20th Century Literature: Poem Analysis

During the 20th century, poetry changed what the idea of what was proper poetry. One of the main focuses during this time while writing poetry was imagery. Imagery is using ones words to paint a picture for the reader in great deal of detail. There were many poets and authors during this time that used imagery as a main focus point in their literary works. Some of the authors during this time were William Carlos Williams, Amy Lowell and Carl Sandburg. Using imagery, the authors that will be discussed, uses imagery in discussing topics that include their political views, how they felt society saw them to be, and insight on what was going on during the 20th century time period.
William Carlos Williams used imagery in quite a few of his poems. …show more content…
Sandburg used imagery to describe the time after the war. One poem that shows this is called “Fog”. This is a short poem that talks about a cat in the fog. Though it is a short poem in makes the reader see that the time after the war was like a cat in the fog just coming and going. “The fog comes on little cat feet/ It sits looking/ over harbor and city/ on silent haunches/ and then moves on” (Perkins, G. and Perkins, B., 2009. P. 1464). As the poem is being read by the reader they are able to imagine a cat coming and going in the fog just as the time of peace came and went for the people during this time …show more content…
In the poem “Sothern Pacific” he discusses the difference between the classes and the similarities. In this poem Sandburg shows in imagery and in form how alike and how different the two men from this time period were. “Huntington sleeps in a house six feet long/ Huntington dreams of railroads he built and owned/ Blithery sleeps in a house six feet long/ Blithery dreams of rails and ties he laid” (Perkins, G. and Perkins, B., 2009. P. 1466). In the lines stated it allows the reader to get the image of how different the classes of this time period were and just how similar they all are as