Contemporary Poetry:

One of the most interesting phenomena in the story of modern literature was the awareness of contemporary works during these last decades. It seemed that this was due to the freedom that was obtained by one time colonial countries and in my opinion this was the effect of the spread of films and books. This therefore erupted from the influence of foreign culture where the explosion of new literature by writers who were still young during those years. The work was then so shaped by this rise of a revolutionary crisis that their enthusiasm kindled and inspiration came forthwith.

Suddenly writers in those years were enraptured with the traditional works of the Milton, Coleridge schools and other traditional poets and were now becoming imbibed by European and American works, in the form of contemporary writings.

Becoming more auto-conscious and more interested in the social change around them they became conscious of the modern situation somewhat more humanely and so started treating religious sentiments, emotions and inspirational thoughts with a different attitude than their predecessors.

Lexical selection in poetry widened and the thematic influence spread more rapidly. The importance of rhythm was abandoned, prose and traditional rhyme were shunned and emphasis was given to the internal rhythm of discourse.

This was so mysterious in the literary field that it encouraged youths to join the "avant garde" circles of authors and this awareness led to the explosion of creative writing. Excessive impact in this field led youth in this group to be over ambitious. Literary circles erupted world-wide and this had to become the umbilical of contemporary poetry.

Yet with all this renewal of literary awareness it was not easily comprehended by those well established authors of those times, and also because the movement with all its ?avant garde? name faced a number of extremists and more than often met harsh critical enemies.

There were even times when a few writers thought of forgetting the traditional school of thought which led to apprehension from their side as they did not try to acknowledge the fact that modern poetry evolved from traditional poetry.

Above all this the results of the awareness of those years was by and large accepted and is still with us. One can say that the struggle for recognition of modern literature by well known critics and the fight for the introduction of literary works was won with the result that today we have such literature being acceptable and comprehensible in the evolvement of current literature.

To read the ensuing poetry click on the animated link: