Once, in finesse of fiddles found I ecstasy,
In a flash of gold heels on the hard pavement.
Now see I
That warmth’s the very stuff of poesy.
Oh, God, make small
The old star-eaten blanket of the sky,
That I may fold it round me and in comfort lie.
First of all the title itself gives us an image that the poem is about one place named as Embankment. (near Thames river) The Thames Embankment is a work of 19th-century civil engineering that reclaimed marshy land next to the River Thames in central London.
Oh, God, make small
The old star-eaten blanket of the sky,
That I may fold it round me and in comfort lie.
So particular this line we can connect with the surrealism. Because he or she dreams of having their own home. Present speaker is facing the problem of homelessness. This poem connects with Oscar Wilde’s famous line, we can all look at the stars, but some of us are in the gutter.
2. Darkness by Joseph Campbell
I stop to watch a star shine
in the boghole -
A star no longer, but a silver
ribbon of light.
I look at it and pass on.
In the title we find that the modern characteristic is the use of negative words. One of the most important themes of Modern literature is Nothingness. This theme we can relate to here. Joseph Campbell strict modern poet, his poem against the Victorian themes. The present poem's title itself suggest the contradiction between darkness and shiny star. speaker might be tell about the illusions in the life.
3. Image by Edward storer
Forsaken lovers,
Burning to a chaste white moon,
Upon strange pyres of loneliness and drought.
The image of forsaken lovers that means the lover who separated but their sexual desire yet not fulfilled.
The image of white moon cycle represents the fertile power of women and was considered the cycle of the 'good mother' as she was fertile in sync with the natural cycles of the earth (the full moon is considered as earth's most fertile time.)
So the lovers are suffering from the theme of alienation in modernist literature. It is about sexual perversion.
4. In a station of the Metro" - Ezra Pound
The apparition of these faces in the Crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
In this particular poem poets use two images. Like the first one is the metro station and the crowd that we find from the title. Second one is about petals in black boughs. Here the poet used metaphors ' these faces' are like ' Petals on a wet, Black bough'.
The word 'crowd' shows here contrast. There is a crowd but no one who is interested in talking with other people doesn't have time for that. Life became a machine like Metro. Life became lifeless. Also we can say that poets try to show disinterestedness as characteristics of modern literature. He was talking about the wet and dark atmosphere at the station and also the lives of people. As we know that petals don't stabl long life. We are also like that mortal in this darkness.
5. The Pool - Hilda Doolittle
Are you alive?
I touch you
You quiver trembling like a sea-fish
Cover you with my net
What are you- banded one?
The poem starts with the question, Are you alive ? Here the poet raised a question may be because the people don't have time for themselves, they worked like machines. So that question was raised by her.
So the image of the pool is important here because the pool doesn't have a flow of water so life has also become flawless in this modern time.
However, another reading is also possible and perfectly persuasive. It was suggested by an IL reader in response to a previous piece of ours, and sees the rock-pool encounter in light of Hilda Doolittle’s pregnancy. When analysed this way, ‘The Pool’ might be interpreted as dramatising an encounter between Doolittle and her as-yet unborn child.
6. Insouciance - by Richard Aldington
IN and out of the dreary trenches,
Trudging cheerily under the stars,
I make for myself little poems
Delicate as a flock of doves.
They fly away like white-winged doves.The
To understand the poem we have to know about the background of the poet. Aldington joined the British Army in 1916, during the Great War, and was commissioned as a second lieutenant into the Royal Sussex Regiment during 1917 and was wounded on the Western Front. Aldington never completely recovered from his war experiences.
So the first image is creating by first two lines. It seems like a war ground. The word 'star' suggests that he was under the protection of stars. And then the reference of doves comes. Dove is the symbol of peace. So speakers want a peaceful life. So 5he poem creates a war image, using a theme of war. This poem explores expressionism.
7. Morning at the Window - by T. S. Eliot
They are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens,
And along the trampled edges of the street
I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids
Sprouting despondently at area gates.
The brown waves of fog toss up to me
Twisted faces from the bottom of the street,
And tear from a passer-by with muddy skirts An aimless smile that
hovers in the air And vanishes along the level of the roofs.
The whole poem has negative words. The word 'Rattling' means vibrating, shaking plates and 'Damp' means in low spirits from loss of hope or courage. The fog and twisted faces gives negative glimpse and an aimless smile suggests artificiality of Modern civilization. This poem gives images and symbols of the dead spirit in people. In this poem we find that the Characteristics of modern poetry,that is the use of negative words. And also we see that the various images create by the poet. The poem tells a story of poor people.
8. The Red Wheelbarrow - by William Carlos Williams
so much depends upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain water
beside the white chicken.
The wheelbarrow is an enduring and universal tool, used by people for thousands of years.
By extension, the wheelbarrow here might be taken to represent the value of the working class. The people actually performing said manual labor, such as farmers, miners, construction workers, etc. Might be the water and the wheelbarrow is the most important part for farmers. This poem showed everyday life.The colours 'red' and 'white' are used in a dual way. It makes the poem difficult in understanding. This poem might be against modern inventions. Poetry is important to craftsmanship.
9. Anecdote of the jar - by Wallace Stevens
I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.
The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.
It took dominion everywhere.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.
The poem is very hard to understand the exact concept of the poem. It's very hard to connect the dots between the images like the jar, the wild area, the place Tennessee, hills and ground. The language is complex in structure. How to read the image of the jar that became difficult for me.
10. I - by E. E. Cumming
"A leaf falls with loneliness"
