In the early years of the 1900's, many different groups were demanding reform and renewal: black writers, labor organizers, supporters of women's rights, and muckraking journalists. \_21\_ Modernism, as much of this new work and theory came to be called, was based on the belief that all the existing structures that governed life and art—social, religious, and political—had broken down. Order was replaced by fragments, and the typical modernist work often seems difficult to understand. Despite modernism's influence, important work was done in the early 1900's of a more familiar sort. \_22\_ Robinson's poems are often set in a fictional New England town called "Tillbury." \_23\_ "Eros Turannos" (1916), one of his finest poems, portrays a woman's desperate and self-destructive love for a man she knows will betray her. Robert Frost was probably the best-known American poet of the 1900's. \_24\_ At that time, modernists wrote verse which was difficult and obscure. \_25\_ He was born in California, but he lived most of his long life in New England. His poetry is filled with the landscapes, seasons, and people of that region.