Twentieth-Century Poetry in English

Abstract

It is clear from reading any history of poetry, including the short one in this chapter, that most general trends (or ‘movements’) of poetry written in English are reacting in some way to what has gone before. Often this rejection of the previous generation of poetry will involve a wistful backward glance at an earlier tradition which seems attractive partly because of its distance in time. A similar phenomenon occurs in the area of fashionable clothes. What your parents wear can usually be dismissed as ugly and old-fashioned, but at a distance of one or two generations, grandparents and great-grandparents are often admired for their fashion sense.