What Is Modern About Poetry? Creative Writing

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English/Poetry and Literature

Classics could turn in their graves if they heard how poetry sounds today. In fact, they would not even be able to understand it. They would not recognize it as poetry. If Michelangelo could see a Pollock painting what would his thoughts be about it? Would he be able to recognize it as a painting? Most certainly not. Considering this chain of logical thinking, the same may be applied to poetry. Different times ask for different forms. Language is a living entity, constantly changing and adapting. Poetry, the most personal form of expression, puts the inside out in a way that allows the author to call it art. William Wordsworth an Shakespeare have created poems and sonnets obeying the rules of classic poetry, sonnets that are a testimony of their creative genius. They sound absolutely wonderful as long as the reader or listener is ware of the time their author has lived in. A poet who would try to write a poem according to the same rules the classics abode by, would only manage to make it sound dusty, a pale imitation, artificial, even nonsensical.

Richard Wakefield's tone is ironic when he indicates that he is going to take a look at the way modern poetry I supposed to look today. One cannot help wondering if the author really feels constraint inside those harsh lines that he is allowed to move between. Words like the past participle, "forbidden" and the verb "must" may indicate that the author is feeling censored in his creation process, or that he is not entirely satisfied with the way poetry evolved in modern times. It sounds like he is revolting against the unnamed authority that proclaims what the rules of modern poetry are. Further more, continuing in the same mocking manner, he uses even harsher tones to denounce the institution of modern poetry that could hold him prisoner. Using the first person, he is including himself in the cohort of those who are chained to rules that seem to be restrictive. One feels his revolt rising constantly with every word. He seems to be revolting here against what looks like a paradox: the liberation of formalism at all costs may be as limiting as the obligation to stay inside the strict rules of the classical form. The old debate between classics and those who want to break away is expressed here in the form of modern poetry. While the poem's satirical tone does expresses only the author's dissatisfaction with what modern poetry is expecting from him along with other poets, it does not reveal the other side of the coin. The author does not indicated what his wishes were related to the form and subjects poetry should be allowed to use. His mentioning Wordsworth, an undeniably great classic may suggest that he is laughing at the way modernists are tossing their predecessors. Modern poets who have opted to write about feelings, moods, states of mind and ideas framed in the mundane have brought a fresh new perspective.

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They have added value to poetic writing by opening new worlds. They have brought new concepts and explored new territories. Emily Dickinson's decision to introduce the fly into a poem that is seemingly about the last moments of a human being seem to lift a burden from the shoulders of the one who is preoccupied with death at a certain moment. See here, she appears to say: do not take yourself too seriously, or the fly will make you forget about the solemnity of the moment. The fly breaks this utterly serious moment in Dickinson's poem as if to show the poet's inclination to disregard everything that was written about death before and express her own very personal thought at that moment into a poetic manner. Although her tone is not mocking or intended to suggest the derisory in the moment, she chooses the nagging fly to represent the disruption. Hearing the buzz of the fly, the dying soul has been disconnected and has forgotten to live the lifting moment, Dickinson suggests. Dickinson has managed here to use the "odd," as Wakefield calls it, to create poetry that trikes a cord. It is high quality poetry and it speaks to the public with a strong voice. The contemporary reader might even consider it classic, when compared to postmodern poetry.

By comparison, Ellen Bass', Gate C22, may look almost as sterile as a surgery hospital room. She places love in the anonymous environment of an airport, but give it an unexpected and enchanting spin. It feels as if she is pulling one by the sleeve, urging you to snatch out of the your own inner universe and acknowledge there is something else out there. This is the beauty of this poem, of modern poetry. It speaks in what is looks like a different form, but it feels alive, it touches and it reaches the inner world of the one who is willing to savor it. There is no need to use an old, classical form just for the sake of indicating it is a poem. One can admire and find delight in reading Shakespeare and Wordsworth as much in reading Dickinson or Bass. Shakspeare could introduce sailing boats, harbors, horses and carriages in his poems, why should the modern poet be denied of introducing airplanes and airports, for instance, in his? One is not a poet for merely constantly floating in the clouds, feeling elated all the time, as if in a trance. The most unexpected, "odd" image or thing can strike a chord in one's soul and cause the poring of words onto the white piece of paper, coagulating in a poem. Skipping one of the rules of modern poetry Wakefield complains about in his….....

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