English Poets

contrast b/w the old english poets and the new english poets..?????
wat r the differences b/w the old english poets as in those of british origin and who wrote in the previous centuries and the new poets of the 20th and 21st century..its out of curiousity and also a part of my english project…any answers ny1…….
there are several major turning points in english literature. including the closing of the theatres at the outbreak of the civil war, the restoration of the monarchy at its end, the publication of pope’s ‘essay on criticism’, the first edition of ‘the lyrical ballads’ … each of these marked a watershed in english poetry.
the most recent major shifts in direction for english poetry are probably the rise of imagism / vorticism in london shortly after the end of wwi, and perhaps the appearance of philip larkin’s first fully mature collection ‘the less deceived’ in 1955.
since you specify 20th and 21st century you are probably going to focus more on the imagist / vorticist paradigm shift.
….
comparing imagist / vorticist poets with those before them we see:
#1 much less interest in rigid verse forms (ezra pound, ts eliot, dh lawrence, wyndham lewis and all the other important vorticists write many of their poems in ‘free verse’. before this movement there were some free verse poems, but most english poetry tended to be written in regular metre and to rime).
#2 much more interest in foreign influences (poets before the imagists had tended to borrow their forms and influences from earlier british writers. the georgians looked back to nineteenth century british models including thomas hardy and william barnes. the imagists and the vorticists were more aware of overseas writers – especially french ones – and borrowed themes and material from laforgue, apollinaire, baudelaire, and also the classical chinese poets of the anthology – particularly li po).
#3 more interest in ‘non-poetic’ material. (eliot’s ‘four quartets’ are more like philosophy than like poetry, ezra pound’s ‘cantos’ are full of political propaganda).
#4 a more revolutionary approach to the arts in general. (poetry before the imagists tended to be like poetry. pound tried to write poems which would work the way paintings did (”l’art’), eliot wrote parts of his poems to be pure meaningless sound (‘weialalaleia’).
….
but this matter is far too large for a school project – i have hardly started …
English-Language Poetry Slam
Tags: english, english poets, english poets 17th century, english poets 18th century, english poets 19th century, english poets 20th century, literature, poetry, reference, writing
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