Any attempt to write sensibly about poetry leads to the core question of what poetry is and how it is composed. Poetry has always been attributed the virtues of having a unique artistic, expressive, inventive and perceptive quality. The very nature of aestheticism itself is to evolve, develop and come into itself, to adapt and capture anything from the nuance of a fleeting disposition to the voracious uproar of a generation. At the same time, what we deem as Great is almost exclusively Great in retrospect. Nostalgia has a dirty habit of making us lust for an unobtainable past; of clinging onto the romance of a tragedy that, at the time, would have destroyed us. Stephen Fry has launched his attack on modern verse for abandoning the wearisome
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In the modern climate of the 21st century, riddled with issues of diversity, disparity and conflict, poets such as Carol Ann Duffy and Dalgit Nagrit have managed to encapsulate the tumultuous divisions in society by reclaiming a voice of their own through the medium of verse – a voice of the martyr instead of the perpetrator; a voice of the people instead of the powerful. For instance, Nagra has adopted the habit of taking the precepts of classical poetry and modifying elements such as the narrator, the dialect and the context to make it applicable to current political issues regarding racial tensions, immigration and the value of “Britishness”. This is ironic, considering Stephen Fry embodies what we allude as being the charming, amiable, scholarly figurehead of classic English charisma; moreover, because he is arguing in support of customary ways of living and doing, which is precisely what Nagra incites as being harmful. Similarly, in employing the “political-correctness” card, Fry disregards that other eras of literary production have occurred against the backdrop of a very different world, a categorically less just world, a world which perpetually silenced the voices of women, of coloured poets, of the working class, of immigrants and unorthodox religious thinkers. To what extent does England’s poetry heritage pay homage to the ramblings of affluent, conservative white …show more content…
What is current today will, in the future, be established as the voice of a different age; an age which is more concerned with the vulgarities of truth than “a host of golden daffodils... tossing their heads in sprightly dance”. Perhaps the present is “dead suburban streets” and “scummed cliffs”, but it’s our present, it’s what we know and it belongs to us. The purpose of all literary ventures is to express without constrain. Modern poetry is unique in that it diverges from the exhausted habits of lonely, wandering clouds to express
In the modern climate of the 21st century, riddled with issues of diversity, disparity and conflict, poets such as Carol Ann Duffy and Dalgit Nagrit have managed to encapsulate the tumultuous divisions in society by reclaiming a voice of their own through the medium of verse – a voice of the martyr instead of the perpetrator; a voice of the people instead of the powerful. For instance, Nagra has adopted the habit of taking the precepts of classical poetry and modifying elements such as the narrator, the dialect and the context to make it applicable to current political issues regarding racial tensions, immigration and the value of “Britishness”. This is ironic, considering Stephen Fry embodies what we allude as being the charming, amiable, scholarly figurehead of classic English charisma; moreover, because he is arguing in support of customary ways of living and doing, which is precisely what Nagra incites as being harmful. Similarly, in employing the “political-correctness” card, Fry disregards that other eras of literary production have occurred against the backdrop of a very different world, a categorically less just world, a world which perpetually silenced the voices of women, of coloured poets, of the working class, of immigrants and unorthodox religious thinkers. To what extent does England’s poetry heritage pay homage to the ramblings of affluent, conservative white …show more content…
What is current today will, in the future, be established as the voice of a different age; an age which is more concerned with the vulgarities of truth than “a host of golden daffodils... tossing their heads in sprightly dance”. Perhaps the present is “dead suburban streets” and “scummed cliffs”, but it’s our present, it’s what we know and it belongs to us. The purpose of all literary ventures is to express without constrain. Modern poetry is unique in that it diverges from the exhausted habits of lonely, wandering clouds to express