Abstract: In the early twentieth-century, Anglo-American literature came to a transitional period and experienced a drastic change. Numerous “little magazines” emerged and as the barometer of literary development, they played a key role in revolutionizing Anglo-American literature. Poetry, founded in 1912 and as the forefront of modernist poetry, is undoubtedly the most representative “little magazine”. But as a magazine for the elite, how can it survive the commercial society? Or how can it keep its aesthetic pursuit and survive in the modern world which takes exchange as the core value? The initial stage of Poetry reveals vividly the dilemma of Anglo-American poetry in the early 20th century: seeking a narrow position in the contradiction of aesthetic pursuit and commercial market. The process actually reveals the ambivalence of modernity: the conflict and compromise of aesthetic modernity and social modernity.

Key words: Poetry, aesthetic pursuit, commercial market, conflict, compromise