An Overview of Modern Poetry

An Overview of Modern Poetry

Modern poets have experienced greater than usual levels of oppression from society and science. Two World Wars, the disintegration of cultural tradition, the decline in religious belief, the emergence of mass communication technologies, and the diminishing value of the individual have all combined to push poets into self-conscious seclusion. Modern poetry uses a complex, cryptic, and "pure" language because its authors distrust the terms used by contemporary society to describe itself and instead choose to avoid them. They have been compelled to invent their own vocabulary as well as their own philosophy and myths as a result of the fragmentation of our culture, while also rejecting the poetic diction and rhetoric of the past.

Most modern poets have abandoned direct statement in favour of indirection, as well as logical development of ideas in favour of either a "metaphysical" exploration of the logic of metaphor or a "symbolist” development of the multiple associations of words, in reaction against both the denotative language of science and the debased currency of popular feeling and decadent romanticism. In a single modern poem, both strategies are frequently used. As a result, there is ambiguity, complexity, and irony, all of which are dynamically arranged in a structure of conflicting tensions that the poem must resolve. Marxism, depth psychology, comparative anthropology, and neo-Thomism are only a few of the new doctrines and systems that modern poetry has had to contend with, and it has attempted to integrate both their internal linkages to systems of poetic form and their contents to myths. As a poetic truth apart from the scientific community's secret facts, myth has grown significantly in importance.

In modern poetry, the conventional genres are still there, but they have largely undergone significant alterations. Longer narrative and reflective poems are largely extinct, and the dramatic lyric has taken over as poetry's standard form. Since the poets no longer find importance in exterior action, true storytelling now seems unattainable, but the reflective poem reappears in a new garb in Eliot's Waste Land and Four Quartets. The verse-epistle has been utilised by W. H. Auden and others on occasion. Modern poetry frequently veers towards satire and vers-de-société, both of which are typically mordant, in its constant blending of humour with seriousness. Eliot has used both, and his poetry on the inhumane modern society is related to Swift's informal mock-heroics as well as Baudelaire's. Both W B Yeats and W H Auden wrote satire, and In Memory of W B Yeats by W H Auden is a deftly modern pastoral elegy.

Imagism, a movement better known for its manifestos than its accomplishments, marked the beginning of modern poetry. In contrast to the late-romantic haziness of typically regular metres, it strived for clarity and accuracy in imagery as well as an organic wholeness achieved through the use of free verse. It's challenging to practise pure imagism, and few poets did. T E Hulme's sparse but incisive writing had a disproportionately significant impact, and D H Lawrence's poetry included some imagistic elements. Eliot's Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock struck a new note in 1917, and his criticism, his startling and enigmatic The Waste Land (1920), along with the release of Sir Herbert Grierson's anthology of Metaphysical Lyrics and Poems of the Seventeenth Century (1921), heralded the arrival of a fully modern poetry, an anti-romantic mashup of the post-Versailles temperament, the metaphysical poets and the French symbolists seasoned with a dash of Freud, Dante and The Golden Bough. The most prominent poets of the 1930s were predominately post-Eliot, while Auden, C Day Lewis, Louis MacNeice, and Stephen Spender were all more intimately interested in the current scene and social issues than was Eliot. These poets came out of both the post-War and post-depression eras. Even though W B Yeats was active virtually until the time of his death in 1939, his effect is much less obvious than Eliot's.

Hopkins' poetry, the kaleidoscopic associational imagery of Hart Crane, and the Celtic heritage of verbal splendour all helped Dylan Thomas (1914–1954) to build his distinctive language. After his death, his collected poems were published, and this was considered a significant literary development. Similar to Thomas in intensity and violence is George Barker (1913). Modern poetry eludes classification as it gets closer to the present, yet Sir Herbert Read encouraged the neo-romanticism of Henry Treece and others, which is perhaps more akin to surrealism than to classic romanticism.

The poetic drama has persisted, and possibly even grown stronger. Early in the century, Lascelles Abercrombie and Gordon Bottomley experimented with diction and staging. Like them, Yeats departed from the photographic realism of the 19th century until the action in his later plays took on a ritual, symbolic, and dance-like quality. Since writing The Cocktail Party and The Confidential Clerk, Eliot has tended to write in the other direction from his previous works Family Reunion and Murder in the Cathedral. In contrast to Christopher Fry, who blatantly sought after Elizabethan colour and music in his endeavours to recreate the nobleness of life, he has worked to produce colloquial dialogue without veering into prose.

The leading figures of modern English poetry are William Butler Yeats (1865–1939), Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888–1965), and Wystan Hugh Auden (1907–1973). Thomas might accompany them, according to some critics. Among them, Yeats is arguably the greatest Eliot is the most influential, and Auden is the best-known exponent of modern thought. Yeats was able to transition from a fine Pre-Raphaelite to a great modern poet without departing from an earlier tradition and without losing his singing voice. His complete rejection of science in favour of myth distinguishes him as uniquely modern; like Blake, he is a radical of the imagination. But, like the romantic, he upholds the gospel of the heart and retains a bond with folk music and ballad. His transformation from a Pre-Raphaelite to a modern poet is most apparent in The Tower (1928).

Due to his distinctive uniqueness and overwhelming renown, an analysis of T S Eliot is an analysis of modern poetry as a whole. The prevalence of mythical motif structure, ironical juxtaposition, and metrical cacophony can be attributed to his use of them. Eliot's early theme of hollow men gradually gave way to meditations on the hope of Grace, yet the manner in which he expressed his faith is an indictment of our everyday life. His poetry is exquisitely austere, giving the impression of a dramatic struggle for an impossible annunciation.

W H Auden presents modern thought most fully, if not most intensely. Amazingly adaptable and agile. Auden has written everything from canzones to popular songs, from old English accentual verse to Byronic ottava rima. He reclothes old pieties and ideals in modern, often modish language, as when God is asked to function as a power-and-light company in Petition, or as romantic sympathy is indistinguishable from anti-romantic Marxism in September 3, 1939. Making categorical boundaries between English and American poetry becomes increasingly unrealistic. The two merge in Auden's poetry.