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Before the late 19th century, poems were written in more or less the same way. They were more direct, rhymed and was written a way to clearly portray a message. After the symbolist movement of the 19th century, today, poems are now written in numerous ways. They are written with metaphors, uses breaks on sentences, are less direct, and doesn't gives out the clear message. Also art is now a key in poems. And by "art", what I mean is the use of one's mind to get the main idea of the poem.
Robert Frost (1874-1963) was an American poet and modernist who was known for writing about the rural of life and having a writing style for combining common speech into a poetic form. Mending wall was published in 1914.
So, the two poems are very much different than the ones before the late 19th century movement. In "Mending Wall" the poem is written with common speech with what we hear everyday and is written in a way that gives a sense of ambiguity to the reader. And in "The Red Wheelbarrow", has more meaning to it if the reader looks for "symbols" and combines it with common ideas. Many more poems today uses some of these writing techniques but there are more ways of writing to be discovered.
In this prezi, I will explain two poems that were affiliated with the events of the late 19th and early 20th century, which was a time of symbolism, where people began to break off the traditional ways of writing poetry and creating new and innovative ways of writing poetry.
"Mending Wall" is about 2 neighbors who tends a wall that separates them. However, one neighbor, the narrator, questions the use of the wall. It is an excellent example of a poem using common speech and writes it in a way that gives a sense of ambiguity.
For an example about ambiguity, "He moves in darkness as it seems to me, Not of woods only and the shade of trees." This clearly tells that the narrator's neighbor is not simply moving under the shade of trees. It could mean he's dark, sinister perhaps evil. But it could also mean he's not well known or holds back who he really is because the poem doesn't exactly tells anything unique about the neighbor, just that he keep saying "Good fences make good neighbors."
Carlos Williams was an poet who was associated with modernism and imagism. His work was closely associated with imagism, which was the use of "art" or thoughts that make a poetic statement. "The Red Wheelbarrow" was published in 1923.
This identifies as a short poem. Although it only has sixteen words, Williams uses symbolism in his poems thus we can interpret many things from this poem. For example, "red" is a color used in many symbols such as love or anger, however if combined with other symbols the message should come apparent. So a wheelbarrow is used for heavy lifting which would be rough for a normal person to carry. And since the wheelbarrow "endures" this, we could say that the wheelbarrow represents a person in distress or in turmoil. Because red represents a hurting feeling and the wheelbarrow caries things that would be a too heavy burden for a normal person to carry, we would say the red wheelbarrow has gone through hardships and turmoil. The poem goes on but when combined with the other symbols, "glazed with rain water", "white chickens." the poem's message should be clear.