Modernism, a literary school that lasted from roughly the beginning of the twentieth century until the end of World War II, is defined by the rejection of traditional literary techniques of the previous century and by its opposition to the accepted and orthodox moral values and traditions . Writers associated with the concepts of this literary practice include Robert Frost and William Carlos Williams.
             The works of Modernist writers are meant to challenge the traditional and more "realistic" way of writing by other writers in other literary schools. They tend to focus on the search of new perspectives and points of view and experiment with form and style. The assigned poems all portray this aspect of Modernism and will be proven with comparisons to poems by well known Modernist writers.
             In "Letter to the Cleaning Lady", the narrator speaks of the confusion in his life. He feels as if he is going nowhere. In lines 9-11 he states "last night came home messed up; with one good fist I banged the wall" . Later in lines 13-15 he states " an artifact of a man confined to private rage, while daily Vesuvius blows his top" . Yet after a description of his coping strategy he seems to downplay his depression to just "a normal man in the dumps" . It is evident that the narrator attempts to minimize his sorrows although he knows its something more severe. This poem is similar to "Fire in Ice" in which the author, Frost, speaks of the Apocalypse. He brings humor to this serious issue in the lines 7-9 " To say that for desctruction ice is also great and would suffice". By this he means that whether it be fire or ice that brings the world to an end, it will not make a difference. Frost believed that it ( the end of the world) could not be halted, therefore it was pointless to worry about how it would be delivered. Overall both poems went against what readers at the point were...