Modern poetry is a departure from traditional poetic forms and topics and reflects the attitude and culture of the 20th century.
It was born in the aftermath of World War I, when poets like T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, William Butler Yeats, Edward Arlington Robinson, and others began to question everything they knew about life.
2. Modern poetry
Modern poetry is a departure from traditional poetic forms and topics and
reflects the attitude and culture of the 20th century.
It was born in the aftermath of World War I, when poets like T.S. Eliot, Ezra
Pound, Wallace Stevens, William Butler Yeats, Edward Arlington Robinson,
and others began to question everything they knew about life.
World had changed drastically, moving from a rural to a more urban and
industrial one.
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Modern poetry
The Modernists saw this change as an opportunity to
reinvent language to express this new reality. They
wanted their poems to reflect all aspects of life, even
those things that were ugly or uncomfortable. Their
poetry aimed to capture what it was like living during
such tumultuous times.
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Chief Elements of Modern Poetry
In Modernist poetry, poets generally discarded traditional concerns
about a meter in favor of free verse. The poetic meter is the regular
rhythm of words in a line or poem. Free verse is poetry written without
rhyme or meter. There are no formal rules about how many syllables or
words should be in each line. Instead, it follows an author's own rhythm
and cadence. It is also called blank verse, as it does not have a rhyme
scheme or meter.
5. Modern poetry
One example of free verse is T.S. Eliot's poem, "The Love Song of J. Alfred
Prufrock."Though there are examples of end rhyme or rhyme that occurs at
the end of lines, it contains no regular rhyme scheme throughout the 131 lines
of this poem.
The opening stanza of the poem reads:
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets
Despite lacking regular rhythm, or meter, it still reads like poetry because it
has meaningful imagery, symbolism, and alliteration. Free verse allows poets
to experiment with rhythm and sound in ways that traditional forms do not
allow. By breaking the formal conventions of the past, authors could
experiment with language and express themselves more freely.
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6. Chief Charectristics of Modern
Poetry
1. Modern poetry is written in simple language, the language of every day speech and
even sometimes in dialect or jargon like some poems of Rudyard Kipling (in the jargon
of soldiers).
2. Modern poetry is mostly sophisticated as a result of the sophistication of the modern
age, e. g. T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land".
3. Alienation. The poet is alienated from the reader as a result of the alienation of the
modern man.
4. Fragmentation: the modern poem is sometimes fragmented like a series of broken
images, and a gain like "The Waste Land".
5. Modern poetry is highly intellectual; it is written from the mind of the poet and it
addresses the mind of the reader, like the poems of T. S. Eliot.
6. It is interested in the ugly side of life and in taboo subjects like drug addiction, crime,
prostitution and some other subjects. Like the poems of Allen Ginsberg.
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7. Chief Charectristics of Modern Poetry
7. Modern poetry is pessimistic as a result of the bad condition of man in
many parts of the world, such as most of the poems of Thomas Hardy.
8. Modern poetry is suggestive; the poem may suggest different meanings
to different readers.
9. Modern poetry is cosmopolitan. It appeals to man everywhere and at
every time because it deals with the problems of man or humanity.
10. Experimentation is on of the important characteristic feature of modern
poetry. Poets try to break new grounds, i. e. to find new forms, new
language and new methods of expression.
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8. Chief Charectristics of Modern Poetry
11. It is irregular, written without metre and rhyme scheme and sometimes
written in prose like the pros poem.
12. Interest in politics and the political problems of the age.
13. Interest in the psychology and in the subconscious. Many poets wrote
unconsciously under the effect of wine or drugs.
14. Irregularity of form. Modern poetry is mostly written in free verse and
prose (the prose poem).
15. Ambiguity: Most of the modern poetry is ambiguous for many reasons.
16. Interest in myth and especially Greek myth.
17. Interest in the problems of the average man and the lower classes of
society.
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