Reflections on Some Poets

American poetry felt the impact of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems (1956). Beat poets like Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Gregory Corso, Ferlinghetti, Philip Whalen and others  revolted against  conventional poetry. Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’ opens with a revolutionary voice:” I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical madness.” Snyder was influenced by Buddha; Ginsberg sought Peace not by drugs, but through the technique of Yoga.

 Robert Lowell’s problem was different. He was trying to get rid of symbols and obscurity. The result was the publication of Life Studies (1959), which clearly points out that he no longer needed Hopkins or Eliot to inspire his compositions.

The most prominent poets of the sixties and seventies were Theodore Roetheke and Sylvia Plath. Plath concentrated on vehemence, anger, hate, suicide, and madness. This is evident from her poem ‘Daddy’:” Daddy, you bastard, I’m through!”

The author’s response to the Iraq War should be entirely aesthetic. We notice an entirely secular attitude towards war in the works of Fitzgerald (1896-1940), John Dos Passos (1896-1970), Hemingway (1899-1961) and Faulkner (1897-1962).

The native tradition should be fused with Continental models. This was precisely done by the Imagists like T. S.Eliot and Pound, who were influenced by the French symbolists Laforgue, Mallarme and Valery. Japanese haiku also inspired Hulme, Flint and Pound. Later on, Pound was drawn towards Vorticism, which was a fusion of Cubism and Futurism.

Robert Frost (1874-1963) adopted a technique quite different from the Imagists. Frost wanted to create ‘the sound of sense’ to attract the common reader ‘who buys books in their thousands’.

The Imagists were indifferent towards the public response. The Imagists like Hulme, Flint, Pound, and Eliot were influenced by French symbolists of the 1890s: Laforgue, Corbiere, Mallarme, Valery, and Apollinaire. The Anglo-American Modernism came into being due to the revolutionary and untraditional style of these Imagists.

William Carlos Williams showed his dissatisfaction with these unconventional poets. He described Eliot’s The Waste Land as ‘the great catastrophe’, ‘an atom bomb’ that destroyed the roots of poetry.