Hello Readers!
Have you ever observed a retro wall clock which has pendulum ? Yes, it keeps on swinging from left to right, right to left. Each oscillation occur with precision and sharpness. We have heard that history repeats itself. Events which are recorded in past is echoed somewhere sometimes in current time also. Modernist literature and the events which are recorded in it, is evidently repeating themselves. Poetry and verse find such voice in the modern age. Here we shall bring out the modernist metaphors from selected poems.
https://blog.dilipbarad.com/2016/06/modernist-poems-activity-identify_25.html
(1) The Embankment by T. E. Hulme
Once, in finesse of fiddles found I ecstasy,
In a flash of gold heels on the hard pavement.
Now see I
That warmth’s the very stuff of poesy.
Oh, God, make small
The old star-eaten blanket of the sky,
That I may fold it round me and in comfort lie.
Star-eaten blanket, gold heels, hard pavement are some of the modern metaphors. It can be said that machination and industries had impoverished the laymen. The voice is heard from some deprived and needy person who wishes to have blanket to wrap up it's body. Hard pavement can also be seen as footpath in which every class of people, rich, poor, working people walk and find their way to somewhere.
(2) Darkness by Joseph Campbell
Darkness.
I stop to watch a star shine in the boghole –
A star no longer, but a silver ribbon of light.
I look at it, and pass on.
Darkness and boghole can be seen as modern metaphor in this poem. The speaker might be watching a reflection of a star in the surface of a boghole.
(3) Image by Edward Storer
Forsaken lovers,
Burning to a chaste white moon,
Upon strange pyres of loneliness and drought.
Metaphors: pyre of loneliness, drought
(4) In a Station of the Metro by Ezra Pound
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
Faces in the crowd, petals, black bough can be the modern metaphors.
(5) The Pool by Hilda Doolittle
Are you alive?
I touch you.
You quiver like a sea-fish.
I cover you with my net.
What are you—banded one?
Sea-fish, net, banded are metaphors.
(6) Insouciance Richard Aldington
In and out of the dreary trenches,
Trudging cheerily under the stars,
I make for myself little poems
Delicate as a flock of doves.
They fly away like white-winged doves.
Metaphors: trenches, white winged doves
(7) Morning at the Window by T. S. Eliot
They are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens,
And along the trampled edges of the street
I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids
Sprouting despondently at area gates.
The brown waves of fog toss up to me
Twisted faces from the bottom of the street,
And tear from a passer-by with muddy skirts
An aimless smile that hovers in the air
And vanishes along the level of the roofs.
Metaphors : damp souls, faces, aimless smile,
(8) The Red Wheelbarrow by William Carlos Williams
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
Metaphors: wheel, chickens
(9) Anecdote of the Jar by Wallace Stevens
I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.
The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.
It took dominion everywhere.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.
Metaphors: jar, wilderness
(10) l(a by E. E. Cummings
l(a
le
af
fa
ll
s)
one
l
iness
l(a leaf falls)oneliness. This is very short and one line poem. Still it tells two major metaphors such as loneliness and fall. Here loneliness can be seen as lack of empathy. In modern scenario it is seen that relations are full of plasticity. Human touch is now losing the ground and machines are found everywhere. Perhaps the metaphor of fall might be regarding the fall of humanity. Oneliness is indicating something about individuality. In a way, the tone of poem seems tragic.
Thank You!
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