poem typifies modernist poetics just as well as the canonical works of Mirrlees's male contemporaries. This essay argues that, nevertheless, _Paris_ also resists such generalisation. The poem is set in Paris in the spring of 1919, the season of the Paris Peace Conference and a singular moment of acute uncertainty about the future. In its experimental typography, and especially in its transitions between verse and prose, _Paris_ responds to this moment, not by replicating the prominent narratives of political commentary, but with its own open, agile, and responsive temporality. In this poem, therefore, poetics meets history – and gives meaning to history – in precisely what is most peculiar to the work.