By the time I was conscious of poetry ee cummings was mostly a name. He wasn't taught in lit programs. I think that's still true. Yeats remains enormously popular, tho at this distance his politics look pretty awful. I'm not the only poet who's made the pilgrimage to Thoor Ballylee. Eliot's reputation isn't what it was. But these things ebb and flow. A better question might be which, if any, are central to one's own practice, which of course also changes as one changes.

The best way to deal with your argumentative friend is to change the topic to football.

-----Original Message-----
From: David Bircumshaw
Sent: Jun 17, 2019 7:28 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Critically acclaimed modernists who lost that

Not entirely I would say. I would say ee cummings has declined in the eyes of modernist critics while Conrad Aiken was held in esteem but is mainly forgotten now.

 There is a big issue about Yeats, who was taken as a great poet and companion and god-father to the modernists but is not so much loved now: I recently saw a blog which, following the intro to a volume of translations, ascribed his lines from The Second Coming "things fall part/ The centre cannot hold" to Ezra Pound (!) - changing the spelling of centre to center at the same time.

David

On Mon, 17 Jun 2019 at 12:08, Luke <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

I was just arguing with someone, and this came up. They keep claiming that these days poetry is just whatever woks for you, your taste, nothing else. They keep using the word 'style'.

I can't think of any modernist poet that was well thought of only to then lose that reputation to modernist (rather than post-modern) critics, but it would help to shut this person up.

Obviously, there was infighting and critics took sides (Adorno and Stravinksy), but I'm curious: were the reputations of most modernist poets were faiirly stable?

Luke

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