“Characteristics of Modern Poetry”

Introduction:

Modernist poetry refers to poetry written, mainly in Europe and North America, between
1890 and 1950 in the tradition of modernist literature, but the dates of the term depend upon a
number of factors, including the nation of origin, the particular school in question, and the
biases of the critic setting the dates. The critic/poet C. H. Sisson observed in his essay Poetry
and Sincerity that "Modernity has been going on for a long time. Not within living memory
has there ever been a day when young writers were not coming up, in a threat of iconoclasm."
Characteristics of modern poetry is the first manifestation of modernism, appeared as a
poetical deviation from romanticism. The metaphysical justification consolidates a genuine
religion of art, which is manifested by aestheticism, by the cult of artificiality. Thus, the
poem becomes the prototype of art in symbolism. Psychically, symbolism is seen as a state of
crisis. For many symbolists, sensitivity means a taste of the bizarre, anxiety, decadence,
apathy, lifelessness, disorder of senses. The main themes, Characteristic and motives
introduced by symbolists are: urban nature, solitude, evasion, chromatics, some protesting
attitude, the city, the sense of death, everything that is difficult to define: polarize with the
myth of progress, rediscover ancient mythologies, invoke the world of timeless ideas and at
the same time, they live the idea of modernism. 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. 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. Modern poetry
is suggestive; the poem may suggest different meanings to different readers. Modern poetry is
cosmopolitan. It appeals to man everywhere and at every time because it deals with the
problems of man or humanity. Experimentation is on of the important characteristic feature of
modern poetry.

What is Modern Poetry?

If we want to discuss about what is modern poetry then we will have to tell about the magic
of modern poetry which is resource center for the theory and craft of writing poetry. Modern
poetry which is a curious mixture of the traditional and the experimental of the old and the
new, it is of cosmopolitan nature with English, Irish and American poets. It is also a poetry of
revolt resulting largely from the impact of science. This revolt is to be seen in the form and
this revolt is to be seen in the form content. We can see this revolt in the poetries of T.S.
Eliot. The poet sees life in its naked naturalism.

Trends or Characteristics of Modern Poetry:

The trends or characteristic of Modern Poetry or modern poetry characteristics is shown

below:

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The main theme of the modern poetry is realistic. The realism of life is shown in the modern
poetry. The tragedy of human life is found in the mind of human poets. Eliot’s “The Waste
Land” reflects the traffic flaw and despair of human life. Passion for humanity is a salient
feature of modern poetry. The common theme of a large number of modern poems are the
tendency to slow sympathy to the down-trodder. Modern poetry reflects the disorder and
decay of modern civilization. “The Waste Land” by T.S Eliot is an example of vivid picture
of decay and isolation. The treatment of myth and history are the also main important aspects
of modern poetry. W.B Yeat’s famous poem “A prayer for my daughter”, Eliot’s “The love
song of Alfred Prufrock” have many mythological references.

Modern poetry reflects turbulent politics of the period. Auden in his poem “In the Memory of
W.B Yeats”, he describes about the terrible outbreak of World War II in 1939. He tells in the
following ways:

“In the nightmare of the dark

All the dogs of Europe bark
And the living nations wait
Each sequestered in its hate”

7. Impressionism, Imagination and Surrealism are the innovation or main characteristic in

Modern Poetry.  

Major Modern poets of Modern Age:

Modern poetry in English Literature begins after the Victorian Age. Modern poets try to focus the
barrenness sterility, fragmentation, alienation, boredom and indecisive of modern man. The major
modern poets who has contributed precisely to modern English literature are W. Whitman, W.B
Yeats, Robert Frost, W. H. Auden, Seamus Heany, T.S Eliot, Dylan Thomas etc.

Characteristics of Walt Whitman’s Poetry:

Song of Myself

"Song of Myself" is a poem by Walt Whitman (1819–1892) that is included in his work
Leaves of Grass. It has been credited as "representing the core of Whitman's poetic vision.

Reception

Following its 1855 publication, "Song of Myself" was immediately singled out by critics and
readers for particular attention, and the work remains among the most acclaimed and
influential in American poetry. In 2011, writer and academic Jay Parini named it the greatest
American poem ever written.

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In 1855, the Christian Spiritualist gave a long, glowing review of "Song of Myself", praising
Whitman for representing "a new poetic mediumship," which through active imagination
sensed the "influx of spirit and the divine breath." Ralph Waldo Emerson also wrote a letter
to Whitman, praising his work for its "wit and wisdom".

Public acceptance was slow in coming, however. Social conservatives denounced the poem
as flouting accepted norms of morality due to its blatant depictions of human sexuality. In
1882, Boston's district attorney threatened action against Leaves of Grass for violating the
state's obscenity laws and demanded that changes be made to several passages from "Song of
Myself".

Literary style:

"Song of Myself" includes passages about the unsavory realities of the United States before
the Civil War, including one about a multi-racial slave

The poem is written in Whitman's signature free verse style. Whitman, who praises words "as
simple as grass" (section 39) forgoes standard verse and stanza patterns in favor of a simple,
legible style that can appeal to a mass audience.

In addition to this romanticism, the poem seems to anticipate a kind of realism that would
only become important in United States literature after the American Civil War. In the
following 1855 passage, for example, we can see Whitman's inclusion of the gritty details of
everyday life:

The lunatic is carried at last to the asylum a confirm'd case,

(He will never sleep any more as he did in the cot in his mother's bed-room;)
The jour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works at his case,
He turns his quid of tobacco while his eyes blurr with the manuscript;
The malform'd limbs are tied to the surgeon's table,
What is removed drops horribly in a pail;
The quadroon girl is sold at the auction-stand, the drunkard nods by the bar-room stove, ...
(section 15)

"Self":

In the poem, Whitman emphasizes an all-powerful "I" which serves as narrator, who should
not be limited to or confused with the person of the historical Walt Whitman. The persona
described has transcended the conventional boundaries of self: "I pass death with the dying,
and birth with the new-washed babe .... and am not contained between my hat and boots"
(section 7).

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There are several other quotes from the poem that makes it apparent that Whitman does not
consider the narrator to represent a single individual. Rather, he seems to be narrating for all:

 "For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you." (Section 1)

 "In all people I see myself, none more and not one a barleycorn less/and the good or
bad I say of myself I say of them" (Section 20)
 "It is you talking just as much as myself... I act as the tongue of you" (Section 47)
 "I am large, I contain multitudes." (Section 51)

Alice L. Cook and John B. Mason offer representative interpretations of the "self" as well as
its importance in the poem. Cook writes that the key to understanding the poem lies in the
"concept of self" (typified by Whitman) as "both individual and universal,"[8] while Mason
discusses "the reader’s involvement in the poet’s movement from the singular to the cosmic".
[9] The "self" serves as a human ideal; in contrast to the archetypal self in epic poetry, this
self is one of the common people rather than a hero.

Song of Myself’s Form:

This most famous of Whitman’s works was one of the original twelve pieces in the 1855 first
edition of Leaves of Grass. Like most of the other poems, it too was revised extensively,
reaching its final permutation in 1881. “Song of Myself” is a sprawling combination of
biography, sermon, and poetic meditation. It is not nearly as heavy-handed in its
pronouncements as “Starting at Paumanok”; rather, Whitman uses symbols and sly
commentary to get at important issues. “Song of Myself” is composed more of vignettes than
lists: Whitman uses small, precisely drawn scenes to do his work here.

This poem did not take on the title “Song of Myself” until the 1881 edition. Previous to that it
had been titled “Poem of Walt Whitman, an American” and, in the 1860, 1867, and 1871
editions, simply “Walt Whitman.” The poem’s shifting title suggests something of what
Whitman was about in this piece. As Walt Whitman, the specific individual, melts away into
the abstract “Myself,” the poem explores the possibilities for communion between
individuals. Starting from the premise that “what I assume you shall assume” Whitman tries
to prove that he both encompasses and is indistinguishable from the universe.

Characteristics of W.B.Yeats’s Poetry:

The Salient Features of Yeats's Poetry:

William Butler Yeats has been recognized as a great modern poet of the 20th century. J.W. Beach
calls him the finest of British poets of the modern age. Edith Sitwell, admiring his poetry, says, "It is
forty years since the earliest of these great poems gave new life to the language…. . " G.S. Frazer in
his widely known book entitled The Modern Writer and His World claims for Yeats the position of a
major English poet, and equates him with Donne, with Milton and with Wordsworth and considers

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him very greatly superior to Browning, to Tennyson and to Arnold. Further, he asserts that the poetry
of Yeats would be more permanent and enduringly popular than the poetry of either T.S. Eliot or of
Ezra Pound, because it is more coherent, and more traditional than that of his two great
contemporaries.

His poetry deals with a variety of themes ranging from ancient legend, mythology, folklore,
politics, history, love and constantly creates new myths of his own. His work is uniformly
good and his creations are quite extensive and he writes with ease on themes adopted from
every sphere of life.

Yeats has been regarded as a great myth-maker. His prose work Vision has been assessed as
the most ambitious attempt made by any poet of time to set up a myth. Yeats is forever
finding analogies in the present and the personal in the past and impersonal. The present is
thus raised high and gloried and imparted the universal status of a myth. In the opening
stanza of Easter 1916 we are given the myth of Yeats's contemporaries coming out of the
dead past to take part in the activities of the present. Yeats invents new myths or tries old
ones in changed context, or invests them with new significance. In the poem Magi the old
Biblical story is modified and the Magi are transported to stars looking down at "bestial
floor".Features following his last poems deal with extremes of everything and there is too
much of blood, dust and mud. There we have the glorification of violence and war, the
celebration of sexuality, the same inner emptiness revealed either in an expression of personal
futility or in the insistence upon a hysterical and nihilistic exultation. Some of these poems
might have a barbaric beauty and splendor, but it is a splendor of desolation and emptiness; a
cold, inhuman beauty of a political personal satire or a ballad of violence. All these excellent
characteristics attends him as the great poet of all the time.

The Relationship Between Art and Politics:

Yeats believed that art and politics were intrinsically linked and used his writing to express
his attitudes toward Irish politics, as well as to educate his readers about Irish cultural history.
From an early age, Yeats felt a deep connection to Ireland and his national identity, and he
thought that British rule negatively impacted Irish politics and social life. His early
compilation of folklore sought to teach a literary history that had been suppressed by British
rule, and his early poems were odes to the beauty and mystery of the Irish countryside. This
work frequently integrated references to myths and mythic figures, including Oisin and
Cuchulain. As Yeats became more involved in Irish politics—through his relationships with
the Irish National Theatre, the Irish Literary Society, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and
Maud Gonne—his poems increasingly resembled political manifestos. Yeats wrote numerous
poems about Ireland’s involvement in World War I (“An Irish Airman Foresees His Death”
[1919], “A Meditation in Time of War” [1921]), Irish nationalists and political activists (“On
a Political Prisoner” [1921], “In Memory of Eva Gore Booth and Con Markiewicz” [1933]),
and the Easter Rebellion (“Easter 1916” [1916]). Yeats believed that art could serve a

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political function: poems could both critique and comment on political events, as well as
educate and inform a population.

The Impact of Fate and the Divine on History:

Yeats’s devotion to mysticism led to the development of a unique spiritual and philosophical
system that emphasized the role of fate and historical determinism, or the belief that events
have been preordained. Yeats had rejected Christianity early in his life, but his lifelong study
of mythology, Theosophy, spiritualism, philosophy, and the occult demonstrate his profound
interest in the divine and how it interacts with humanity. Over the course of his life, he
created a complex system of spirituality, using the image of interlocking gyres (similar to
spiral cones) to map out the development and reincarnation of the soul.

Irish Nationalism and Politics:

Throughout his literary career, Yeats incorporated distinctly Irish themes and issues into his
work. He used his writing as a tool to comment on Irish politics and the home rule movement
and to educate and inform people about Irish history and culture. Yeats also used the
backdrop of the Irish countryside to retell stories and legends from Irish folklore. As he
became increasingly involved in nationalist politics, his poems took on a patriotic tone. Yeats
addressed Irish politics in a variety of ways: sometimes his statements are explicit political
commentary, as in “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death,” in which he addresses the
hypocrisy of the British use of Irish soldiers in World War I. Such poems as “Easter 1916”
and “In Memory of Eva Gore Booth and Con Markiewicz” address individuals and events
connected to Irish nationalist politics, while “The Second Coming” and “Leda and the Swan”
subtly include the idea of Irish nationalism. In these poems, a sense of cultural crisis and
conflict seeps through, even though the poems are not explicitly about Ireland. By using
images of chaos, disorder, and war, Yeats engaged in an understated commentary on the
political situations in Ireland and abroad. Yeats’s active participation in Irish politics
informed his poetry, and he used his work to further comment on the nationalist issues of his
day.

Mysticism and the Occult:

Yeats had a deep fascination with mysticism and the occult, and his poetry is infused with a
sense of the otherworldly, the spiritual, and the unknown. His interest in the occult began
with his study of Theosophy as a young man and expanded and developed through his
participation in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a mystical secret society. Mysticism
figures prominently in Yeats’s discussion of the reincarnation of the soul, as well as in his
philosophical model of the conical gyres used to explain the journey of the soul, the passage
of time, and the guiding hand of fate. Mysticism and the occult occur again and again in
Yeats’s poetry, most explicitly in “The Second Coming” but also in poems such as “Sailing
to Byzantium” and “The Magi” (1916). The rejection of Christian principles in favor of a

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more supernatural approach to spirituality creates a unique flavor in Yeats’s poetry that
impacts his discussion of history, politics, and love.

Irish Myth and Folklore:

Yeats’s participation in the Irish political system had origins in his interest in Irish myth and
folklore. Irish myth and folklore had been suppressed by church doctrine and British control
of the school system. Yeats used his poetry as a tool for re-educating the Irish population
about their heritage and as a strategy for developing Irish nationalism. He retold entire
folktales in epic poems and plays, such as The Wanderings of Oisin (1889) and The Death of
Cuchulain (1939), and used fragments of stories in shorter poems, such as “The Stolen Child”
(1886), which retells a parable of fairies luring a child away from his home, and “Cuchulain’s
Fight with the Sea” (1925), which recounts part of an epic where the Irish folk hero
Cuchulain battles his long-lost son by at the edge of the sea. Other poems deal with subjects,
images, and themes culled from folklore. In “Who Goes with Fergus?” (1893) Yeats
imagines a meeting with the exiled wandering king of Irish legend, while “The Song of
Wandering Aengus” (1899) captures the experiences of the lovelorn god Aengus as he
searches for the beautiful maiden seen in his dreams. Most important, Yeats infused his
poetry with a rich sense of Irish culture. Even poems that do not deal explicitly with subjects
from myth retain powerful tinges of indigenous Irish culture. Yeats often borrowed word
selection, verse form, and patterns of imagery directly from traditional Irish myth and
folklore.

The Gyre:

The gyre, a circular or conical shape, appears frequently in Yeats’s poems and was developed
as part of the philosophical system outlined in his book A Vision. At first, Yeats used the
phases of the moon to articulate his belief that history was structured in terms of ages, but he
later settled upon the gyre as a more useful model. He chose the image of interlocking gyres
—visually represented as two intersecting conical spirals—to symbolize his philosophical
belief that all things could be described in terms of cycles and patterns. The soul (or the
civilization, the age, and so on) would move from the smallest point of the spiral to the
largest before moving along to the other gyre. Although this is a difficult concept to grasp
abstractly, the image makes sense when applied to the waxing and waning of a particular
historical age or the evolution of a human life from youth to adulthood to old age.

The Swan:

Swans are a common symbol in poetry, often used to depict idealized nature. Yeats employs
this convention in “The Wild Swans at Coole” (1919), in which the regal birds represent an
unchanging, flawless ideal. In “Leda and the Swan,” Yeats rewrites the Greek myth of Zeus
and Leda to comment on fate and historical inevitability: Zeus disguises himself as a swan to
rape the unsuspecting Leda. In this poem, the bird is fearsome and destructive, and it
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possesses a divine power that violates Leda and initiates the dire consequences of war and
devastation depicted in the final lines. Even though Yeats clearly states that the swan is the
god Zeus, he also emphasizes the physicality of the swan: the beating wings, the dark webbed
feet, the long neck and beak. Through this description of its physical characteristics, the swan
becomes a violent divine force. By rendering a well-known poetic symbol as violent and
terrifying rather than idealized and beautiful, Yeats manipulates poetic conventions, an act of
literary modernism, and adds to the power of the poem.

Yeats’ Poetic Style:

Yeats’ famous poems feature a unique and very distinct poetic style. W. B. Yeats was a great
poet who deserves a place among other famous artists. The specific characteristics of his type
of poetry originality come from the spontaneous nature of the poem, and the use of alteration
and substitution.

In the first one, spontaneity adds a surprise to the verse and leaves the reader wondering what
will come next. As it is always a process of discovery, the poem becomes even more
intriguing and unexpected. In the second method of writing, using alteration and substitution
gives the ability to percept various meanings and concepts (Unterecker, 1996).

As such, a lot of information can be grasped by the reader, and the picture will be more
logical and organized. Some poems have very shortened verses, and this gives a rapid rhythm
to a poem. It keeps a person at the moment, inspiring to action and a clear way of thinking.
One can see that from the quote below:

That fool, all foul and pitifully looking

Dost thou not learn how to correctly dance?
If ye has chosen entertainer’s fate
That taken kindness from your unresolved inside?

Who’s guilty time will show

As every day is filled with a reminder
To understand what’s meant by the presented man
A hundred years won’t clear the fact of quarrel.

Characteristics of Robert Frost’s Poetry :

Language and Diction: Frost uses simple words, though he seldom resorts to dialects. His language is
plain, but his words are chosen carefully to suit their situation. The words are made to contribute to
the very mood of the poem. He has refined the vernacular without robbing it of its savour.

Poetical Qualities of Robert Frost

Frost - A Popular Poet: Robert Frost emerged as a poet in the America of transition, when
the country was emerging from the old into the new order. He won came in his life time, and

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was admired by the old as well as the new school. He has been undoubtedly the most
distinguished American poet of the twentieth century.

Essentially An 'Outdoor Poet: Frost found his poetry 'out of doors', either in the face of
field or the men who are in daily contact with the elemental realities of earth and sky. He
describes a scene or incident in a way that makes you see what he sees. His style,
conversational, dramatic, terse, is the repressed style of the outdoor man, accustomed to
silence, who never wastes a word. But he is all the same a poet, one who sees something
more where an ordinary man would see only wood or stubble.
Not Only Conservative, but an Experimentalist Too: Frost is often called a traditionalist
and conservative. True, he does not belong to the main current of modern poetry, for he
spoke for conservative adherence to tradition at a time when other young poets were breaking
off the shackles of conventionalism. Frost was against futile experimentation. But he carried
on his own experiments, emphasising speech rhythms and "the sound of sense".

Deceptive Simplicity of Frost's Poems: Frost's poems on the surface seem simple. He puts
on the familiar mask of a shrewd Yankee farmer who speaks of the simple rural folk, and
birds and animals, and the cycle of seasons, and whose utterances are full of practical
wisdom. But the poems in reality have deep significance, and show Frost's penetrating insight
into the primal instincts of man.

Frost As A Poet of Love: It is in the context of his view of humanity that Frost's concept of
love is to be understood. He was not a love poet in the conventional sense. He does not
indulge either in sentimental rhapsodies or in coarse sexuality; his love poems are restrained
but at the same time intense. Furthermore, his view of love is on the universal level: for love
comes with a better understanding of self and others. It is what makes man respect the chaos
of the world with which he is in conflict; it is what makes him respect and accept differences
between men.

Frost's Philosophy - Neither Pessimistic Nor Complacent: Frost's attitude as shown in his
poetry is neither one of utter unrelieved gloom and pessimism, nor one of sheer complacency.
Frost is often willing to accept contrarieties; he is aware that without darkness there would be
no light, and without evil there would be little possibility of freely choosing good. Thus,
though he is not complacent about man's situation, lie has achieved a simplicity born of
experience and painful self-questioning. He is only a patient and persistent seeker after truth,
blind neither to life's grim ironies nor to its more pleasant aspects.

Frost is a Realist: He is a realist in his accurate descriptions of the New England countryside
and its people. If we understand a realist to be one who knows what he is talking about, then
Frost is a realist. But his realism does not imply the cataloguing of minute details whether
pleasant or bald and brutal. He believes in stripping life to form in his art. Frost's method is to
give a part for the whole, to suggest rather than explain all. His poems such as Mending Wall,
After Apple-Picking, Putting in the Seed, and The Woodpile are crystallized bits of life.

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Mixture of Fact and Fancy in Frost's Poetry: Fact and fancy constitute two major planks
in the world of Frost's poetry. Though he is a realist, in the core of thought, there is a
delightful interplay of fact and fancy in his poems, such as After Apple-Picking, Mowing,
Birches, To Earthward. The flight towards heaven is a quest for perfection that our human
world denies. But a momentary touch with the 'perfect' satisfies Frost, for he is willing to
come back with acceptance to earth's reality. The blend of fact and fancy shows Frost's acute
awareness of the 'sick hurry' and 'divided aims' of human life. But he also knows the right
choice to make.

A Symbolic Poet: Apparently whimsical, simple and direct, Frost is actually highly
symbolical in almost all his poems. There is more in his poems than meets the eye-
subterranean, the deep and subtle rhythms and the peculiar Frostian pauses are more eloquent
than the clamour of preachers and moralists. Beneath the deceptive simplicity and apparent
insignificance, there is deep understanding of the human situation and its great significance.

Mixture of Delight and Wisdom: Most of Frost's poems vindicate his view of a poem
beginning in delight and ending in wisdom. Seldom is Frost deliberately and blatantly
moralistic; in his best work there is a balanced fusion of pleasure and wisdom.

A Lover's Quarrel with the World: Frost's poems show his spirit of accepting the world's
contradictions without being crushed by them. "I had a lover's quarrel with the world", he
says in one of his poems, and it aptly sums up his attitude. He may question and criticise the
world but he does so with understanding and in a spirit of love.

Frost's Humour: Frost's touch is light. Even when the subject is serious, as it often is, Frost's
treatment is light. Frost is a humorist, though not in the sense of comic-strip writers. In some
poems, the laughter bubbles out of drollery such as in Brown's Descent. Quiet witticism and
casual wisdom are blended in poems such as Departmental and Two Tramps in Mud Time.
The humour of the characters in Frost's poems may be mild or uproarious. Frost often chose
the way of comedy.

Poetry of Conflict: In Frost's poems the rural themes get significance because through them
he puts forward the conflict between man's sense of duty and his tendency to desire an escape
from the turmoil of life-a conflict of which Frost was keenly aware.

Sense of Duality: In Frost's poems, contraries are constantly being set side by side - Natural
living and insensate, human life and mechanical power, light and darkness, good and evil.
This sense of duality, however does not jar the reader as the heterogeneous elements are well
balanced and blended into a unity.

Frost's Technique: Frost has forged his own idiom and versification. He makes good use of
arts and artifices of verse. He experimented in his way with stanzaic forms and generally uses
a form most appropriate to the content in hand.

Clear and Simple: Frost's technique was to convey what he wanted to communicate in
simple and clear terms. He is lucid enough for a reader, who looks to poetry for mere

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enjoyment. But below the easily grasped image or meaning-some comment about birches, or
deep woods filling up with snow - there is something more.

Layers of Meaning in Frost's Poem: Frost's craftsmanship ensures the multi-faceted

significance in his poem. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening is a much quoted example
for showing the layers of meaning that a Frost poem is capable of yielding. Each reader may
find his own interpretation.

Element of Lyricism: Most of Frost's poems show the lyric poet's gifts of emotion, imagery,
and song. Emotionally, the poems vaguely remind one of the joy and melancholy of Shelley
and Keats. In imagery they are filled with the beauties of the darkness of late autumn, the still
depths ot winter, and the intensity of swift summer. Their musical quality is that of the
conventional verse and stanza form of English poetry. But the purely lyrical vein declined in
Frost's poetry with the passing of time, but the lyrical music never quite left him.

Assuming up of Frost's Salient Poetical Characteristics: It would be apt to quote Jarrell in

summing up the main features of Frost's poetry:
(i) Frost's tenderness, sadness and humour, which are (sometimes) adulterated with vanity;
(ii) Frost's sorrowful acceptance of things as they are without exaggerating them or
explaining them away;
(iii) his seriousness and honesty;
(iv) his many poems in which there are real people with their real speech and real thought and
real emotions;
(v) his subtlety and exactness
(vi) a classical understatement and restraint.

Characteristics of W. H. Auden's Poetry:

Auden's poems deal with universal themes such as love, political and social concerns,
religion and personal morals, often set against the backdrop of man's relation to the natural
world. Born in England in 1907, Auden later settled in the United States, but only after
spending years in locales all over the world. Some critics have called Auden an anti-Romantic—
a poet of analytical clarity who sought for order, for universal patterns of human existence. Auden's
poetry is considered versatile and inventive, ranging from the tersely epigrammatic to book-length
verse, and incorporating a vast range of scientific knowledge.

Auden has become known since his death as one of the first “modern” poets of the 20th
century. Although some dispute his reputation as one of the foremost poets of the 20th
century, it is impossible to discard his influence over other poets. One of Auden’s best
poems, one which seems to crystallize his own career in relation to the development of poetry
in the 20th century, is “The New Age:”W. H Auden is known as an Oxford poet. He was a
versatile writer. He played a very important role as the leader of Oxford poets. Thus Auden is

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popular as the most representative poet of the thirties. He was influenced by Eliot, Hopkins,
Kipling, Freud and Marx.

Auden’s literary career is divided into two phases. In the first phase he was influenced by
both Marx and Freud. Their theories played vital role in the career of this poet. Thus his early
poetry appears as a strange fusion of Freudian and Marxist views. His interest in
psychological state became very deep. He supported the left wing political ideologies. The
main theme of his early poetry is social criticism and protest. This early poetry expresses the
poet’s reaction to the political, social and economic issues of 1930s. Freudian phases and
Marxian metaphors found a place in Auden’s writings. The contemporary political tensions
and social and economic unrest are the important subjects of his early poetry. He treats these
subjects with wit and irony.

Scorn is the predominant note of Auden’s poetry. He sings of human failure in a rapture of
distress. He found his subjects among the sordid realities of diseased social order. The tone
during this early phase is that of an aloof commentator. Auden’s poetry is noted for its
objectivity also. The final impact of his poetry is intellectual not emotional. Auden described
the thirties as a low and dishonest decade. In this decade there was wide spread
unemployment and unrest. The condition of life was pitiable. Auden’s poetry deals with all
these issues.

W.H. Auden is a philosophical and conversational modern poet, combining close

commentary with nonchalant musings. Auden’s poetry has a number of different themes
which enriches his poetic style. From the several themes, we’ll analyze his major themes as
follow;

Love is Fleeting:

While Auden is thought for his poems about heady themes corresponding to demise,
totalitarianism and the function of poetry, he’s additionally famed for his love poems. Many
of them, corresponding to “As I Walked Out One Evening,” “Lullaby” and “O Tell Me the
Truth About Love,” feature stirring passages about how lovely and galvanizing love could be,
and “Funeral Blues” encompasses a man deeply in love with one other. However, for Auden,
that’s not all he has to say about love. Almost all of those poems have a sobering
undercurrent of sorrow, or of the will to remind readers that life, and love, are brief and are
affected by the vicissitudes of existence like illness and time. Love is sweet, however it
doesn’t exist in a universe devoid of struggling waning of affection or, in fact, demise.

Reality in Poetry:

Auden’s poetry evokes the fear of dwelling in the course of the 20th century, when dictators
in Europe suppressed their folks’s freedoms, led their nations into warfare, and resorted to
barbaric ways of mass slaughter. In a couple of of his poems he wonders what the function of
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poetry will be within the face of such nightmares, and why he ought to honor the demise of 1
man when so many had been being killed on the battlefield, on the streets, and in gasoline
chambers. Writing about Freud, he asks, “of whom shall we speak” when “there are so many
we shall have to mourn.” In the elegy for Yeats, he asserts his perception that poetry can
nonetheless, elevate the human spirit and “persuade us to rejoice” and “teach the free man
how to praise.” Auden is a realist in that he understands poetry won’t immediately affect
something, however its behavior of calling things by their actual names can carry us into a
greater relationship with actuality.

Modern Horrors;

Auden’s poetry is typically cerebral, generally brutally sincere and evocative of the historic
context during which he’s writing. He is famed for addressing the problems of his day in a
transferring and relevant manner. The horrors of the modern world don’t escape his incisive
pen; he offers with the dictators and their mad quest for world domination, the downfall of
masses beneath their leaders’ spell, the stultifying bureaucratic state, the Spanish Civil War,
the bleakness and maybe impossibility of the upcoming days, the psychic facet of warfare,
the awful panorama, the martyrdom of heroes and the demise of poets, the unthinking use of
modern instruments, and the bludgeoning of the human spirit by means of the great weight of
historical past. Through all this, Auden retains some hope for the upcoming days, mentioning
the liberty that comes from recognizing our true situation no matter our circumstances are.

Theme of Death;

Death is an ever-present actuality in Auden’s poems, chopping life and love brief. It impacts
each man, even these of prominence and stature, like Yeats and Freud. It can come within the
type of martyrdom, illness or old age or by means of warfare. Death is a weapon utilized by
dictators in addition to a natural part of the human cycle of life and demise. Auden doesn’t
shrink back from this theme, nor the difficulties related to it. He brazenly grieves for a
deceased lover, suggests the futility of the battle between troopers and their enemies in “Ode
V,” and showcases how a terrific thoughts will be rendered ineffective with the onslaught of
bodily erosion. Death cuts brief careers and poses troublesome non secular questions,
however, the dwelling can carry their messages and restate their work, albeit at a remove
from the uniqueness. Overall, Auden’s poems rejoice life, whereas we’ve it, they usually,
immediately face the truth that life is all the time reduced and brief by demise one way or the
other.

Theme of Bureaucracy and Totalitarianism;

This has been one of the major themes of W.H. Auden, whereas he lived throughout the age
of great totalitarianism dictators Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin and Franco, and say the rise of
bureaucratic state. His poems cope with each of those points. Poems together with “The
Shield of Achilles,” “Friday’s Child,” and “September 1, 1939” tackle the hubris and greed

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that led dictators to amass armies, brainwash their residents, and unleash warfare upon the
world. He catalogs the assorted methods the bureaucracy retains tabs on its residents and tries
to cut back them to statistics and figures. Governments do all the things they will to quench
the human spirit, however Auden’s perception within the worth of poetry in addition to the
enduring human spirit counteracts this malicious tendency.

Sufferings;

W.H. Auden’s poetry will be humorous, gentle and sweet, however lots of his best works
cope with the struggling that comes from being human. He writes of the rise and rule of the
dictators and the deadening bureaucratic state; the extinguishing of the light of great males
who’ve been useful to the world; the attrition of affection by means of unfaithfulness, illness,
time, and demise; the crippling nature of satisfaction and greed; religious doubt; warfare and
the complacency and apathy evinced by others once we are undergoing this struggling.
Sometimes we undergo at others’ arms, and typically we carry it upon ourselves.

Characteristics of Dylan Thomas’s Poetry:

Dylan Thomas was obsessed with words—with their sound and rhythm and especially with
their possibilities for multiple meanings. This richness of meaning, an often illogical and
revolutionary syntax, and catalogues of cosmic and sexual imagery render Thomas's early
poetry original and difficult.

Dylan Thomas is one of the writers who has often been associated with Welsh literature
and culture in the last sixty years. He is possibly the most notable Welsh author.
Fortunately, it is mainly his literary work, and not his tumultuous lifestyle, that is still
associated with him. The analysis of some of his poems mirrors his sincere relationship to
Wales. In 1937 he married to Caitlin MacNamara who gave birth to three children.
These circumstances indicate a typical British conservative and straight forward approach
to family life. Dylan Thomas was influenced in his writing by the Romantic Movement
for the beginning of the nineteenth century and this can be seen in a number of his best
works. Dylan Thomas uses symbols and images of nature to express how he feels towards
death and childhood. He says that images are used to create a feeling of love towards life.
Despite Dylan Thomas’s obscure images, he expresses a clear message of religious
devotion in many of his poems. The style of Dylan Thomas is an opaque poetic style
which Thomas used to perfection. He possessed tremendous talent and was blessed with
immense gifts that made him a professional success at a relatively young age.

Dylan Thomas romanticism:

Romanticism is an aesthetic attitude born out of a late eighteenth century reaction to the
Enlightenment, stressing powerful feelings, originality, the individual response and a
return to nature. The Romantic period in English literature is usually considered to

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extend from 1798, when Wordsworth and Coleridge published their Lyrical Ballads, to
1832, when Sir Walter Scott died. The Romantic impulse extended beyond these dates,
however, and can be seen in a variety of art forms, from the music of the latter half of the
nineteenth century to the Romantic impulses of the Impressionists and post-
Impressionists. The Romantic period was a turbulent era politically and socially as
England was changing from its former status as an agricultural society to a modern
industrial state where the balance of economic power shifted to large-scale employers.
The French Revolution
was another impetus for the development of the Romantic spirit, a spirit more egalitarian
than the previous era. Dylan Thomas was influenced in his writing by the Romantic
Movement from the beginning of the nineteenth century, and this can be seen in a
number of his best works, including the poems "Fern Hill," "A Refusal to Mourn the
Death, by Fire, of a Child in London," and "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night."
These and other Dylan works show the power of the Romantic style, which fit well with
Thomas's interests and capabilities as a poet. Poet Dylan Thomas was influenced in his
writing by the Romantic Movement from the beginning of the nineteenth century, and
this can be seen in a number of his best works, including the poems "Fern Hill," "A
Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London," and "Do Not Go Gentle into
That Good Night." These and other Dylan works show the power of the Romantic style,
which fit well with Thomas's interests and capabilities as a poet.

Dylan Thomas as a metaphysical poet:

Considering Dylan Thomas as a „metaphysical poet‟ presents considerable difficulty
because of the complexity of his poetry which does not fit into the frame work of any
rigid definition. Pointing out an aspect specific in its connotation will be a hazardous
task, as the essentiality paradoxical nature of his art might point towards the opposite of
what one is seeking. A poet who has been described as a romantic who spearheaded the
Neo Romantic movement in the 40‟s and as a metaphysical whose handling of religious
themes is reminiscent in its salient features of that of the poets of the seventeenth century
to whom that term has been applied would appear to be almost an impossibility, Dylan
Thomas represents such as literary phenomenon whose poetry displays certain
characteristics of the spontaneous lyrical outbursts of the romantics as well as the
cerebral,
rational, calculated elaborately worked out intellectual conundrums.

Dylan Thomas as a creator of Death-Myth:

The poetry of Dylan Thomas, in its own particular spectrality, also showcases a voice
inflected by the presence and insertion of death and the death-image. For Sylvia Plath, the
concept of the death-poet was both consciously fostered by her in poems, such as “Lady
Lazarus”, but also irreversibly solidified by the nature of her death by suicide, which for

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some readers, added the weight of a macabre authenticity. Dylan Thomas’s poems are
signified by a powerful death-myth, which emanates from the poet himself. The poems were
originally crafted by Thomas with the presence of death always lurking, but when they were
subsequently stamped with a “seal of authenticity” by his death amidst controversy and
excess in America, Thomas himself became a spectral figure of death. Thomas‟s career being
longer and more prodigious than Plath in reception,there are more opportunities in not only
his poems, but also his stories, plays and film-scripts to find intriguing avenues for discovery.
Dylan Thomas’s imagery:
The intensity of any literary work largely depends on powerful imagination. It also depends
on the effective execution of that very imagination in the pages of a literary work. Therefore,
to visualise his/her imagination the poet/writer often employs various literary devices. The
most effective and compelling of those is the use of imagery (a figure of speech). Imagery is
used in literary works to refer to the ways the writers compose mental images in words. It
signifies all the sensory perceptions used in a literary work, whether by literal description,
allusion, simile, or metaphor. Imagery is not limited to visual imagery; it also includes
auditory (sound), tactile (touch), thermal (heat and cold), olfactory (smell), gustatory (taste),
and kin esthetic sensation (movement). Imagery engages the reader‟s imagination through
wonderful descriptions or illustrations that vividly portray the reality of a particular moment.
A literary work with effective imagery gives the reader a clear mental picture of what is
happening and enhance what the writer is trying to convey to the reader. Dylan Thomas is
widely regarded as one of the 20th Century's most influential lyrical poets, and amongst the
finest as such of all time. His acclaim is partly due to the force and vitality of his verbal
imagery that is uniquely brilliant and inspirational. His vivid and often fantastic imagery was
a rejection of the trends in the 20th Century poetics.

Dylan Thomas poetic style:

Thomas claimed that his poetry was "the record of my individual struggle from darkness
toward some measure of light.... To be stripped of darkness is to be clean, to strip of darkness
is to make clean." He also wrote that his poems "with all their crudities, doubts, and
confusions, are written for the love of man and in praise of God, and I'd be a damned fool if
they weren't." Passionate and intense, vivid and violent, Thomas wrote that he became a poet
because "I had fallen in love with words." His sense of the richness and variety and flexibility
of the English language shines through all of his work. Thomas's verbal style played against
strict verse forms, such as in the villanelle Do not go gentle into that good night. His images
were carefully ordered in a patterned sequence, and his major theme was the unity of all life,
the continuing process of life and death and new life that linked the generations. Thomas saw
biology as a magical transformation producing unity out of diversity, and in his poetry he
sought a poetic ritual to celebrate this unity. He saw men and women locked in cycles of
growth, love, procreation, new growth, death, and new life again. Therefore, each image
engenders its opposite. Thomas derived his closely woven, sometimes self-contradictory
images from the Bible, This richness of meaning, an often illogical and revolutionary syntax,

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and catalogues of cosmic and sexual imagery render Thomas's early poetry original and
difficult. In a letter to Richard Church, included by FitzGibbon in Selected Letters, Thomas
commented on what he considered some of his own excesses: "Immature violence, rhythmic
monotony, frequent muddle-headedness, and a very much overweighed imagery that leads
often to incoherence." Similarly, in a letter to Glyn Jones, he wrote: "My own obscurity is
quite an unfashionable one, based, as it is, on a preconceived symbolism derived from the
cosmic significance of the human anatomy.”
Characteristics of Seamus Heaney’s poetry:
Among the characteristic features of Heaney's poetry that are visible in these lines are the
following: A frequent tendency to use Irish settings. A frequent tendency to write
autobiographically, from his own experiences. Phrasing and sentence structure that are very
clear and straightforward. Seamus Heaney being an Irish poet has used various themes in his
poetry, which are related to his society. Most of the themes, which have been used by him in his
poems, are common. He does not specify any poem for a selected theme. List of themes, used by
Heaney in his poems, is not so large. It is not the case that every poem has a new thematic concept;
rather he replicates his collection of themes again and again. In fact, his poems share universal subject
matter; however, there are some poems, which are different in thematic context. Having an Irish
background, his themes are also related to Irishmen and Irish society. Heaney is also lover of pastoral
life and rustic images can also be found in his poetry. In addition, he, like a psychologist, describes in
detail the psyche of a prudent mind. The most important element of Heaney’s poetry is that he is lover
of history and feels pleasure in describing it. Many poems of Seamus Heaney revolve around
historical prospective of Irish society. He prefers to illustrate history, which is related to Irishmen and
their heroic tales.

Seamus Heaney, as discussed above, is lover of history. His concern is mainly with bog
people, bog society and Irish people. He loves to rewrite history in form of poetry. Although,
there is nothing new in it because he discusses the same incident, which has already been
observed by the people yet his writing style compels the reader to rethink about it. “The
Tollund Man” is a poem, in which we meet the bog people. Symbolically, it is not only the
history of bog people but also the history of Irishmen. The poem tells the story of a person,
who has sacrificed his life in context to a ritual ceremony but Seamus Heaney does not find it
worth enough and calls it a waste. Nevertheless, the poem is about a historical event, which
was happened in the Iron Age and Seamus Heaney has rewritten it. In the same way, the
poem “Grauballe Man” is also a historical poem. Like “The Tollund Man”, it is also based on
bog people. It also shares the same kind of theme and has been written on the basis of
chronological perspective.

Seamus Heaney’s Stylistic Features

Seamus Heaney (1939-2003) is one of the prominent figures in the modern Irish poetry.
Awarded with the Nobel Prize in 1995, the poet was the author of multiple collections of
verse, literary essays, and translations. Seamus Heaney is an outstanding creative individual;
his uniqueness is reflected through his poetic language, the interpretation of the incidents that

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took place in the Irish history, the imagery system of his verse, and the overall style of
writing. Heaney’s creative identity is distinctly defined in his poetry that continues to attract
the interest of the vast audience.

Poetic Identity of Seamus Heaney

In many of his compositions, Heaney highlights the “sense of place” that took a significant
place in his creative life (Quindos and Teresa 38). It is possible to say that the place of poet’s
birth largely influenced and stimulated his poetic imagination, provoked the formation of the
national self-identity, and made the poet think of the connection between the different
epochs. It is observed that the sense of place was always associated with the art of the Irish
writers since the very early times when a special genre existed both in poetry and prose in
which the authors tended to reveal the origins and meanings hidden in the names of the
geographic objects (Quindos and Teresa 39). The sense of place is naturally bound to the
peculiarities of the landscapes in the region where the poet was born and lived. In his
imagination, the landscapes become associated with the events and actions that are kept in the
memory of the nation. Thus, the transformation of the geographic place from the biographic
into the literary fact is of great importance in Heaney’s poetry because it gives him the
opportunity to become realized and fulfilled (Russell 103). In this way, the poet attained a
chance to reproduce the atmosphere of the place, well-known from the early childhood, in an
adequate way.

In the final of “An Ulster Twilight,” the boy shares his thoughts about the possible
conversation that would have taken place in case the meeting with Eric happened – they
would talk about the carpentry and toys because these topics are far more significant than the
conflicts and weapons in the hands of the conflicting parties. In this way, Seamus Heaney
asserts the values of the common people that have significance in the everyday life while
trying not to focus on the religious controversies. The connection to the homeland and
historical heritage play one of the crucial roles in Heaney’s literary creativity. Through the
poetry, he attempted to identify the origins of this religious and political controversy, and he
saw them in the tragic past of the nation that for centuries endures humiliation and rebels
against the English time after time. In this way, in “Requiem for the Croppies,” the poet
remembers the 1798 uprising when the group of peasants and Catholic priests controlled the
whole county for two weeks. Some episodes of the uprising are based on facts. In the poem,
the lyric character narrates the story on behalf of the hundreds of people died during the
rebel. The character shows the suffering of those who were buried without the cerements and
coffins. Nevertheless, barley grew on the bed of honor – this grass symbolizes not merely the
eternal circle of life, it is also the plant out of which the daily bread is produced. And in the
Irish tradition, barley is also used for beer brewing (Quindos and Teresa 69). In this way,
death may be regarded as a way of returning to the roots; death and life become unified by
the in-depth national sentiments and the cultural traditions. The theme of the Irish traditions
and the historical conflicts raising the issues of peace and war may be regarded one of the

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crucial stylistic features of Seamus Heaney poetry. The evaluation of the settings and the
characters of his poems makes it clear that the formation of national identity supported the
development of Heaney’s creative identity to a large extent. The symbolism and the lyrical
tones of his verse demonstrate that the poet had a strong emotional connection to the history
of his country and his homeland. And these aspects of his literary works create the special
atmosphere in which a reader may trace the spiritual richness of one person and the whole
nation.

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Conclusion:

Modernism emerged with its insistent breaks with the immediate past, its different inventions,
'making it new' with elements from cultures remote in time and space. The questions of
impersonality and objectivity seem to be crucial to Modernist poetry. Modernism developed
out of a tradition of lyrical expression, emphasizing the personal imagination, culture,
emotions and memories of the poet. For the modernists, it was essential to move away from
the merely personal towards an intellectual statement that poetry could make about the world.
Even when they reverted to the personal, like T. S. Eliot in the Four Quartets and Ezra Pound
in The Cantos, they distilled the personal into a poetic texture that claimed universal human
significance. Herbert Read said of it, "The modern poet has no essential alliance with regular
schemes of any sorts. He reserves the right to adapt his rhythm to his mood, to modulate his
metre as he progresses. Far from seeking freedom and irresponsibility (implied by the
unfortunate term free verse) he seeks a stricter discipline of exact concord of thought and
feeling." In conclusion, the use of nature in Modern Poetry has a great impact in English
literature. Within the various uses of nature in Modern Poetry often refers to geology and
wildlife. Nature can refer to the general realm of living plants and animals, and in some cases
to the processes associated with inanimate objects – the way that particular types of things
exist and change of their own accord, such as the weather and geology of the Earth. It is often
taken to mean the "natural environment" or wilderness–wild animals, rocks, forest, and in
general those things that have not been substantially altered by human intervention, or which
persist despite human intervention. For example, manufactured objects and human interaction
generally are not considered part of nature, unless qualified as, for example, "human nature"
or "the whole of nature". This more traditional concept of natural things which can still be
found today implies a distinction between the natural and the artificial, with the artificial
being understood as that which has been brought into being by a human consciousness or a
human mind. Depending on the particular context, the term "natural" might also be
distinguished from the unnatural or the supernatural in English literature. Modern poetry is
full of diversity. Eliot has been greatly influenced by the famous poetry of symbolist poets
W.B Yeats who was an Irish whose poetry reflects his love for Ireland. Robert Frost wrote
poetry from the viewpoint of a New England dweller and we all know that New England
dweller is a part of the U.S.A.

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References/Bibliography:

Journals
Anderson, M. Robert. “Thoma‟s „A Refusal to Mourn...‟” The Explicator. Vol.38, No.4
(Summer, 1980).
Cox, C.B. “Dylan Thoma‟s „Fern Hill‟ ” The critical Quarterly. Vol.1, No.2 (Summer,
1959).
Joshi, Neeta. “Influence of the Welsh Bardic Tradition in the Poetry of Dylan Thomas”
Punjab University Research Bulletin. 21 (1990).
Mckay, D.F. “Aspects of Energy in the Poetry of Dylan Thomas and Sylvia Plath” The
Critical Quarterly. Vol.16, No.1 (Spring, 1974).

Books
Blamires, Harry, ed. A Guide to Twentieth Century Literature in English. London: Methuen,
1983.
Cecil, Lord David, ed. The Oxford Book of Christian Verse. Oxford: Clarendon, 1940.
Cox, C.B, ed. Dylan Thomas: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs : Prentice,
1966.
Davies, Aneririn Talfan. Dylan: Druid of the Broken Body. Swansea: Salisbury, 1977.
Keynes: The Open University Press, 1979.
Greenspan, Ezra, ed. Walt Whitman’s "Song of Myself": A Sourcebook and Critical Edition.
New York: Routledge, 2005. Print.
Loving, Jerome. Walt Whitman: The Song of Himself. California: University of California
Press, 1999. Print.
Unterecker, J. (1996). A Reader’s Guide to William Butler Yeats. New York, NY: Syracuse
University Press.

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