Ezra Pound : An American Poet

Wilfred Owen was born in Shropshire on 18th March 1893. He was the son of a railway worker and was educated at schools in Shrewsbury and Liverpool. Wilfred was encouraged to write poetry from an early age by his devoted mother. He couldn't afford university education, so decided to go abroad to teach English in France. Owen then volunteered for the Army in 1914 when the First World War was in action. After training he became an officer and was sent to France at the

European Modernism and American Modernism, while sharing broadly similar characteristics, engage in different projects. In Europe, T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound found potential solutions in Conservatism (involving Eliot’s concern with tradition) and new modes of organic social organization (represented by Pound’s acceptance of Fascism). The Dadaists and Italian Futurists adopted a subversive and negative eye towards the present in desire for the future. Abstract artists and atonal composers were examining ways to represent a search for truth in a way that overcame the bourgeois art and music of the past. In America, life was dominated by an explosion of wealth and prosperity in the wake of World War I. In some instances, soldiers and citizens became expatriates. Hemingway and Fitzgerald stand out as representatives of two parts of American Modernism. Fitzgerald focuses on life in the United States in all of its excess and search for deeper connection amid vapidity. Hemingway shows the life of the post-war American who is aware of the change in the world and strives for enjoyment and direction in activities like bull fighting, hunting, love, and drinking.

The most effective poems convey the poet’s idea and influence the Reader’s Response. This is certainly true when considering the poetry of John Foulcher is a contemporary Australian poet who writes about his observation of everyday life, people and places, as well as religious history. The poet’s voice is distinctive and he writes in a condensed style where each word and image is very important and has layers of meaning. He also often uses very harsh and violent imagery in his poems, which can be very shocking to the reader. Foulcher uses a range of techniques in his poems to communicate meaning, including similes, metaphors, personification and onomatopoeia. The poems that will be discussed in this essay are Martin and the Hand Grenade

Writers of this time period were heavily influenced by the war, and the political events going on. Major writers were; T.S. Eliot, William Faulkner, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, and others. All of their writings incorporated accurate portrayals of the world through experience and interior monologue (“Modernism” 504) and did not write about the new technology developing around them (“Modernism” 501).

Born in Senegal around 1753, Phillis Wheatley became an important American poetic figure. At the age of 8, she was kidnapped and brought to Boston on a slave ship and upon her arrival to Boston, she was quickly sold to John Wheatley (Bio). Under her new family, Phillis adopted the master’s last name, taken under the wife’s wing, and showed her deep intelligence. Even though suffering from poor health, Phillis’s intelligence did not go unnoticed; she received lessons in theology, English, Latin and Greek. Being a slave did not stop Phillis from learning and experiencing her life, she participated in the master’s family events and eventually became a family member. The irony in this situation is

Yeats was born on June 13, 1865 in Dublin. However, he’s family moved to London after he was born. Yeats decided to move to London when he was about 14 years old. After Yeats returned to London he met famous writers like Oscar Wilde, Lionel Johnson and Maud Gonne, this encourage him to write about his Irish heritage. Even though Yeats lived in London for about 14 years “Yeats maintained his cultural roots/Irish nationality” (Poetry Foundation). In addition, this means that Yeats showed his love to where he came from by including Irish legends on his poems and plays.

The short but inspirational poem "Harlem" by Langston Hughes addresses what happens to aspirations that are postponed or lost. The brief, mind provoking questions posed throughout the poem allow the readers to reflect--on the effects of delaying our dreams. In addition, the questions give indications about Hughes' views on deferred dreams.

Wilfred Owen’s poetry is shaped by an intense focus on extraordinary human experiences. In at least 2 poems set for study, explore Owen’s portrayal of suffering and pity.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poetry has been the subject of much criticism. Her elusive style prompted many critics to question Barrett's method of writing. In fact, some critics, like Alethea Hayter, go so far as to propose that an "honest critique of her work must admit that she often wrote very bad poetry indeed" (15). Accusations against Barrett's work were often targeted at her tendency for anonymity, her excessive development of thoughts, unsuccessful forced rhymes, and more often than any other of her familiarities, her tendency to create her own words. Despite being relatively shunned by the world of poetry, Barrett persisted in writing poetry, even though the majority of her writing

Modernism was a time for experimentation in the 20th century. Gertrude Stein, Wallace Stevens, and William Carlos Williams were just three of the influential poets of this literary period. They altered the typical literature form. These three poets each presented objects differently in their works, varying in syntax and diction. Whether they proposed these objects in abstract or specific in their writing, you can see how Stein, Stevens, and Williams differed. Stein was vastly complex, Stevens created depth in easier to understand terms, and Williams used colloquial language and was very specific. These three poets were important to the modernist movement and it’s easy to see how they bent the rules in the form of poetry.

Pound was showing influence from the fourteenth-century Italian poets such as Guido Cavalcanti. In their works that follow their time in Europe, both Eliot and Pound display a hybridization of English and French and Italian ideas. Cummings began to imitate French Modernist poets Guillaume Apollinaire and Stephane Mallarmé. He also adopted an aesthetic based on the manifestos of French Surrealists and Dadaists, who "detached literature from referential meaning and linked it to experimental play" (McQuade 1235). Such experimental play is seen in Cummings' poem "[she being brand]" in which the creatively formed words and syntax give the image of a young man's thoughts, feelings, and actions upon driving his new car: "again slo-wly; bare,ly nudg. ing" (Cummings 15). The use of punctuation gives a vivid image of his thoughts as he carefully puts the stiff transmission into gear. Into another Cummings poem, "[in Just-]," we see more experimental play with the words to create the impression of the way excited children talk: "and eddieandbill come running from marbles and piracies and its spring" (Cummings 6).

The influence Walt Whitman had on Ezra Pound is found through Pound’s modernist poetic experiments. “At the beginning of Pound’s career, he wrote of Whitman, “I honor him for he prophesied me while I can only recognize him as a forebear of whom I ought to be proud”” (Willard 573). The following work from Pound was a pact he made with Whitman:

In the beginning of the twentieth century, literature changed and focused on breaking away from the typical and predicate patterns of normal literature. Poets at this time took full advantage and stretched the idea of the mind’s conscience on how the world, mind, and language interact and contradict. Many authors, such as Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, and Twain, used the pain and anguish in first hand experiences to create and depict a new type of literature, modernism. In this time era, literature and art became a larger part of society and impacted more American lives than ever before. During the American modernism period of literature, authors, artists, and poets strived to create pieces of literature and art that

London by William Blake is a poem characterised by its dark and overbearing tone. It is a glimpse at a period of England's history (particularly London) during war and poverty, experienced by the narrator as he walks through the streets. Using personification it draws a great human aspect to its representation of thoughts and beliefs of the narrator.

William Blake was one of those 19th century figures who could have and should have been beatniks, along with Rimbaud, Verlaine, Manet, Cezanne and Whitman. He began his career as an engraver and artist, and was an apprentice to the highly original Romantic painter Henry Fuseli. In his own time he was valued as an artist, and created a set of watercolor illustrations for the Book of Job that were so wildly but subtly colored they would have looked perfectly at home in next month's issue of Wired.