Guidelines for the Essay and Peer Review of the Modernist Poetry
The terms modern and modernism are often challenging to define. Modernism was usually associated with literature features of the early twentieth century when the First World War had ended. The publication of Eliot’s book “The Waste Land” in 1922 also contributed to the description of modernism. The traditions of literary forms, subjects, concepts, and styles characterize modernist literature. In poetry, modernist components are discussed in new themes and word games, modern or new experiments in form and style new themes and word games, and open-ended nature of their themes and meaning. The experimentation and invention of the new modes of expressions is the most crucial element of modernist poetry. Modernist poetry can be presented in the imagist was such that the reader might understand the detailed images and feel the experience themselves.
Modernist poetry presents ideas and concepts in a manner that the readers will interpret them intellectually and gets get the meaning and the realities of their world. In some cases, modernist literature goes beyond reality and explore psychological, private fantastic, and neurotic characteristic of the readers (Levine 54). It uses a wide range of themes, issues, and subjects to express a concept or an idea. Unlike modernist poetry, traditional poetry was limited to the idea that was universally significant and appealing to the general public. Modernist literature does not have such limitations, and thus we read the poetry of any subject. You can find poetry of literally everything that is from nature to myths.
Modernist poems contain various themes that are single poems talks about different subjects at the same time. Also, they do not follow the traditional rules established in the past. Technical devices such as style, rhythm, and stanzas have been destroyed, and experimentation of new devices is ongoing. Recently, remixed rhythms, pictorial poems, and blank verse poems were introduced. Looking at them keenly, you will realize that the traditional metric systems, symbols, and rhyme schemes have not been applied as in the old way of writing poems. It is clear that the current poetry, every poet makes his own rule. The existence of different styles of poems is what constitutes modernist poetry.
Eliot was successful in the use of images and language in his The Waste Land to convey his vies concerning modern society (Eliot 3). He employed symbolic features and formal language that earlier modernists did not use. He used images and symbolism to bring to fore the sense of desolation that was caused by the World War. He addressed things like uncertainty, futility, and vanity the results from the war, yet people were seeking prosperity. Eliot made use of allusion, various verse forms, and poetic fragments to communicate to the society in crisis. Eliot’s age is symbolic, he was 33, and it is at this moment that Dante saw heaven and hell. Jesus was crucified at the same age, and his death and resurrection is a major symbolic framework employed in The Waste Land.
Eliot called April the cruel month despite that spring usually brings new life. In doing so, he alluded to Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, which describes April as “sweet showers.” The line expresses the speaker’s fear of the cycle of life and death. Line five of the poem supports it as it states that “winter kept us warm,” which is a contradiction to the death and isolation that comes with the winter season. Eliot uses his condition to show an excellent image of modern culture: hopelessness and confusion. The Waste Land was published in 1922, but the issues it addresses make it applicable today. The chaos and instability talked about in the poem are currently experienced in the world.
The Waste Land helps describes the aftermath of World War I. Eliot employed various shifting speakers in the five sections and addressed the themes of trauma, disillusion, war, and death. He tried to portray the physical and emotional effects felt after the war. He used settings such as the sea in which a man drowned, a drought-hit desert, and bedroom of a woman and Thame filled with garbage. These settings helped Eliot to advance his message about despair in the world Brooker, (Jewel and Joseph 154). The drought-worn desert, for example, helped him to focus on water and its lack. After a while, the desert received rainfall that turned out to be a storm. The title of the poem itself is a setting that presents a state of hopelessness. Generally, the settings employed by Eliot help advanced the despair that the world encounter after World War I.
Eliot’s poem, The Waste Land is a modernist poem that uses allusion, symbolism, and contradiction to advance the theme of despair after World War I. Eliot contradicts season, for example, he wrote that winter was a season of warmth is quite the opposite as it is usually associated with death and isolation. He employed symbolism to illuminate the consequence of war by describing its vanities and futilities. The title of the poem itself is symbolic of the despair encountered in the current world. In writing the poem, Eliot failed to follow the traditional poetry rules to bring forth his views concerning the modern world. All in all, Eliot successfully conveyed his opinions about today’s world through the innovations of images, language, and poetic forms.
Works Cited
Eliot, Thomas Stearns. The Waste Land 1922. Grolier Club, 2014.
Levine, Robert S., Gen. Ed. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 9th ed. Vol. C, D, E. New York: Norton, 2017. Print.
Brooker, Jewel Spears, and Joseph Bentley. Reading” The wasteland”: modernism and the limits of interpretation. Univ of Massachusetts Press, 2012.