Analyzing Poetry Essay

Ezra Pounds poetry is striking in its break from the lacuna verse which occupied the page during the transcendental period. Taking points from Whitmans free verse style, Pound demos the reader a subjective look at poetry. The verse form A Virginal gives the reader both phantoms and tangible feelings of which the narrator is powerless to control (much as the war made countrymen feel a powerlessness in the death of their comrades).This is supported with business sectors such as And left me cloaked as with a gauze of aether (Pound line 5). It is this symbolic castration that war re kick ins which plays a significant role in Pounds poem. Pounds poem warfare Verse Pound gives a rather ambivalent cerebration of World War I. The point of the poem is that he wants poets to give soldiers their m he was speaking about poets winning awards for their poems about the war, of which they had seen no action. The beginning lines of War Verse are, O two-penny poets, be still For you have nine ye ars out of every ten To go gunning for glory with pop guns Be still, give the soldiers their turns (Pound lines 1-2). In either poem this idea of not being able to do anything about the war and the deaths that were the outcome of that war, are the impetus to Pounds feelings. The form of either poem are similar, and the subject matter of course is strikingly the same. In T. S. Eliots view of the past as expounded upon in his bear witness Tradition and the Individual Talent have to do with following tradition.Eliot criticizes poets and critics for only following a tradition that is merely one coevals removed from the present and says that we ought to follow the maturity of the poet, not the country of his work, not the work done with less vigor as we are apt to do. In his essay Eliot says we must(prenominal) understand what it is when we speak of tradition which means that we cannot ignore any of the work, that a poet must strive uphold tradition in knowing the full expanse of li terature (not just the previous generations triumphs) as Eliot states,the historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a co-occurrent existence and composes a simultaneous order. (Eliot paragraph 3) For T. S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock can be said to be the addressing of age, life, and ones personal fight with the discharge of days. The many allusions throughout the poem may be attributed to various issues concerning ones growing old.In line two, for example, Eliot makes the comparison of the evening to an unconscious patient role on an operating table. The consequence of this comparison is that the reader begins to see the evening as not the end of a day, but rather the end of someones life old age. With this allusion use in Eliots poem the reader is allowed to explore their own unde rstanding of how their life has been in comparison to the illustrations used by Eliot. Thus, the reader becomes a part of the poem an active listener in the story/poem told by Eliot.The personification of the time of day at the beginning of the poem, then leads the reader to view the rest of the poem in a manner conducive to that comparison with all of the metaphors dealing with life. This comparison is only pressed in line 23, with And indeed there will be time. This solidifies the metaphor of time, and a persons dealings with it. Eliot seemed to enjoy opus in the metaphysical aspects and indeed this is strongly reflected in Prufrock, while Eliot balances this writing with concrete imagery.Though Eliot insists there will be time, he follows this line with a list of many things that one does throughout his or her life. This expansive list would fill a lifetime, and therefore refute the idea of endless time that line 23 infers. Eliot liked to write in contradictions since humanne ss was full of contention points and paradoxes. The hesitations and frivolous actions of life listed in this poem are not an witness of the ability to achieve these goals, or waste this time, but instead it is a warning that time passes, without respect to the desire or intent of a person.Eliot makes summons of this by indicating that his hair is thinning, something that he does not desire to occur, yet does outside his control. This again is the metaphysical aspect of Eliots writing which could perhaps have been shake by Donnes work, yet Eliots writing style seems to be more realistic than Donnes and Eliot writes with a sort of paying attention to the fringes of humanity and exploring darker concepts of the human mind such as death and time in this poem.Works CitedThe Heath Anthology of American Literature, Vol. II, ed. Lauter, et al (Vols. C, D, a