I've gone to look for America

C20th, my little work-in-progress, is sub-titled Poetry in English, 1898-1999. 'In English', not in England. 

Needing to make Elizabeth Bishop central to it and just about 'top of the bill', one couldn't help but make reference to Marianne Moore. And once Ms. Moore is in then questions would be asked why other Modernist, and even not-so Modernist, Americans weren't and so a chapter on America - Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams and thus Robert Frost and wherever we go from there - is required to make my flimsy account of the period more coherent.

I'm learning by finding it necessary to do so, not teaching. I'm not finding that I admire most of them any more than I did already but having to write a few paragraphs on each of them concentrates the mind. And, it seems, the American T.S. Eliot was not accepted as such a sine qua non in his country of origin as he was when he was over here, over paid but possibly under sexy.

One has to look at things and keep looking to understand them better or else what you thought you thought might only have been no more than that. C20th is unlikely to be of much use to anybody else but it's already been of use to me and that is what all writing should be before it's anything else.