Poetry

There is no single thing that makes a poem or story “modern”: it might involve a work that emphasizes
experimentation or that self-consciously charts out new territory; it might involve a work that closely aligns with
new artistic practices such as cubism in painting or blues and jazz in music; it might involve a work that
engages and embraces racial, gender, or sexual identity in a new way; it might involve a work that introduces a
new psychological intensity in how it views the world in terms of form or content (think Freud, the unconscious,
stream-of-consciousness, etc.); it might seem to be a poem or story that is in some ways about a poem or a
story (art about art); it might be a work that seems to hold on to some dream of coherence and unity even as
that coherence and unity are threatened. Look over the info I have given below about what makes modernist
poetry. Then, choose two works (one poem and one story) that you think achieve a certain “modernist” identity
that resonates with you and make a case for why you hold those two pieces up as being particularly mode