¶ … American Poet Laureate Robert Hass to lift European impact from American English thus making the latter a truly original and authentic language. The paper also cites examples from his collection, Sun Under Wood (1996) and shows how the poet accentuates simplicity to reveal the beauty of American version of English language.
Robert Hass: shedding European influences from American English
Robert Hass is the former United States Poet Laureate who is known for his simple yet beautiful verses, some of them translations of Japanese Haiku while others simple expressions of his deepest sentiments. In his fourth collection of poems, Sun Under Wood (1996) Hass tried to encompass all his past experiences in 20 beautiful pieces, which moved back and forth in history. These poems reveal something truly amazing about the poet's command over the English language. Coming from a truly modern West Coast, he refused to use traditional or conventional poetic words in his works and instead focused on the use of simple terms, terms that everyone can relate to, and which sometimes appear oversimplified. But then that's the beauty of his work. He is known for simplicity and lucid fluidity of his verses, something that is often missing from the works of other modern poems. In this collection particularly, we notice a subtle transformation occurring in the poet when he focuses explicitly on the influence of various women in his life and his opinions on some famous female figures. All these figures have been provided with a feminine voice, which is strangely American, and thus show no European influence. This is an truly amazing thing about Hass's work. Not only does he take English as a tool for self-expression, he is also blessed with the kind of ingenuity, which gives his language a beautiful contemporary American touch. Unlike the earlier poets of our times, we notice Hass has deliberately tried to shed off past Europeans influences on poetry to reveal a new and rather fresh Western Coast language. (Wagner, 1995)
Hass...
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