Degree Name
MA (Master of Arts)
Program
English
Date of Award
5-2019
Committee Chair or Co-Chairs
Jesse Graves
Committee Members
Matthew Fehskens, Mark Holland
Abstract
Critics often credit Ezra Pound and his Imagist movement for the development of American poetics. Pound’s interest in international arts and minimalist aesthetics of cross-cultural poetry gained the attention of prominent writers throughout Modernist and Post-Modern periods. From writers like Wallace Stevens and Gertrude Stein to later poets like Jack Kerouac and Gary Snyder, image and precise language has shaped American literature. Few critics have praised Eastern cultures or the Imagist poets who adopted an East-Western form of poetics: Amy Lowell and William Carlos Williams. Studying traditional Eastern painting and short-form poetry and interactions with personal connections to the East, Lowell and Williams adapt then progress aesthetic fusions Pound began and abandoned through his interpretation of Eastern art. Like Pound, Lowell and Williams illustrate a mix of form, free-verse language, and modernized poetics to not only imitate Eastern art but to create poetics of international discourse which shape American Modernism.
Document Type
Thesis - unrestricted
Recommended Citation
Gilbert, Matthew, "Fir-Flower Petals on a Wet Black Bough: Constructing New Poetry through Asian Aesthetics in Early Modernist Poets" (2019). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 3588. https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/3588
