“Let anything that burns you come out whether it be propaganda or not . . . How can you help writing about something you feel intensely?” (39). These words by the Anglo-American poet Lola Ridge (1873-1941) perhaps best characterize this understudied modernist and serve as an apt introduction to her life and poetics. One finds in Ridge’s poetry an intense social and emotional attention. While she joined her fellow modernists in “making it new”, what is most emphatically new about Ridge’s modernism was her application of its principles to suit her belief in social justice. She used a highly visual language to construct a poetic world in which the immigrant, the laborer, the outsider, the protestor, and the whole mechanism of modern life are represented together and in flux. In a…
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Citation: Berke, Nancy. "Lola Ridge". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 21 August 2015 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=3783, accessed 22 November 2024.]
