Comparison of Post War Poetry

Comparison of Post war numbersWrite an essay comparing John Agards, In Times of quiet, and Fred DAguiars, contend on TerrorThe post-war Caribbean Diaspora, and its attending aesthetic rise in poetics, is rooted in a celebration of paradox in the disorientation and anxiety of a conflicted cultural identity, and consequentially, the self-examination and inspection it provokes. John Agard and Fred dAguiar are no exception as both are of Guyanese origin, and both take care themselves exploring the present in Britain, a present submerged in social and political turbulence to which the war in Afghanistan is inextricably linked. We find ourselves in a divided Age, wherein troubadours and poets no dourer scribble from a faraway trench nor enlist at all, merely instead fight in a socio-political field against seemingly endless cavalries of disillusionment and bureaucratic control. The stanzaic Rebel-Yell is, today, battling alienation on a pseudo-home front orchestrated by vast and impersonal forces, and as a outlet Fred dAguiars proclamation, that home is always elsewhere, speaks volumes for our current condition. Agard and dAguiar, poets capable of fusing deep imagination with cultural and political realities, seem at once relevant voices in their potence to shed light from a paradoxical insider-and-outsider perspective. Traditionally, Agard and dAguiar have displayed firm grasps on iconoclastic satire and political criticism. Their poems, In Times of Peace and war on Terror, respectively, stay true to this tradition while sharing many other bows including the psychological impact of modern warfare, dislocation, ambiguity, transience, and more. For every similarity however, there are differences, to the highest degree profoundly in tone. Where War on Terror is overwhelmingly elegiac with overtones of nostalgic resignation, In Times of Peace seems defiant and provocative. Through these and other alter vehicles, the poems arrive with the same didactic in tention of moving us into a vital awareness and inquisitiveness.Even at a world-class glance, the structural differences in the midst of the two poems are as striking as they are reflective, in that we are faced with the juxtaposition of dAguiars aesthetic minimalism and Agards erudite precision. In War on Terror, the total exclusion of punctuation acts out the role of persistent catalyst for interpretation. The lack of grandction created, while being profoundly symbolic of the elusive war itself, also provokes an active commentatorship in which the audience is forced into subjectively expressing the framework of the poem. This provocative absence almost constructs a dialogue between reader and poet, a poetic conversation and revelation free of political rhetoric but instead promoting personal understanding and endless possibilities for expression. Along with this understanding though, complete ambiguity the fog of war is ever-present and is only accentuated by the final non -conclusion. The fact that the last line is left open-ended leaves an after-taste of nightmare2 discomfort, wherein the equivocally prosperous war remains unanswered for and closure is left unfound thus this purposeful omission aims for a metaphorical rereading and search for answers. In contrast, John Agards heedful cellular inclusion of question-marks as the only punctuation lends to a more direct approach whereby he automatically denies any degree of finality or certainty, but in its frame offers us the right questions. This careful placement, in conjunction with an apocalyptic falling trochaic metre, draws attention to the gravity of the questions being asked, or the questions that should be asked and answered. Tension seems to rise as In Times of Peace progresses along a series of internal-rhymes, with each quatrain growing closer to a complete Canzone poetize a relatively archaic form traditionally reserved for the tragic, comic or elegiac in subject and is therefore not o ut of place here. In this way, as the rigidity of Agards confrontation symbolises the homogenous production-lines of Capitalist war, dAguiars free-verse compliments the lack of punctuation in projecting a disquieting awareness of entropy3. some(prenominal) poems display a deviant anaphora, with equally significant effects. In War on Terror the repetition of as long as2, and more consistently, long2, serves both to provide changing states of time and perspective, and to emphasize the severity of the paradoxical shorter2 in the final stanza. The theme of Time and transience is abundant throughout, with the first and second stanzas introducing a conceit paradox that will be elaborated upon gradually until echoing indefinitely in the open-ended stanzaic non-conclusion. Before doing so however, the middling surrealistic inclinations of paint behind the eyeballs2 and plethora of functioning tropes succeed in defamiliarizing the reader from the mass-media-desensitization to ongoing war, so to give way to the abrupt and dire realities where nightmares paint2 Post Traumatic Stress disorders and the next generation dies for todays conflict in their sleep2. The sense of time and relative transience is propelled by the changing metaphors and perspectives of short long, of as long as a piece of quarter2 contradicted by no longer than a piece of string2, of as long as nightmares2 juxtaposed with the evanescence of paint2. Mutually, In Times of Peace uses the complexities of Time within the words, begin, all there is, wilting1, and urgent questioning of are eyes ready1, to create a sense of immediacy. Anaphora in Agards poem comes in the form of quantifiers and adverbs (that, how, when1) at the lineage of lines, enabling continuity of the inquisition. Figurative use of grammar is likewise found in dAguiars elegy as, in the final stanza, possessive pronouns of this, our and their2 are wielded to illustrate identity and allegiance this war in this time under this governm ent2 not only projects a feeling of detachment and sterile anonymity, but the inclusion of under2 proposes a deeper anomie, oppression and inhumanity. Contrastingly, our children2 evokes a possessive responsibility just as, their sleep2 exemplifies a human right to self-ownership (of fate). The theme of inhumanity, or even sub-humanity, is moreover exposed when the only alliteration, a signpost for natural fluency and regularity, can be found in the nostalgic tamarind tree tree and child crying2. Furthermore, the incongruous imagery of radar and whale2 is rooted in irony, subjectively interpreted as a semblance between the natural purity of the whale, and the disturbing new nature of technological man. This metaphor finds its feet most dramatically in Agards commentary, where the conceit metaphor throughout is that of modern-man changing or devolving into something unrecognisable. Via anatomical referencing of finger, skin, feet, bodies, hearts, human arms, ears, and eyes1, Agard c ontemplates the long-run impact of cross-generational war on human nature4. The alliteration of at home in heavy boots1 brings us to question whether the nature of modern humanity is rooted and reliant on war, leading onto our stepping over bodies1 to draw attention to ruthless Capitalist careerism, and finally questioning how we will cope with a bubble bath1 and whether terminal damage has been make and the notion of peace is no longer relevant, but has been reduced to obscurity, to theory and vagrant optimism. Alliteration is present again in the orality of bullets blood1, but as if awakening in a violent realisation the fluency is halted abruptly by the line-ending rush1. These dystopian visions remain central to the satirical and sceptical comparisons of mogul fingers with skin, feet with foam, arms with the ironic death of weapons, and ears with the romantically-natural imagery of wings1. Considering these interpretations, the audience can find echoes of Rousseauian6 humanis m in both Agard and dAguiars outlook on an anaemic mechanised society.Within our psychological black comedy, our Parade Sauvage7, refuge can be found in the rarity that is the autonomous realm of rhyme no social compromise is offered, no empty promise, but in their places stands a state of rare human equality and mutual exploration. John Agards In Times of Peace bares the ugly reality of our evolution into the modern Prometheus by veiling serious musings, of the notion of Peace as a still-tangible possibility or a faded and fellatious mirage, with a darkly comical satire. Fred dAguiars War on Terror, a title made metaphorical by its origins in mass-media and governmental reasoning, reflects upon the long-term consequences of war and leaves, open-ended, the prospect of a predetermined and doomstruck fate for our next generation of children.AppendixNotes1. From focus text, John Agards In Times of Peace2. From focus text, Fred dAguiars War on Terror3. The focus poems both mirror each other in a stanzaic capacity for debate, with In Times of Peace separated into triad thematic sections of War vs. Civilian Life (first and second stanzas), War vs. Love and Soul (third stanza), and Traditional Nature vs. New Human Nature (fourth and fifth stanzas). Fred dAguiars War on Terror can be stanzaically split into two balanced faces of paradoxical Time, the Indefinite (first and second couplets) and the Definite (fourth and fifth couplets).4. The number of former servicemen in prison or on probation or parole is now more than double the total British deployment in Afghanistan, and an Estimated 20,000 veterans are in the criminal arbitrator system, with 8,500 behind bars, almost 1 in 10 of the prison population. Travis, Alan, Revealed The Hidden Army in UK Prisons, The Guardian, 25 September 2009, p.1.5. Roberts, Neil, A company to Twentieth-Century Poetry (Oxford Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2001) pg. 583.6. Rousseau, J.J, The Social Contract (London Penguin Group, 1968). 7. Rimbaud, Arthur, Complete Works Selected Letters, Bilingual edn (Chicago The University of Chicago Press, 2005) pp. 314-317.Bibliography Silkin, John, The Life of Metrical and Free Verse in Twentieth-Century Poetry (Basingstoke Macmillan, 1997). Roberts, Neil, A Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry (Oxford Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2001). Lennard, John, The Poetry Handbook, 2nd edn (Oxford Oxford University Press, 2005). Rousseau, J.J, The Social Contract (London Penguin Group, 1968).Focus TextApproaching Poetry U67010 Module Handbook Semester 1, 2009-10 Agard, John, In Times of Peace DAguiar, Fred, War on Terror