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what is the importance of literature?
The importance of literature
history of british poetry
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“I dwell in Possibility-- / A fairer House than Prose . . .” (Dickinson) Poetry in its most basic form predates literacy. In fact, poetry was first utilized as a technique to assist in keeping an oral record of things like history, stories, genealogy and in some cases, even law. Most people have come to believe that poetry was so widely used due to the fact that it was far easier to memorize then prose, and during the time of texts like the Odyssey, oral recitation was the number one way of relaying information from one individual to another. So it is needless to note that poetry has undergone a lot of changes over the course of history. With the oldest surviving poem being the Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor, dated around 4500 B.C.E, and the most recent being typed out on someone’s laptop right now, it is no wonder that things have had to shift. Each and every poet has their own opinions on poetry, what it is as well as what it means. These ideas all vary, pulling their definitions from the modern world as well as the historical world. Three poets have managed a nearly impossible task of defining poetry through example, Wallace Stevens in His Text Of Modern Poetry, Archibald MacLeish in His Text Ars Poetica And Marianne Moore in Her Text Poetry.
Wallace Stevens’ text Of Modern Poetry circulates around the central idea of poetry filling the long hollow void in the lives of those who didn’t know how to find a deeper meaning. The most important thing to keep note of in regards to Steven’s text is the time period it was published in. This poem first made an appearance in a collection of poems entitled Parts of a world in 1942. Now it is important to note that just a year before this collection was published, Japan bombed Pearl Harbo...
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...overnment or knocked out of existence. Poetry has become an integral part of every culture in every period of time, and will very likely remain a deciding factor for generations to come. As long as there are people around to create and recall, poetics will survive, and that is fact.
Works Cited
Angelou, Maya. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. New York: Random, 2002. Print.
Babbitt, Natalie. Tuck Everlasting. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1975. Print.
Dickinson, Emily. "How Happy is the Little Stone." The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. By Emily Dickinson and Thomas Herbert Johnson. London: Faber, 1970. N. pag. Print.
- - -. "I Dwell in Possibility." The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. By Emily Dickinson and Thomas Herbert Johnson. London: Faber, 1970. N. pag. Print.
Thoreau, Henry David. Walden and Other Writings. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1993. Print.
Poetry is literary work in which special intensity is given to the expression of feeling and ideas, by the distinctive style and myth. It relies on different devices such as assonance, themes and even the tone to be successful. Even though many poems seems to be different, in some way they have similarities.
Approaching Emily Dickinson’s poetry as one large body of work can be an intimidating and overwhelming task. There are obvious themes and images that recur throughout, but with such variation that seeking out any sense of intention or order can feel impossible. When the poems are viewed in the groupings Dickinson gave many of them, however, possible structures are easier to find. In Fascicle 17, for instance, Dickinson embarks upon a journey toward confidence in her own little world. She begins the fascicle writing about her fear of the natural universe, but invokes the unknowable and religious as a means of overcoming that fear throughout her life and ends with a contextualization of herself within both nature and eternity.
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 a versatile avenue from which waves or ripples can be made potentially. A writer of poetry has the ability to make their readers feel a while wide array of emotions and situations synonymous with the human condition. I, at first, was completely turned off to the idea of poetry at first because all I was exposed to early on by way of poetry were bland professions of love or lust or seemingly simple poems I was forced to process down to a fine word paste. Edgar Allan Poe was interesting, but it was a tad bit dry to me. But, after reading poems the Harlem Renaissance gave me a bit of hope for poetry. To me, the poetry written during that time period has a certain allure to it. They have serious depth and meaning that I, myself and empathize
Dickinson, Emily. The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Ed. Thomas H. Johnson. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1960.
Emily Dickinson was one of the greatest woman poets. She left us with numerous works that show us her secluded world. Like other major artists of nineteenth-century American introspection such as Emerson, Thoreau, and Melville, Dickinson makes poetic use of her vacillations between doubt and faith. The style of her first efforts was fairly conventional, but after years of practice she began to give room for experiments. Often written in the meter of hymns, her poems dealt not only with issues of death, faith and immortality, but with nature, domesticity, and the power and limits of language.
Hoefel, Roseanne L. "The Complete Poems Of Emily Dickinson." Masterplots, Fourth Edition (2010): 1-6. Literary Reference Center Plus. Web. 17 Nov. 2013.
Porter, David T. The Art of Emily Dickinson’s Early Poetry. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966. Print.
Plato being a philosopher acknowledges that poetry in regards to philosophy is of higher ranking, but one should not take it seriously when dealing with the truth. Also one who listens to it should remain fearful to poetry because of its capability to corrupt their soul, and must remember all of what we have said about poetry. Plato puts an emphasis on people knowing the importance of being just and seeking good and true knowledge when it comes to poetry. He wants us to be aware that even though at times poetry is charming, “we must not be guilty of impiety by betraying what we think is true.” (Plato 298)
Dickinson, Emily. "Because I could not stop for Death." Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. M.h. Abrams. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, Inc, 1993. 726.
Vendler, Helen. Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commentaries. President and Fellows of Harvard College, 2010. 118-20. Google Books. Google. Web. 5 April. 2014. .
According to Webster's Dictionary, poetry is defined as "writing that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience in language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response through meaning, sound, and rhythm." While this is the technical definition of poetry many writers attempted to further describe what poetry is. There are many contradicting views and no one can agree what is the essence of poetry. Some poets think that poetry is the expression of emotions and rules do not matter, while other poets suggest the poetry is all about the rules and the rhythm that must be followed. The perfect mix to define poetry is somewhere in between.
In conclusion, I feel poets mainly write poems to express feelings, thoughts, and messages to the world. It’s an easy approach for them to use this writing technique as a way to articulate different aspects which could be improved in this world. I think what attracts people to poetry is writing which relates to each person in their everyday life no matter how it could be portrayed by. For some people poetry could be a relaxing thing or it could be something which cheers someone up, but people look to poetry to get a deeper thinking in life rather than a simpler thinking. This is clearly evident through authors, William Wordsworth and William Blake, and their poems “The World is too Much with Us” and “The Tyger.” Both poems related to one another one way or another, and they depicted different messages and themes which do relate to real life situations.
Even though poetry is still taught in classes, students will only view it as a required subject. A majority of students do not find poetry interesting just from investigating on their own. However, when they are learning it in a classroom setting with their peers, they may have more enthusiasm about the topic. Yet, after these students learn about the influence that poetry has brought to our society, they are still inclined to explore their own writing style. There is nothing wrong with this, but this proves that poetry has strayed away from its actual literature and the value it
Poetry unlike fiction is solely based on the author’s personal take on a certain subject. The tone, diction, syntax, and mood of a poem are all determined by the author of the poem. For some readers, to interpret a poem or explain the plot can be a difficult task. Other forms of literature such, as fiction is much easier to understand and discuss.