Modern poetry and free verse Performer - Culture & Literature Marina Spiazzi, Marina Tavella, Margaret Layton 2013

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1 Modern poetry and free verse Marina Spiazzi, Marina Tavella, Margaret Layton 2013

2 1. Tradition and experimentation The first decades of the 20 th century a period of extraordinary originality and vitality in poetry. A variety of trends and currents expressed the nature of modern experience: The Georgian Poets The War Poets Karl Moll, Twilight, ca Osterreisches Gallery, Belvedere (Vienna). Imagist Poets Symbolist Poets

3 2. The Georgian Poets The Georgian poets influenced by the Victorian Romantic tradition. They were Rupert Brooke ( ), Walter de la Mare ( ), and Edward Thomas ( ). They: employed the conventions of diction; felt sympathy for English elements, such as the countryside as an idyllic place; remained indifferent or hostile to the revolution in sensibility and technique started by the Symbolists. Rupert Brooke Walter de la Mare Edward Thomas

4 3. The War Poets The War Poets: experienced the fighting in most cases lost their lives in the conflict Content of their poetry the horrors of modern warfare represented in an unconventional, anti-rhetorical way Aim of their poetry to awaken the conscience of the readers to the horrors of the war Language employed violent, everyday Their poetry a definite move away from the 19 th -century poetic conventions.

5 4. Imagist Poets Modern poetry officially began with Imagism, a movement which flourished between 1912 and The name Imagiste invented by the American poet Ezra Pound ( ).

6 4. Imagist Poets The main aesthetic principles of Imagist poets were constant use of hard, clear and precise images use of a rhythm freed from the artificial demands of metrical regularity choice of any subject matter poems, usually short, were the poet s response to a scene or object, and contained no moral comment; the aim of poetry: to achieve precision, discipline, dry hardness.

7 5. Symbolist Poets Symbolism a movement started in France with Charles Baudelaire s Les Fleurs du Mal (1857). It influenced the new poetry. The style of the Symbolist poets was characterised by: indirect rather than direct statements the use of allusive language and of the multiple association of words. Les Fleurs du Mal, first edition, 1858

8 5. Symbolist Poets The style of the Symbolist poets was characterised by: the importance given to the sound of words the use of quotations from other literatures, revealing cosmopolitan interests the use of free verse the possibility for the reader to bring meaning to the poem

9 6. Symbolist Poets and T. S. Eliot It was T.S. Eliot who developed the new poetic theory and practice. In his essay Tradition and the Individual Talent (1917), he stated that Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality

10 6. Symbolist Poets 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.

11 7. Free verse At the beginning of the 20 th century under the influences of the French Symbolists, such as Stephane Mallarmé ( ), and the American poets Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, many poets: rejected the 19 th -century regular metre. employed free verse. Emily Dickinson Walt Whitman Stephane Mallarmé

12 7. Free verse Features of free verse: 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