Echoes of Modernity: Poetry Evolution and Diversity

1. MODERN POETRY

2. Tradition and Experimentation • Distinction between avante-gardes and Victorian and Georgian poets • Georgian poets: (from the reign of George V); they storngly used the conventions of diction, looking for guidance to Romantics and Victorians; sympathy for English elements • Revolutionary poets: Pound and Eliot; War Poets: horrors of modern warfare; violent language and images; experimentation

3. Imagism Modern poetry official began with Imagism, flourished between 1912 and 1917 thanks to American poet Ezra Pound • Main features of Imagism: • Constant use of clear and precise images; • Use of a rhythm freed from artificial metrical regularity; • Choice of any subject matter; • poems, usually short, were the poet’s response to a scene or object, and contained no moral comment; • The aim of poetry was to achieve “precision, discipline, dry hardness, the exact curve of things”

4. Symbolism and Free Verse • French Symbolism had started in France with Baudelaire: it influenced new poetry. • Symbolists: • Stressed the importance of subconscious and use of images to evoke rather than state; • Ideas were presented obliquely; • Free verse: musicality and flexibility of sounds • Poets invented their own language, vocabulary and mythology to voice the fragmentation of culture

5. Features of Symbolism • Indirect than direct statements • Use of allusive language and development of multiple associations of words • Importance given to sounds • Quotations from other literatures • Use of free verse • Possibility for the reader to bring meaning to the poem

6. Committed Poetry Group of poets who joined in the 1930s at Oxford and devoted themselves to left-winged propaganda Interested in social and political aspects of human life No more experimental poetry but: • Scepticism of contemporary poetry • The poet seldom intrudes as a speaker • Openness to new experiences and a range of life experiences • Variety of forms and techniques • Very colloquial tone • Powerful imagery: contrasts and juxtaposition • Unique perspective on human condition

7. New Romantic Poetry A group of poets in the 1940s reacted against committed poetry and turned to topics such as love, birth, death and sex. To be remembered is Dylan Thomas Main features: • Emotional subject matter • Great interest in love, birth, death and sex • Pantheistic approach to nature, everything is connected • Use of violent natural imagery • Sexual and Christian symbolism • Rhythms in verses