Proto-modernist Poerty Reflection

As I read some of the proto-modernist poetry and about their movement I found some of the unifying elements. They wrote primarily in the mid to late eighteen hundreds, in the time of the Victorian poets. However, their content and style did not resemble the poetry of their time. Instead they drew from past influence of the Romantics and developed techniques that laid the ground for the next movement in poetry–the modernists. The Romantics reacted against ideas brought on by the Industrial Revolution and the rationality of the Enlightenment. They fell back on emotion and imagination to form their poetry, preferred "real" language rather than contrived mechanistic wording, and largely favored anti-urbanization. They used emotion, albeit processed, to create art; balancing spontaneity of feelings with deep reflection. The proto-modernists embraced these ideas, but were also inspired by freer rhyme and meter. Later, they would be seen to be ahead of their time, though of course in their own time they could not have known that this was the direction of the future. All they could do is to be different and hope that the world would follow their ideals.

Some impressions I got from such poets as Dickinson, Hopkins, and Whitman are an excitement about what they are writing and a sense that their emotions are deeply felt. Common themes are life, love, nature, and religion. This group is hard to lump together, as they are all varied- they each have their own distinct styles and meters. Even the poets themselves show variations in style from one poem to another. The poems vary in length- Emily Dickinson has many short poems, some with only four lines. Whitman, in contrast, wrote his lengthy "Leaves of Grass". Gerard Manley Hopkins coined the term inscape- something’s unique, inherent, and definite characteristics, and the reason God created it. This was the essence he tried to convey in his poetry- he struggled, for instance, to convey the why-it-was-created-ness of a dead tree. Whitman looks at ordinary objects and tries to view them differently. Dickinson also draws inspiration from the traditionally unimportant things around her- like a bird hopping outside her window.

Hopkins uses internal rhyme. His meter is very different- it changes often throughout a single poem. The lines are different. He wants urbanization to stop, nature to be protected. He ends poems like Binsey Poplars with repetition rather than rhyme. Hopkins conveys a lot of emotion. He heavily uses sound- assonance and consonance. He puts emphasis on the whole sound of the words, not just rhyming the ending sounds. The poems flow well as a whole, with the words connecting and resonating with each other, not merely ends of lines connecting. Hopkins uses imagery in innovative ways- for instance, when he compares elves’ eyes to stars. He makes the imagery convey to us his emotions about the things he describes. The poem is in this way more personal than Victorian poetry.

Whitman uses a lot more prose than the other two poets. He doesn’t concern himself with rhyme- his is free verse. He, like Hopkins and Dickinson, concentrates his writing on the ordinary stuff of life- as in his "A Silent Night Ramble", simply describing a walk in Washington. Whitman includes himself in his poems, but also describes his surroundings, which he sees artistically. His poetry is almost conversational- it feels like real life. Though he does portray emotion, even when he is dramatic he is much calmer than Hopkins. Whitman uses anaphora and epistrophe in "Leaves of Grass". He has really long lists of things.

Dickinson seems the most conventional of the three. She uses fairly consistent rhyme and meter in her poetry. However, she uses slant rhyme, which set her apart from the Victorian poets. One of Dickinson’s common themes is Death. She makes excellent use of dry humor. She uses dashes so often- her verses are fragmented.