Poetry

===20th-century and 21st-century disputes===
[[File:Archibaldmacleish.jpeg|thumb|upright|[[Archibald MacLeish]]]]
Some 20th-century [[Literary theory|literary theorists]] rely less on the ostensible opposition of prose and poetry, instead focusing on the poet as simply one who [[creation (disambiguation)|creates]] using language, and poetry as what the poet creates.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Wimsatt |first1=William K. Jr. |title=Literary Criticism: A Short History |last2=Brooks |first2=Cleanth |publisher=Vintage Books |year=1957 |page=374}}</ref> The underlying concept of the poet as [[creative work|creator]] is not uncommon, and some [[modernist poetry|modernist poets]] essentially do not distinguish between the creation of a poem with words, and creative acts in other media. Other modernists challenge the very attempt to define poetry as misguided.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Johnson |first=Jeannine |title=Why write poetry?: modern poets defending their art |publisher=Fairleigh Dickinson University Press |year=2007 |isbn=978-0-8386-4105-7 |page=148}}</ref>

The rejection of traditional forms and structures for poetry that began in the first half of the 20th century coincided with a questioning of the purpose and meaning of traditional definitions of poetry and of distinctions between poetry and prose, particularly given examples of poetic prose and prosaic poetry. Numerous modernist poets have written in non-traditional forms or in what traditionally would have been considered prose, although their writing was generally infused with poetic diction and often with rhythm and [[Tone (literature)|tone]] established by [[Metre (poetry)|non-metrical]] means. While there was a substantial [[New Formalism|formalist]] reaction within the modernist schools to the breakdown of structure, this reaction focused as much on the development of new formal structures and syntheses as on the revival of older forms and structures.<ref>{{Cite book |title=The Cambridge companion to modernist poetry |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=2007 |isbn=978-0-521-61815-1 |editor-last1=Jenkins |editor-first1=Lee M. |pages=1–7, 38, 156 |editor-last2=Davis |editor-first2=Alex}}</ref>

[[Postmodernism]] goes beyond modernism's emphasis on the creative role of the poet, to emphasize the role of the reader of a text ([[hermeneutics]]), and to highlight the complex cultural web within which a poem is read.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Barthes |first=Roland |author-link=Roland Barthes |title=Image-Music-Text |publisher=Farrar, Straus & Giroux |year=1978 |pages=142–148 |chapter=[[Death of the author|Death of the Author]]}}</ref> Today, throughout the world, poetry often incorporates poetic form and diction from other cultures and from the past, further confounding attempts at definition and classification that once made sense within a tradition such as the [[Western canon]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Connor |first=Steven |title=Postmodernist culture: an introduction to theories of the contemporary |publisher=Blackwell |year=1997 |isbn=978-0-631-20052-9 |edition=2nd |pages=123–28}}</ref>

The early 21st-century poetic tradition appears to continue to strongly orient itself to earlier precursor poetic traditions such as those initiated by [[Walt Whitman|Whitman]], [[Ralph Waldo Emerson|Emerson]], and [[William Wordsworth|Wordsworth]]. The literary critic [[Geoffrey Hartman]] (1929–2016) used the phrase "the anxiety of demand" to describe the contemporary response to older poetic traditions as "being fearful that the fact no longer has a form",<ref>{{Cite book |last=Preminger |first=Alex |title=Princeton Encyclopaedia of Poetry and Poetics |publisher=Macmillan Press |year=1975 |isbn=978-1349156177 |location=London and Basingstoke |pages=919|edition=enlarged }}</ref> building on a trope introduced by Emerson. Emerson had maintained that in the debate concerning poetic structure where either "form" or "fact" could predominate, that one need simply "Ask the fact for the form." This has been challenged at various levels by other literary scholars such as [[Harold Bloom]] (1930–2019), who has stated: "The generation of poets who stand together now, mature and ready to write the major American verse of the twenty-first century, may yet be seen as what Stevens called 'a great shadow's last embellishment,' the shadow being Emerson's."<ref>
{{Cite book |last=Bloom |first=Harold |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_wS0rbeF72QC |title=Contemporary Poets |publisher=Infobase Publishing |isbn=978-1604135886 |editor-last=Bloom |editor-first=Harold |editor-link=Harold Bloom |edition=revised |series=Bloom's modern critical views |location=New York |date=2010 |page=7 |chapter=Introduction |quote=The generation of poets who stand together now, mature and ready to write the major American verse of the twenty-first century, may yet be seen as what Stevens called 'a great shadow's last embellishment,' the shadow being Emerson's. |author-link=Harold Bloom |access-date=7 May 2019 |orig-date=1986}}
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