Modern Poetry and the Tradition

By Cleanth Brooks

This study presents the revolutionary thesis that English poetry and poetic theory were deflected from their richest line of development by the scientific rationalism that came with Hobbes and has continued its restrictive influence to the present day, when such poets as Yeats and Eliot have begun the reestablishment of the earlier line of development.

Originally published in 1939.

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• Language: English
• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Release date: Feb 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781469639383

Book preview

1. METAPHOR AND THE TRADITION

MANY READERS find modern poetry difficult, and difficult in a special sense. I am thinking not so much of the person who has read little poetry of any kind as of the man who has some acquaintance with the English classics. He is apt to find the modern English and American poets bewildering, and his knowledge of nineteenth-century poetry not only does not aid him but actually seems to constitute a positive handicap. What, for example, is he to make of a poem like the following?

Sir, no man’s enemy, forgiving all

But will his negative inversion, be prodigal:

Send to us power and light, a sovereign touch

Curing the intolerable neural itch,

The exhaustion of weaning, the liar’s quinsy,

And the distortions of ingrown virginity.

Prohibit sharply the rehearsed response

And gradually correct the coward’s stance;

Cover in time with beams those in retreat

That, spotted, they return though the reverse were great;

Publish each healer that in city lives

Or country houses at the end of drives;

Harrow the house of the dead; look shining at

New styles of architecture, a change of heart.*

—W. H. Auden

If he recognizes in the phrase a sovereign touch a reference to the custom of the sovereign’s touching for the king’s evil, he still may wonder at the poet’s motive in using the phrase. To compare contemporary neuroses to a disease cured by a sovereign touch may seem overingenious, and perhaps unpleasant. Is poetry not to be sublime and elevating? Moreover, sovereign as used seems to come perilously near to a pun. But the pun, he knows, is the lowest form of humor; and yet, the poem is apparently a serious poem. The last line clearly demands a serious

Reviews for Modern Poetry and the Tradition

[stillatim · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Brooks makes some interesting readings of poems here. His chapter on Eliot's Waste Land is particularly useful. But as with so much literary criticism, the book could easily have been a chapter- Brooks has a few theses, and proceeds to quote poems which back up his theses. I think we can do better, that we can actually argue about books rather than making huge claims like 'All poetry is symbolist poetry,' then picking our favourite authors to 'prove' this claim, and declaring that anything which isn't, say, symbolist poetry, is weak poetry.
If you say "look, Pope is a great poet, and not symbolist at all," Brooks' response is "Pope's best poetry is symbolist, like this obscure little ditty I found written on a dishcloth." Infuriating.