Contemp poetry Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words - 1

Contemp poetry - Essay ExampleFor many contemporary poets, Wordsworth remains an inspiration as they pertain to investigate their own feelings of loss and aging. However, they necessarily approach the subject from a more contemporary viewpoint that has only become more abstracted and disorganize with the increased speed of modern life. These ideas can be traced through the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop, Frank OHara and Rae Armantrout.Elizabeth Bishop employs imagery of the modern world to highlight the loss of youthfulness and loneliness that she finds in the contemporary madness of everyday life. For example, although Filling Station is a playful exchange exploring synonyms, she uses the everyday image of a backwater gas space to investigate ideas of deterioration, loss of beauty and the feeble attempts of someone to cling to the pure. Everything within the filling station is oil-soaked, oil-permeated / to a disturbing, over-all / black translucency (3-5) which is only interrupted by a small stack of colorful comic books that lie / upon a big dim doily / draping a taboret (23-25). The metaphysical question, Why, oh why, the doily? (30) emphasizes the smell of lost meaning that is embodied in the battlefront of something beautiful in this world of aged mechanics. While the sense of self is represented in the presence of the doily and the small plant near it, it is nearly entirely subsumed by the oil and grease that permeates everything in the shop, turning all into a postmodern fantasy of cyborg automaton.The loneliness of the self is complicated by feelings of guilt and shame only acquired through the passage of time and loss in Bishops quintuple Flights Up. While the guilt permeates the poem, the memory of its cause does not make an appearance, indicating the inescapable nature of it in the new world. Any joy in the birds or the dogs greeting for the new day is