Influences in Poetry

Influences of Ezra Pound and Emily Dickinson respectively on E.E. Cummings and Dylan Thomas.

“In a Station of the Metro” Ezra Pound departs from the tradition of obeying the rules of syntax and establishes himself as one of the pioneers of the imagism. He has greatly influenced Cummings in his debuts in Poetry. For example, in “Anyone lived in a pretty how town” Cummings is appealed by the idea of writing his poems with no regard for the standard rules of syntax and grammar in Poetry. He goes further and deprives that poem with the privilege of a having a real title. Instead he uses line 1 as a cover up for a proxy title.
Cummings pursuit the departure from the tradition by eliminating the left margin and starting his lines with a small case letter instead of a capital letter. For example, line 13 reads serves as an illustration as follow:
“when by now and tree by leaf.”
Cummings put into practice the notion of parsimony in the use of words inherited from Pound. In line 36 for example he condenses words in a compact metaphor with the intention of representing the passage of time over the years.Line 36 reads:
“sun moon stars rain”

Emily Dickinson is another example of a poet of an early generation who has been influential among poets of the 20th century. She is a poet who has extensively written about a theme not very attractive, death. As we learned in the previous weeks, she devoted several elegant poems on that theme (for example, # 340, 479 and 591).

Dylan Thomas also expanded passionately around that same theme of death and the dying process in a manner that signals that he was exposed to the school of thought of Emily Dickinson who contemplates death and brings it to a courteous and non threatening position. Similarly Dylan Thomas contemplates death and stimulates the reader to dominate it. In “Do not go Gentle into that goodnight” Dylan Thomas encourages the reader to be valiant until the ultimate moment.