The Messages of modern poetry.

Question 1

Which poet often wrote about this:

‘the individual experience is very important and worthy of attention’.

Answer 1

Wordsworth in ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’ as well as DIckinson and Yeats in some instances, though Wordsworth is a prominent figure in this topic.

Question 2

Which poet often wrote about this:

‘The poet is special, has special insight and is above most people in society’.

Answer 2

Elizabeth Browning wrote about this in some of her poetry, notable ‘Cry of the children’ which is an expose of the mistreatment of the working class (child labour).

Other poets like Tennyson with ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’ and Shelley encompassed this in their work.

Question 3

Which poet often wrote about this:

‘Death is more important/interesting than life’.

Answer 3

Dickinson. She often has a very casual attitude about the afterlife especially in her writings (in part due to her being an athiest).

This message can be seen in her poems such as “I heard a fly buzz when I died” and “Because I could not stop for death”, the latter of which portrays death as ‘calm, collected and kind’. The poem basically takes the reader on the journey of the ‘circle of life’.

“The brain is wider than the sky” feels more like it aligns with the ‘individualistic experience”.

Question 4

Which poet often wrote about this:

‘Poetry has very few rules and suggests that life also has very few rules’.

Answer 4

Again this can be witnessed in Dickinson’ poems.

Question 5

Which poet often wrote about this:

‘Traditions are worn out and should be replaced by foreign of occult beliefs or experiment to find new ways to live and find truth’.

Answer 5

This theme is very apparent in Yeats’ poems. This is apparent in both “The lake isle of Innisfree” and “The second coming”. In “The second coming”, he’s making a mockery of religion and suggesting the Messiah is a “beast” which is completely false, but it’s evidence of replacing “worn out traditions”.

Question 6

Which poet often wrote about this:

‘Life has no meaning. All we can do is despair’.

Answer 6

Yeats again. This is evident in “the second coming” where everyone is shadowed in darkness numerous times. He also compares the human race to a gyre, suggesting that the human race constantly repeats itself.

It is also slightly apparent in “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death”, this is because the narrator really doesn’t care about his life which correlates to the message that “Life has no meaning”.