Introduction:

What do you understand by the term Modern Poetry? What are its chief characteristics? Choose a poem by a modern poet and explain what do you think are ‘modern’ features in it?

Introduction:

Many have sincerely felt that in the 20th century no great poetry has been written. As a critic has put it, there have been many poetic persons in the 20th century, but no poets. At the beginning of the new century at least there was no poet of any stature.

After the death of Tennyson it seems that English poetry had died with him till 20th century. According to the critics of the early 20th charm of the English poetry was over and only foolishness, way word and obscurity were seen in this poetry. Thoughts of the critics were misplaced modern poetry is full of rich thought in style and diction related to age. The fact is that in the modern age there is no dearth of great poets and poem it seems remain evergreen forever.

Characteristic:

Realism:

The searching realism of modern poets often brings them face to face with repulsive facts which would have scandalised a goody- goody Victorian. But our poets handle them most daringly. Prostitution war slum-dwellers and other such “unpoetic” themes find adequate treatment in modern poetry. Our century has witnessed two terrible holocausts in the two global wars. The terror ugliness and brutality of war became a major theme in the poetry of “the war poets” like Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen who themselves fought as soldiers.

Same are poets, such as Rupert Brooke, however seem to have loved war as a test of their braveness and patriotism and they treated in their poetry accordingly.

Religion and Mysticism:
Religion and mysticism also find a place in work of some poets of the 20th century. Coventry pat more and Frances Thompson who wrote religious poetry towards the end of the preceding century.

In the poetry of the Jesuit Gerard Manley Hopkins, too. We have something religious now and then. Ralph Hudson’s The song of Honour is not a notable poem pulsating with religious felling. Even in the poetry of such poets as Yeats there are mystical strains.

Representation:

“Poetry is of imitative nature, it is merely a copy of copy”

Aristotle’s theory of imitation is as famous as mimesis. He makes imitation the aesthetic faculty, the aesthetic meaning imitation is representation of natural object.

Aristotle’s artist sits before the carpenters table in brooding consideration of its form and those tries to coax the form on his canvass. This interpretation of the artist’s imitation of the idea raised the status of the artist in the exalted sphere of philosophy.

According to Aristotle it does not mean that an artist makes a true copy of the world of reality; but means the he imitates nature and presents an imaginative reconstruction of life.

In the same way new poets imitates their poetry with new. Ideas and imaginations of old poet’s ideas and imaginations. Thus they give the new birth of poetry with their some new ideas by the thought of old poets and will get good credit. They represent the poetry by the mythology, dialogues, history, proverbs etc.

Longingness

Longingness:

Longingness is very important in the all kinds of poetry. We can call it root of poetry. Every aspects of longingness are express by poets in their poetry. Tennyson’s Ulysses spend his life for seeking of knowledge John Mansfield’s ‘Seekers’ is the best example of the longing of man for God and the eternal city of light.

Pessimism:

There is a definition of pessimism and reality in modern poetry. Suffering of the people was realised by modern poets. They came to know and started the show the reality of world. It is the tragedy and suffering of the poor people, this made them gloomy. They become pessimistic. Their faith in God started to full. Their poetry is the picture of modern society.

Tradition and Innovation:

As in modern painting, we find a lot of experimentation and innovation in modern poetry. Most of the poets have broken away from tradition completely, as they feel that 0poetry should change with the changing times. Many movements, schools and groups have appeared and disappeared over the years. Imagism, surrealism and the so called “Apocalypse” School have had their days. Some poets mostly belonging to the early years of the century remained, on the other hand, sticking to the traditions of Tennyson, Browning, and Arnold etc. Even T.S. Eliot who with Hulme Hopkins and Ezra Pound has been a tremendous shaping influence on modern poetry looks too often to Donne and the fellow metaphysical.

Thus, in a word, even innovations are influenced little or much, by the poets before them.

Humanitarianism:

The pessimistic realization of the sad realities of life is partly responsible for the note of fellow-felling and humanitarianism which is to be heard in the work of some modern poets. The realization of human suffering spurs them to align them with the suffering. Even in the Victorian age were poets like Thomson Hood and Mrs. Browning who demanded justice for the downtrodden. The 20th century poets like Galsworthy, Gibson and Masefield also voiced their indignation against social regression.

In their solicitousness for the working classes, some modern English poets have honed over to the side of radial socialism and even communism.

Diction and Meter:

Diction and Meter:
This movement has also revolutionized the concept of poetic diction and metre Traditional “Poetic diction”, saccharine poeticism, and even regular metre have been discarded almost completely. As Moody and Lovett point our, “Imagism did modern poetry a tremendous service by pointing the way to renovation of the vocabulary of poetry.

In the 20th century many experiments have been made on the techniques and diction of poetry. Doughty for example, as Grierson and Smith put it, “Manhandled” English. The American poet Cummings refused to start every line of his poetry with a capital letter, land so on. Many of such experiments have been interesting but interesting only.

Complexity and Psychology:

Complexity and Psychology are some other qualities of the more representative poetry of today. The reaction against the earlier naiveté of poetry was initiated by Eliot and Ezra Pound in the second decade of the present century. Eliot’s long poem The Waste land (1922) was the first example of the poetry, and it remains a watershed in both English and American literary history.

Conclusion:

Poetry is a criticism of life. It must maintain its contact with life. Modern poetry is the reflection of modern life. It is realistic in tone and expresses the spirit of the age. It cannot denounce as petty, wayward and puerile. It can safely take its place f pride in the kingdom of poetry produced from the times of Chaucer to the modern times.

“THE HOLLOW MEN”

“THE HOLLOW MEN”
T.S. Eliot. (1922)
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Learning together
Headpiece filled with straw, Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We wishper together
Are quite and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feel over broken glass
In Our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour
Paralysed force, gesture without motion.

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to deaths’ other Kingdom
Remember us if at all- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men,
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do it appear.
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer—

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

III
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars.

In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
E grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of deaths’ twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
V
Here we go round the prickly per
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear.
At five o clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the shadow

Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the shadow
Fir Rhine is the kingdom

For time is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the word ends
This is the way the word ends
This is the way the word ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

FEATURES OF MODERN POETRY “THE HOLLOW MEN”

FEATURES OF MODERN POETRY “THE HOLLOW MEN”

T.S. Eliot “God’s in his heaven” types of optimism is a thing of the past. T.S. Eliot did not confess atheism, but his attitude towards life as we find it in such poem as ‘The waste Land’ and ‘The Hollow Men’ is far from optimistic to quote a few lines from the latter.
We are the Hollow men.
We are the stuffed men
Learning together. Load piece filled with straw, Alas!
Our dried voices when
We whisper together
Are quite and meaningless
As wind in dry grass

The pessimism of 20th century poets is not of the some what stylized melancholy of shelly or the Tennysonian elegance mode with its lingering enjoyment of self pity. It is more intellectual and more impersonal.

This poem has the astounding variety of them. As its title suggests, it is written on
“The Hollow Men”
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
In ‘The Hollow Men” all the richness and complexity of culture which gives. Such thickness of texture disappears. The poem takes place in a twilight realm of disembodied men and forces. The complexity of relations making up the subjective realm in Eliot’s ideal descriptions of it is replaced by the vagueness and impalpability of
“Shape without form
shade without colour
paralysed force
gesture without motor

longingness is root of modern poetry also. In this poem.
We also find longingness as
The below lines suggest
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of deaths facilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

The final stanza may be the most quoted of all of Eliot’s poetry.

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper

The poem reflects upon Eliot’s skepticism about the men of his time, the posterity, and society as a whole.

He quotes the Bible, but cannot finish the quoted. He can only get “for thine is the ….” Out…. This shows his anger at god and the religious.

T.S. Eliot wrote this poem during a period of absence from the bank, having just suffered a nervous breakdown. The them of ‘hollowness’ presented in the poem directly relates to his own psychological condition at the time a condition known at the time as ‘aboulie’ epigraph to section.

The ‘hollow men’, and ‘stuffed men’, ‘filled with straw’ are a combination of the effigies.