Modern Poetry

Modern Poetry:
The 20th century is an age of instability, wars and of shattered dreams. Both European and American societies were experiencing great changes. The two World Wars had totally shattered the world. Modernist poetry is a fruit of Euro-American unification or we can say that Modernism is a form of writing that is Euro- American. Modern poetry in England was influenced by French symbolism, The American Imagists and writings of Ezra Pound. In common with many other modernists, the imagists wrote in reaction to the perceived excess of Victorian poetry, with its emphasis on traditional formalism and ornate diction. Modernists saw themselves as looking back to the best practices of poets in earlier periods and other culture. Modernism in poetry is distinguished by its complexity. The Modernist attempt to construct a new view of the world and of human nature through the self-conscious manipulation of form. Modern poetry is emphasized by certain crucial shifts from tradition.
Poetic renaissance was in the air, and poets confidently went ahead in their eager quest for new forms and subject.” Modern poetry not only rejects traditional themes and structures ,but also traditional verse pattern. This rejection led to the emergence of ‘free verse’ as ‘free verse’ is the only pattern to suit to the demands of new poetry for directness,concreteness and economy. The ‘free verse’ style had already been shown by Walt Whitman. Along with Whitman’s ‘free verse’ modern poetry accepted the ‘verse libre’ provided by French poets such as Rimbaud, Laforgue and Moreau. The experimentations done by the modern poets in terms of form, diction and pattern arouses wide attention of poets of different schools, among which Imagism,Symbolism, Expressionism and Surrealism are noticeable trends.

The High modernist mode dominated English and American poetry for approximately thirty years, from the 1920s to the 1950s. During the crucial decades of modern poetry Ezra Pound was the most influential and at the same time the most controversial poet in England and America. Being one of the most difficult poets of the 20th century, he was at the forefront of major literary movements and developments like Imagism and Vorticism. T. S. Eliot declared him as the most responsible poet for the 20th century revolution in poetry than anyone else.
. Eliot is one of the major and complex poets of the 20th century, whose poetry contains a great deal of social commentary and awareness of the ugliness of modern life. Eliot was deeply influenced by French poets .Eliot wanted English poetry to produce varied and complex results. He particularly respected the intellectual wit and irony of the 17th century Metaphysical poets and drew similarity of Modern poetry with the French Symbolists.However,Eliot’s name rests on his most ambitious work ‘The Waste Land’, unique work in modernist poetry edited by Ezra Pound. In this classic, Eliot presents the angst, corruption and materialism of modernist society .The poem is best known for its obscurity, its slippage between satire and prophecy and its abrupt chances of speaker, location and time. Other dominant modernist poets from America are—William Carols Williams,Wallace Stevens, Marianna Moore, Hart Crane and Hilda Doolittle known primarily by her initials H. D.