Monday, June 22, 2009

from Romanticism to Materialism

is not an idea I would have thought of, but is one I think is worth pondering. When I encountered it, I immediately thought of William Wordsworth and Ralph Waldo Emerson and William Carlos Williams with their: "The world is too much with us"; "Things are in the saddle"; "No ideas but in things." Could most poets alive during the rise of Industrialism be considered Materialists in spite of whatever intellectual and/or spiritual values they held? In spite of their poetic and/or aesthetic positions? A step back to take in how thoroughly things--especially those "practical" things which by our ingenuities we humans have made and continue to make--have captivated us/ definitely promotes this idea. See William Wordsworth Ralph Waldo Emerson William Carlos Williams but also see Samuel Taylor Coleridge and then go to this Joshua Corey post: 6/18 It is his idea, and it seems to have arisen out of his thoughts about Ammons, whose works he has been reading; and out of his concurrent thoughts about Ashbery. This post is heavy with conclusions I, for one, had never entertained. However, if his general thesis is accepted, most schools of poets since the Romantics could easily be Materialists. bl00356

No comments: