Poetry may only be a mere fifteen lines on a page, yet it is much more. It is the art of using various literary techniques and vivid imagery to capture immortally anything from a scent of a rose to the misery of a heartbreak. It also has the ability to provide comfort and insight into many of life’s complexities. This makes poetry, as P.B. Shelly states, “indeed, something divine”. However, there are many more who are unaware of poetry’s hidden secrets. Therefore it is my pleasure to unlock the door and share the many pleasures of poetry in Eloquent, Beautiful & Divine. My anthology contains poems from the Romantic era and the Contemporary- the two periods which I believe help provide answers and comfort at troubled times. Regardless of when poetry is written both eras express issues everyone has to confront, no matter what time they live in.

In the opening section of my compilation- Romantic Ripplets, I have included poems by the most ‘loved’ poets such as P.B. Shelley’s Mont Blanc, John Keats’s To a Nightingale, William Blake’s The French Revolution and I Wandered lonely as a cloud by William Wordsworth. The combination of vivid imagery and poetic techniques in all these poems successfully portray the author’s profound issues in life.

Gone are the days of the classic Shakespearean poems where ‘Romantic’ was regarded as something dreamy and remote. Whilst Blake saw “a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wild flower’ and Shelly “met a traveller from an antique land”, other Romantic poets had different views on looking at life’s problems. Many dramatic 19th centaury events occurred, the most significant being the French, American and Industrial Revolutions. The movement of freedom and equality and the constant hopes and fears about the changing society were greatly reflected in its literature. Poets particularly dealt with the individual and quite often, nature, in contrast to the turmoil of the political and social surroundings, was the focus of their poetry. Nature was believed to be the “manifestation of God’s glory on earth” where poets can find their haven.

To some people, taking a stroll may be an exercise, but it can also be a time for inspiration to bathe the inner soul. It is these long walks that inspired the work of the most distinguished poet and founder of the Romantic period- William Wordsworth who found pure bliss when isolated with nature and captured it with his immortal words. He has done this in The Solitary Reaper which in my opinion, is the most represented poem in the first section of my anthology.

This reflective lyric like many of his poems, is an instant of “power feelings, recollected in tranquillity.” Not only does he describe a scene in respect to nature like Composed Upon Westminister Bridge, he also writes about the individual and the sense of sadness in The Solitary Reaper. While passing a sublime valley on his Scottish tour, Wordsworth was so enchanted by a lone lass singing and harvesting for grains, that it continued to echo in his mind.

The music in my heart I bore, Long after it was heard no more.

He has used similes to describe her melody as “more welcome” than nightingales; and more “thrilling” than the spring-time. Yet she is not happy in her solitude. Wordsworth was unsure about the tune’s theme but he could feel that her melancholic notes were possibly about “battles long ago” or “some sorrow, loss, or pain”. Although he left the valley and no longer heard the girl’s voice, it continued to resonate him.

Before the Romantic era, poems were written in a “classical” style, but the enthusiastic spirit of liberty during the period, encouraged more freedom from poetic constraints. Poems were written in “language really used by men” hence Wordsworth combined simple, concrete and highly connotative diction to produce audile and visual imagery. Following the iambic tetrameter with a slow rhythm in his four regular rhyming octaves, his careful selection and placement of words helped convey the meaning even more effectively.

Romantic Ripplets has five more of Wordsworth’s poems as well as many more masterpieces by other Romantic poets. Through the creative use of language, they convey the authors’ emotions and experiences encountered in life.

The second section of my anthology, Contemporary Channels, contains a vast collection of about 120 poems. They continue to prove my contention that poetry, still to the present day, is the most effective form of expressing the vital aspects of life.

Violence, war, destruction- these three words that seem an integral part of modern life, have been reflected in many of the poems written in the last fifty years. The world has undergone many events such as the two Great Wars, the baby boom, pollution, political reforms, modernisation and industrialisation. Thus, many modern poets have revealed their problematic lifestyle like Geoffrey Hill’s The mystery of the Charity Charles Peguy, Edwin Brock’s 5 Ways to kill a man and Phillip Larkin’s The Less Decent. Other poets reminisced about the past, the beauty of nature or the possible futuristic outcomes like Ted Hughes’s Cave Birds, and Derek Walcott’s Endings. Unlike Romantic poetry, contemporary poetry has not stood the “test of time” i.e. it has not been accepted as an era nor has spanned generations. However, the most widely read contemporary poet is Sir John Betjeman, and it is his reflective satire The Executive, which I believe, is the most representative of the poems in Contemporary Channels.

The Executive is an amalgamation of Betjeman’s usual anti-pretension and anti-modernist themes. It is about a young man who at first appears to be a typical, honest and well respected executive. However, readers must not be fooled by this impression because he does wear the “other hat”. If he is only an ordinary ten to five worker, driving the “firm’s Cortina”, how can he afford an Aston-Martin and a speed-boat made of “fibre-glass”? It’s because he does “vital off-the-record work” where he slyly develops small country towns into big modernized cities. He does it at any cost regardless of any destruction to nature or heritage sites.

Will settle any buildings that are standing in our way The modern style, sir, with respect, has really come to stay.

His ironic and comical tone is certainly a joy to read. However, quite frequently, at a glance, contemporary poems are mistaken for pieces of prose because of the poets’ freedom to experiment in poetic techniques. Clichés are avoided and are instead, replaced with scientific, industrial and colloquial words like “Slimline brief-case” which were once considered as “unpoetic”. Although free style of writing is evident in Betjemen’s six stanzas, he still employs the traditional techniques of classical poets like similes and personification. He also uses concrete, simple and connotative diction and a lively rhythm, mainly in an iambic metre which further enhances the visual imagery and underlying themes for all readers.

However, not all contemporary poets have written about the dramatic and somewhat pessimistic changes in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In contrast, Sir Stephen Spender wrote about a train in The Express with similar imagery and emotions more familiar with the Romantic poets. This signifies that not all changes in today’s society are negative. Nevertheless, regardless of what poems readers choose from this selection, they portray various “complexities” of life in a beautiful and eloquent way.

Everyone can benefit from reading poetry. Each verse is specially crafted to perfection so that readers from generations later can still enjoy the creative use of literature and the vivid images of the poet’s feelings and experiences. Also, by reading some of the best poems, it will assist readers to cope with everyday problems in their lives, and what is better than to start with the poems of the Romantics and end with contemporary? Aiming this anthology to all poetry lovers, I would especially recommend it to a teenage and young adult audience. Often today, the young fail to comprehend the deeper messages of poetry and only see that it conveys stereotyped “thees and thous”, but given a little time and effort, one will realise that poetry can indeed be eloquent, beautiful and divine.