수축뒤의 팽창 - 미국시의 모더니즘

Abstract

The history of American poetry shows a characteristic pattern: repetetion of contractions and expansions. American poetry has witnessed two full contraction-expansions: the first in 1830-50 and the second in 1910-30. The first expansion made American poetry really "American: and the second made American poetry "international: The first contraction which preceded the first expansion is represented by Poe with his "useless poems" like The City in the Sea and The Sleeper. The second contraction is represented by Imagism which tends to reduce life into one image per poem poetry.

Modernism in American poetry comprises the second expansion, which presupposes the second contraction, Imagism with its suppressed logopoeia, as a prerequisite. We don"t usually call Frost or Crane Modernists proper, for they have never been baptised in Imagism. The Modernist expansion in sprit and form shows its affinity with the first expansion. We can say Modernism in American poetry was an attempt to find a new American identity on the ebb of the spirit of Emerson and Whitman who are the forerunners of the first expansion. Now on the ebb of the spirit of the forerunners of the second expansion we find another contraction in the form of Minimalism and Language Poetry which makes us expect another imminent new expansion.