The Language of Twentieth Century Poetry

Does modern poetry take word meaning beyond the music-hall pun? How have twentieth-century poets compensated for the diminishing use of metre and rhyme? How colloquial can a poet get? Does grammatical structure ever play a part in poetic effect?These questions and many others are addressed by this volume which takes the view that the creativity of poetry in the twentieth century often bases its inventiveness on the creativity of everyday language. Extraordinary though some modern poetry may seem at first sight we all have the knowledge to unravel the processes that led the poet to that result.The Language of Twentieth-Century Poetry makes liberal use of extracts from the famous poets of the twentieth century as well as less familiar names. The volume culminates in a chapter which draws together linguistic themes into an integrated analysis of three very different poems.