I didn't intend it as moral approbation or otherwise (there are lots of indisputably modernist poems that I don't approve of even when I agree with the sentiments they express). As a descriptor (does that mean adjective?) it covers a lot of territory, but unless antimodernism is a kind of modernism I don't know that the term stretches this far.
If we limit ourselves to Eliot's work I think no one would argue with using "modernist" to describe The Waste Land. If we want to consider the quartets modernist it seems to me we need some modifiers. Tho I suspect that the impulse to so define the quartets follows mostly from a sense of "once a modernist always a modernist."
Literary taxonomy is only important to the extent that it enables discussion. Although often the discussion is only about taxonomy. I finally really don't care what box we put the quartets into. Very much a side issue for me.
Best,
Mark
-----Original Message-----
>From: Alison Croggon <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Jan 21, 2012 3:43 PM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Chris Hamilton Emery on the elusive nature of a "poetry establishment"
>
>I do too. "Modernist" is a descriptor surely, not a stamp of moral approval?
>
>On Sun, Jan 22, 2012 at 4:46 AM, Tim Allen <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> I consider the 4 Quartets to be a modernist poem.
>>
>> Tim A.
>>
>> On 20 Jan 2012, at 20:14, Mark Weiss wrote:
>>
>> can't see how anyone would consider The 4 Quartets a modernist poem.
>>
>>
>
>
>
>--
>Editor, Masthead: http://www.masthead.net.au
>Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
>Home page: http://www.alisoncroggon.com
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