The Times They Are a Changin'

The 20th century changed the world of poetry. Major world events boded on the mind of many a writer, reflecting in their work. Diaspora in the British Empire, the two World Wars, and cultural and societal events was behind the poetic change that took place in the early 1900's.

Claude McKay's "If We Must Die" is a poem that depicts the racial issues he experienced as a Jamaican born citizen living in white neighborhoods. His prose is as full of eloquence as any Romantic or Victorian writer, but the issue he is writing about is something either of those writers could not relate to: being persecuted or even killed because of skin color. "If we must die, O let us nobly die/ So that our precious blood may not be shed/ In vain; then even the monsters we defy/ Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!" (Greenblatt et al, 2006). When reading his poem from an objective stance, one could assume he is describing a bloody battle in any war during any time period. His ultimate message of the poem could be achieving honor, even in death.

Seamus Henley writes about a blacksmith, ever present and non-changing though the world is changing around him: "He leans out the jamb, recalls a clatter/ Of hoofs where traffic is flashing in rows/ then grunts and goes in, with a slam and a flick/ To beat iron out, to work the bellows," (Greenblatt et al, 2006). Though the job of the blacksmith has not differed for decades upon decades, the world has, bringing with it industry and technology.

The world that these poets saw was very different from the world of the Romantics and Victorians. Things in the world of the Romantics and Victorians were easier in a way, more black and white. While the world of the 20th century writer became muddled with grey, full of detail and chaos.

References:

Greenblatt, et al. [Eds]. (2006). The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Romantic

Period Through the Twentieth Century [vol. 2] (8th ed.). New York,

NY: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Tradition

Tradition. It is a word that has many different meanings, as plenty of words tend to do. For writers, it means repetition, boredom. To T.S. Eliot and other poets of his era, tradition meant a certain quality of writing. Specifically, tradition came into play when comparing modern poets with Romantics and Victorians. Romantics and Victorians influenced writers for generations to come.

The writing styles of the Romantics and Victorians have their differences and their points of agreement. While the Romantic writer fancied nature and created poems with ethereal backdrops, the Victorian writer had a more modern standpoint and wrote more realistically about nature and issues that interested them. This is not to say that either of the the writers had more imagination than the other, but they merely used it in ways that suited them. Poets of the 20th century seemed to have taken both of these styles and merged them, to create poems that are full of modern sentiment, but romantically spoken.

English writer T.E. Hulme would have disagreed because he was a man who longed for writers to lose their "romantic view[s] which drag in the infinite," (Greenblatt et al, 2006). He believed that Romantic poems were always "moaning or whining about something or other [...and true romance and...] beauty may be a small, dry thing," (Greenblatt et al, 2006). Many of T.S. Eliot's works echo this sentiment, such as "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock". In this poem, Eliot writes of the mundane but presents it in such light that it takes on a life of it's own: "Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets/ the muttering retreats/ of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels/ and sawdust restaurants with oyster shells" (Greenblatt et al, 2006).

Eliot's view of traditionalism stemmed from his respect for Hulme and his base of literary history. He believed that in order to be a great writer, one had to study about literature. By learning different styles and reading about different stories, a writer would know better about how to develop their own style; "This historical sense, which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal and of the timeless and of the temporal together, is what makes a writer traditional. And it is at the same time what makes a writer most acutely conscious of his place in time, of his contemporaneity," (Greenblatt et al, 2006)".

References:

Greenblatt, et al. [Eds]. (2006). The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Romantic Period Through the Twentieth Century [vol. 2] (8th ed.). New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Friendship Between Wordsworth and Coleridge

The Romantic poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge were close friends who sought to create a new kind of poem centered on emotions and a sort of conversation between the reader and narrator. Even though many of their poems seem to be addressed to women, they "can be read as 'fragments of an agon', moments of an agonizing struggle between two male rivals apparently friends but locked in a secret and mortal combat for the deadly right to be 'the speaker' of 'the word'," (Lauder, 2001, p. 68). To showcase their works and their new theme, they collaborated on a volume of poetry entitled "Lyrical Ballads".

There are connections that can be found between the different works of the two poets, beginning with their vigorous use of nature in an otherworldly context. In his poem "Kubla Khan", Coleridge includes nature to complete the picture of another world, or another part of the world, the East: "And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills/ Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree/ And here were forests ancient as the hills/ Enfolding sunny spots of greenery," (Greenblatt et al, 2006). 

Similarly, but of course in a contrasting way, Wordsworth's view of nature is less exotic and more tangible. In other words, Coleridge's words made nature part of a fantasy world, but Wordsworth's approach was one that the average reader could relate to. For example, in his poem, "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,", nature is described simply but still in a way that evokes emotion; "I saw a crowd [...] of golden daffodils/ beside the lake, beneath the trees/ fluttering and dancing in the breeze," (Greenblatt et al, 2006).

One last notable connection between the works of Coleridge and Wordsworth would be their use of "I". By using "I", it is as if they are addressing the reader, or what is, more likely, a character within the poem. It is the "I" that connects the reader deeper with the narrator of the poem, creating the illusion of not just a poem, but a conversation.

References:

Greenblatt, S., et al. (Eds.) (2006). The Norton anthology of English literature (8th ed., Vol.2). New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.\

Lauder, B. (2001, Winter). Secret(ing) conversations: coleridge and wordsworth. New Literary History, 32 (1), 67-89. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/20057648

William Blake's Poetry Collections

William Blake's triumvirate of collective poems, Songs of Innocence and Experience and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell come together to create the portrait of man and life stages. Throughout each collection, nature is used in different ways to accentuate the images Blake's poems were meant to evoke.

Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience are two works that are defined by their names. In Songs of Innocence, the reader is taken back to childhood, where everything was a discovery, full of the beauty of nature. The animals in the collection are friendly and it is natural for the narrator to praise them, or even engage in conversation with them, "Pretty, pretty robin/ under leaves so green/ a happy blossom/ hears you sobbing, sobbing," (Greenblatt et al, 2006). 

Another example of the use of nature in Songs of Innocence would be the poem "The Flute", "Little lamb/ here I am/ come and lick/ my white neck," (Greenblatt et al, 2006). Questions of childhood, such as acceptance and the love of a mother and father are explored in a few of the poems, always circling back to nature as it pertains to a child's outlook. Even the introduction is harmonious with nature, "Piping down the valleys wild [...]/ On a cloud I saw a laughing child," (Greenblatt et al, 2006).

The introduction of the Innocence collection set the tone, just as the introduction of Songs of Experience sets the tone.

From brightness, innocence, and childhood, the reader is taken down darker, more adult avenues in Songs of Experience, "Hear the voice of the Bard! [...]/ whose ears have heard/ The Holy Word/ That walked among the ancient trees," (Greenblatt et al, 2006). Both collections depict nature and God, just in opposing fashions. New ideas are presented in this set of poems, like love, jealousy, misery, and poverty.

While Songs of Innocence and Experience are obviously complements to one another, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell could be considered the final piece of the trilogy. In connection, the two works could be allegories for childhood and adulthood, whereas The Marriage of Heaven and Hell could be the spiritual stage man takes in death and the afterlife; "The man kept his course along/ the vale of death," (Greenblatt et al, 2006).

References:

Greenblatt et al [Eds]. (2006). The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Romantic Period Through the Twentieth Century [vol. 2].

American Poets in the 19th Century

Early American poets often had a sonorous tone, and at times their poems were even a bit long-winded. In comparison, the form of poems written later by Walt Whitman, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Emily Dickinson have a lighter quality to them throughout. In Whitman's poem, "Song of Myself", the reader's spirit is uplifted merely by reading the first line: "I celebrate myself, and sing myself," (McMichael & Leonard, 2011). Along with the happier tones, these poets also had a more lyrical approach to penning their stanzas. 

For example, while reading Longfellow's poem "A Psalm of Life", one can almost imagine pairing the words with a song, "Tell me not, in mournful numbers/ Life is but an empty dream/ For the soul is dead that slumbers/ and things are not what they seem," (McMichaels & Leonards, 2011). Dickinson had similar playful tones in her poems, such as in "There is no Frigate like a Book", "There is no frigate like a book/ to take us lands away/ nor any coursers like a page/ of prancing poetry," (McMichael & Leonard, 2011).

To further explore Dickinson's poetry, the significant images found in her poems would be love, identity, nature, and death, like her poem "Because I Could Not Stop for Death". These images might represent her life experiences, or her lack thereof. Perhaps she longed to live a different life, one full of excitement and beauty. Instead, she wrote about wonderful, sad, and beautiful things.

References:

McMichael, G. & Leonard, J. S. (2011). Concise anthology of american literature. (Eds.).

New York, NY: Pearson Education, Inc.

Analysis of Four Different Poems

In the poem, My Last Duchess, Robert Browning constructs a sinister tone by implying murder was committed in such casual tones: "I gave commands/Then all smiles stopped altogether." At first, the narrator in the poem seems to describe a portrait of a woman he loved, but by the poem's end, the reader is well aware that "[the duke] refers to his last duchess as an object, as a possession that has been appropriately added to his prized collection," (DiYanni, 2008, p. 514).

The connotation of the word daffodils differs from its denotation in William Wordsworth's I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud. While a dictionary describes daffodils simply as yellow flowers, in his poem, Wordsworth personifies the daffodils to make the narrator's loneliness apparent to the reader. He does this by describing the daffodils as "a crowd", "a host", and seeing the daffodils "dance".

The effect of Elizabeth Bishop's recurrent use of white imagery in the First Death in Nova Scotia is one that illustrates the finality felt by the narrator over the death of Arthur. She describes his casket as "frosted cake", his countenance as "white, like a doll, and his final resting place: "roads deep in snow".

Shakespeare plays with metaphor and meaning in his two poems, Shall I compare thee to a summer's day and My mistress eyes are nothing like the sun. During the poem Shall I compare thee to a summer's day, the reader knows that the narrator is in love because he uses a summer day to describe the object of his affection. He also vows that their love will last forever, an "eternal summer" that "shall not fade". Simile is further employed in My mistress eyes are nothing like the sun with the line, "If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head."

References:

DiYanni, R. (2008). Literature approaches to fiction, poetry, and drama [2nd Ed.]. New York: McGraw Hill

Elements of Poetry

Symbolism and allegory are two intricately linked aspects of poetry. Symbolism is a tangible object that represents another aspect beyond its literal meaning, (DiYanni, 2008, p. 536). Allegory is when the events, characters, and places in the narrative contain a symbolic meaning, (DiYanni, 2008, p. 537). Emily Dickinson’s poem Because I could not Stop for Death is an example of an allegorical poem. It has plenty of instances of symbolism, but the places described in the poem and the personification of death are the two important symbols to consider, therefore setting it apart as an allegorical work of literature.

Lines 9-13 of the poem could be a representation of the narrator seeing all the central events of her life or human life in general before she dies, or before the narrator and death pass “the Setting Sun/Or rather—He passed Us.” One more example of the allegorical nature of Dickinson’s poem would be lines 17-20, when she describes “The cornice—in the Ground.” The cornice could represent her own grave.

Syntax is the grammatical way in which the words come together to create a feeling, (DiYanni, 2008, p. 542). Towhomitmayconcern by Sonia Sanchez is a poem brought to life because of the use of syntax. The words are spelled out how the narrator would sound them out; in effect the reader ‘hears’ the voice of the narrator with lines like “ima gonna stake you out”.

Rhythm and meter are two elements of poetry that both describe the flow and measure it as well. The prevailing meter in Her Kind is iambic pentameter. Most of the poem's lines contain ten syllables, with two syllables per foot. To keep the poem moving, the author Anne Sexton variegates from ten syllables per line, to eight, nine, and five. Altogether, the poem has a lilting quality to it, primarily due to the author's use of caesura and enjambment. The run-on lines pull the reader’s eye down to read more the poem, and each pause sets the necessary rhythm for the poem to follow.

Langston Hughes accents his poem I Too to create a pattern and tone in each line. Every line seems a proclamation and every important as the one the precedes it: “But I laugh/And eat well/And grow strong.”

DiYanni, R. (2008). Literature approaches to fiction, poetry, and drama [2nd Ed.]. New York: McGraw Hill