“One function of the poet at any time is to discover by his own thought and feeling what seems to him to be poetry at that time” (The necessary vii). What Stevens is suggesting here is that a poet must find a particular voice among other voices –other poets– and that his voice will be significant only if it intends to be a contribution to the theory of poetry, in the sense that they “are disclosures of poetry, not disclosures of definitions of poetry” (Ibid). Precisely, the poetry of Wallace Stevens and John Ashbery are disclosures of poetry regarding imagination, for they deal with the capacity of the mind to transform external reality. Both poets take the reader through beautifully pictured strange landscapes and, by allowing the reader to experience, dialogically, what is pictured in the poem; both poets make clear that the reader is a fundamental part of it.
“In Tradition and the Individual Talent”, T.S. Eliot affirms that the greatest writers are those who are conscious of the writers who came before, as if they write with a sense of continuity. T.S Eliot addresses literary tradition as well as poetic tradition, and states that it is important to focus on “significant emotion, emotion which has its life in the poem and not in the history of the poet” (18). In this sense, the importance of tradition in poetry relies on the fact that a poet must be aware of the achievements of his predecessors, for, as we shall see in the case of Stevens and Ashbery, “the emotion of art is impersonal. And the poet cannot reach this impersonality without surrendering himself wholly to the work to be done. And he is not likely to know what is to be done unless he lives in what is not merely the present, but the present moment of the past, unless...
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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.
Works Cited
ASHBERY, John. “The instruction manual” in poetryfundation. Web. May 24. 2014.
“Biography of Wallace Stevens” in poetryfundation. Web. May 23. 2014.
“Biography of John Ashbery” in poetryfundation. Web. May 24. 2014.
ELIOT, T.S. “Tradition and the Individual Talent” in poetryfundation. Web. May 23. 2014.
PERKINS, David. “On Ashbery’s Predecessors: Stevens, Eliot and Pound” in Modern American
Poetry. Web. May 24. 2014.
WALLACE, Stevens. The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination. New York:
Random House, 1951. Print.
---. “The Snowman”, “Tattoo” and “The Idea of Order in Key West” in poemhunter. Web. May
23. 2014.
Fulton, Alice. “You Can’t Rhumboogie in a Ball and Chain.” Approaching Poetry: Perspectives and Responses. Ed. Peter Schakel and Jack Ridl. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997. 128-29.
Everett, Nicholas From The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-century Poetry in English. Ed. Ian Hamiltong. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. Copyright 1994 by Oxford University Press.
Despite the beauty described in the first few stanzas of the poem, it was the feeling of doubt and pondering that approached at the end of the poem that truly was the most thought provoking. Instead of just writing of beauty, Poets must realize that they may be leading people to false ideals, and in doing so that they may actually be causing individuals to believe in something that is nothing more than a dream. This realization makes the image of the questioning poet by far the most important in the piece.
The analysis of the two poems reflects the application of the above-mentioned points. The two poems, condensed and saturated with various historical figures and events, illustrate Finney’s activism and slices of her personal life in relation to public concerns. That was the night that I started to figure and configure, contemplate, and compute just how I might leave my delible mark on this life” (Inquisitors and Insurgents). The pencil is a life giving force, a fountain of life, a symbol of readiness and ability to write. Her professor and mentor Dr. Gloria Wade Gayles encouraged her to show her poems to Nikki Giovanni, who corrected them with a red pen, but assured Finney that something good was about to happen.
Wallace Stevens is not an easy poet to understand. His work is purposely twisted and tangled so one is forced to thing-whether they want to or not. Stevens’ poetry ranges from real life situations to situations which are simply a depiction of his imagination. One thing can be concluded though, Stevens does not allow his work to have a single meaning. Why should he? This is the upmost quality that makes his stand out from his competitors in the poetic industry. An interesting theme though which Wallace truly enjoys writing about, in all seriousness, is something thought provoking- perception. The book definition of perception is “appending [something] by the means of senses or the mind” . In his poem, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”, Stevens offers multiple definitions of this single concept. It just depends on what the reader can decipher from thirteen parts consisting of short verses.
...ictures for the reader. The similar use of personification in “Snapping Beans” by Lisa Parker and the use of diction and imagery in “Nighttime Fires” by Regina Barreca support how the use of different poetic devices aid in imagery. The contrasting tones of “Song” by John Donne and “Love Poem” by John Frederick Nims show how even though the poems have opposite tones of each other, that doesn’t mean the amount of imagery changes.
Strand, Mark and Evan Boland. The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms. New
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.
“I look to poetry, with its built-in capacity for compressed and multivalent language, as a place where many senses can be made of the world. If this is true, and I’ve built a life around the notion that it is, poetry can get us closer to reality in all its fluidity and complexity.”
Stevens, Wallace. "The Idea of Order at Key West." The Columbia Anthology of American Poetry. Editor: Jay Parini. Columbia University Press, 1995. 334-335.
In her poem, Poetry, Marianne Moore writes, poets create “imaginary gardens with real toads in them.”(439). The quotation in the poem suggests that the poet’s works reflect her personality, experiences, and creativeness. In other words, a poet cannot be completely separate from her own works because her experiences come alive through her works. Unlike Marianne Moore, T.S. Eliot takes a different approach to his work and his experiences. He claims that a good poet is supposed to be able to separate himself from his works so that it does not reflect his personality. In addition, he believes that poet’s mind is a mere facilitator that incorporates his experiences and various ideas. Besides their approaches to their own works, the two poets
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.
Kennedy, X. J., and Dana Gioia, eds. An Introduction to Poetry. 13th ed. New York: Longman, 2010. 21. Print.
“Description restores vitality to the plain visual object” (Altieri, 250). Take for example when Horatio, after having seen the ghost the first act of Hamlet, notices the beginning of the new day: “But, look, the morn in russet mantle clad, walks o’er the dew of yon high eastward hill.” (Shakespeare, 347). He doesn’t say “Sun’s coming up!” and we do not read Shakespeare in hopes that he would. Instead we are given a description of the sun and it’s movement. This two part description is vital to the beginning of the entire play, and closes the scene succinctly. It provides first a visual image for the reader or listener to imagine, and then gives motion, in this case to indicate that the play has been set into motion by something outside the control of the characters. Transition from a static image to that of a dynamic one gives vitality to several of Wallace Stevens’ poems, furthering their motion and directing their impression.
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).