American Poetry Essay

The poesy of Modern peak poets contains a proliferation of scents of isolation and alienation. Among such poets as William Carlos Williams, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Edna St. Vincent Millay and Amy Lowell, isolation and alienation atomic number 18 experienced as failed love, unrequited love, or love that never surpasses the informal or imaginative stage. In their do appears the subtle delineation among societys fascination with federation and self following World War I. In short, Modern poesy indicates the adjust of the romantics and the advent of un get outing self-involvement, even narcissism.Essentially, Modernism implies the inauguration of failed kind-he tricked relationships. Each poem relates the inability of the individual to achieve connections beyond the physical. In fact, connection are more imaginative than substantive, sought after than accomplished. Edwin Arlington Robinsons poem sexual want Turannos relates a womans love for a figment of her imagination. The t itle translates from Greek as Love, the Tyrant and suggests iodin of cardinal possibilities either the woman comes to realize she loves a tyrant and that her love is unavoidably false, or she realizes that love is a tyrant, drawing her into an unwilling association.Robinsons phrase suggests such ambiguity, describing to demiseorsers, a love made purposely blind. The first stanza of Eros Turannos introduces a woman so fearful of dying an old wet nurse that she convinces herself of bing in love She fear him will always ask/ what ill-starred her to choose him all apprehensions to refuse him/but what she meets and what she fears/ are little than are the downward years (Lines 1- 6). In Arlingtons poem, a connection occurs between two people by reason of fear. Fear that the poems heroine will never achieve, at least the appearance of a close, individual(prenominal) relationship.And the relationship described in this poem is an illusion. Arlington describes his heroines self s elf-denial or blurred sagacity, her determination to keep her buff from being the Judas that she found him (Line 12). Perhaps, the poems hero becomes a Judas by reason of failing to meet the heroines standards a Judas because he acknowledges his shortcomings, cognizant the heroine has brusque choice but to accept him. In any force, she mothers do as satisfaction wins over fulfillment of a dream, choosing to view an engaging disguise as her prejudice delays and fades and she secures him. Arlington signifies an inherent unnaturalness in choosing to love as impertinent to falling in love. In keeping with the decline of the romanticist periods idealistic fancy, Arlington compares the lack of sentiment with a falling hitch, dying nature or a cessation of the nature temperament towards the creation of life. This fall, really a growing cynicism and human weariness of forming attachments to others continues in the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay. Her poem entitled The startle an d the Fall goes further than Robinsons Eros Turannos to advance the idea of love as natural and life-affirming.Like Robinson, Millay describes the veritable formation of love but one-sided as her heroine entertains the nonion of love, holds appear for it only to find it as elusive. She falls in love during the flush and by the fall of the year knows it will remain unrequited. To love, Millay seem to indicate, comes course as the seasons. Her overall message that similar creatures unable to connect constitute outside the natural order. The first line of each stanza in The Spring and the Fall have the sound of forced jauntiness, wearing thin by the poems conclusion In the stand out of the year, in the spring of the yearIn the fall of the year, in the fall of the year grade be springing, or year be falling Less and less does the poems heroine seek to disclose her feelings, as first her lover broke her a bough of blossoming peach and then broke her heart. It is worth noting that her heart, as symbolized by the blossoming peach was out of the way and hard to electron orbit Millay describes a being isolated from its natural instincts for humans, a need to make oneself available for connection. There is also a sense that the poems events happen in spite of the heroine not to her.For example, the disconnection from her lover occurs gradually and so wholly that she reconciles, as though from the periphery, some place of emotional detachment Tis not loves going hurts my days, /but that it went in little ways. Surely, a more profound and true love disappears with one cathartic event or not all. Perhaps Millay describes the love found in Amy Lowells Patterns where it is shrouded in sexual feelings and imagination. Lowells heroine seeks the distinction of becoming Lady to a Lord Hartwell, a colonel killed in battle. The relationship between the two seems insubstantial, base solely on her passion, her perspective.She consistently refers to her suitor in the fu ture tense up he would, till he, we would. In fact, the actually nature of their relationship is one of a pattern rather than an actual series of occurrences. And she seems inordinately design with her statements of I should like to I would be I would choose I shall go I should see or I shall walk. Clearly on that point are few definitives in her connection to the Colonel and even upon his death she clay unable to connect to others, stating, And the softness of my body will be unemotional from embrace For the man who shall loose me is dead (Lines 103-05).Lowells description of this passing(a) love is also quite sexual, the heroine seemingly more desirous of poke than possession. Sexual imagery pervades the poem. Her reference to herself as a plate take a description of her dress train as a pinko and silver stain on the gravel. Following the Romantic tradition of analyse a womans chastity to porcelain dishes, she exists in a arrant(a) state and a rather uncomfortable one based on the imagery. Lowells heroine is also constantly depicted amidst nature but not part of it, admitting. in a telling statement, that there is not a softness anywhere about meFor my passion/ wars against my dresses stiff brocade She goes on to state that the daffodils and squills/ Flutter in the breeze as they please The entailment being that she cannot. And unable to connect with nature, with her sexual feelings she projects them upon images surrounding her. Flowers, indicative of feminine sexuality, fall upon her chest. She sees the plashing of waterdrops in the marble fountain, which symbolizes the female womb, an image she cultivates for the reader as she imagines a womans softeness bathed in the fountains marble basin.A hand of contradictions and ambiguity the heroine is clothed in warm, girlish pink and the uninviting, coldness of silver. The brocade texture of her gown invites the touch of an observer but its thickness repels virtuoso from the wearer. Lowell cl early captures the modern disinclination to rejoice, as did the Romantics, in a desire to love or feel loved. It is a sentiment echoed in the poetry of Lowells fellow Modernist, William Carlos Williams. His poem Portrait of a Lady invokes a strong sexual recognition in the reader of loves physical expression.Paradoxically, the reader sense the narrator of the poem is left unaffected by such feelings. How else could the narrator so capably articulate his feeling without a certain detachment from them? As though mocking the Romantic period, Williams deliberately appeals to certain Rococo aesthetics. And in so doing invokes two very popular painters of the French Rococo period Watteu and Fragonard. Given that the above painters belonged to a period intent upon heralding the joys of simple pleasure, it seems worth noting that Williams somehow manages to complicate love.He states his ladys thighs touch the sky but will only describe it as that one where Watteau hung a ladys slipper Su ch vivid imagery of the sexual act is disjointed in the authors hesitant manner, an ambiguity furthered with question mark and dashes which seemingly connect ideas but actually conveys detachment. He cannot decide if his ladys knees are a southern breeze or a gust of snow. In essence his disconnection from her leaves him unable to decide her sexual compliance or resistance. It is a confusion that reappears in his poem The Rose. incessantly a symbol of the Romantic period, William considers the rose obsolete. Its soft, velvety texture, from Williams Modernist perspective, renews itself in surface or porcelain. He compares the effort love requires to doing geometry and finds it more cutting than a broken plate. If the rose carried the weight of love Williams postulate, then love is at an end And when he says the fragility of the flower, unbruised penetrates space Williams elevates love to the level of the sublime. Unlike the Romantics, he seems intent upon proving Modern huma ns incapable of achieving love, connection, or true favorable position from ones self-containment.Clearly feelings of isolation and alienation pervade modern life. And if art imitates life then William Carlos Williams, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Edna St. Vincent Millay and Amy Lowell accurately recreate that feeling of disconnection in their poetry. Their ability to capture Modern individuals unwilling self-involvement indicates the decline of Romantic ideals. In short, the concern for betterment of others which fueled the Enlightenment, French and American Revolutions gave way to a self-protective form of narcissism. As a result the poetic form, often associated with protestations of love, came to convey disillusionment with the emotion.