Strength in Themes of Modernist Poetry Things

¶ … Strength in Themes of Modernist Poetry

Things fall apart, the center cannot hold," wrote Yeats of the modern, human condition. Yeats later poetic vision highlights a central notion in much of modern poetic philosophy, namely that the old ideological and religious structures have begun to unravel in modern life. What ideologies that once held up the human form and human social norms are no more, in the face of modern war and destruction. The title of this poem "The Second Coming" refers to the fact that the awaited solution to the crisis, that of the second coming of the Messiah, seems no where to be found, and while human beings wait for meaning, it seems to be no where, and all human strength is lost.

However, not all of modern poetry is absent of answers of the lack of strength in the face of the bleak crisis of hopelessness, of modern life's lack of faith and religion. Ezra Pound saw as the solution to the modern absence of meaning in life, and the searching for a new poetic form that could express the crisis of modern life in the past and the forms of the Far East. While Yeats ultimately rejected the folkloric Irish poetry with which he began his career, Pound returned again and again to other, older poetic traditions such in the Asiatic tradition. The speaker of his poem "Fan-Piece, For Her Imperial Lord" is philosophical when the center of her world, her lover, rejects her: "O Fan of white silk, / clear as frost on the grass-blade, / You also are laid aside."

The haiku form is old, yet unlike Yeats poetic vision, the speaker is not enraged at the lack of an answer for the world's cruelty and her personal woes. She accepts her lot and the nature of life with strength.