By Matt Hooley on. in Default. Modernist poetry is a literature of crisis: an effect of-and response to-crises of politics (the failure of western diplomacy and the invention of global war), culture (the inadequacy of realism and accepted notions of âTraditionâ), and economy (the collapse of industrial capitalism).y Matt Hooley on. in Default. Modernist poetry is a literature of crisis: an effect of-and response to-crises of politics (the failure of western diplomacy and the invention of global war), culture (the inadequacy of realism and accepted notions of âTraditionâ), and economy (the collapse of industrial capitalism).