The document discusses the emergence and key aspects of modernism in literature in the early 20th century. It introduced modernist authors like James Joyce and Virginia Woolf and describes how modernist works broke from traditional forms through experimentation with techniques like stream of consciousness, fragmentation, and multiple perspectives. Specifically, it outlines the development of free verse as a rejection of traditional poetic forms and meters, and surveys styles like Imagism, the works of T.S. Eliot, and different variations of free verse practiced by poets such as Whitman, Lawrence, Ginsberg, Williams, and e.e. cummings.