I agree in that American's "morphed" French symbolism into modernism. I don't know much about the Russian influence. It was probably just as important.
I heard somewhere that Poe was the first American avantgarde poet because of the symbolist link. Don't know if that is true or not, but it makes sense.
------------------original message--------------
David Bircumshaw wrote:
In my occasional jocular moments I would define avant-garde poetry as
consisting of a) French poets and b) Americans pretending to be French but
of course there's far more to it than that. Russians for instance. :)
|