Traditional Poetry Is More Strict in Its Form
Traditional Poetry Is More Strict in Its Form
Traditional Poetry Is More Strict in Its Form
Traditional poetry is also generally written with a formal meter like iambic pentameter and a
strict rhyme scheme. Though there are certainly poets working today that impose formal
constraints on their work, the form most commonly associated with modern poetry is that of
free verse .
Also, what is modern poetry What are the characteristics of modern poetry?
3. It is brief.
4. The poet laces the poem with images using all the reader’s senses.
5. It invites the reader to interpret the poem without yelling from the rooftops the true meaning of the poem.
Perhaps the biggest differences lie not between the various kinds of contemporary
poems, but between contemporary poetry and traditional poetry. Older, traditional
poems, such as those by William Shakespeare, Alexander Pope, and John Donne,
followed much stricter structure rules than do contemporary poems. For example,
many kinds of contemporary poems are written in free verse and do not focus as
much on rhyme as do traditional types of poetry. Most traditional poems adhered
to the strict formats of sonnets, ballads, and odes. Also, contemporary poems
usually are shorter than traditional poems, and use language that is more familiar to
today’s readers.
Regardless of style, some of the most common themes of contemporary poems are
those of love, family, and death. Still, much of contemporary poetry focuses more
on suggesting an idea or image than on outright stating it. By doing this, the
contemporary poem lives up to its characteristic of allowing the meaning to reside
within the reader’s mind rather than within, and accessible from, the poet’s mind.
In other words, a contemporary poet often leaves the reader to draw his own
conclusions and meanings. For some, readers and poets alike, this level of
suggestion and mystery is part of the appeal of contemporary poetry.
The main feature of modern poetry is freedom. Modern and Post-modern
poets exercise the freedom to write in any structure they choose—rhymed verse, blank
verse, free verse—and they have the freedom to experiment with new hybrid structures.
Contemporary poetry is usually defined as poetry written after the start of the 1920s
(some extend it until the 1950s). But it is still a style of poetry that follows a specific
series of traits and literary tools: inconsistent meter. variations upon standard rhyme.
The contemporary poetry is that created in the last decades of history. Some experts
put their start about 100 years ago, while most put as starting point the end of World
War II, more or less from 1950.
Poetry is a part of literature, with an origin that goes back to the use of music and the
word to tell stories. It is characterized by using a series of literary resources to give a
much more aesthetic treatment to what is narrated.
Metrics, rhythm or rhyme are part of the elements that endow this artistic manifestation
with a musicality that prose literature lacks.
The avant-garde and much of the contemporary poets, often break the stylistic rules of
poetry, this break being a fundamental part of their creations.
Index
This renewal, both in the stylistic form and in the contents, had a great influence on
contemporary authors.
Among these currents are Cubism, Surrealism and Expressionism, each with its
particularities, but united in the search for a new artistic language
origins
Although there are regional differences, the second half of the 20th century appears as
the period in which this poetry begins.
The years after the Second World War they are marked by the tragic consequences of
it, and art also responds to this context.
Thus, poetry in these early years acquires an existential theme, giving priority to a
feeling of emptiness and thinking that life is absurd.
As for the authors, many scholars consider that it is the modernist Rubén Darío who
acts as a frontier towards contemporary poetry, given the changes he introduced with
respect to what was done in the 19th century.
Similarly, the Chilean Vicente Huidobro is another reference to indicate the arrival of the
contemporary age of this art.
1960s
After the 50s the theme of contemporary poetry is changing with the emergence of new
authors and the remoteness of the global conflict.
A part of the authors begins to write a socially committed poetry. Among them, Gabriel
Celaya and Blas de Otero stand out.
Meanwhile there is another current that tries to write about the human being, about their
concerns and values, but without any kind of relationship with politics.
These authors are quite close to Surrealism and, although its theme is very focused on
the human being, the forms are totally disruptive, with the abandonment of the norms
that had characterized poetry for centuries.
Main characteristics
As for the theme, contemporary poetry is quite eclectic, since it touches all possible
issues.
Obviously, there are quite a few differences depending on the authors, but usually
certain changes that define this literature are marked.
Structure
One of the aspects in which this type of poetry changes is in its stylistic structure. As in
the rest of the aspects, the absolute freedom of the artist is imposed.
In this way, the times mix freely, and it is not obligatory to maintain a chronological order
of what is related.
Everything is left to the imagination of the author, although it is true that this causes the
reader greater difficulty in understanding the text.
That freedom does not mean that contemporary poetry does not attach importance to
form; On the contrary, this apparent lack of coherence is sought to achieve an effect on
the reader.
Metrics
Another aspect in which classicism is abandoned is in the metric. Traditional poetry
maintained codes that marked the meter of each verse. It was even one of the ways to
distinguish between one type of poem or another.
The contemporary abandons all rule in this aspect. The verses do not maintain any
rigidity in their length, nor the number of syllables.
It is each author who decides how each verse will be, losing the old division between,
for example, alexandrines or hendecasyllables, which helped to identify what kind of
poem the reader was in.
Rhymes
With the rhymes exactly the same happens with the structure and the metric. Despite
having been for centuries one of the distinctive elements of poetry, contemporary
authors no longer feel compelled to appear.
In this way, in many cases the resulting verses do not have any type of rhyme and,
when they do, they do not respect the old rules about them.
There are differences depending on the time, but this is something that they maintain as
a characteristic in common.
From comics or television to new information technologies, they are part of their
themes, or even used as platforms to create new multimedia works.
I think the major difference is that contemporary poetry is more flexible. Poets can and do
continue to employ traditional forms, meter and rhyme. But they are free to do different
things in different poems, and even to switch back and forth within a poem, as Eliot did
from time to time.