The Modernist period stretched from 1860-1930. During this chaotic time in history, there were countless new developments in technology, science, and medicine. There was also a new concept call urbanization; people moving from rural areas into cities and other urban areas. This period in history brought out artists and poets like never before. They got the urge to express themselves in a way that the world had not seen the likes of at any time that came before it. This created new forms of poetry and art that heavily contrast that of previous periods of history. The Modernist movement would eliminate the precedents created by both Romanticism and the Victorian period. There are many examples of paintings and poems that scream Modernist …show more content…
For example, E.E. Cummings’ poem, “i(a)” was, and still is a unique Modernist poem. It reads vertically rather than horizontally, which was a radical idea at the time that it was written. If the poem is put together horizontally, it reads, “l (a leaf falls) oneliness.” This spells out loneliness, but separates the word with a leaf falls. This relates to the idea of Modernism, because many people felt alone during this period in history. The comparison that is being made is that leaves are all together on a tree, but they are separate, which in turn causes them to be alone. The poem can also see similarities to a Modernist painting called, “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.” The painting depicts many people relaxing in a park on a Sunday afternoon. However, it is apparent that the many different people aren’t really talking to or engaging with one another. This relates to the atmosphere of the Modernist movement, because of the idea of being completely surrounded, but being alone at the same time. This relates back to the poem of how leaves are all together, but are actually separate …show more content…
This showed the idea of actually being alone, versus being alone in a crowd. Being in a crowd and feeling alone is a terrifying feeling. I believe the poem shows this, because it says one leaf falling is like loneliness. However, that leaf came from a crowd of leaves on a tree, which was alone in the first place. The painting shows a crowd of people who are all within 100 feet of each other, but are extremely far away from each other on an emotional
The essay will consider the poem 'Practising' by the poet Mary Howe. It will explore how this poem generates its meaning and focus by analysing its techniques, metaphorical construct and its treatment of memory. The poem can primarily be seen to be a poem of missed opportunity. In this way is comes to form, alongside other poems of Howe's a study about a certain kind of loss and the recuperative efforts of memory, alongside the certainty of the failure of this recuperation. The paper will begin by giving a context to the poem with regard to Howe's life and work and will then proceed to analyse it directly, drawing attention to how it can be seen to fulfil this thesis about its content and meaning.
The poem and the story both demonstrate how nature would continue without mankind. Both tell how nature is always victorious. For example, in the story, a tree falls onto the houses causing them to burn. "A failing tree bough crashed through the kitchen window. " The house tries to defend itself, using technology, but the power of nature is too strong.
In the early 20th century after the world war I, this was the period when modernism started. There was the industrialization, development of modern technology to solve problems and there was the modernist movement in writing also. This movement was characterized by a lack of confidence in the traditional ways of explaining existence and its meaning. Family, and religion were no longer seen as being dependable. Writers could not find any meaning in the old ways of writing, they did see the need to start writing in new techniques as the world was changing.
The poem begins with the narrator describing being alone in the woods. She is being dragged through the water, by a mysterious man which develops the sense of imprisonment. She describes the man’s language as not human and she turned to prayer to find strength.
He or she may have a creative personality who would spot more beauty in nature and look deeper into it than others could ever imagine. While the elder tree in this poem could represent a tree that he grew up with in his backyard and is his favorite place to relieve his stress. “The wheat leans back towards its own darkness And I lean toward mine,” could play the part of the speaker minding his or her own business when “Between trees, a slender woman lifts up the lovely shadow Of her face, and now she steps into the air, now she is gone,” (Wright). These two lines out of the poem show that he or she does not like people.
In the first stanza’s, the narrator’s voice and perspective is more collective and unreliable, as in “they told me”, but nonetheless the references to the “sea’s edge” and “sea-wet shell” remain constant. Later on the poem, this voice matures, as the “cadence of the trees” and the “quick of autumn grasses” symbolize the continuum of life and death, highlighting to the reader the inevitable cycle of time. The relationship that Harwood has between the landscape and her memories allows for her to delve deeper into her own life and access these thoughts, describing the singular moments of human activity and our cultural values that imbue themselves into landscapes. In the poem’s final stanza, the link back to the narrator lying “secure in her father’s arms” similar to the initial memory gives the poem a similar cyclical structure, as Harwood in her moment of death finds comfort in these memories of nature. The water motif reemerges in the poem’s final lines, as “peace of this day will shine/like light on the face of the waters.”
In WW2 the holocaust clamed 6 million Jews lives, and over 7 million soviets died too and 1.7 million of those soviets were also counted towards the 6 million Jews. The holocaust was a genocide during World War II in when Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany tried to take over then world and also attempted to kill off all the Jews. They would send Jews and people who opposed them to concentration camps where they were either durned or worked till they couldn’t. Night is an autobiography by Elie Wiesel, a holocaust survivor. Auschwitz death camp is a video documentary with oprah winfrey and Elie Wiesel.
“Then leaf subsides to leaf” and “So Eden sank to grief” are some examples of imagery in this poem. “Then leaf subsides to leaf” in my opinion, means that the leaves have calmed down. I imagine leaves falling slowly and gracefully onto the ground. “So Eden sank to grief” means that Eden or someone else has become sad or depressed. I image a person falling down into a dark abyss.
In this environment, he is “facing the sun,” happy, open, and free. In closing, Philip Larkin uses literary techniques to make his point in his passage. He utilizes imagery and strong diction to convey his attitude toward the places he describes. Because of this, it can be understood that the speaker is unsatisfied with the crowded city and the habits of its residents.
The agony the writer is feeling about his son 's death, as well as the hint of optimism through planting the tree is powerfully depicted through the devices of diction and imagery throughout the poem. In the first stanza the speaker describes the setting when planting the Sequoia; “Rain blacked the horizon, but cold winds kept it over the Pacific, / And the sky above us stayed the dull gray.” The speaker uses a lexicon of words such as “blackened”, “cold” and “dull gray” which all introduce a harsh and sorrowful tone to the poem. Pathetic fallacy is also used through the imagery of nature;
“Solitary the thrush, the hermit withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements, sings by himself a song,” (Lilacs, stanza 4, line 3-5). The author creates an image of being in solitude usually occur when someone purposely wants to be left alone, or at times when it is unintentional. Throughout Whitman’s poems, a different tone is depicted, but in some, they share the similarity in tone. Walt Whitman uses the symbolism of nature to depict his loneliness.
Modernism began in early 1700s with the rise of capitalism. This was start of an age of rational thinking. The major belief of this age was to believe only those things which they could see. The idea of modernism is, to quote father of Modern Philosophy Rene Descartes, ‘I think therefore I am’(2). This basically meant believing only those phenomenon those can be seen or proved by science.
Additionally, “defining the wood with one feature prefigures one of the essential ideas of the poem: the insistence that a single decision can transform a life” (Robinson). This one feature, the yellow leaves, and in it the sole definition of
Modern poetry is in open form and free verse. It is pessimistic in tone, portraying loss in faith and psychological struggle which is quite different from the fixed forms and meters of traditional poetry. Secondly, modern poetry is fragmented in nature, containing juxtaposition, inter-textuality and allusion. It has no proper beginning, middle or end. Thirdly, modern poetry is predominantly intellectual in its appeal, rather than emotive.
He supported the free verse and skillfully practiced the techniques of collage and allusion. Pound placed a value on novelty and experimentation that helps define what we see as the avant-garde today (Lewis and Domestico). Pound had the most contentious career of any twentieth-century poet, and his overall place in American literature is more controversial than that of any other modernist. As a poet, a critic, and a promoter of other writers, Pound was crucial to the growth of modernist poetry. T. S. Eliot, in dedicating his poem