Modern and Post Modern Poetry

Dr. P. B. THORBOLE

Presents

Characteristics of Modern Poetry

1. Bold experimentation in style and form
• Imagists—poem based on a single image
• Symbolist—presents idea based on symbols for reader to interpret
• Impressionist—presents unrefined first impression
2. Non-traditional sources for inspiration on subject
• Most traditional sources—Nature and Romantic Love or Loss, always meant to be universal in theme
• Classical Chinese Poetry inspired Ezra Pound
• 19^th century French Symbolist Poetry
3. Poems had no fixed single meaning; often they had multiples themes to interpret, it was up to the individual reader to determine
• As long as you back up your opinion on what you think the poem means, you’re right!

​

​

Symbolism and Imagism

• Reject the Romantics’ focus on nature as a source of solace
• Movement begins in France in 1875…American writers are first introduced to French Symbolist poets during expatriate movement after WWI
• Symbolism: a form of expression in which the world of appearances is violently rearranged in order to depict a different and more truthful version of reality
• This violent rearrangement was visually apparent in the work of Picasso; e.e. cummings attempts to do in poetry what Picasso was doing in painting

Imagism

• American offshoot of Symbolism—started by Ezra Pound and TS Eliot
• Also heavily influenced by Japanese haiku
• Imagism: believed poetry could be made purer by concentrating on the precise, clear, unqualified image
• imagery alone can carry a poem’s message
• Sought to rid poetry of its prettiness, sentimentality, and artificiality
• Famous imagists: Pound, William Carlos Williams, e.e. cummings, H.D.

Symbolism

• Characteristics of Symbolism
• Didn’t merely describe objects—tried to portray the emotional effects that objects can suggest
• Felt that most symbols were overused and trite—stressed the need to trust in the nonrational
• Imagination is more reliable than reason

​

Edgar Lee Masters

• Product of the Midwest—found small town life oppressive
• Became a lawyer in Chicago and began writing poems, plays, and essays
• In 1914, a friend gave him a copy of Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology—became the inspiration for his collection of poems (epitaphs)
• Epigrams were inscriptions written on monuments in ancient Greece
• Modern epigrams have a short, satirical twist or surprise at the end.
• Masters created a collection of epitaphs (traditional inscriptions on a gravestone) that combined traditional epitaphs and Modern epigrams

Edgar Lee Masters

• Decided to write a book of epigraphs that would reveal the dark underside of small town life
• Gossip/Rumors --Affairs
• Addictions --Secrets
• Published Spoon River Anthology in 1915
• Created fictional town of Spoon River, IL
• Rejected traditional forms—all poems are in free verse
• Subject: the truth behind the happy façade of small town life
• Over 250 epitaphs. When read together, they create a full and vibrant picture of small town life in America
• Epitaphs are written in the voice of the dead, and an entire life is usually revealed through one incident that is remembered, even in death
• These epitaphs are also known as: Dramatic monologue—a poem in which the character/speaker addresses a silent listener

Spoon River Anthology

“Blind Jack”

I HAD fiddled all day at the county fair.

But driving home, "Butch" Weldy and Jack

McGuire, who were roaring full, made me fiddle and fiddle to the song of Susie Skinner, while whipping the horses till they ran away. Blind as I was, I tried to get out as the carriage fell in the ditch, and was caught in the wheels and killed. There's a blind man here with a brow as big and white as a cloud. And all we fiddlers, from highest to lowest, writers of music and tellers of stories, sit at his feet and hear him sing of the fall of Troy.

Ralph Rhodes

ALL they said was true:

I wrecked my father's bank with my loans to dabble in wheat; but this was true-- I was buying wheat for him as well, who couldn't margin the deal in his name because of his church relationship. And while George Reece was serving his term I chased the will-o-the-wisp of women and the mockery of wine in New York. It's deathly to sicken of wine and women when nothing else is left in life. But suppose your head is gray, and bowed on a table covered with acrid stubs of cigarettes and empty glasses, and a knock is heard, and you know it's the knock so long drowned out by popping corks and the pea-cock screams of demireps-- and you look up, and there's your theft, who waited until your head was gray, and your heart skipped beats to say to you: the game is ended. I've called for you, Go out on Broadway and be run over, they'll ship you back to Spoon River.

“Thomas Rhodes”

VERY well, you liberals

And navigators into realms intellectual, You sailors through heights imaginative, Blown about by erratic currents, tumbling into air pockets, You Margaret Fuller Slacks, Petits, And Tennessee Claflin Shopes– You tound with all your boasted wisdom How hard at the last it is To keep the soul from splitting into cellular atoms. While we, seekers of earth's treasures Getters and hoarders of gold, Are self-contained, compact, harmonized, Even to the end.

Metapoetry

• Defined as a poem about poetry
• Wallace Stevens
• Believed that the goal of poetry is to capture the interaction between the private world of the mind and reality.
• How does our imagination shape the way we see the world around us?
• Uses imagery and precise language
• Archibald MacLeish
• Lyric poetry: a melodic poem that expresses the observations and feelings of a single speaker

​

Metapoetry

• Marianne Moore
• Explored more traditional subjects—animals, nature, poetry itself
• Wrote objectivist poetry: poems that focus on a single subject (person, place, or object) and render it objectively (without personal judgment) and in detail
• All three poets use imagery to suggest theme
• All three poets use simile, metaphor, personification to evoke theme

Robert Frost�1874-1963

• Originally from Ca.; family settled in Mass. after the early death of Frost’s father
• Educated at Dartmouth College
• Dropped out after a few months
• Worked in a textile mill and wrote poetry
• Married young, enrolled at Harvard
• Lasted less than two years: not supportive of his type of traditional poetry
• Worked as a teacher, editor; eventually settled on farming
• Decided farming wasn’t good for poetry writing either
• 1912: relocated his family to England to focus on writing career

Robert Frost

• Characteristics of Frost’s Poetry
• Devoted to traditional forms with a twist
• Rhyme scheme often used
• Meter is often used
• The twist?
• Blank Verse: poetry written without a rhyme scheme but in a specific metrical pattern (usually iambic pentameter)—affects the sound and mood of poem
• Conversational language
• Pastorals: poems that focus on a rural setting--Frost focused on American landscapes, specifically New England
• Traditionally, pastorals present an idealized view of rural life
• Known for “cranky realism”—rural life is filled with accidents, conflicts, and ethical lapses

Robert Frost

• “Birches”
• Style: Blank Verse
• Unrhymed iambic pentameter
• Sounds like conversational English
• Relies on other sound effects than rhyme to create poetic elements
• Alliteration
• onomatopoeia
• Comment about nature in this poem?
• Nature can help us re-experience the freedom and innocence of childhood, when adulthood is too much for us

​

Robert Frost

• “Mending Wall”
• Perfect example of a Frost pastoral
• Consider what aspects of rural life this poem addresses
• Relationship with neighbors
• Destruction of man made by nature
• Does this poem idealize these aspects of rural life, or is Frost offering a more complex vision of country living
• Notice the form—Blank Verse

e.e. cummings

• Challenged the conventions of syntax (the rules for the formation of sentences)
• Made typography (the general character or appearance of printed matter) and the division of words part of the shape and meaning of the poem
• Concrete poetry: poetry in which the typographical arrangement of words is as important in conveying the intended effect as the conventional elements of the poem
• Heavily influenced by French symbolism and Whitman’s free verse

e. e. cummings

• Characteristics of cummings poetry
• Unconventional punctuation
• Unconventional capitalization and spelling
• Use of typography symbols
• Jubilant lyricism
• Celebration of love
• Beauty of nature
• Affirmation of the individual

​

“in Just-”�cummings never titled his poems…sorta like Emily Dickinson ☺

in Just-

spring when the world is mud-

luscious the little

lame balloonman

​

whistles far and wee

​

and eddieandbill come

running from marbles and

piracies and it’s

spring

​

​

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer

old balloonman whistles

far and wee

and bettyandisabel come dancing

​

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

​

it’s

spring

and

the

goat-footed

balloonMan whistles

far

and

wee

“the hills”

the hills

like poets put on

purple thought against

the

magnificent clamor of

day

tortured

in gold, which presently

​

crumpled

collapses

exhaling a red soul into the dark

so

duneyed master

enter

the sweet gates

of my heart and

take

the

rose

​

which perfect

is

With killing hands

the sky

was can dy

lu mi

nous ed

I

ble

spry pinks

shy lem

ons

greens

cool

choco lates

un der

a lo

co

mo tive s pout

ing

vi

o lets

​

l(a

​

le

af

fa

​

ll

​

s)

one

l

​

iness

r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r

who

a(s w(e loo)k

upnowgath

PPEGORHRASS

eringint(o-

aThe):l

eA

!p:

S a

(r

rIvInG .gRrEaPsPhOs)

to

rea(be)rran(com)gi(e)ngly

,grasshopper;

birds(

here,inven

ting air

U

)sing

tw

iligH(

t’s

v

va

vas

vast

​

ness.Be)look

now

(come

soul;

&:and

​

who

s)e

voi

e

es

(

are

ar

ia

Characteristics of Post-Modern Poetry (1945-1985)

• There is no single dominant style of poetry during this period
• Narrative poems (tell a story)
• Observational, philosophical, and reflective poems
• Sense of alienation
• Poems as diary or journal
• Poems that reinterpret the self in context of others (“Mirror” by Sylvia Plath)

Post Modern Poetry

• Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton
• Both poets are known for use of figurative language
• Simile and metaphor
• Both used language to capture painful emotions
• Both explored the pressures society places on women, specifically standards of beauty and mental health

​

Post Modern Poetry

• Theodore Roethke
• Family owned greenhouses when he was a kid; wrote lots of observational poems about nature
• Found it difficult to relate to others; related to the world through his poetry
• Use of figurative language in poems—sound effects primarily
• Alliteration: repetition of consonants at beginning of words
• Assonance: repetition of vowel sounds in words (not necessarily at the beginning of word)
• Consonance: repetition of constant sounds in the middle or at the ends of words