When looking at modernism, one who is used to reading poetry
that follows a timeline (or stream of consciousness), that contains literal
meanings (or obvious denotations), and an overall sense of completeness will be
quite frustrated. Modernism, thereby
modernist poetry, does little, if any, of that.
In fact, when one reads modernist poetry, one must read “into” a poem
and discover meanings that might not be too obvious and allow for disjointedness
that will leave one who is used to superficial (or passive) readings
confused. Thus, when one reads
modernist poetry, one must certainly read it actively as opposed to
passively. As such, the correct response
to this question is “B” in that modernist poetry is characterized by all of the
following except a tendency to encourage passive reading.
