Early Morning Cities – Comparing Wordsworth and Ginsberg in light of T. S. Eliot’s ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’
In his essay ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’ T. S. Eliot is making the case that a poet should escape emotion and personality in the poem itself; he argues that the ‘greatness’ of a poem is not ‘the spontaneous overflow of powerful emotions’ ; on the contrary, he describes them as something that is more contained in the work of the art itself and does not originate from the process of writing poetry or from the poet’s personal history. While the simplified version of this idea – give emotion to your audience (and Eliot argues, there should be an awareness of audience!) without transferring your own personality into
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Although the approach, and consequently the linguistic choices, are very different, Ginsberg manages to invoke the same sort of raw emotion in the reader that one might associate with a city morning. Necessarily the differences between the cities and the change of imagery over time makes for not much actual similarity regarding the poems, however the way both poets try to grab and immortalise one moment in time is remarkably parallel in many ways. Wordsworth creates an atmosphere of stillness and perfect calm through carefully picked details of a landscape, lyrical language choices, adjectives!, a not-really-simile, more like word association (‘This city now doth, like a garment, wear/The beauty of the morning: silent, bare’) and open judgement reserved for the ignorant reader. On the other hand, Ginsberg manages to capture the essence of the city through romanticising exhaust and pigeons on church roofs. Both poems are easy on our imagination – standing in the middle of Westminster Bridge or looking out our window, observing pigeons are not hard to relate to. What makes these poems exceptionally similar is the raw emotion that they manage to present through their city descriptions. Both poets believe that there is something in the very moment that they describe that is worth preserving; Wordsworth sees tranquillity in the early morning, while there is a certain …show more content…
Ginsberg surrenders himself to the moment – to a level that the immortalised mental picture becomes ‘forever’ by the end of the poem – and to the emotion that he is feeling, which is more valuable (cite) as a form of art, continually sacrificing his personality for the sake of the reader to create, which Wordsworth constitutes necessary to be able to create ‘new art emotion’ and therefore create something of artistic
Why. Excuse me. Why. Does. Excuse. Why me. I mean. Excuse me. Why. Does. It . Always end up this way. Like this. A performance. It's my best excuse. And. I'm on the wagon. Again. Why. Excuses. Sitting in the state of a daydream. No. Falling. A performance. Why what it comes down to. Poetry. And. My two main men. Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. Both use their individual voice to perform the buddhistic beat they feel is part of their poetry/ their beatific movement. Even though these two poets influenced each other. And. Their voices are significantly different. Each has a personal style one cannot deny. And. Each boy added his separate beat to the music they created as a generation. A beat generation. Jack's buddhistic jazz/ blues chorus poetry is domesticized/ tainted Christianity-wise. And. Allen's sound becomes zentific without Christianity/ hanging on a cross in the backbeat of his prose poetry. While each may have his own personal style/ both poets use the same technique in sound. And. Rhythm to give their audience something to bugaloo to. Excuse me. What's. That. Poetry. Baby. A performance. So. Please brother. Take a chance. And. Dance. (She says that as she shh shh shivers.)
Ginsberg and Kerouac are an interesting comparison because of their unique symbiotic relationship. Not only was each a literary influence on the other, but they actually appear in each other's works. In Ginsberg's "Sunflower Sutra," he and Kerouac sit between a railroad and a river to watch the sun set over San Francisco. Kerouac points out a sunflower, and Ginsberg begins one of his mystical visions ...
In today’s modern view, poetry has become more than just paragraphs that rhyme at the end of each sentence. If the reader has an open mind and the ability to read in between the lines, they discover more than they have bargained for. Some poems might have stories of suffering or abuse, while others contain happy times and great joy. Regardless of what the poems contains, all poems display an expression. That very moment when the writer begins his mental journey with that pen and paper is where all feelings are let out. As poetry is continues to be written, the reader begins to see patterns within each poem. On the other hand, poems have nothing at all in common with one another. A good example of this is in two poems by a famous writer by the name of Langston Hughes. A well-known writer that still gets credit today for pomes like “ Theme for English B” and “Let American be American Again.”
The Modernist era of poetry, like all reactionary movements, was directed, influenced, and determined by the events preceding it. The gradual shift away from the romanticized writing of the Victorian Era served as a litmus test for the values, and the shape of poetry to come. Adopting this same idea, William Carlos Williams concentrated his poetry in redirecting the course of Modernist writing, continuing a break from the past in more ways than he saw being done, particularly by T.S. Eliot, an American born poet living abroad. Eliot’s monumental poem, The Waste Land, was a historically rooted, worldly conscious work that was brought on by the effects of World War One. The implementation of literary allusions versus imagination was one point that Williams attacked Eliot over, but was Williams completely in stride with his own guidelines? Looking closely at Williams’s reactionary poem to The Waste Land, Spring and All, we can question whether or not he followed the expectations he anticipated of Modernist work; the attempts to construct new art in the midst of a world undergoing sweeping changes.
In the early 20th century, many writers such as T.S. Eliot (Thomas Stearns Eliot) and Langston Hughes wrote what scholars of today consider, modern poetry. Writers in that time period had their own ideas of what modern poetry should be and many of them claimed that they wrote modern work. According to T.S. Eliot’s essay, “From Tradition”, modern poetry must consist of a “tradition[al] matter of much wider significance . . . if [one] want[s] it [he] must obtain it by great labour . . . no poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists’ (550). In another term, tradition only comes within the artist or the art itself; therefore, it should be universally monumental to the past. And, Langston Hughes argues that African-Americans should embrace and appreciate their own artistic virtues; he wishes to break away from the Euro-centric tradition and in hopes of creating a new blueprint for the African-American-Negro.
In order to accomplish this goal Eliot incorporated allusions into his work. These references added historical context and depth to his poetry. On the other hand Wallace Stevens opposed Eliot’s large reliance on allusion, calling it overly intellectual and a hindrance to the sound and rhythm of the poem. While Stevens’s portrayal of the desolate present was similar to Eliot’s imaginings, Stevens chose to focus on an American future rather than a European past.
Primarily in Lines composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey the mortality of creativeness and imagination is expressed by Wordsworth. This is a poem about the beauty of an old cathedral called Tintern Abbey. He hasn’t been there in five years and he brought his sister along. Even though imagination isn’t immortal, there is a way to reclaim it, “That time is past, / and all its aching joys are ...
...In "The Waste Land," Eliot delivers an indictment against the self-serving, irresponsibility of modern society, but not without giving us, particularly the youth a message of hope at the end of the Thames River. And in "Ash Wednesday," Eliot finally describes an example of the small, graceful images God gives us as oases in the Waste Land of modern culture. Eliot constantly refers back, in unconsciously, to his childhood responsibilities of the missionary in an unholy world. It is only through close, diligent reading of his poetry that we can come to understand his faithful message of hope.
Robert Frost and Edgar Allen Poe two amazing poets, who created many well written poems, for instance “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening”, by Robert Frost and “The Raven” by Edgar Allen Poe. These two poems have many differences and similarities between them. A big difference between Frost and Poe is there back ground but this is also a similarity, how they took their real life situations and turned them into poetry. Then, their life situations made their tone in “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening” and “The Raven” completely different. But in these two poems there is a meaning behind them and the meanings are similar. Finally, a difference and similarity
During the 18th century, two great companion; William Wordsworth collaborated together to create Lyrical Ballad; one of the greatest works of the Romantic period. The two major poems of Lyrical Ballad are Wordsworth’s “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” and Coleridge’s “Frost at Midnight.” Even though these two poems contain different experiences of the two speakers, upon close reading of these poems, the similarities are found in their use of language, the tone, the use of illustrative imagery to fascinate the reader’s visual sense and the message to their loved ones.
T.S Eliot, widely considered to be one of the fathers of modern poetry, has written many great poems. Among the most well known of these are “The Waste Land, and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, which share similar messages, but are also quite different. In both poems, Eliot uses various poetic techniques to convey themes of repression, alienation, and a general breakdown in western society. Some of the best techniques to examine are ones such as theme, structure, imagery and language, which all figure prominently in his poetry. These techniques in particular are used by Eliot to both enhance and support the purpose of his poems.
Faced with a world lacking variety, viewpoints, vibrancy, and virtue- a world without life- a fearful and insecure T.S. Eliot found himself the only one who realized all of civilization had been reduced to a single stereotype. Eliot (1888-1965) grew up as an outsider. Born with a double hernia, he was always distinguished from his peers, but translated his disability into a love of nature. He developed a respect for religion as well as an importance for the well-being of others from his grandfather at a young age, which reflected in his poetry later in life. After studying literature and philosophy at Harvard, Eliot took a trip to Paris, absorbing their vivid culture and art. After, he moved on to Oxford and married Vivien Haigh-Wood. Her compulsivity brought an immense amount of stress into his life, resulting in their abrupt separation. A series of writing-related jobs led Eliot to a career in banking and temporarily putting aside his poetry, but the publication of “The Waste Land” brought him a position at the publishing house of Faber and Gwyer. His next poem, called “The Hollow Men” reflected the same tone of desolation and grief as “The Waste Land.” Soon after, he made a momentous shift to Anglicanism that heavily influenced the rest of his work in a positive manner. Eliot went on to marry Valerie Fletcher, whom he was with until the end of his life, and win a Nobel Prize in literature. T.S. Eliot articulates his vast dissatisfaction with the intellectual desolation of society through narrators that share his firm cultural beliefs and quest to reinvigorate a barren civilization in order to overcome his own uncertainties and inspire a revolution of thought.
When a man becomes old and has nothing to look forward to he will always look back, back to what are called the good old days. These days were full of young innocence, and no worries. Wordsworth describes these childhood days by saying that "A single Field which I have looked upon, / Both of them speak of something that is gone: The Pansy at my feet Doth the same tale repeat: Whither is fled the visionary gleam? Where is it now, the glory and the dream?"(190) Another example of how Wordsworth uses nature as a way of dwelling on his past childhood experiences is when he writes "O joy! That in our embers / Is something that doth live, / That nature yet remembers / What was so fugitive!" (192) Here an ember represents our fading years through life and nature is remembering the childhood that has escaped over the years. As far as Wordsworth and his moods go I think he is very touched by nature. I can picture him seeing life and feeling it in every flower, ant, and piece of grass that crosses his path. The emotion he feels is strongly suggested in this line "To me the meanest flower that blows can give / Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." (193) Not only is this showi...
During Wordsworth time as a poet he made it his mission to have poetry be read by not only the aristocrats but also now the common man something that has never been done. In both poems Wordsworth makes his poems relatable by incorporating themes that everyone can relate to even if they haven’t personally had that experience, although both poems do differ when it comes down to structure and form but also when trying to convey a message, these poems are important because these ideas have never been done before and now even the average Joe can finally participate in a conversation about poetry and this brings two world together.
Wordsworth had two simple ideas that he put into his writing of poetry. One was that “poetry was the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.” The second idea was that poets should describe simple scenes of nature in the everyday words, which in turn would create an atmosphere through the use of imagination (Compton 2).