Etherized upon a Table, Vol. 1: The Story and Evolution of Modern Poetries

Etherized upon a Table is an account of the evolution of poetry from Homer to the present day, with particular emphasis on the periods of history in which poets saw themselves as modern. Whether they were called "moderni" or "neoterics" or "poetae novi" or "moderns," every great era in poetry was usually centered around a group of poets who broke with tradition, used the natural speech and diction of their own time, and saw themselves as creating something new. In time, the movement solidified, became establishment, crystallized into the new tradition and repeated the forms that had become successful. Eventually, a new impulse toward the modern ideal re-asserted itself, and poets once again experimented with new forms, incorporated the new vernacular, and called themselves moderns. We tend to think of "Modern Poetry" as characteristic only of the 20th century, but there have been modern poetries throughout history where modernism as a force has waxed and waned, from the days of Homer to the present time. This book traces the evolution of that basic modernist impulse and charts the fortunes of those poets who embraced the new, and those poets who became locked into the past and adhered to the traditional paradigm. This is volume 1 of a two-volume set.