Modern Poetry: Tradition and Experimentation, War Poets and Imagists

Modern Poetry: Tradition and Experimentation

TALI BAYER EA B Modern poetry Compact Performer Shaping Ideas Marina Spiazzi, Marina Tavella, Margaret Layton @ 2021 ZANICHELLIModern poetry 1. Tradition and experimentation First decades of the 20th century a period of extraordinary originality and vitality in poetry. A variety of trends and currents expressed the nature of modern experience:

• Georgian poets;
• War Poets;
• Imagists;
• Symbolist poets sterreisches Gallery, Belvedere (Vienna). Compact Performer Shaping Ideas ZANICHELLIModern poetry

Georgian Poets

The Georgian Poets and Their Influences

2. The Georgian poets The Georgian poets published during the reign of George V. They were Rupert Brooke (1887-1915), Walter De La Mare (1873-1956), and Edward Thomas (1878-1917). They:

• were influenced by the Victorian Romantic tradition;
• used traditional poetic forms;
• wrote about nature and country life. Edward Thomas. Compact Performer Shaping Ideas ZANICHELLIModern poetry

War Poets

Characteristics of War Poetry

3. The War Poets: · experienced the fighting; • in most cases lost their lives in the conflict. Content of their poetry: the horrors of modern warfare and the hopes and disappointments of an entire generation. Aim of their poetry: to awaken the conscience of the readers to the horrors of the war. Language employed: violent, everyday language. Style: unconventional. Compact Performer Shaping Ideas ZANICHELLIModern poetry

Imagist Poets

Imagism Movement and Ezra Pound

4. Imagist poets Modern poetry officially began with Imagism, a movement which flourished between 1912 and 1917. The name 'Imagiste' was invented by the American poet Ezra Pound (1885-1972). IN A STATION OF THE METRO The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough. (Ezra Pound, 1913) Compact Performer Shaping Ideas ZANICHELLIModern poetry

Aesthetic Principles of Imagist Poets

4. Imagist poets The main aesthetic principles of Imagist poets were

• use of hard, clear and precise images;
• . use of a rhythm freed from the artificial demands of metrical regularity;
• free choice of any subject matter;
• . poems, usually short, and without any moral comment;
• the aim of poetry: to achieve precision, concreteness. Compact Performer Shaping Ideas ZANICHELLIModern poetry

Symbolist Poets

Symbolism and Charles Baudelaire

5. Symbolist poets Symbolism a movement started in France with Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal (1857). It influenced modern poetry. The style of Symbolist poets was characterised by: LEURS tance given to dreams, visions and the associative 's of imagination; se of language and images to evoke rather than to erse to exploit the sound and musicality of words. Les Fleurs du mal, first edition, 1857. Compact Performer Shaping Ideas ZANICHELLIModern poetry

Modern Poetry Representatives

Influence of Imagism and Symbolism

6. Modern poetry Imagism and Symbolism influenced modern poetry. Main representatives:

• William Butler Yeats used symbols to convey his inner sensations, visions and mystic experiences;
• Thomas Stearn Eliot stated that poetry was an escape from emotion and personality. Compact Performer Shaping Ideas ZANICHELLIModern poetry

T.S. Eliot's View on Poetry

6. Modern poetry and T.S. Eliot According to T.S. Eliot, the poet was the explorer of experience. used language to create rich patterns of meaning that were not easy for the superficial reader. recorded the collapse of Western civilisation and the culture and spiritual waste of the beginning of the century. Compact Performer Shaping Ideas ZANICHELLIModern poetry

Free Verse

Origins of Free Verse

7. Free verse At the beginning of the 20th century under the influence of the French Symbolists, such as Stephane Mallarmé, and the American poets Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, many poets: Emily Dickinson. "rejected the 19th-century regular metre; ·employed free verse. Walt Whitman. Stephane Mallarmé. Compact Performer Shaping Ideas ZANICHELLIModern poetry

Features of Free Verse

7. Free verse: features · Absence of the traditional metre; · lack of regular rhyme scheme; • use of alliteration and assonance; · metre and sound determined by a correspondence between feeling, impression and poetic form and not by the conventional rules of poetic diction; · the unifying element is the use of the poetic line; • flexibility of verse line length; Compact Performer Shaping Ideas ZANICHELLI