Poems Influenced by the 20th Century

1. How Poems Were Influenced by 20th Century Events By Breanna Caulfield

2. My Poem Selections “Languages” by Carl Sandburg “The Wall” by Robert Frost

3. Languagesby Carl Sandburg • There are no handles upon a languageWhereby men take hold of itAnd mark it with signs for its remembrance.It is a river, this language,Once in a thousand yearsBreaking a new courseChanging its way to the ocean.It is mountain effluviaMoving to valleysAnd from nation to nationCrossing borders and mixing.Languages die like rivers.Words wrapped round your tongue todayAnd broken to shape of thoughtBetween your teeth and lips speakingNow and todayShall be faded hieroglyphicsTen thousand years from now.Sing - and singing - rememberYour song dies and changesAnd is not here to-morrowAny more than the windBlowing ten thousand years ago.

4. Languages by Carl Sandburg • Summary: • The poem describes how the world is changing and how different cultures are coming together. • He uses imagery to show the reader how he feels that some cultures and languages are being lost and forgotten. We must preserve them. • In this imagery, he uses “a river” to represent language as it goes on its journey in life, and “faded hieroglyphics” to represent the fact that language is fading. • Influences: • The early 20th century was recognized for the industrial, social, and economic changes that were occurring in the world known as the Progressive Era. • Fast population growth was happening as immigrants made their way to America. • Imagism was a movement that took place in the early 20th century where poetry describes images with simple language and great focus.

5. Something there is that doesn't love a wall,That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,And spills the upper boulders in the sun; And makes gaps even two can pass abreast. The work of hunters is another thing:I have come after them and made repairWhere they have left not one stone on a stone,But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,No one has seen them made or heard them made,But at spring mending-time we find them there.I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;And on a day we meet to walk the lineAnd set the wall between us once again.We keep the wall between us as we go.To each the boulders that have fallen to each.And some are loaves and some so nearly ballsWe have to use a spell to make them balance:"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"We wear our fingers rough with handling them.Oh, just another kind of out-door game,One on a side. It comes to little more:There where it is we do not need the wall:He is all pine and I am apple orchard.My apple trees will never get acrossAnd eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.He only says, "Good fences make good neighbors."Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonderIf I could put a notion in his head:"Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't itWhere there are cows? But here there are no cows.Before I built a wall I'd ask to knowWhat I was walling in or walling out,And to whom I was like to give offence.Something there is that doesn't love a wall,That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,But it's not elves exactly, and I'd ratherHe said it for himself. I see him thereBringing a stone grasped firmly by the topIn each hand, like an old-stone savage armed. He moves in darkness as it seems to me,Not of woods only and the shade of trees.He will not go behind his father's saying,And he likes having thought of it so wellHe says again, "Good fences make good neighbors." Mending Wallby Robert Frost

6. Mending Wall by Robert Frost • Summary: • The poem describes two neighbors who meet each year to repair a wall that separates their properties. One is in favor of the wall and the other one is not. • The wall is used as a symbol or metaphor about geographical borders, political or economic policies, and other metaphorical walls between nations and individuals. • The symbolic elements in the poem show the difficulties of human interactions and whether we need walls. • Influences: • The Progressive Era took place in the early 20th century bringing industrial, social, and economic changes. • After the Civil War, industrialization, urbanization, and immigration strengthened the inequalities between industrialist and worker, white and non-white, man and woman.  • The Symbolism Movement influenced European and American literatures in the 20th century.