Contemporary poetry, written from the mid-20th century to present day, differs from traditional poetry in structure, length, and language. In the US, contemporary poetry has two main branches: conventional and avant-garde. Common themes include love, family, and death, but contemporary poetry often focuses on suggesting ideas rather than declaring them. High school and college literature classes often cover contemporary poetry, and examples include Sylvia Plath, Robert Frost, and TS Eliot.
By definition of its namesake, contemporary poetry is considered poetry written in our lifetime and includes poetry written from approximately the mid-20th century to the present day. The various types of contemporary poetry do not differ from each other so much as from the poetry of past eras, such as traditional poetry. Contemporary poems often share similar themes and writing styles. However, contemporary poetry has gone in different directions, to some extent.
Readers can begin to distinguish between types of contemporary poetry by looking at poetry within a certain region. For example, in the United States, contemporary poetry seems to have branched off in two directions. The former is a kind of conventional poetry, which tends to include the types of poems published by the big publishing houses and includes poets such as Maya Angelou and Rita Dove. The second is an avant-garde type of poetry, which is favored by small publishers and self-publishers and includes writers such as Frank O’Hara and Robert Grenier. The main difference between conventional poetry and avant-garde poetry is that conventional poems tend towards more widely accepted themes and styles, whereas avant-garde poetry is more experimental.
Perhaps the greatest differences are not found between the various types of contemporary poetry, but between contemporary poetry and traditional poetry. Older traditional poems, such as those of William Shakespeare, Alexander Pope, and John Donne, followed much stricter rules of structure than contemporary poems. For example, many types of contemporary poetry are written in free verse and do not focus as much on rhyme as traditional types of poetry. Most traditional poems adhered to the strict formats of sonnets, ballads and odes. Additionally, contemporary poems are usually shorter than traditional poems and use language more familiar to today’s readers.
Regardless of style, some of the most common themes in contemporary poetry are those of love, family, and death. However, much contemporary poetry focuses more on suggesting an idea or image than on outright declaring it. In this way, contemporary poetry lives up to its characteristic of allowing meaning to reside in the reader’s mind rather than within and accessible from the poet’s mind. In other words, a contemporary poet often leaves it up to the reader to draw their own conclusions and meanings. For some readers and poets, this level of fascination and mystery is part of the allure of contemporary poetry.
Many high school and college level literature and poetry classes focus on contemporary poetry at some point during the course. These courses might focus on learning to read and analyze poetry, write contemporary poetry, or both. Depending on the courses, these lessons might also help students distinguish between different types of contemporary poetry and poets. Some of the best known examples of contemporary poets include Sylvia Plath, Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, TS Eliot and Dylan Thomas. For people interested in learning more about contemporary poetry, but who aren’t enrolled in such classes, reading the poems of these writers is a good place to start.
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