¶ … unconventional poetic form and breaking the laws of spelling and grammar, Bill Bissett's "Ode to Frank Silvera" presents a multilayered, multifaceted critique of modern poetry and modern life. Ironically, "Ode to Frank Silvera" does reveal a strong commitment to the traditional goals of poetry: including the use of verse to achieve intellectual and emotional reactions in the reader. The reader can recognize the elements of traditional poetic structure including the use of repetition and parallelism, and deliberate homage paid to ee Cummings in the use of all lowercase letters. Bissett also manages to achieve a sort of meta-analysis of the English language, distilling words to their essential phonemes and presenting them with blatant errors in spelling. Doing this, Bissett also draws attention to the words he misspells, such as the ubiquitous "yu," which is pivotal in "Ode to Frank Silvera." The content of "Ode to Frank Silvera" echoes that of T.S. Eliot in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," as well as William Blake in "London." All three of these poems depict modern urban life and the confusion, alienation, and ambivalence it brings out in people. Writing in second person, Bissett directly engages the reader in conversation. Using vernacular speech and misspellings underscores the deliberate attempt to bring poetry to the level of the vernacular. Not too far from the lofty diction used by Eliot and Blake, Bissett creates an urban atmosphere that has blurred distinctions between...
Using parallelisms to begin the first lines of each stanza: "yu might think," "yu might say," and "yu might hope" creates a sort of drum beat that anchors the reader to the content of the poem. There are deliberate discrepancies in the ways Bissett chooses to misspell his words, as the poet could have spelled "might" phonetically as well, "mite." Yet the poet chooses to render some words like "yu" and "th" differently and leave other words as they are, signaling the contradictions inherent in modern urban life. Eliot and Blake likewise rely on second person singular to connect with the reader, as they refer to the "anxieties" that accompany the speaker through his daily journey (Bissett).
T.S. Eliot and Amy Lowell The poetic styles of T.S. Eliot and Amy Lowell are so dissimilar, that it comes as something of a shock to realize how much the two poets had in common. Each came from a prominent Boston family, and was related to a President of Harvard University -- Eliot was a distant relation to Harvard's President Eliot, and attended Harvard as an undergraduate: Amy Lowell's brother would
TS Eliot REVISED "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot is indefeasibly a Modernist masterpiece. Yet how do we know it is modernist? Let me count the ways. Modernist poetry is often marked by complicated or difficult disjunctions in tone -- "J. Alfred Prufrock" which is capable of moodily swinging from the depressive lows of "I should have been a pair of ragged claws / scuttling across the
T.S. Eliot and Paul Verlaine The late nineteenth century Symbolist movement in literature was first identified as the primary origin of twentieth century Modernism by Edmund Wilson, in his 1931 work Axel's Castle: A Study in the Imaginative Literature of 1870-1930. Wilson's study ranges widely enough to cover the Modernist prose of Proust and Joyce in addition to the experimental prose-poetry of Gertrude Stein, but he makes a particularly strong case
Sketch of T.S Eliot The Life of T.S Eliot Eliot was born in Missouri in 1888. He studied philosophy and logic at various universities including Harvard. After graduating he spent a year at Sorbonne in Paris reading French literature. He then returned to Harvard where he studied epistemological theory, Indian languages and metaphysics. He later transferred to Oxford where he studied Greek philosophy (Kamm 143). During these years of study he also
This is the case with Gabriel in "The Dead" as well. Throughout much of the action of the story, Gabriel appears at a loss as to who he is, which is directly related to how he is perceived. The first time in the story this is noticed is to the beginning, when he gives a coin to Lily out of an unspecified yet apparently selfless motive. Gabriel wants to share
"On receiving news of the war" by Isaac Rosenberg Rosenberg's poem conjures up a physical, metaphorical image of the specter of war. A spirit of a person torn by the red fangs of either death, war, or some diabolical, physically imagined agent hangs over the poem. This dead spirit, representing all of the fallen soldiers, is in neither heaven nor hell (suggesting a crisis of faith in this modernist poem) but
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