Not sure whose or which post you are replying to David, but I have to
say that your comment below could be very misleading -it depends on
what you mean by 'modernism'. True, Rimbaud had little or no influence
on Pound and Eliot (as somebody already pointed out), and his visible
influence on any of the other American modernisms before WW2 is
slight, but he is there in the background, particularly through the
medium of Apollinaire who, as somebody else pointed out, was the
bigger and far more obvious influence (I'm not talking about Pound and
Eliot here). Apollinaire saw his own work as a reaction against
symbolism but his poetry is highly Rimbaudesque in its own way, as was
so much Dada writing and early surrealism. Stein in turn was directly
inspired by Apollinaire and his contemporaries. So yes, the post WW2
radical American poetry was indebted to Apollinaire, and hence
Rimbaud, and with the Beats and the New York School these influences
increased immensely. Mallarme is someone else whose importance became
more pronounced for many of the avant American poets through the 70's
and 80's.
The importance of those French poets for the American poetic avant
garde cannot be overstated. Their subsequent influence on English
poetry post-war (except for us strange people who found an
inspirational high in the outward looking and open poetry of Lee
Harwood, Roy Fisher and Tom Raworth, as opposed to our disgust with
the reactionary miserabilism of Philip Larkin) was negligible, even
negative.
Tim A.
On 27 Aug 2009, at 16:53, David Latane wrote:
> As for your sensory train wrecks--I can't say Rimbaud has much to
> do with American modernism.
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