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RESEARCH PRODUCT

“ ‘What are patterns for?: the horizons of form in The New Poetry (1917)”

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description

In the early twentieth century, the relationship between poets and the rules that preside over composition is cast as a conflictual one, characteristic of modernity's mythologizing of formal innovation as a path to artistic autonomy, achieved through the destruction of codes. The anthology entitled The New Poetry, which was published in 1917 by Harriet Monroe and Alice Corbin Henderson, faithfully reflects the construct of a poetics established upon the reappraisal of the constraints set by meter and rhyme, as in the example of free verse. However, while celebrating avenues to experiment, the anthology brings to light the limitations of the myth of formal autonomy in a cultural climate shaped by the geo-politics of World War One. In this context, the ideal of a newly-ordered poetic universe adequately reflecting poetry's place in society comes to supplant the debate opposing notions of form and formlessness.