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
The "Poet of the New Violence" On the Poetry of Allen Ginsberg. Ed. Lewis Hyde. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1984. 29-31.
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.”
,“Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity" as William Wordsworth, the English Romantic poet, stated. Poetry is a way to express vast emotions and feelings in a way which is unique to the poet. Poetry uses forms and conventions to suggest differential interpretation to words, or to evoke emotive responses.
Murphy, Russell Elliott. T.S. Eliot: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work. New York:
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.
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.
...g with many individuals, are alienated and in turn, wish for extreme change and even another life. Ginsberg conveys a vital message that carries through to the year 2010 even more. Materialism does not make a person, it is insignificant. What is imperative is the natural world; beauty, individuality, and real human interactions as these are concepts that make an individual.
The poems ‘lines composed on Westminster Bridge’ and ‘London’ are created by William Wordsworth and William Blake respectively. Wordsworth’s work originated in the eighteenth century and he himself lived in the countryside, and rarely visited large cities such as London. This is reflected on his poem, making it personal to his experience in London, however William Blake on the other hand had a vast knowledge of London and was actually a London poet, which allowed him to express his views of London from a Londoner’s point of view. I therefore will be examining comparisons in both poems, as well as their contrasting views of London and the poetic devices used to express their opinions.
Often, the poets Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson try to convey the themes of the meaning of nature, or that of death and loneliness. Although they were born more than fifty years apart their poetry is similar in many ways. Both poets talk about the power of nature, death and loneliness. However, Dickinson and Frost are not similar in all poetic aspects. In fact, they differ greatly in tone.
18th century London, it seems, was not a city of beauty or mirth; that is, at least, for the poets William Blake and Jonathan Swift. Blake’s “London” and Swift’s “A Description of a City Shower” are both poems in which the pervading theme is one of a dark, miserable city. London is portrayed as a cold and unredeemable city in both the 1710 poem of Swift, and the 1793 poem of Blake. These works, over eighty years apart, are so strikingly similar in their themes and focus that it is evident that English society, especially that in cities, had changed little, retaining its oppressive social order. Blake and Swift, acutely aware of such problems, use their poetry to make scathing social commentaries.
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 ...
T.S. Eliot is often considered one of the greatest and most influential poets of the 20th Century. Not only were his highly regarded poems such as “The Wasteland” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” influential to the literary style of his time, but his work as a publisher highlighted the work of many talented poets. Analyzing his poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” with psychoanalytic criticism reveals several core issues in the speaker of the poem, and may reflect Eliot himself.
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.
William Wordsworth has respect and has great admiration for nature. This is quite evident in all three of his poems; the Resolution and Independence, Tintern Abbey and Michael in that, his philosophy on the divinity, immortality and innocence of humans are elucidated in his connection with nature. For Wordsworth, himself, nature has a spirit, a soul of its own, and to know is to experience nature with all of your senses. In all three of his poems there are many references to seeing, hearing and feeling his surroundings. He speaks of hills, the woods, the rivers and streams, and the fields. Wordsworth comprehends, in each of us, that there is a natural resemblance to ourselves and the background of nature.
His poem recognizes the ordinary and turns it into a spectacular recollection, whose ordinary characteristics are his principal models for Nature. As Geoffrey H. Hartman notes in his “Wordsworth’s poetry 1787-1814”, “Anything in nature stirs [Wordsworth] and renews in turn his sense of nature” (Hartman 29). “The Poetry of William Wordsworth” recalls a quote from the Prelude to Wordsworth’s 1802 edition of Lyrical ballads where they said “[he] believed his fellow poets should "choose incidents and situations from common life and to relate or describe them.in a selection of language really used by men” (Poetry). In the shallowest sense, Wordsworth is using his view of the Tintern Abbey as a platform or recollection, however, this ordinary act of recollection stirs within him a deeper understanding.