The Poetry Pillar Explained

My soft-clay sculpture of a white pillar was used to portray the formal and definite structure of the Victorian poetry. Poets of this era wrote with precise meter and rhyme scheme, and the content was themed around an idealistic world view from a resolved speaker with controlled emotions. The proto-modernists were contemporaries of the Victorians, but employed different styles to support their poetry, metaphorically twisting and bending the pillars. The fact that they still use the pillar as a basis for their poetry, despite their twists to it, can be seen in two ways: firstly, they adhere to poetic language as opposed to prose, using blank verse rather than free verse, if not rhyming poetry; also, there is still a common thread of religious subject in their work. They add color (as seen by the colored cord) to the whiteness through the emphasis on sound play and the personal touch in contrast to the formal statements on life and observations of the Victorians. The pillar had a wick because poetry has always had the potential to be used in different ways. When I lit the pillar, I meant to illustrate the new use of poetry by the proto-modernists; instead of using it to bolster ideas, they wrote as an expression of fiery passions, setting a spark that would light the ideas, even beyond the conventions of the pillar, for the yet more radical modernists.