Modern poetry: tradition and experimentation

The first decades of the 20th century were a period of extraordinary originality and vitality in poetry. A
variety of trends and currents gave shape to a changing world and contributed to expressing the nature of
the modern experience.

The Georgian poets

The poetry of the years preceding the First World War was characterised by a sharp distinction between
the avantgarde groups and those poets that were still influenced by the Victorian Romantic tradition; their
name is referred to an anthology, Georgian Poetry, published during the reign of George V; these poets
employed the conventions of diction, looking to the Romantics and the Victorians for guidance. They felt
sympathy for specifically English elements and remained indifferent or hostile to the revolution tn
sensibility and technique started by the Symbolists.

The War Poets

the so-called 'War Poets’, wrote remarkable poetry whose value lies in the Style unconventional. anti-
rhetorical way they dealt with the horrors of modern warfare, and in a certain measure of experimentalism
which emerged in the choice of a violent.

Imagism and the beginning of modern poetry

Modern poetry officially began with Imagism, a movement which flourished between 1912 and 1917. The
name 'Imagiste' was invented by the American poet Ezra Pound; they used hard. clear and precise images,
and a rhythm which was freed from metrical regularity They also felt free in the choice of any subject
matter and their poems were usually short and contained no moral comment.

Symbolism and free verse

French Symbolism also influenced the new poetry. The style of the Symbolist poets was characterised by:

- indirect rather than direct statements

- the use of allusive language and development of the multiple association of words
- the importance given to the ‘sound' of words as conveying ‘the music of Ideas'
- he use of quotations from other literatures, revealing cosmopolitan Interests
- the use of free verse
- the possibility for the reader to bring meaning to the poem

It was T.S. Eliot who expounded the new poetic theory and practice, he stated that ‘Poetry is an escape
from emotion, and is not an expression of personality but an escape from it’, the reverse of what
Wordsworth said; the poet became the explorer of experience who used language to create "Ch patterns of
meaning that were not made easy for the superficial reader, but required close analysis before they could
be understood.

The War Poets

During the First World War, a lot of young men were called to fight, and most of them regarded the conflict
as an adventure undertaken for noble ends; The loss of human lives on the so-called 'Western Front'. the
line of trenches running from northwestern France to Switzerland, was terrible. For the soldiers, life in the
trenches was hell; almost from the beginning the common soldiers improvised verses which did not reach
the ears of the literate people living comfortably at home. There was a group of poet who actually
experienced the fighting. and in most cases lost their lives in the conflict, that managed to represent
modern warfare in a realistic and unconventional way. and to awaken the conscience of the readers to the
horrors of the war; these were called War Poets, and were a definite move which find another mode to
express what happened in the war.

Wilfred Owen
Born in 1893, Wilfred Owen was working as a teacher of English in France when he visited a hospital for the
wounded and decided to join the war; 1917 was an important one: he was sent to France and saw his first
action; in March he was injured and sent to Cratglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh to recover from shell
shock. It was there that he met Siegfried Sassoon; Owen returned to the front in August 1918. On 4'
November. just seven days before the Armistice, he was killed in a German machine gun attack. His poems
are painful in their accurate accounts of gas casualties, men who have gone mad and men who are clinically
alive although their bodies have been destroyed; he used assonance and alliteration extensively. These
devices gave his lines a haunting quality, a gravity and moral force which made them suitable for any
situation in which people must suffer and die; In June 1918, he was writing the preface to the book, words
which have now become essential in discussing his work and much of the poetry about World War.