Modernist poetry in English

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Modernist poetry in English" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (December 2008) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Modernist poetry in English started in the early years of the 20th century with the appearance of the Imagists. Like other modernists, Imagist poets wrote in reaction to the perceived excesses of Victorian poetry, and its emphasis on traditional formalism and ornate diction.

In Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, published in 1800, William Wordsworth criticized what he perceived to be the gauche and pompous nature of British poetry over a century earlier, and instead sought to bring poetry to the layman. Modernists saw themselves as looking back to the best practices of poets in earlier periods and other cultures. Their models included ancient Greek literature, Chinese and Japanese poetry, the troubadours, Dante and the medieval Italian philosophical poets, such as Guido Cavalcanti, and the English Metaphysical poets.^{[citation needed]}

Much of early modernist poetry took the form of short, compact lyrics. Ultimately, however, longer poems gained in favor, representing the modernist movement of the 20th-century.