The greatest themes of contemporary poetry include isolation, solitude, extinction of tradition, inability of love, the lossof indentity, and etc. which the industrialized and mechanized society brings about. All these are closely connected to the urb...
The greatest themes of contemporary poetry include isolation, solitude, extinction of tradition, inability of love, the lossof indentity, and etc. which the industrialized and mechanized society brings about. All these are closely connected to the urban life.
The great urban effect which appeared in literature begins inthe poetry of 1930s modernists'. It's natural to look over the expression and reflection of the urbanism in literature as the city is nowadays the essential foci of modern life.Furthermore, the city shapes what is called the ecological characteristics in Western Society. As poems are the reflection of life, so the urban images are the reflection modern life. So it's no doubt generalized that the distinct characteristics of modern poetry is defined as thename of urban poetry and generally believed the equation of con-temporary modern poetry is equal to urban poetry.
For the moderns the city is seen as falling or as fallen andtherefore moving toward the infernal City.In urban life we seeboredom and horror, and frustration or derision of latent feel-ing, the sham of modern life.
So the modern poetry such as T.S.Eliot's and R.Lowell's whichbelong to modernists'indulges in self-mokery, ridicules seriousfeelings and represent mixed reactions to things, the subjective mocked by the objective, the discrepancy between appearance and reality.