ModPo - Week - 5 – Communist poets of 1930s and formalism of the 1950s

     In Week 5 there were four chapters about Communist poets of the 1930s, The Harlem Renaissance, Robert Frost and Formalism of the 1950s.

    

     In this blog I have shared poems from two chapters. First is “If We Must Die” by Clause McKay from The Harlem Renaissance Movement, these poets were a group of African-American writers who wrote and developed ideas together. Second is “The Death of a Toad” by Richard Wilbur from 1950s Formalism. It is U.S. poetry in the post war reaction against what was deemed to be modernist experimental excess. In this course there were introduction of two Formalists: Richard Wilbur and X.J. Kennedy.

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If We Must Die - Claude McKay, 1889 - 1948

If we must die—let it not be like hogs

Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,

While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,

Making their mock at our accursed lot.

If we must die—oh, let us nobly die,

So that our precious blood may not be shed

In vain; then even the monsters we defy

Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!

Oh, Kinsmen!  We must meet the common foe;

Though far outnumbered, let us show us brave,

And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow!

What though before us lies the open grave?

Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,

Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

        In this poem Claude McKay has adopted high poetic diction and rhyme and meter of a Shakespearean sonnet. The poem is about race relations in the early 20^th century. The very first scene is of war or battle between two groups. They are with the fact that they will not win the battle but poet encourages them to fight back though they die. If they die in battle it will be a noble death and the precious blood will not be shed in vain. The defeat does not matter but what matters is fighting will all strength and respect.  “Oh! Kinsmen” in the poem is used for everyone including readers to encourage them to fight against racism.

Another poem is about Formalism 1950.

"The Death of a Toad" (1950) - Richard Wilbur

       A toad the power mower caught,

Chewed and clipped of a leg, with a hobbling hop has got

   To the garden verge, and sanctuaried him

   Under the cineraria leaves, in the shade

      Of the ashen and heartshaped leaves, in a dim,

          Low, and a final glade.

       The rare original heartsblood goes,

Spends in the earthen hide, in the folds and wizenings, flows

    In the gutters of the banked and staring eyes. He lies

    As still as if he would return to stone,

        And soundlessly attending, dies

           Toward some deep monotone,

       Toward misted and ebullient seas

And cooling shores, toward lost Amphibia's emperies.

    Day dwindles, drowning and at length is gone

    In the wide and antique eyes, which still appear

        To watch, across the castrate lawn,

            The haggard daylight steer.

      In this poem Wilbur has used high poetic diction and classicism. He has depicted the death of a toad in a garden. There is description of toad’s helplessness and poet’s sympathy towards it. Here Wilbur has presented a theme of Man v/s Nature. The Lawn mower has clipped the leg of toad and killed it and those last movement of Toad’s life has been described with full of pain. The garden has also described with a satire on modernism. In the second stanza there is a death of toad and it is presented that after the death the toad is leading towards some good place (heaven). In this poem there is a deep satire towards the human activities which harms nature. Wilbur’s formalism runs contrary to the way the modernist poets approached artifice.