Poetry is an art that can be written in many ways, as can be seen from the many examples from different eras. The Imagist movement that generated from the modernist movement depended on solid images that were depicted with clear and non-literal language rather than the traditional poetic of the past movements. Modernist-Imagist poems have many similarities and differences that connect and separate them from each other. Examples of two poems that employ these characteristics are Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird by Wallace Stevens and Haiku (never published) by Allen Ginsberg. The two poems are similar in their form, language and usage of figures of speech such as similes and images, they are different in the themes and settings that are employed by the poets.
The two poems are similar in the language, form, and figures of speech that are recognizable throughout the structure. Concerning the language that the poets use in the poems, both the poems are written with simple words that can be read. When the reader looks through the poem, there are no difficult words that are hard to pronounce nor understand. The form of the poems is similar in the length and stanza structuring. The two poems are long and constructed in stanzas, that belong together but can also be understood individually. Each stanza seems to depict a particular haiku, an exact Japanese form of art, although they are not written in the correct form-meter principles of the traditional Haiku Poetry. The poems also do not have a regular meter in a sentence, sometimes the sentences are constructed with many words as in the poem Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Bird, “The Blackbird whirled in the autumn words”, sometimes they are written in two words like in the poem Haiku (never Published), “The Madman…” Both the poems have enjambments, where one line does not end until the next line, sometimes until the next stanza.
Even though the language is simple in the poems, the poets employ many figures of speech such as similes and images to refer and explain the themes prevalent throughout the poems. Steven’s poem starts with the imagery of snow and landscape of twenty mountains; which establishes a cold, concrete, and strong theme throughout the poem. In the same way; Ginsberg also begins his poem with an image of tea without sugar, which creates an atmosphere of observation and feeds the theme of the poem. Stevens and Ginsberg use symbols that relate to the themes they are depicting in the poems. Stevens, later into his poem uses the Blackbird as a symbol to represent the misunderstanding and miscommunication in the line “A man and a woman and a Blackbird”. Another simile that Stevens uses is in the line, “Why do you imagine golden birds?”, where golden birds represent wealth and money as opposed to the poverty and darkness of the ‘Blackbird.’
Ginsberg uses the symbol of a Cherry Tree and cherry blossoms, in which the former represents his past life and the latter represents the happiness of his past life. The poet uses the word ‘blossom’ to emphasize the happiness, and the word ‘tree’ to emphasize the solidity of his past life. Another symbol that Ginsberg uses is in the line, “but the eyes that glanced at me,” where the word ‘eye’ is the specific symbol to focus on. The poet uses this word to represent the many people from his past looking out onto the speaker, as though they are judging him or approving of him. The similitude between the poems connects the poems to each other, although Stevens is a modernist and Ginsberg is an imagist.
The theme and setting of the poems are the two elements that are different between the poems. Ginsberg’s poem employs the theme of ‘longing for the past’ in his poem, which creates a pessimistic atmosphere. The first hint that the poet gives his readers is in the lines, “Looking over my shoulder/my behind was covered…” where the speaker is looking into the past life that he left behind before moving to somewhere else. Later in the poem, the speaker goes to his old house where he looks through his ‘old desk’ and ‘old journal’ in search of his past life. One reason a person would be looking into the past is that he/she is unhappy with the present. This seems to be the case with the speaker in Ginsberg’s poem because he uses the image of being ‘void’ and the world having no difference wherever he is and whatever he does. The setting of the poem is in an old house, where everything is passed, and a ghost seems to be haunting the grounds. Towards the end, the speaker rents this house that ‘has the moon over the roof and the worms in the garden.’ This gloomy description of the setting adds to the theme of hopelessly longing for the past. In this sense, Ginsberg depicts a pessimistic and hopeless speaker in his poem, which also makes the poem pessimistic and dark.
In contrast, however, Stevens uses the theme of change and passage of time, which are built up by the setting in the poem. Change is emphasized through seasons and passing of time along with a pastoral setting that seems to create a more hopeful feeling, despite the negative imagery, like the coldness of snow and the piercing of glass. Throughout the poem, we can see three seasons, winter, autumn and maybe summer. The poem begins with the cold, austere season of winter into the reddish autumn. In the final section, the lines such as “the river are moving” and “flying in a green light” seem to indicate the shift towards warmer seasons; however, this is not very clear. This shows that time encompasses a large span in the poem. Time is a shifting element in this poem, unlike in Ginsberg, where time stands still for the speaker to observe his surroundings. Steven’s uses the theme of time to emphasizes the change that occurs throughout the poem, like the change happening in the setting as the seasons change. The two themes of change and time are used in the setting of the poem, that is more than one place in his poem, unlike the setting in Ginsberg poem, that is mostly in an old haunted house. Stevens’ poem shifts between the wilderness that is left to itself and the small-town of Connecticut that represents civilization. The atmosphere in the latter setting has a corrupt society that is unhappy, while the former is quiet, beautiful and serene. The differences in the theme and settings set the poems of the same era and similar movement apart.
In the entireness of each poem; the themes, setting, form, language, figures of speech all contribute to creating poetry that is belonging to the modernist movement with a hint of imagism. Within these structures, the poems break-away from the traditional principles and create what Ezra Pound wanted, which was “make it new” by “breaking the pentameter.” The themes, although existing even in the previous traditional poems, are shaped with the modernist ideas and presented through the imagist perspective. This makes the poem unforgettable and effective in explaining the Modernist era, an era where life was fragmented, shifting and pessimistic, but also with a hint of light for the future.