The Modern-Post Modern era of poetry took place between 1900 and the 1970’s. The main focus of this era was located in North America and in Europe. Modern Poetry is mainly known as writing with technical innovation in a free verse way when they write a poem or story. This time period was also well known for poets to use the word “I” to refer to themselves in their poems. This small change started a new revolution of writing and a new way to make their poems personal. Those two changes are directly connected to each other. Modern Poetry in English is viewed by most as an American phenomenon. The influence that Modern Poetry had in poetic groups such as the Objectivists, Black Mountain Poets, the Deep Image Group, and many more, had a much later effect than most of the well known poets at the beginning of the era.
The Modern-Post Modern style of writing and poetry became popular in the mid to late 19th Century. Some well known poets and writers such as Thomas Hardy, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, and many more were credited with beginning this style of poetry and writing. Some of their tendencies of these writers were mainly their reactions and thoughts against the Victorian Era. There were also poets like W.B. Yeats and Rainer Maria Rilke who started their poetic careers in the Post-Romantic era but adapted into the Modern-Post Modern era. Modern poetry was created with the long tradition of lyrical expressions, imagination, culture, and the writer’s emotions or mood. There were several poets who wouldn’t use a regular style when they were writing. Instead, they would use their emotions to create a mood for the poem and then they could use that to create their rhyme scheme for the poem. This is why sometimes every 2 lines don’t rhym...
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...and lyrics in the poems. In past era’s it was popular to write a poem with a certain idea, mood, rhyme but in the Modern-Post Modern era it was a new idea to let the writers mood decide basically how the poem would be and what it would be about. It’s safe to say that during the Modern-Post Modern era there were several key events and factors that influenced authors and poets in not only the United States but the whole World. There were several key events during the Modern-Post Modern era that influenced poets and writers. Some of these key events and influences are WWI, Hitler and the Nazi’s, the Industrial Revolution, WWII, JFK’s Presidential term and assassination, Martin Luther King Jr’s historic march, speech, and assassination, segregation, and many more. This era was very influenced on worldly affairs and you can see that reflection in their stories and poems.
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.
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.”
In 1920 it was a hard time for most people. While going over these poets work it seems like the 1920 was a difficult time to live through. Authors explained this timeframe to be very dangerous for African Americans. Most people didn’t agree with most poets as they tried to show support for both whites and blacks. Some of the popular events happened in 1920 that the world still talks about until this day. Some of the popular events are the prohibition, Wall Street bombing, and the most important which is the Harlem Renaissance movement.
“Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words.” –Edgar Allan Poe. Poetry is one of the world’s greatest wonders. It is a way to tell a story, raise awareness of a social or political issue, an expression of emotions, an outlet, and last but not least it is an art. Famous poet Langston Hughes uses his poetry as a musical art form to raise awareness of social injustices towards African-Americans during the time of the Harlem Renaissance. Although many poets share similarities with one another, Hughes creatively crafted his poetry in a way that was only unique to him during the 1920’s. He implemented different techniques and styles in his poetry that not only helped him excel during the 1920’s, but has also kept him relative in modern times. Famous poems of his such as a “Dream Deferred,” and “I, Too, Sing America” are still being studied and discussed today. Due to the cultural and historical events occurring during the 1920’s Langston Hughes was able to implement unique writing characteristics such as such as irregular use of form, cultural and historical referenced themes and musical influences such as Jazz and the blues that is demonstrative of his writing style. Langston Hughes use of distinct characteristics such as irregular use of form, cultural and historical referenced themes and musical influences such as Jazz and the blues helped highlight the plights of African-Americans during the Harlem Renaissance Era.
Ellmann, Richard and Robert O’Clair. Modern Poems. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1989.
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
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
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.
Both Romantics and Modernists felt loss of authority, either from man or man's religious following. Poetry changed what it focused on as those figures lost respect or importance in the public's lives. I believe Yeats sums up my point partially in lines 19 and 20, "That twenty centuries of stony sleep/ Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle.
These constant feelings of discontent, and annoyance were seen frequently by African Americans who suffered from injustice acts from the white majority during these times. Many of the poems written during this time showed some sort of historical reference of maltreatment, or inequality. For years, African Americans were not allowed to have a voice, and if they did they wen’t unheard. However, when poems got published, the deep emotion, and rage that African Americans lived through for many years was released to the public, and shocked a majority of people when they quickly became influential to society.
Allen, Donald, ed. The New American Poetry 1945-1960. Berkely, CA.: U. of California P., 1999.
"Characteristics of Modern Poetry - Poetry - Questions & Answers." ENotes - Literature Study Guides, Lesson Plans, and More. Web. 09 Jan. 2012. .
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Emily Dickinson, and Walt Whitman all use different varieties of themes, mood, structure and literary devices throughout their poetry. Poetry uses aesthetic and rhythmic qualities of language. Poetry has been around for years, even back in the early 1900’s.
Postmodernism attempts to call into question or challenge the notion of a single absolute unified master narrative without simply replacing it with another. It is a paradoxical, recursive, and problematic method of critique.
There are an assorted of various characteristics included in poetry including Rhyme, Rhythm, and Mood. Some poems use rhyming words to create a certain effect but not all poems rhyme, poetry that doesn’t rhyme is called “free verse poetry”. Sometimes poets use repetition of sounds or patterns to create a musical effect in their poems, rhythm can be created by using the same number of words or syllables in each line of a poem. Rhythm can be described as the beat of the poem. The mood of a poem is the feeling that it has. A poem can be sad, gloomy, humorous, happy, etc. There are many more various characteristics in poetry including shape, figurative language, descriptive imagery, punctuation and format, sound and tone, and choice of