Tonight Prof. Marjorie Perloff talked about how French artist Duchamp turned ready-made into art in 1917, in NYC. Artists CHOOSE what to present…
In that same year, Chinese young scholar Hu Shi published the first free verse poem in China after he finished his graduate studies from Columbia University and went to teach at Beijing Univ that year. He turned the ready-made, Chinese vernacular language, into art and named it “New Poetry”. It so happened that T. S. Eliot published the essay “Reflections on Vers Libre” in 1917.
More info about HU Shi: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hu_Shih
