Ezra Pound, Robert Frost, And William Carlos Williams

The four great Modernists Poets of American Literature are Ezra Pound, T. S. Elliot, Robert Frost, and William Carlos Williams. The works of Pound, whose poetry focused mainly on the desolate state of the modern world, influenced by the poems of the other three poets. Elliot, too, made the ruin of the world his primary theme Frost whose topics ranged from nature to narratives, wrote his poetry in a somewhat light manner, or with a cool, neutral outlook. Williams, although not prone to sentimentalism, also wrote his poetry in a rather neutral tone and focused on lave and social issues. Although these poets all shared some aspects of their poetry, such as the undercurrent of modernism, the differences between them were prominent and the degrees of Modernism varied. Ezra Pound, the mount influential poet of the four, was distinctively Modernist in his writings. Many of his poems, such as Hush Selwyn Mauberley and The Cantos, made references to ancient literary figures and improved on them. “His true Penelope was Flaubert… Observed the elegance of the Circe’s hair (Norton E 321) The form
(Norton 302-303) Williams wrote primarily about idolized and eroticized women current and the state of America. Some example of such poetry are Portrait of a Lady, Queen-Ann’s Lace, and The Dead Baby. Like Frost, Williams was not blatantly pessimistic, but was rather indifferent I his poems. The imagery used by Williams is sat once clear and deep. The apparent meaning is not always that is meant, as is demonstrated in To Elsie. To me, it seems like Williams is the most Anti-Modernist of the four. He complains about the pessimism and obscenity of Eliot and the regionalism of Frost and he seems to forget that in his criticism of other works the essence of modernism is rebellion against