Orientalism Modernism and the American Poem

Orientalism Modernism and the American Poem is a critical and historical interpretation of Oriental influences on American modernist poetry. Kern equates Fenollosa and Pound''s discovery of Chinese writing with the American pursuit of a natural language for poetry what Emerson had termed the language of nature. Through analysis and contextualization Kern sheds light on the three contemporary nexuses of his search: the cultural study of Orientalism and the West the evolution of Indo-European linguistic theory and the intellectual tradition of American modernist poetry.