Modern Poetry

CDA:a Comparison of Contemporary Iranian and American Poetry

by Parvaneh Khosravizadeh

Co-authored with Sara Mahabadi, Published in the proceedings of International Conference on Languages, Literature and Linguistics, IPEDR vol.26 (2011)

This paper contains a comparison of a famous female poet from Iran and a well-known poet
from the USA. In this... more This paper contains a comparison of a famous female poet from Iran and a well-known poet
from the USA. In this paper issues such as the contexts they produced their work, the type of poems they wrote, and the type of audience they offered their work to, are examined. There is also an analysis of the acceptance as well as the critics of their poems and how they were viewed in the eyes of the readers who
responded to their poems. Some of the views of the contemporary scholars are given in order to give a clear view of the similarities and the differences that exist between the styles of these two poets.

Seamus Heaney and the Romantic Image

by Jonathan Allison

An Approach for the Study of Poetic Imagination

by Arezou Zalipour

Abstract of my PhD thesis that was completed in 2008. Please feel free to contact me if you are interested to know more about my PhD thesis. I am trying to publish it as a book. Your kind suggestions are most welcomed.

An Approach for the Study of Poetic Imagination

Arezou Zalipour, PhD
more An Approach for the Study of Poetic Imagination

Arezou Zalipour, PhD
arezouzalipour@gmail.com


This study examines notions of poetic imagination towards exploring its contemporary representations. It takes its initial point of departure with a historical and conceptual survey that traces the concepts and theories of both imagination and poetic imagination. The literature survey demonstrates that poetic imagination has not been featured in the theories of modern and contemporary poetry, barring the Romantics who celebrated the creative nature of imagination. Therefore, the existing concepts, ideas and theories of poetic imagination are largely unstructured and incoherent concepts inherited by contemporary poets. However, there are some researches on the concept of imagination in poetry in modern and contemporary philosophy and psychology. In the twentieth century, the use of poetic image in philosophical studies as well as the relations between imagination and reality have provided some insights into modern conceptions of poetic imagination. This thesis examines, discusses and collates the principles and concepts relevant to imagination to discover whether these notions can explain and define the nature of poetic imagination in contemporary poetry. Fundamentally, the thesis develops an approach for the exploration of contemporary notions of poetic imagination. The approach is drawn from the existing concepts and theories of imagination and poetic imagination. The approach is constructed featuring the elements of types of images, features of poetic imagination and modes of imagination.

These three categories shape the components of the theoretical framework and also form the three levels of the analytical procedure of the approach. In level one, we look at types of images in a poem which leads us to draw conclusions about features of poetic imagination in level two. In level three, the findings in levels one and two will then help us to determine the apparent and dominant mode of imagination in the poem/text. What should emerge by the end of the analysis is a special opportunity to look at how (creative) imagination is manifested in a poem/text. The approach was applied to a corpus of contemporary poetry in order to show the application of the approach and the way analysis is carried put. The assessment of the approach on a corpus of contemporary poetry was also in an attempt to elucidate the dimensions of relationships between the imagined, the imaged, and the real.

The research identifies that imagination in contemporary poetry moves more towards imaging rather than poetic imagination. In other words, imagination shows greater affinity to imaging in contemporary poetry. The significant contribution of the thesis is that it offers a continuum called Imaginiuum with one end as imaging, and poetic imagination as the other. Imaginiuum is a paradigm that describes contemporary notions of imagination in poetry.

Prosaic Imagination in Contemporary Personal Poetry

by Arezou Zalipour

Arezou Zalipour. 2011. “Prosaic Imagination in Contemporary Personal Poetry”. Asian Journal of Literature, Culture and Society, Vol. 5, No. 3, pp. 68-86. ISSN 1905 - 856X.

Note: this paper was originally published in Asian Journal of Literature, Culture and Society. I was granted the permission to upload it on Academia.edu.

Contemporary poets are inspired to write about their personal lives and experiences. This can be considered as a... more Contemporary poets are inspired to write about their personal lives and experiences. This can be considered as a reaction to T. S. Eliot’s idea of a poem as “impersonality,” or the trend of hiding a personal life behind a poem’s mask. The willingness to write personal poetry goes back to the breakthrough of the American Confessional Movement of the late 1950s. It established a tradition in poetry that has evolved and survived until today. Personal poetry is an attempt to express concerns about the individual’s worth and the value of life in a modern and seemingly strange world. The contemporary poet’s choice of writing about himself and his life has influenced the nature of creative imagination in contemporary poetry. This tendency affects and limits the manifestations of creative imagination in poetry.This paper aims to investigate and discuss this phenomenon. The conceptual framework consists of the
examination and discussion of types of images and features of poetic imagination in the selected samples of contemporary personal poetry. The significant contribution of the study is conceptualisation of the prosaic imagination as a dominant mode of creative imaginatio

"To Make a Show of Concealing": the Revision of Satire in Earle Birney's "Bushed" (SCL 35.2)

by Duncan McFarlane

McFarlane, Duncan. "'To Make a Show of Concealing': the Revision of Satire in Earle Birney's 'Bushed'." Studies in Canadian Literature 35.2 (2010): 185-205.

"An Art That Won't Behave": Film and the Seven Arts, 1907-1921

by Michael Devine

American Literature 84.1 (March 2012): 89-117

In the first two decades of the twentieth century, American artists connected to the journal the Seven Arts sought to... more In the first two decades of the twentieth century, American artists connected to the journal the Seven Arts sought to transform the cinema into an indigenous art free from European influence. Precisely because the cinema was “an art that won't behave,” as the journal's first essay on film put it, it depended on the arts as tutor texts in the effort to restrain sensory disorder and reinvigorate communal life. Wholly absent from critical treatments that see film as a model for the most kinetic modernist practices, the journal provides entry to a richly interdisciplinary history of American cinema: in the critical writings and poetry of the journal's contributors, including James Oppenheim, Waldo Frank, Vachel Lindsay, Stephen Vincent Benét, and Babette Deutsch, and in the works of artists close to the journal—John Sloan's painting Movies, Five Cents (1907) and Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler's abstract film Manhatta (1921). Imagined as a shelter from the most dispiriting forces of urban-industrial modernity, the cinema was at once embraced, challenged, and idealized by these artists who practiced what Wanda Corn has called a “transcendent modernism.”

"Le miroir de l'étranger": Subjectivity in André Frenaud's "Le silence de Genova." Romanic Review, 97.3-4 (2007): 423-43

by Andrea Malaguti

Romanic Review, 2007

Matrimony Unpropitious

by Mohamed Eno

Another excerpt from the book Corpses on the Menu

The African masses should beware of a total subscription to the 'Shared Values' project. Previous as well as current... more The African masses should beware of a total subscription to the 'Shared Values' project. Previous as well as current hardships created by the West should give us enough reading of where we are heading and who to trust along the journey.

So Noxious a Premonition

by Mohamed Eno

Excerpted from my forthcoming volume Guilt of Otherness: A Brief Personal Memoir in Poetry

Strong and weak leadership exist everywhere, in every profession, and academia is not an exception. This verse is... more Strong and weak leadership exist everywhere, in every profession, and academia is not an exception. This verse is dedicated to all men and women academics who at some point in their professional life felt oppressed, frustrated or marginalized for one reason or another by the powers that be in their respective institutions.

Poesia: pistas musicais

by Manuel Pedro Ferreira

in Relâmpago,  nº 19 (Outubro de 2006), pp. 146-50

Depoimento sobre o tratamento musical da poesia (R. M. Rilke, F. Pessoa, E. de Andrade) em três peças vocais do autor,... more Depoimento sobre o tratamento musical da poesia (R. M. Rilke, F. Pessoa, E. de Andrade) em três peças vocais do autor, e exemplificação de decalque rítmico na tradução para português de dois poemas de W. B. Yeats.

Interland: six steps underwater

by Adam Strickson

It was no one's fault

by Benjamin DiZoglio

The reality of life is why we escape into art sometimes. I like to try to capture the reality we're all running from.... more The reality of life is why we escape into art sometimes. I like to try to capture the reality we're all running from.

Check it out

"Paupières mûres": un scénario intournable de Benjamin Fondane?

by Nadja Cohen

Nadja Cohen, « « Paupières mûres », un scénario intournable », in « Ce que le cinéma fait à la littérature (et réciproquement) », Fabula LHT (Littérature, histoire, théorie), n°2, 01 décembre 2006.

Henri Michaux ou le dégagement rêvé

by Nadja Cohen

Published in Les Frontières en question, actes du colloque pluridisciplinaire « les frontières en question » de juin 2006, P.U.G, pp. 179-188, 2007.

Imaging and Imagining Realities: Conceptualising Poetic Imagination In Contemporary Poetry

by Arezou Zalipour

One important function of imagination is to understand reality. Imagination and reality are inherently related and... more One important function of imagination is to understand reality. Imagination and reality are inherently related and poetry is perhaps where imagination reaches its zenith of conception. In the history of Western culture, it was only with the Renaissance that imagination came to be discussed in poetry. Later, poetic imagination was revaluated and formulated by the giants of Romanticism. Close to the present, however, we do not hear much about the concept of poetic imagination as it has been taken for granted in poetry and literature. Therefore, the existing concepts, ideas and theories of poetic imagination are the scattered remnants of its Romantic glorification inherited by the contemporary poet. The account of lost notion of poetic imagination in contemporary poetry put a good deal of emphasis on a reflection of a change in the modes of representing realities in the contemporary. This paper attempts to conceptualize the state and nature of poetic imagination in contemporary poetry to explore the different worlds that imaging and imagining of realities might capture. My focus is to elucidate the dimensions of the relation between the imagined, the imaged and the real. To do this I will look at and discuss imagination in some samples of contemporary poetry from the perspectives of Bachelard’s notion of imagination. Gaston Bachelad’s philosophical studies of poetic image provide some insights into the current state of imagination in poetry

Diálogo entre natureza e língua nos poemas introdutórios de "A paixão medida", de Drummond

by Daniel Duarte

This paper aims to think the role of the initial poems in Carlos Drummond de Andrade’s poetry books. In order to... more This paper aims to think the role of the initial poems in Carlos Drummond de Andrade’s poetry books. In order to consider it, it analyses one case, the three first poems of A paixão medida,
a book published in 1980. It is argued that the first poems in each book of hte poet’s express the themes, scopes and positions of the poetry to be developed, resumed and widened in the poems following. In the case of A paixão medida, the themes are the questioning of nature, the existence of the being when facing nature (which will unfold, in the central part of the book, by approaching the theme of death) and the role of language as “unsolved solution” for the mystery death cannot answer. As
theoretical ground, the theories of Hugo Friedrich about modern poetry are used, as well of main critical books on Drummond’s poetry.

Enemy Lines: Form, Politics and Identity in Wyndham Lewis's One-Way Song

by Ivan Phillips

Published in The Wyndham Lewis Annual, Vol. XII (2005), pp.59-79.

In The Electric Orchard: Technology, Literacy and the Innocence of Experience in the Poetry of Paul Muldoon

by Ivan Phillips

Published in Kennedy-Andrews, Elmer, ed. (2004) The Poetry of Paul Muldoon. Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe.

Cyberdylan: A Poet in the Electric Age

by Ivan Phillips

This was originally presented as a paper at the Dylan Thomas Symposium, The Dylan Thomas Centre, Swansea, in July 2000. It was subsequently printed, in a slightly different form and under a different title, in The Times Literary Supplement:

Phillips, Ivan (2003) 'I sing the bard electric – Dylan Thomas, a poet for the age of mass media'. The Times Literary Supplement. 19 September. 14-15.

"Scars Upon My Heart and Soul: Religious Belief In Women's Poetry of World War I"

by Vicky Simpson

eSharp Online Journal. Special Edition 7: Faith, Belief and Community (spring 2006). <http://www.sharp.arts.gla.ac.uk/&gt;

World War I, like many other cataclysmic events, sparked a renewed interest in religion that is demonstrated most... more World War I, like many other cataclysmic events, sparked a renewed interest in religion that is demonstrated most clearly in the literary discourse of the period. As women were, for the most part, the ones left behind during World War I, they were the ones who worked to make sense of the slaughter of war, and the religious iconography in many of their poems details this attempt. This paper will establish the popularity of religious belief during the war, then introduce Freud’s 1928 essay, The Future of an Illusion, as a means of opening a new perspective on faith during the early 20th century. His perspective will help explain why, rather than tacitly subscribing to the religious fervour of the period, the women’s poetry reveals an ambiguity, a questioning of belief. This paper will argue that the religious iconography became such a popular discourse, used for support, protest, and a variety of messages in between, that it ultimately devalued itself and destabilized the very ideals it sought to reinforce.