Jamel O.

Banta

BSED English 3

Example of Contemporary Poem

•Traditional: Typically traditional poetry is anything written with a fixed verse. Traditional
poems, adhere to established forms like sonnets or haikus, with Structured rhyme and meter,
often conveying universal themes and emotions.

•Contemporary: Typically moves back towards traditional forms. However, it also may include
other characteristics.

Five characteristics of Contemporary Poetry:

1. Contemporary poetry is often written in free verse (unrhymed and with no specific metrical
rhythm).

2. Readers know and can associate with the language.

3. It is brief

4. The poet laces the poem with images using all the reader's senses.

5. It invites the reader to interpret the poem without yelling from the rooftops the true meaning
of the poem.

Example of a Traditional poem:

Sonnet 18

By: William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date;

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

 Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;

Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Example of a Contemporary Poem:

Mother to Son

By: Langston Hughes

Well, son, I'll tell you:

Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.

It's had tacks in it,

And splinters,

And boards torn up,

And places with no carpet on the floor — Bare.

But all the time

I'se been a-climbin' on,

And reachin' landin's,

And turnin' corners,

And sometimes goin' in the dark

Where there ain't been no light.

So boy, don't you turn back.

Don't you set down on the steps

'Cause you finds it's kinder hard.

Don't you fall now—

For I'se still goin', honey,

I'se still climbin',

And life for me ain't been no crystal stair.