Bible of Beat Generation

20th CENTURY ENGLISH POETRY
Modernist poetry in English started in the early years of the 20th century with the appearance of the Imagists. In common with many other modernists, these poets wrote in reaction to the perceived excesses of Victorian poetry, with its emphasis on traditional formalism and ornate diction. In many respects, their criticism echoes what William Wordsworth wrote in Preface to Lyrical Ballads to instigate the Romantic movement in British poetry over a century earlier, criticising the gauche and pompous school which then pervaded, and seeking to bring poetry to the layman.
Modernists saw themselves as looking back to the best practices of poets in earlier periods and other cultures. Their models included ancient Greek literature, Chinese and Japanese poetry, thetroubadours, Dante and the medieval Italian philosophical poets (such as Guido Cavalcanti), and the English Metaphysical poets.
Much of early modernist poetry took the form of short, compact lyrics. As it developed, however, longer poems came to the foreground. These represent the of the modernist movement to the 20th-century English poetic canon.

This paper have been organized into four main sections. Firstly, It will be given a brief information about English Poetry. Secondly, It will be explained the development of English Poetry from 1940 to up to now. Thirdly, It will be presented some important poem samples belonging to any of these periods and analyse two of them. Finally, It will be made a comment throughly on the subject.

ENGLISH POETRY FROM 1945 UP TO NOW
1945s:
The 1940s opened with ‘’the outbreak of war inUnited Kingdom and English-language poetry took a number of turns, generally in the direction of the difficult’’(Macrone, Michael Brush Up Your Poetry, 1996, p. 216). A new generation of war poets emerged in response. These included Keith Douglas, Alun Lewis, Henry Reed and F. T. Prince. As with the poets of the First World War, the work of these writers can be seen as something of an interlude in the history of 20th century poetry. Technically, many of these war poets owed something to the 1930s poets, but their work grew out of the particular circumstances in which they found themselves living and fighting. It was a time when old certainties were shattered and old values put into question. Events such as the First World War, the Great Depression, and the rise of fascism, and theories such as those of Freud and Einstein, made the world seem increasingly hard to fathom, and certainty ever more uncertain. (Macrone, Michael, Brush Up Your Poetry, 1996, p. 216).
The main movement in post-war 1940s poetry was the New Romantic group that included Dylan Thomas, George Barker, W. S. Graham, Kathleen Raine, Henry Treece and J. F. Hendry. These writers saw themselves as in revolt against the classicism of the New Country poets. They turned to such models as Gerard Manley Hopkins, Arthur Rimbaud and Hart Crane and the word play of James Joyce. Thomas, in particular, helped Anglo-Welsh poetry to emerge as a recognisable force.
Other significant poets to emerge in the 1940s include Lawrence Durrell, Bernard Spencer, Roy Fuller, Norman Nicholson, Vernon Watkins, R. S. Thomas and Norman MacCaig. These last four poets represent a trend towards regionalism and poets writing about. their native areas; Watkins and Thomas in Wales, Nicholson in Cumberland and MacCaig in Scotland.
1950s:
The 1950s were dominated by three groups of poets, The Movement, The Group and a number of poets that gathered around the label Extremist Art.
The Movement poets as a group came to public notice in Robert Conquest's 1955 anthology New Lines. The core of the group consisted of Philip Larkin, Elizabeth Jennings, D. J. Enright,Kingsley Amis, Thom Gunn and Donald Davie. They were identified with a hostility to modernism and internationalism, and looked to Hardy as a model. However, both Davie and Gunn later moved away from this position.
The members of The Movement were not anti-Modernists, however they were opposed to Modernism which was reflected in the Englishness of their poetry. It was The Movement which sparked the division between different types of British poetry. Their poems were nostalgic for the former Britain and are filled with pastoral images of the decaying way of life as Britain moves farther from the rural and more towards the urban ( Nicholls, Peter Twentieth Century English Literature 2012, pp.226-228).
As befits their name, the Group were much more formally a group of poets, meeting for weekly discussions under the chairmanship of Philip Hobsbaum and
The chairmanship of the group passed to Edward Lucie-Smith in 1959 when Hobsbaum left London to study in Sheffield. The meetings continued at his house in Chelsea, and the circle of poets expanded to include Fleur Adcock, Taner Baybars, Edwin Brock, and Zulfikar Ghose; others including Nathaniel Tarn circulated poems for comment.( University of Reading, Papers of The Group, 2013) Other Group poets included Martin Bell, Peter Porter, Peter Redgrove, George MacBeth and David Wevill. Hobsbaum spent some time teaching in Belfast, where he was a formative influence on the emerging Northern Ireland poets including Seamus Heaney.
The term Extremist Art was first used by the poet A. Alvarez to describe the work of the American poet Sylvia Plath. Other poets associated with this group included Plath's one-time husband Ted Hughes, Francis Berry and Jon Silkin. These poets are sometimes compared with the Expressionist German school. ‘’In different realms at different times were many different definitions of "extremism". Dr. Peter T. Coleman and Dr. Andrea Bartoli give short observation of definitions’’ ( Coleman and Bartoli, Adressing Extremism, pp. 3-4 )
A number of young poets working in what might be termed a modernist vein also started publishing during this decade. These included Charles Tomlinson, Gael Turnbull, Roy Fisher and Bob Cobbing. These poets can now be seen as forerunners of some of the major developments during the following two decades.
1960 and 1970s:
In the early part of the 1960s, the centre of gravity of mainstream poetry moved to Northern Ireland, with the emergence of Seamus Heaney, Tom Paulin, Paul Muldoon and others. In England, the most cohesive groupings can, in retrospect, be seen to cluster around what might loosely be called the modernist tradition and draw on American as well as indigenous models. The British Poetry Revival was a wide-reaching collection of groupings and sub groupings that embraces performance, sound and concrete poetry as well as the legacy of Pound, Jones, MacDiarmid, Loy and Bunting, the Objectivist poets, the Beats and the Black Mountain poets, among others. Leading poets associated with this movement include J. H. Prynne, Eric Mottram, Tom Raworth, Denise Riley and Lee Harwood.
The Mersey Beat poets were Adrian Henri, Brian Patten and Roger McGough. Their work was a self-conscious attempt at creating an English equivalent to the Beats. Many of their poems were written in protest against the established social order and, particularly, the threat of nuclear war. Although not actually a Mersey Beat poet, Adrian Mitchell is often associated with the group in critical discussion. Contemporary poet Steve Turner has also been compared with them.
About half-way from the Beats and the Angry Young Men stands Keith Barnes whose themes are WWII, love, social critcism and death. His Collected Poems were published in France.
We come across some curicial events happened both in 1960 and in 1970. In 1960 August Derleth launches the poetry magazine, Hawk and Whippoorwill. Welsh poet Waldo Williams is imprisoned for six weeks for non-payment of income tax (a protest against defence spending). What’s more, an inscription of an excerpt of the Poema de Fernán González is discovered on a roofing tile in Merindad de Sotoscueva, the earliest known record of it. In 1970 some other important events ocurred such as ‘’May –La nuit de la poésie, a poetry reading in Montreal bringing together poets from French Canada to recite before an audience of more than 2,000 in the Théâtre du Gesu, lasting until 7 a.m.’’ in 1970 (The Encyclopædia Britannica ,"Literature" article, "Canada" section, "French Language" subsection, page 457,1971) and ‘’First issue of Tapia later named the Trinidad & Tobago Review published ‘’( Williams, Emily Allen, Selected Timeline of Anglophone Caribbean Poetry, 1970-2001, p.17 ). In addition, ‘’In the United Kingdom, "My Enemies Have Sweet Voices", a poem by Pete Morgan, is set to music by Al Stewart and included in his "Zero She Flies" album this year’’ ( Salter, Miles, "Pete Morgan obituary: Elegant, original poet much admired by his contemporaries", July 15, The Guardian ).
English poetry now:
Last three decades of the 20th century saw a number of short-lived poetic groupings, including the Martians, along with a general trend towards what has been termed 'Poeclectics' namely an intensification within individual poets' oeuvres of "all kinds of style, subject, voice, register and form". There has also been a growth in interest in women's writing, and in poetry from England's minorities, especially the West Indian community. Performance poetry has gained popularity, fuelled by the poetry slam movement. Poets who emerged in this period include Carol Ann Duffy, Andrew Motion, Craig Raine, Wendy Cope, James Fenton, Blake Morrison, Liz Lochhead, Linton Kwesi Johnson and Benjamin Zephaniah.
Even more recent activity focused around poets in Bloodaxe Books' The New Poetry, including Simon Armitage, Kathleen Jamie, Glyn Maxwell, Selima Hill, Maggie Hannan, Michael Hofmann andPeter Reading. The New Generation movement flowered in the 1990s and early 2000s, producing poets such as Don Paterson, Julia Copus, John Stammers, Jacob Polley, K M Warwick, David Morley and Alice Oswald. ‘’A new generation of innovative poets has also sprung up in the wake of the Revival grouping, notably Caroline Bergvall, Tony Lopez, Allen Fisher and Denise Riley.’’ ( Don, Peterson, The Dark Art of Poetry: T.S. Eliot Lecture, 9 November, 2004 ) There has been, too, a remarkable upsurge in independent and experimental poetry pamphlet publishers such as Barque, Flarestack, Heaventree and Perdika Press. Throughout this period, and to the present, independent poetry presses such as Enitharmon have continued to promote original work from (among others) Dannie Abse, Martyn Crucefix and Jane Duran.

In this section, I will present some important poem samples belonging to any of these periods and give a short summary of two other poems belonging any of these time about what is told in these poems in order to smell the atmosphere of that time at least. Here is a one of Keith Douglas’ poems:

The Knife Can I explain this to you? Your eyes are entrances the mouths of caves
I issue from wonderful interiors upon a blessed sea and a fine day, from inside these caves I look and dream.

Your hair explicable as a waterfall in some black liquid cooled by legend fell across my thought in a moment became a garment I am naked without lines drawn across through morning and evening.

And in your body each minute I died moving your thigh could disinter me

from a grave in a distant city: your breasts deserted by cloth, clothed in twilight filled me with tears, sweet cups of flesh.

Yes, to touch two fingers made us worlds stars, waters, promontories, chaos swooning in elements without form or time come down through long seas among sea marvels embracing like survivors in our islands.

This I think happened to us together though now no shadow of it flickers in your hands your eyes look down on ordinary streets
If I talk to you I might be a bird with a message, a dead man, a photograph.
Keith Douglas

As a second example, I want to present one of Philip Larkin’s poems:

Nothing To Be Done
For nations vague as weed,
For nomads among stones,
Small-statured cross-faced tribes
And cobble-close families
In mill-towns on dark mornings
Life is slow dying.
So are their separate ways
Of building, benediction,
Measuring love and money
Ways of slow dying.
The day spent hunting pig
Or holding a garden-party,
Hours giving evidence
Or birth, advance
On death equally slowly.
And saying so to some
Means nothing; others it leaves
Nothing to be said.

At this point, I want to give a short summary of two poems, one of which is Love is, written by Adrian Henri and the other of which is Dis Poetry ,written by Benjamin Zephaniah

Love Is...
Love is...

Love is feeling cold in the back of vans

Love is a fanclub with only two fans

Love is walking holding paintstained hands

Love is.

Love is fish and chips on winter nights

Love is blankets full of strange delights

Love is when you don't put out the light

Love is

Love is the presents in Christmas shops

Love is when you're feeling Top of the Pops

Love is what happens when the music stops

Love is

Love is white panties lying all forlorn

Love is pink nightdresses still slightly warm

Love is when you have to leave at dawn

Love is

Love is you and love is me

Love is prison and love is free

Love's what's there when you are away from me

Love is...
Adrian Henri

When I come to analysis of this poem, I must say that this poem brings out the feeling of love expressed in terms of a lover who feels the delight and joy in describing love showing its similarities with many of our day to day chores, objects and events around us.
Love has been described as a strange thing which gives the two people in love a strange feeling. Love has been suggested as a fan club that has only 2 fans meaning that it’s a liking that happens between two people, ‘walking holding painstained hands’ is symbolic of Lovers keeping together even when they have to face oppression or savageness of the world. Love gives them the strength to bear any hardships that come in their way because they are together.
The phrase ‘Love is…” has been repeated at the beginning of each stanza is to emphasize the feeling of love explicitly and clearly. Some simple things that people love doing together bring them happiness and cheer. ‘Fish and chips’ look like a special thing on winter nights, just because it gives them some time to be together and to feel the love for each other. Love has been compared to a’ blanket’ that has many exciting things to hold. Love makes you feel so excited that you spend sleepless nights dreaming of the one you love.
The mesmerizing feeling of love has been compared to gifts on a Christmas shop which are always attractive and appealing. Love makes you feel joyous as if it were some kind of present. Love has a magical effect which makes you feel on cloud nine. You feel that you are on the top of the world and that everything around you is perfect. Love brings great moments for the lovers to enjoy. The rhythm of love goes on even when the music stops. In other words, love makes you feel alive and is eternal.
Love is also what brings the two lovers close and results in physically intimacy. The warmth of love is something that only two lovers can sense. Lovers find it too difficult to separate from each other. Love gives them a sense of belonging and a reason to be always together. They feel the pain in separation and do not want to wave goodbye when they have to leave at the dawn.
Finally, love has been given a very substantial meaning. Love has been called ‘you’ and ‘me’ referring to the two lovers. Personification of love has given it a significant presence. Love makes a lover feel imprisoned in the jail of Love. In other words, Love keeps you go back to your lover again and again. Even when the two lovers are physically separated from each other, they can feel the presence of Love in their lives. The feeling of love is so great that it doesn’t know any bounds. It transcends all boundaries of physical existence and makes the person feel the presence of their lover even they are not close to them.

Dis poetry
Dis poetry is like a riddim dat drops
De tongue fires a riddim dat shoots like shots
Dis poetry is designed fe rantin
Dance hall style, big mouth chanting,
Dis poetry nar put yu to sleep

Preaching follow me
Like yu is blind sheep,

Dis poetry is not Party Political
Not designed fe dose who are critical.
Dis poetry is wid me when I gu to me bed
It gets into me dreadlocks
It lingers around me head
Dis poetry goes wid me as I pedal me bike
IÕve tried Shakespeare, respect due dere
But did is de stuff I like.
Dis poetry is not afraid of going ina book
Still dis poetry need ears fe hear an eyes fe hav a look
Dis poetry is Verbal Riddim, no big words involved
An if I hav a problem de riddim gets it solved,
IÕve tried to be more romantic, it does nu good for me
So I tek a Reggae Riddim an build me poetry,
I could try be more personal
But youÕve heard it all before,
Pages of written words not needed
Brain has many words in store,
Yu could call dis poetry Dub Ranting
De tongue plays a beat
De body starts skanking,
Dis poetry is quick an childish
Dis poetry is fe de wise an foolish,
Anybody can do it fe free,
Dis poetry is fe yu an me,
DonÕt stretch yu imagination
Dis poetry is fe de good of de Nation,
Chant,
In de morning
I chant
In de night
I chant
In de darkness
An under de spotlight,
I pass thru University
I pass thru Sociology
An den I got a dread degree
In Dreadfull Ghettology.
Dis poetry stays wid me when I run or walk
An when I am talking to meself in poetry I talk,
Dis poetry is wid me,
Below me an above,
Dis poetry's from inside me
It goes to yu
WID LUV.
Benjamin Zephaniah
“Dis Poetry” by Zephaniah is one of a kind. It is simple, yet looks like complicated. The poem is just spoken straight out from his mind.
The poem itself says that there is no rhythm and in case, found any that is pure co-incidence. The poem is juts flatly put, to showcase that the poet is not that specific about any particular event or thought, but yet words and thoughts in mind are much stronger than words put out.
The first part of the poem says that the poem does not hold any specifications as it is not for preaching, nor for following, it is not for putting you to sleep or for reciting after me, it is just that pope duo in my thoughts and is within me when I go to bed or bike. Loved Shakespeare and his work, but this is my style and I like it.
In the second stanza he says that, he is not afraid is this poem gets published, for it does require imagination to understand. He tried being romantic, but since it was of no good to him, he even left that subject. He tried to be personal, but all those have been discussed earlier and there is no use in discussing repeated words and thoughts.
He says the poem is for all alike, the child and adult, the wise and the fool, anybody could take it for free and read as it is just for you and me. Inspite of all these, you yet honored from Universities under a spotlight. Lastly he says the poem is within him and would be with him all the time, no matter what or where he is, it is from him to you, just like that. This poem has depicted his own life and he has put that in simple format as just a saying through this poem. If the entire poem is summarized and compared with Zephaniah life, it does have a lot of resemblance, he doe clearly say that he has not come for preaching or to be followed, yet he would like to spread the message, similarly, the poem says it is not specific for any character or subject, just like not for any age categories or politic, but for the Nation. He has clearly said in the poem, it is within me and no words would be from the past, where he shows that his ideas were not with anyone and not like the famous poet Shakespeare, but it has derived from within him and has been with him day and night. The poem is just the depiction of his life and the message that he wants to convey to all, penned down beautifully and simply.
Finally, as a conclusion, I want to say that English Poetry has undergone many superb developments from 1945 up to now and hosted many important poets and poetry motifs such as The British Poetry Revival and The New Poetry. These innovations and developments in the poetry between these periods provided a new soul to it. For instance, War Poetry of 1945 reflected the scene and social situation of that time very well thanks to war poets such as Keith Douglas or Philip Larkin. In my opinion, when we look at English poetry from 1940 to now, we can readily take the smell how English Poetry follows currency and express the soul of its time succesfully.

Works Cited *http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/emily_dickinson/poems/9347.html *http://www.poeticterminology.net/english-poetry/ *http://www.skoool.ie/skoool/junior.asp?id=1461
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_poetry
* www. Shmopp. com
* www. Sparknotes. com
* www. Cliffnotes.com

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[ 2 ]. New Romanticism (also called blitz kids and a variety of other names) was a pop culture movement in the United Kingdom that began as a nightclub scene around 1979 and peaked around 1981.
[ 3 ]. The Movement was a term coined by J. D. Scott, literary editor of The Spectator, in 1954 to describe a group of writers including Kingsley Amis, Philip Larkin, Donald Davie, D.J. Enright, John Wain, Elizabeth Jennings, Thom Gunn, and Robert Conquest. The Movement was essentially English in character; poets in Scotland and Wales were not generally included.
[ 4 ]. The Group was an informal group of poets who met in London from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s. As a poetic movement in Great Britain it is often seen as being the successor to The Movement.
[ 5 ]. Extremism (represented on both sides of the political spectrum) is any ideology or political act far outside the perceived political center of a society; or otherwise claimed to violate common moral standards.
[ 6 ]. The British Poetry Revival is the general name given to a loose poetry movement in Britain that took place in the 1960s and 1970s. The revival was a modernist-inspired reaction to the Movement's more conservative approach to British poetry.
[ 7 ]. A national group of poets who emerged from San Francisco’s literary counterculture in the 1950s
[ 8 ]. The "angry young men" were a group of mostly working and middle class British playwrights and novelists who became prominent in the 1950s. The group's leading members included John Osborne and Kingsley Amis.
[ 9 ]. The New Poetry was a poetry anthology edited by Al Alvarez, published in 1962 and in a revised edition in 1966. It was greeted at the time as a significant review of the post-war scene in English poetry.
[ 10 ]. Enitharmon Press is an independent British publishing house specialising in poetry. The name of the press comes from the poetry of William Blake: Enitharmon was a character who represented spiritual beauty and poetic inspiration.
[ 11 ]. Adrian Henri (10 April 1932 – 20 December 2000) was a British poet and painter best remembered as the founder of poetry-rock group the Liverpool Scene and as one of three poets in the best-selling anthology The Mersey Sound, along with Brian Patten and Roger McGough.
[ 12 ]. Benjamin Obadiah Iqbal Zephaniah (born 15 April 1958, Birmingham, England) is an English writer and dub poet. He was included in The Times list of Britain's top 50 post-war writers in 2008