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How Modernism arose

The literary movement we call Modernism rejected Romantic ideas. It grew out of the philosophical,
scientific, political, and ideological shifts that followed the Industrial Revolution, through the shock of
World War I, and its aftermath.

Modern writers: break with the past reject literary traditions that seemed outmoded reject aesthetic
values of their predecessors reject diction that seemed too genteel to suit an era of technological
breakthroughs and global violence break with Romantic pieties and clichs (such as the notion of the
sublime) and become self-consciously skeptical of language and its claims on coherence.

Characteristics of Modern Poetry

Stylistic experimentation and disrupted syntax

Stream of Consciousness (a term coined by American psychologist William James to describe the
natural flow of a persons thoughts)

Theme of alienation: characters or speakers feel disconnected from people and/or society/the world
Focus on images.

1. Syntax

Syntax is how we structure sentences and language. e.e. cummings experimented heavily with syntax.
One example of this is his poem anyone lived in a pretty how town. anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down) spring summer autumn winter he sang his didn't he danced his did

2. Stream of consciousness

A narrative mode that seeks to portray an individual's point of view by giving the written equivalent of
the character's thought processes, either in a loose interior monologue, or in connection to his or her
actions. T.S. Eliots The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is one example of the use of stream of
consciousness

3. Imagism: a subset of Modernist poetry

In traditional poetry, poets describe images in great detail, and then link the images to a philosophical
idea or theme. In Imagist poetry, the writer does not talk about the themes behind the image; they let the
image itself be the focus of the poem. Ezra Pound, one of the founders of Imagism, set out three
guidelines:
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1. Direct treatment of the subject. The poem should deal directly with what's being talked about, without
fancy words and phrases to talk about it.

2. Use no word that does not contribute to the presentation. Use as few words as possible.

3. Compose in the rhythm of the musical phrase, not in the rhythm of the metronome. In other words,
create new rhythms.

Modern Poets
1. T. S. Eliot

He is one of the most remarkable of English poets. He had great influence on poetry for more than
forty years. He sees poetry and ceremony as forces that can give meaning to the emptiness and
confusion of the modern world. He gives great importance to the forces that make it possible for
spiritual as well as physical life to continue.

The Waste Land is Eliots major work. It is very long and complex poem. The poem contains many
old myths, literary allusions, languages, music as well as different kinds of characters. There is
spiritual dryness in the wasteland where renewal of life is impossible. The poem shows the
emptiness and meaninglessness of modern life and modern world. Eliot sees the root cause of
modern worlds unhappiness and confusion is the peoples inability to bring together the different
areas of their experiences to make a complete and healthy whole.

2. W. B. Yeats

He was, without doubt, one of the greatest English poets. By birth and temperament, he was the
poet of the Irish traditions. Irish history, people, language, traditions and nationalism are always in
the mind of the poet when he is writing, though the theme of his later poetry in universal. The use of
symbol and imagery and the combination of magic and mystery also become characteristic of Yeats,
great poetry. At times we find the use of classical and Celtic mythology in his poetry. His later poetry
uses plainer language in its description of human nature.

3. Thomas Hardy

Hardy is regarded as a great English poet of this century. He wrote poetry throughout his long life
and considered it more important than his novels. As a poet, he sets out to show the other side of
common emotions. His poetry does not suggest that life is a bitter tragedy. Hardy believes that life is
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hard and uncertain, but the man possesses the strength to tolerate its hardship and continues to
struggle in life. His poetry shows great delight in the natural beauty of the world and at the touch of
humor in events. Hardy describes human hardship and suffering by looking at them from a distance.
Though his language is generally direct, at times, it is loaded with unusual words and sentences.

4. Gerard Manley Hopkins

He was a poet of religious faith. He appears as a devout humble Christian. The theme of his poetry
is the relationship of man to God and the problem of suffering in a world created by God. In brief the
poetic development of Hopkins is the story of the development of a religious poet. Hopkins also
appeals to his readers as a natural poet. He was a keen observer of nature. He regarded nature as
an agent of the lord. In order to use the rhythm in the most natural way he developed his own rhythm
called sprung rhythm. His work had a greater influence upon other poets.

5. W. H. Auden

Auden is one of the most famous poets of the modern age. He was born in England and later in his
life he went to stay in America. He mainly wrote his early poems in political and social themes. They
are the poems of examinations of the contemporary English situation. Some of his poems directly
deal with political events and their effect on peoples lives. The poems which he wrote in America are
concerned very closely with the individual in contemporary organized society. He expresses a strong
sense of the realities of everyday life.

6. Dylan Thomas

He is a famous poet who was born and brought up in Wales. His language is not plain and simple. It
is full of life, energy, feeling and strength. Thomas religious poetry sometimes attains the strength of
the spoken Welsh words. His work praises and delights in natural forces. His purpose of writing was
to touch and show people their won human feelings.

7. Ted Hughes

Hughes poetry is concerned with strong and violent forces of nature. He is influenced by D. H.
Lawrence. By making the animals and birds the subjects of many of his poems, the poet intends to
express the human condition. Therefore, his animals are powerful as symbols. Hughes attempts to
capture the mystery of life and experience of animal characterization.
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8. Robert Grave

He is one of the important poets of this century. Many of his poems are love poems. In such poems
he deals with as a central subject the relationship between man and woman. He shows how physical
love between man and women can bring back life to the world and the lost sense of innocence and
wonder to human relationship.

9. R. S. Thomas

Thomas is Welsh and he is a clergyman by profession. Thomas follows the tradition of British poets
who have written about the country. His poems deal with the hardship of country life. Country
landscape and scene are beautiful to look at from a distance, but if one gets closer to them, he
becomes aware of discomfort and hardship of life. His poems express the sense that difficulty in life
can be tolerated only by love of men and love of God, since the qualities of mind alone are not
enough.

10. Philip Larkin

Larkin is one of the most important poets since the war. He is the central figure of the group who
began Movement poetry. This group of poets rejected the tradition of Dylan Thomas that poetry
should express high emotion and feeling and forces of nature. Their subject trend to be smaller and
their language more clearly controlled. In much of the poetry there is a sense that reality is dull and
unattractive, but that living through a dream is equally impossible. Larkin is very much influenced by
Hardy and like him he also looks back to the past because the real happiness seems to have been
lost in the present.

11. Stevie Smith

Smith is a nave writer, whose voice is always clear and unmistakable and whose expression is
spontaneous. She writes poems in her simple language and she treats common reality and
experience of people in them. Many of her poems concerned with good and evil carry on a direct
debate over the mystery of religion. She writes about her dislike of cruel people and gives sharp and
critical description of how people behave to each other. Her aim of writing was ethical and didactic as
well as to be entertained.

12. Seamus Heaney

Heaney is an Irish poet who is influenced by R. S. Thomas and Ted Hughes. Like them, he writes of
the countryside and of the natural world in his early poems. His later poems move from private
history to the public events of the past and how they have influenced the present political and military
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situation in Northern Ireland. Heaney is attempting to go beyond the daily events of the life around
him and to discover the forces below his countrys history that can bring back life and hope. He
received the Noble Prize for literature in 1995.

War Poets
1. Rupert Brooke

One of the most famous poets of the war is Brooke. But he does not express the painful view of the
suffering caused by the war in his poetry. The romantic and patriotic view of many soldiers at the
beginning of the war is reflected in one of his most famous poems. For Brooke death for a soldier
was a great sacrifice for his country. The poet has been criticized for not responding to the horrors of
war.

2. Siegfried Sassoon

Other war poets have truly expressed the painful realities of war. As an English soldier Sassoon
fought in France and gathered the real experience of the destructive war. In his poems his anger is
directed at the pointlessness of war. He severely attacks those military senior officers who plunged
the innocent solider into the war. He hates those people at home who ignored the misery and
sufferings of the soldiers. The poets accuse them of believing the false heroic stories of war told by
government.

3. Wilfred Owen

He is the best-known English poet of the First World War. Like Sassoon, he describes the realities of
war-pain, horror and the suffering of the soldier in his poem. He mentions how the war destroyed the
soldiers happiness and damaged their mind permanently. Owen did not accept the romantic and
patriotic view of the war as Brooke did.

4. Isaac Rosenberg

He belonged to a working-class family and served as an ordinary soldier in the war. He had not
received much formal education. So his experience of life in the war is different from other poets.
This is reflected in the language of his poetry and in the events he describes. He did not follow the
models and traditions of earlier poetry. He has used a new form of poetry to describe his new
experience. His language has great life and energy.
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Discussion on modern poetry

Modern poetry also bears a deep and profound impact of the baffling problems of the modern age. The
modern man is not merely satisfied with the aesthetic pleasure a work of art affords, but he wants truths in
life which might ennoble his existence, energies him, revitalize him and vivify him. The modern poet falls
upon some contemporary issues, the relation of husband and wife, of Labor and Capital, parent and
children, workman and employer, specializes in the problem which he has chosen for his poetry, debates
in the poetry on the problem for and against, and brings the poetry to a conclusion after having unravelled
the knotty problem to a successful close.

When Ted Hughes started writing poetry in the nineteen fifties, the aftermath of the Second World War
still lengthened its shadow on most of British poetry and human being is suffering from doubt, fear,
anxiety, hatred, familial issues and injustice. What made Hughes revolt against this post-war mood was
the feeling that people had not learnt their lesson from the war and were being evasive in their response to
the new situation. Ted Hughes, whose father had a narrow escape from a shrapnel which could have killed
him but for the pocket pay-book which deflected it, realized that shutting ones eyes from the horrible
reality outside was at best an evasive technique. He decided to express the holocaust, the nightmare that
confronted the world in a post-Hiroshima period. Several poems dealing with the WarSix Young
Men, The Casualty, bayonet Charge, Out and many poems in Wodow and Crow paint the
nightmarish world the War had created and the psychic numbness it had brought about among the
survivors.

In Crows Account of the Battle Hughes writes

And when the smoke cleared it became clear

This had happened too often before
And was going to happen too often in future
And happened too easily
Bones were too like lath and twigs
Blood was too like water
Cries were too like silence
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Another recurrent aspect of modern poetry is a fear of death. Hughes examines its various facts, ranging
from death in war to the death of an animal and brings out the sorrows as well as the fulfillment of a
process that death generally means for him. In his early poetry he writs of the death of the Six Young
Men and contrasts their holiday mode with their premature death. The poem Mid-Term Break is about
a boy, that tells his experience when he as picked up from school because of the death of his baby brother.

Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops

And candles soothed the besides; I saw him

For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

The aspect of injustice and exploitation of man by man as well as nation by nation is reflected by
violence poetry of Ted Hughes. It is an assertion of identity. It is the pure expression of mentality of man.
The British have always been a warlike and brilliant nation and Hughes seems to reflect this quality,
especially imperialism, in his poetry. Hawk Roosting treats a kind of violence that has no justification in
the poem, it is a privilege. The bird proudly averse that it needed the entire power of Creation to produce
its foot fathers. So, I consider Creation in my foot. The Hawk considers himself the master of universe.

I kill where I please because it is all mine.

There is no sophistry in my body:

My manners are tearing off heads-

The allotment of death.

The relationship man and woman was radically changed. Before the First World War, male hegemony had
suffered a reverse because of the suffragette movement. Shaws analysis of femininity in Man and
superman and Candida implies an error in the conventional 19th century assessment of the relative role of
sexes. Little wonder that D.H. Lawrence, writing in 1913, found in the relation between man and woman
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the problem of today, the establishment of a new relation, or the adjustment of the old one.. where
parents and children were concerned, there was a break-up of the old authoritarian pattern. Same is the
case of clash between husband and wife in Ted Hughes poem Her Husband which reflects the indirect
approach of poet. The wife seems to be a housewife, and we learn from reading the poem that the
husband disrespects the wife. In the first two stanzas, he tells us that he let her learn which expresses a
very harsh master/slave type of relationship.

And let her learn through what kind of dust

He has earned his thirst and the right to quench it
And what sweat he has exchanged for his money
And the blood-weight of money he'll humble her

Seamus Heaney uses his art to explore both the Irish Troubles and the human existence. Heaney makes
a connection between the mythical and the logical and the past and the present to describe his thoughts
and emotions concerning the Irish Troubles and the human existence. It is through the use of this myriad
of imagery and the use of structural techniques that Heaney depicts his feelings toward the Irish Trouble
and the various aspects and problems of the human existence. The poems Funeral Rites and Punishment
use mythological figures and metaphors to represent the problems of the past in order to explore the
present issues and contemporary conflicts. In them, the reader gains an insight to the Irish Troubles and
the various aspects and problems of the human existence via the connection between the past and present.

A Constable Call is based upon Seamus Heaney personal experience of fear and modern man is also a
victim of fear which is haunted upon his psychology of mind. Though it is a routine call of constable, it is
threatening to the child and his sensibility may be it is because child and other members of his family live
in a constant state of fear due to sectarian and political divide in the region. Punishment is a poem that can
be constructed on many levels. One level tells of the plight of contemporary Irish women, whilst another
describes the brutal treatment of an Iron Age female. It discusses the treatment of Ireland by Britain and
tells of various aspects of the human experience, from betrayal to death. Ultimately it uses the link
between past and present to explore the various aspects and problems of the human experience as well as
the Irish Troubles via the use of figures of the past as metaphors for the present.

Arithmetic and fear.

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I sat staring at the polished hoslter

With its buttoned flap, the brad crod

Looped into the revolver butt.

In the last stanza of A Constable Call the frightened boy saw the policemans shadow outside the window.
The boy may have been afraid to go back out to the bicycle with the fat black handle grips. The final
image imitates the sound of the bicycle as it moved off: the bicycle ticked, ticked, ticked. The adult
Heaney may be referring to a clock that is used as a timer in a bomb. He means that the hatred between
police and former will lead to explosion in the future. Heaneys work is filled with images of death and
dying, and yet it is also firmly rooted in the life of this world. His tender elegies about friends and family
members who have died serve many purposes: they mourn great losses, celebrate those who have gone
before us, and recall the solace that remains to us, our memories.

The ideas on alienation have become quite widespread in modern poetry, and many societies in earlier
stages of history have experienced these notions. But both in its form and in its extent the modern
alienation differs from that of preceding time. It has now become much more intensified and broader, and
has actually turned into a prevalent trend. On the whole, there are three types of alienation common in
literature. First, the mans alienation from himself. Modern man often finds it hard to be himself; he has
become a stranger to himself. Second, he has become estranged or alienated to his fellow man. He
experiences alienation from the world in which he lives in, and finally alienation of man from God.

In existential writing, the concept of alienation is used primarily to refer to a kind of psychological and
spiritual malaise which is pervasive in modern society though it is not specific to it.

The idea of alienation, lack of communication, injustice, and doubt are very vividly woven in modern
poetry. Man in living in isolation away from his family in a boarding school or anywhere else and also a
victim of deep rooted fear which always haunted upon his psychology. Man is a enemy of man in the
same sense everyone is victimizer and everyone is victim. It is a materialism of modern man that he has
no soft corner for his nation even for his fellow human being. In Seamus Heaneys poem Mid-Term
Break, there is a silence grief because of alienation and lack of communication between parents and
children. Similarly in the poem Full Moon and Little Frieda by Ted Hughes in which father lacks
understanding of his daughters maturity and there is also a great distance between perception of father
and maturity of Frieda.
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In the porch I met my father crying-

He had always taken funerals in his stride-

And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard below.

(Mid-Term Break)

A pail lifted, still and brimming- mirror

To tempt a first star to a tremor.

(Full Moon and Little Frieda)

The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot in the most significant expression of a certain feeling of disillusion and
neurotic boredom in the period after the First World War; particularly disillusionment felt by so-called
lost generation. This notion Eliot simply calls nonsensical. It is notable that throughout Eliots poetry
the theme of human union and divine union are accompanied by feelings both of ecstasy and of fear. The
despair of The Waste Land is a despair of metaphysics, and horror of life has its source in this despair. The
scorn of humanity is really a loathing of everything that reminds the poet of the meaninglessness of
existence. He has made further attempt to search the remedy for the evil of the modern age. Ash
Wednesday marks the beginning of a new phase in the poets development in which he finds hope in the
discipline of Christian religion, though, as yet the old outlook persists in his mind and constantly comes to
the fore.

Socio-Psychic integration comprises the harmonious and balanced growth of the personality as opposed
to the extreme cases where one aspect is cultivated to the exclusion of others and the detriment of the
whole. By reconciling impulse and reason, the basic unity of existence is perceived, and one is able to
come to terms with the self and society. The vulnerable soul of man is striving for integration of love,
peace, friendship, trust, belief and family in spite of all the issues of alienation, lack of communication,
doubt, fear, war, familial issues and injustice. Love is one of the most fascinating concepts associated with
socio-psychic integration. The language or codification of love has been developing since the beginning
of western culture and it has parallels in other cultures, particularly Persian. But the kind of love that we
associate with modernity is a very distinct kind of animal and its conceptualization is closely intertwined
with individualism. love is inherently and fundamentally a critique of and a refuge from the selfish and
materialistic nature of the world outside the home with or without its white picket fence (a favorite North
American image of contented domesticity). For instance in Ted Hughes poem Full Moon and Little
Frieda, Frieda is feeling a sense of security and refuge under the patriarchy of love of his father. Similarly
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in the poem A Constable Call, a constable looks at a child as he says goodbye. His saying of goodbye is
based upon his unconscious love for a child.

Fitted his cap back with two hands,

And looked at me as he said goodbye.

One cannot build a family without the existence of love. The feeling of love always flowing in the family,
even after some member had passed away. True love between family member can be seen in the poem,
Mid-Term Break when Heaney was returning home for the funeral of his younger brother who had been
killed in a road accident. It shows how devastating this tragic accident was for Heaneys family, and
because he loves his family, he is willing to face all the situation during the funeral.

The elements of love and spiritual elevation pervade the poetry of Ted Hughes. He added a new
dimension and new strength into the 20th century love poetry that replaced the formal grace of Movement
poets. As Harry Blainires points out, The physical violence that erupted in Hughes poems, the harsh
landscape of the West Riding, and the creation in his numerous animal studies of what has been called a
modern bestiary have given individuality to his work . Modern man is totally obsessed with the
materialistic view of life and in search of knowledge and spiritual elevation. In the poem That Morning
by Ted Hughes man has attained knowledge and spiritual elevation.

Separated, golden and imperishable,

From its doubting thoughts-a spirit-beacon

Lit by the power of the salmon

So we stood, alive in the river of light,

Among the creature of light, creature of light.

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The disillusionment and frustration was the work of the world wars and other political upheavals. The
lamps had gone out, not only in Europe but all over the world. In the ensuing darkness, a pail of
depression descended over the jaded war-weary world. The poets were deeply influenced by these events
of war, hater, injustice, familial issues and e.t.c. But they did not become pessimistic. They encountered
all these difficulties bravely and boldly. They endeavoured to search the values in their poetic art. Among
them are T.S. Eliot, Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes. T.S. Eliot made clear his own concern for this
function of literature in his essay on The Presence of Pascel . The Waste Land is, from the point of view
of its substance, an attempt, articulated with peculiar clarity, to diagnose the disorder; to render its
challenge, inescapably insistent: and its final section to deliver a message emphasizing certain human
values. Time will remove these uncertainties and enable what is of permanent value to become definite
and clearly understandable. A more settled world, a more stable society will doubtless help poets to derive
new form of surprising power and resilience with which they can shape for us the thoughts and emotions
coming, still too confusedly, from rapidly expanding world of mind and soul.