Modern poetry

and free verse Performer Heritage

Marina Spiazzi, Marina Tavella,
Margaret Layton © 2017
 Modern poetry and free verse

1. Tradition and experimentation

First decades of the 20th century ➔
a period of extraordinary originality Tradition and experimentation

First decades of the 20 th century ➔

a period of extraordinary originality
and vitality in poetry.

and vitality in poetry. A variety of trends and currents

expressed the nature of modern
experience:

• the Georgian poets;

A variety of trends and currents • the War Poets;

• imagist poets;

• symbolist poets.

expressed the nature of modern

experience:
• the Georgian poets;
• the War Poets;
Karl Moll, ‘Twilight’, c. 1900, Osterreisches Gallery,
• imagist poets; Belvedere (Vienna).

• symbolist poets.

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 Modern poetry and free verse

2. The Georgian poets

The Georgian poets ➔ influenced by the Victorian Romantic tradition.
They were Rupert Brooke (1887-1915), Walter De La Mare (1873-1956), and
Edward Thomas (1878-1917). They:

• felt sympathy for English elements, such as the countryside

as an idyllic place;
• employed the convention of diction;
• remained indifferent or hostile to the revolution in sensibility and
technique started by the Symbolists.

Rupert Brooke. Walter de la Mare. Edward Thomas.

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 Modern poetry and free verse

3. The War Poets

The War Poets:

• experienced the fighting;
• in most cases lost their lives in the conflict.
• Rupert Brooke, Sigfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen

Content of their poetry ➔ the horrors of modern warfare

represented in an unconventional, anti-rhetorical way.
The War Poets

The War Poets:

• experienced the fighting;

• in most cases lost their lives in the conflict.

• Rupert Brooke, Sigfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen

Aim of their poetry ➔ to awaken the conscience of the readers to

Content of their poetry ➔ the horrors of modern warfare
represented in an unconventional, anti-rhetorical way.

Aim of their poetry ➔ the horrors of the war.

the horrors of the war. to awaken the conscience of the readers to

Language employed ➔ violent, everyday language.

Their poetry ➔ a definite move away from the 19th-cen

Language employed ➔ violent, everyday language.

Their poetry ➔ a definite move away from the 19th-century poetic

conventions.

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 Modern poetry and free verse

4. Imagist poets
Modern poetry officially began with Imagism, a movement which
flourished between 1912 and 1917.

The name ‘Imagiste’ ➔ invented by the American poet Ezra Pound

(1885-1972).

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 Modern poetry and free verse

4. Imagist poets
The main aesthetic principles of Imagist poets were

• free choice of any subject matter;

• poems, usually short, were the poet’s response to

a scene or object and contained no moral comment;

• use of hard, clear and precise images;

• use of a rhythm freed from the artificial demands of

metrical regularity;

• the aim of poetry: to achieve precision,

discipline, dry hardness.

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 Modern poetry and free verse

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 Symbolist poets was

characterised by:

• indirect rather than direct statements;

• the use of images to evoke rather than to

state.
Les Fleurs du mal, first edition, 1857.

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 Modern poetry and free verse

5. Symbolist poets

• the importance given to the ‘sound’ of words;

Symbolist poets

• the importance given to the ‘sound’ of words;

• the use of quotations from other literatures,

• 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

revealing cosmopolitan interests; poem

• the use of free verse;

• the possibility for the reader to bring meaning to the

poem.

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 Modern poetry and free verse

6. Symbolist poets and T.S. Eliot

It was T.S. Eliot who developed the new poetic theory and
Symbolist

practice. In his essay Tradition and the Individual Talent

(1917), he stated that 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. ’

‘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. ’

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 Modern poetry and free verse

6. Symbolist poets and T.S. Eliot

According to T.S. Eliot, the poet

was the explorer of used language to

experience. 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.

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 Modern poetry and free verse

7. The poets of the 1930s

Social and political commitment characterised the 1930s.
The most famous Oxford poets ➔ W.H. Auden, Cecil Day-
Lewis, Louis MacNeice, Stephen Spender.
They

• devoted themselves to left-wing propaganda;

• concerned themselves with the social and political

aspects of human life;

• turned away from T.S. Eliot’s complexity;

• aimed at communicating with their fellow men and

encouraging them to follow morally right courses of action.

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 Modern poetry and free verse

8. The new Romantics

In the 1940s ➔ a group of poets reacted against the
intellectualism and commitment of the poetry of the
The new Romantics

1930s. In the 1940s ➔ a group of poets reacted against the

intellectualism and commitment of the poetry of the
1930s.

They were labelled new Romantics because they

• appealed to emotions;

• rediscovered individual themes death, sex.

They were labelled new Romantics because they➔

love, birth,

Their greatest representative was Dylan Thomas.

• appealed to emotions;

• rediscovered individual themes ➔ love, birth,

death, sex.

Their greatest representative was Dylan Thomas.

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 Modern poetry and free verse

9. Free verse
At the beginning of the 20th 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 19th-century regular metre;
• employed free verse.

Emily Dickinson. Walt Whitman. Stephane Mallarmé.

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 Modern poetry and free verse

9. 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.

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