Throughout the late 20th and early 21st century many poets spent their careers attempting to “shift … writing away from the readable,” (McCaffery, 150) and create and avant-garde form of new and innovative poetry. Language poetry was first on this scene, primed and ready to start, according to Andrew Epstein in his essay “Verse Vs. Verse”, an “oppositional movement.” (46) The only problem is, with most avant-garde movements, the interest of the intellectuals soon follows. By creating works that were “self-aware [and] fragmented,” (Epstein, 48) the Language poets were able to keep their art restrained to a “small circle,” (Epstein, 15) of intellectuals. Contemporary poetry then underwent a series of different movements, each adopting new maneuvers. Unfortunately for contemporary poetry, there is a point at which new innovations become difficult and it is rather new adaptations of familiar formulas that become avant-garde. This very regression, the loss of the avant-garde movement can be seen in the poetry of Tao Lin. The re-emergence of lyric in poetry was the death of a poetic revolution.
When language poetry broke on to the poetry scene in the late 1970’s it was introduced by a small group of poets who “shared a passionate devotion to the more avant-garde side of American poetry- to the experimental” (Epstein, 46). This poetry was not intended for the general audience, it was poetry intended as an “art for the happy few” (Epstein, 15) who were willing to engage in conversation with the literature they read. Language poets “demand[ed] a reader who [would] be an active participant rather than a passive consumer.” (Epstein, 47) It was this very opposition to the literary tradition that not only made it works targeted to a select f...
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Although still adopting a traditional literary form, the poetry writing can be regarded as an example of the heterogeneity and border-crossing of cultural-scape in globalization period. Those poems were produced under the brunt of the international mobility that is propelled by the capitalist globalization, but precisely and paradoxically, in a suspending situation caused by national regulation, a “state of exception” of this mobility. The juxtaposition of the frustration on foreign life and the flare of nationalist emotion (with the rhetoric emulating ancient barbarian-expelling heroes), may imply a paradoxical consequence in globalization: the international mobility undergirding the national awareness instead of undermining it. Following this thread, the publication of this kind of poetry in 1930s, the oblivion of it after war, and the subsequent re-discovery, recognition, and research of it can be all taken as symptomatic traces of the localization, articulation, and transformation of national consciousness (both as “Chinese” and “American”) in the continuous globalization. Needless to say, those poems are deeply flawed in terms of aesthetics due to the rather poor literacy of their authors. It would be invoking to put these poems beside those “high art” works also produced in globalization context, such as the works on the Eiffel Tower and the London fog by Huang Zunxian (黄遵宪), a late Qin intellectual caught in between the East and the West, the
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Poetry’s role is evaluated according to what extent it mirrors, shapes and is reshaped by historical events. In the mid-19th century, some critics viewed poetry as “an expression of the poet’s personality, a manifestation of the poet’s intuition and of the social and historical context which shaped him” ( Preminger, Warnke, Hardison 511). Analysis of the historical, social, political and cultural events at a certain time helps the reader fully grasp a given work. The historical approach is necessary in order for given allusions to be situated in their social, political and cultural background. In order to escape intentional fallacy, a poet should relate his work to universal
The simple skill of writing, while something we all possess, has many different impacts on the brain. We think of it as a simple action, yet it can be as manipulative as a drug. Studies over the years have proven this using modern technology. Writing affects our minds in many different ways and in many different forms.
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It is a way to crucially engage oneself in setting the stage for new interventions and connections. She also emphasized that she personally viewed poetry as the embodiment of one’s personal experiences, and she challenged what the white, European males have imbued in society, as she declared, “I speak here of poetry as the revelation or distillation of experience, not the sterile word play that, too often, the white fathers distorted the word poetry to mean — in order to cover their desperate wish for imagination without insight.”
Ron Padgett, the author of Creative Reading, recalls how he learned to read and write as though these things happened yesterday. Like Padgett, I tried recalling my reading and writing history.
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Poetry, Drama, and the Essay. Ed. Joseph Terry. New York: Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers Inc, 2001.
The youth of today are more likely to have a favourite song rather than a favourite poem. Although the feelings and hidden meanings expressed in songs are often unacknowledged by the listener, they often have qualities that resemble those of a typical poem. These qualities include word choice, mood, hidden meanings and imagery. Using the songs “Luka” by Suzanne Vega, and “April Come She Will” by Simon and Garfunkle, I am going to prove that songs can be considered a form of modern day poetry.
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...human imagination and reality, the role of imagination in shaping that reality, and the role of the reader, as an observer as well as participant, in the understanding of poetry, of language shaping the world around him.
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The ability to write well is not a naturally acquired skill; it is usually learned or culturally transmitted as a set of practices in formal instructional settings or other environments. Writing skills must be practiced and learned through experience. Writing also involves composing, which implies the ability either to tell or retell pieces of information in the form of narratives or description, or to transform information into new texts, as in expository or argumentative writing. Perhaps it is best viewed as a continuum of activities that range from the more mechanical or formal aspects of “writing down” on the one end, to the more complex act of composing on the other end (Omaggio Hadley, 1993). It is undoubtedly the act of