I think I was the culprit who noted your feminist outlook on the poetry if this course. thanks for validating you use of it. Thourgh this perspective, we see the few benefits of was as a tool which opened new doors for equality through necessity. The way in which the pooet belittles new emerging trends shows the narrow-minded views which revolutionists had to contend with in order for change to occur. But these are the so-called "great" poems of western history, which documented up until this period, with a few exceptions, only was the majority of "white" males (this is around the time that class levels began to erode for poets to gain equal opportunity, therefore i omit class struggle). So while it's not disputed that there were probably many other "great" underrated poets of the time, it was not their time to shine, sadly. However, the poem does have a strong bias which might have been opposed to today by most of the same people who acclaimed it in the beginning.
Minority in PoetrymysteryofgodMarch 20 2006, 20:33:50 UTC
I think that if you study the life of some of the poets we've read and the eras in which they were surrounded then you would see that perhaps these issues of minorities aren't so past over as you thought. For example, Kipling's poem "Tommy" obviously deals with the issue of prejudice. As well, the life of some of the poets weren't so conventional. They didn't address issues such as racism and prejudice because they weren't issues in their days. Sure they existed but they weren't inflated to the size that they are now. I believe you are looking at poetry from a present-day point of view. Occasionally it does well to drop the issues that we face today to see what issues they were facing in their eras.
Re: Minority in PoetrypitchgreenMarch 25 2006, 19:53:43 UTC
If we only look at poems as they were seen in their eras, what we will discover is that the poem is undeniably beautiful (because all the criticism of the time agrees), and then we smear the poem all over the place completely ignoring the fact that it promotes misogyny, racism and classism. Ignoring it won't make it go away, in fact it will just promote all the negative things we've been fighting for that last 100 years to destroy.
Re: Minority in PoetrymysteryofgodMarch 27 2006, 21:21:00 UTC
I don't agree that all the criticism of the time agrees. Not all poets were appreciated during their times. I'm not suggesting that we ignore these issues I'm just suggesting that we look at it in a different way.
There's undeniable sexism in "The Waste Land" but we have to consider Eliot's education and life. He was extremely religious and raised in a time where men were fighting to keep women under submission. It's kind of sad that education doesn't solve societal problems. You'd think learned people would look beyond their priviledge. Eliot had enough respect for the Hindu religion to include it in his poem but the opposite sex is a different situation.
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But these are the so-called "great" poems of western history, which documented up until this period, with a few exceptions, only was the majority of "white" males (this is around the time that class levels began to erode for poets to gain equal opportunity, therefore i omit class struggle). So while it's not disputed that there were probably many other "great" underrated poets of the time, it was not their time to shine, sadly.
However, the poem does have a strong bias which might have been opposed to today by most of the same people who acclaimed it in the beginning.
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