EXPERIMENTAL POETRY..!!

DEFINITION...!!
“Experimentation is one aspects of all modernist and post-modernist poetry ,
but experimental poetry makes a special points of innovation, sometimes in the
belief that current poetry is stereotyped and inadequates but more often for its
own sake” (John Solcombe)

EXPLANATION...!!
Experimental poetry is a product of “MODERNIST” and “POSTMODERNIST”
poetry. Its explores and emphasizes innovation. Individuals who write
experimental poetry don’t always write with a conscious awareness and tries to
desire meaning from things that where a work fit into an aesthetics range. Its
about poetry ...that is not necessarily poetry that doesn’t include words and
would defy the rules in especially in sense of metric of Rhyme of Rhythm,it could
use any of the instances of traditional and conventional poetry.
The most distinctive of experimental poetry was in how it was structured on the
page,the words follow their own forms rather than a standard, and sometimes
this regard rules related to language and function,but through some of the
definitions here another one from a poet ,
“Reading Experimental poetry is like listening to impromptu free-style jazz the
good kind that you only hear late at night at jazz clubs or during a musician’s
private practice sessions .” (Rae Armantrout)

HISTORY OF EXPERIMENTAL POETRY..!!

Compared to sonnets and lyrical poems—classical forms—experimental poetry
and literature is a relatively new, evolving genre. About a century-and-a-half later,
in the 1910s, artistic experimentation blew into full force. Often inspired by jazz
and abstract expressionist painting, American and European writers began
experimenting with poetic forms as they show in the modernist movement.
Avant-garde movements also largely contributed to evolution of experimental
poetry, including Dadaism, futurism and surrealism. Experimental poetry that
came out of the New York School. As New York City was the birthplace of Abstract
Expressionism, which largely inspired experimental poetry.
One such writer includes....
Jean Valentine,
Valentine states that as she writes, she pays attention to the sounds of her
words. If they don’t sound alive in a draft, she takes them out.
Today’s contemporary experimental writers demonstrate many of the qualities
seen in works from the 1960s. Their works, however, tend to have more irony and
humor.
Elaine Equi is a masterful contemporary experimental poet who writes for
literary and non-literary audiences. Much of her inspiration comes from her
observations of others, her life and pop culture.
Experimental poetry isn’t necessarily poetry that breaks the rules. It’s poetry with
its own borders and boundaries. Rather than haven an against engagement with
literature, as some view it, experimental poetry has an alternative engagement
with convention.

FORMS OF POETRY..!!
There is, first, the obvious external form of a rhymed, closed couplet in iambic
pentameter . There is, second, the obvious external form of a single sentence
balanced in four grammatical units with and in counterpoint with the metrical
form. There is, third, the conventional form belonging to the epitaph and
reflecting back to antiquity, There is, fourth, the fictional form belonging to the
epitaph, according to which the dead man is supposed to be saying the words
himself. There is, fifth, especially poignant in this instance, the real form behind or
within the fictional one.
INTRODUCTION OF POET..!!
T.S.ELIOT was born in 1888 and lived upto 1965, as he was a poet, critic and
playwright, a pioneer of the “MODERNIST MOVEMENT”. Though
“EXPERIMENTAL” in writing he was very conservative in Political, and Religious
views. He got a Noble prize in Literature in 1948...He has said this famously ..
“I am a Classicist in literature , Anglo Catholic in religion, and conservative in
Politics”
Eliot went to “HARWARD UNIVERSITY” that was in 1906, and there his teachers
included the philosopher George Santayana and Irving Babbitt were very
important writers of that time and influences Eliot in different ways. Babbitt
influenced his idea of dynamic relationship between past and present. Eliot
believe in tradition and the individual talent. Eliot also had a very great bias
against “ROMANTICISM”. HE was a “MODERNIST” .
Eliot interest in “DANTE” , “JULES”, LAFORGUE” and “FRENCH SYMBOLISM”.
He served a short term as assistant editor of the egoist ,( the egoist was a popular
periodical a literary journal of this time), and then he became the editor of the
new quaterly review “THE CRITERION” (1922 until it ceased publication in 1939).
Also worked as a director of “FABER AND FABER”
“HE BAGAN TO PUBLISH POETRY WITH THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF EZRA
POUND , SHE WAS A VERY INORTANT FIGURE AT THIS TIME AND SHE
DISCOVERED ELIOT TALENTS IN SOMEWAYS “

“THE LOVE SONG J. ALFRED PRUFROCK”

BACKGROUND..!!
“A Magazine of Verse” was launched in October 1912. Young new writers were
drawn to the magazine, and it quickly became the world’s leading English-
language poetry journal. Because its inception also coincided with the
Midwestern cultural ferment later known as the Chicago literary renaissance, the
magazine is often thought of as the vehicle for the raw, original, locally coloured
poetry of Carl Sandburg, Edgar Lee Masters, Vachel Lindsay, and Sherwood
Anderson, but it also presented new formalistic movements in verse. The poet
and critic Ezra Pound was its foreign correspondent. “The Love Song of J. Alfred
Prufrock” by the then unknown T.S. Eliot appeared in Poetry (1915), as did the
experimental poems of Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, D.H. Lawrence, and
William Carlos Williams.
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, dramatic monologue by T.S. Eliot,
published in Poetry magazine in 1915 and in book form in Prufrock and Other
Observations in 1917. The poem consists of the musings of Prufrock, a weary
middle-aged man haunted by the feeling that he has lost both youth and
happiness:“I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.”
“Prufrock” was both Eliot’s first major publication and the first masterpiece of
modernism in English. Eliot’s experiment with poetic form, metre, rhyme, and
voice was a radical departure from the restrictions of established forms and
diction. Segments of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” often called the “First
Modernist poem”.

ANALYSIS OF EXPERIMENTAL ELEMENTS IN

“J. ALFRED PRUFROCK”..!
It is a poem where a character a” modern man” like an everyman in a modern
period he is pondering over the nature of his existences “the love song of J.Alfred
Prufrock” look at this tittle the love song suggest an amorous theme and this
Alfred Prufrock a very unseen significant name and also very self-obsessed
person.
He is just an ordinary man and he is a failure in his life but the tittle make it look
like it is some grand story of his life, this form of “examination of the tortured
psyche of the prototypical modern man” and this man is over educated ,
eloquent and anti-heroic this is a painfully self- conscious monologue spoken by
this man as he goes through the streets of London , he just spend his life doing
“meaningless activities “not able to do anything that kind of a failed character
this is . and the poem also shows a touchstone for modern man . this is “an
allusion to Laforgue’s self – mocking little man” this elements has been used by
T.S Eliot in this poem as well.
Prufrock seems to be addressing a potential lover but does not “dare” to
approach the women , in his mind he hears the comments other make about his
inadequacies he is not able to overcome the fear of society and what others will
think about him.
In this poem a Prufrock in all of us we are all such characters who cannot live
confidently and who are scared of what other will think and who are always trying
to live somebody’s else expectations and be something that we are not so that is
the (malady) of modernity. And that is what Prufrock represent , he chides
himself for presuming emotional interaction could be possible at all he is very shy
of communicating with people and he is very self-conscious and he lives in a
fantasy there in such a world there is no possibility of emotional interactions at all
and intimacy at all.
1...Interior monologue,
Interior monologues encompass several forms, including dramatized inner
conflicts, self-analysis, imagined dialogue (as in T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J.
Alfred Prufrock” [1915]), and rationalization. It may be a direct first-person
expression apparently devoid of the author’s selection. The term interior
monologue is often used interchangeably with “stream of consciousness”. The
interior monologue was first used extensively by Édouard Dujardin in Les Lauriers
sont coupés and later became a characteristic device of 20th-century
psychological novels.
2...MODERN VAIN PEOPLE..!!
“PRUFROCK” is a member of the decadent aristocracy , just as sweeney, in
“SWEENEY AMONG THE NIGHTINGALES” is representatives of Eliot’s proletariats
in the Prufrock volume of the poetry. Prufrock lives in a world in which art and
music have become the idle conversation of women , who are spiritually , and
intellectually dead , who spent there lives in an eternel round of afternoon tea
parties, who may talk of art because because it is expected that the class to which
they belong should know something about it. Prufrock is one of this group..
EXAMPLE...!!
“THE WOMEN WHO COME AND GO , TALKING OF MICHELANGELO”.
Prufrock ,we come to see is a very attentive to about his dress as they are ,
Prufrock has measured out his life ..”COFFEE SPOON” and his life has been as
empty , as meaningless as their has been.
3...STYLE..!!
“The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufork “ begins with an Epigraph a quote that set a
tone for the poem to follow. This Epigraph included in the poem in the original
Italian, is form “DANTE’S DIVINE COMEDY” .Eliot believe in the instructive
function of poetry, as well as his conviction that it was a poet;s reponsibility to be
aware of and build on the established tradition of poetry .
This poem is structured into four sections , with each section seperated by an
Ellipsis, a mark used in conventional punctuation to indicate an omission, Eliot
belief that “NO VERSE IS FREE FOR THE SERIOUS POET” is apparent in “the love
song” .this poem is written in free verse with varying line length, but Eliot
employs Rhyme as a major structural component in its composition.
4...POEM STRUCTURE..!
In the 131 lines of the main poem structure , only 12 lines are unrhymed. The
patterns of Rhyme in first stanza, beginning..“LET US GO THEN , YOU AND I” a
couplet and unrhymed line -a series of three couplet – an unrhymed line-a
couplet. Such a pattern serves to establish coherence in the stanza as well as to
create a distinctive music.
 Eliot also found repetition useful to establish rhythms of ideas a well as
sound rhythms. The pepetition of the word” time” in two stanzas beginning
“AND INDEED THERE WILL BE TIME ....” in the first section.
 Conventional punctuations and sentences structure are used in this poem,
but capitals letters at the beginnings of lines stress lineation,thus balancing
the importances of the sentences.
 Eliot maintained that poetry should conform to current conversational
speech, he emphasized the musical qualities of speech as well as the
imagistics and symbolics possibilities of words, by his use of lineation.
 The varying line length and stanza length of this poem are indicative of Eliot
refusal to impose a form on the thoughts and emotions are centre of the
 composition. It was not his purpose to discover or create a new form for
poetry, but to free the poet from set forms in order to allow each poem to
create its own form-in this case a “love song “ which Eliot sings onto the
page or the reader.
 This poem is carefully , resembling free verse at the end and it uses
refrains of phrases that are repeated presenting the consciousness of a
modern neurotic individual.
 The poem also present absurd rhymes suggesting that Prufrock is capable
of neither love nor sacrifice metaphors used here the similes , rhymes are
all kind of absurd famously in this form fogg is compared to a lazying cat,
then there is the image of an insect stuck on a pin, a crab deep in the sea
scuttling the flows of the seas , so many striking images but all conveying a
sense of absurdity .
 Rhythms are insistent like incantations, the insistent rhymes repeatedly
same rhythm and its suggest to a ritualistic approach to a climax this a life
without a climax and this life of Prufrock. Eliot said that idea of else where
“THE WORLD END WITH A WHIMPER NOT WITH A BANG “

CONCLUSION..!!
As discussed through out the analysis of the style and work of the writers it is
transparent that every era of poetry is influenced by the experiences and
experiments of the poets . They have experimented with their work bringing the
dimention and substance to English Literature.
This is very true in modern society , a lot of people in a west are lonely like that
they go out of their mind sometimes they act weird they become unconventional
and eventually sometimes even mad, so this kind of isolation and loneliness is
very “characteristics of western Metropolitan societies” even in the times of
T.S.Eliot and very much so today. there are many Metropolitan societies they live
alone they have to live from hand to mouth making their own money and just
absolutely meaningless lives without emotional interaction and intimacy with
anybody .
The core value of Experimental work in the Epitome of the changing values,
economical structures , and the living styles of the different societies going
through the ever changing elements thus bringing us the most beautiful , and
meaningful poetry that each of us can relate to...