A guide to reading modernist poetry in English: its pleasures, frustrations, powers and problems.

1. Why write like this?; 2. Ezra Pound; 3. T. S. Eliot; 4. W. B. Yeats; 5. Modernist America: Williams, Moore, Stevens; 6. Avant-gardism: Loy, Stein, H. D.; 7. Why is it so difficult?; 8. Inside and outside modernism; Index.

Peter Howarth is Senior Lecturer in the School of English and Drama at Queen Mary, University of London.