Friday, June 1, 2012

Reflective Journal - American Poetry


The study of different eras and overall progression of American Poetry is personally wonderful for me because I love poetry and have been writing poems ever since I was ten years old. I studied the ballad form because I loved writing long dedication poems. Poetry has changed a lot since Shakespeare’s ballads though! The speaker’s attitude and relationship with their subjects progressed slowly yet surely throughout the ages. For example, the early Puritanism poetry dealt with God’s signs and celebration of his grandeur and greatness; the ceding era was of Romanticism where everything was idealized and humans were put upon a pedestal; with the next eras all the way to Modernism becoming more realistic and then abstract. I believe the primary change is the views the poets took on themselves. They first viewed themselves as servants of God; humble yet driven to do His Will, this attitude giving away to the prideful man whose destiny is in his control; to a view that a man is a victim to circumstances and fate, to finally, a total abstract and chaotic look to the world and to themselves. People nowadays don’t know who are what they are; giving rise to a society that does whatever it wants with no sense of consequences.  I guess that centuries of trying to understand themselves only made the humankind even more confused about themselves despite the advancements made in science and technology; for the underlying question is; who are we and what is our purpose of living?

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