Comparing Yeats And Langston Hughes

“Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit.” This quote from E.E. Cummings himself illustrates just how Cummings incorporated his curious and wondrous personality into his poems. Like no other poet before him, Cummings took it upon himself to create his poems into not only a literary masterpiece but a visual masterpiece as well. Poets leading up to Cummings took a serious, more contemporary approach to their work. Cummings quickly flipped that idea on its head with works such as Tulips and Chimneys, 95 Poems, and is 5, which shows a playful and experimental side of poetry that had never been done before. The imaginable mind of E.E. Cummings changed the poetry world in a remarkable way, from the way in which they are written to the way he …show more content…
Cummings during the 1920s, and took on a more serious and thought out approach to their work. Accepting the responsibility of a large audience and claiming authority in a very serious way, both Yeats and Hughes in works, “The Second Coming” and “The Weary Blues”, became historical figures for expressing the disillusionment of society during their life. Many argue that Yeats and Hughes did more for poetry with their clear and nuanced writing style, then Cummings has with his abstract and creative writings. However, many fail to understand that Cummings style was revolutionary, changing the way we look at the English language. Even though Yeats and Hughes, writings are more straightforward, they lack the certain elements that Cummings brings throughout his work, to encourage the reader to think as well as imagine, in order to grasp a better picture of what the poet is trying to paint. Unlike Yeats and Hughes, who leave little to the imagination, which doesn't allow for their works to grow over course of many years for different generations to