12.individual Freedom TILL Lang

The Indo-Libyan Linguist P K Sharma and C Bhuvaneswar Individual Freedom 2014
Individual Freedom: Perspectives on Selected Contemporary British and

American Poets
Pradeep K. Sharma, and Chilukuri Bhuvaneswar
“Individual freedom is the freewill in choice exercised through one’s svabhavam for living
by triple action.” (Chilukuri Bhuvaneswar)
Abstract
Individual freedom, bordering on outright rejection of and revolt against the repressive set norms
of the mainstream culture, has been one of the predominant concerns of literature. Almost all
literature, whether categorized as ‘protest literature’ or not, is a literature of protest, an
expression / a voice crying for individual freedom erupting from the radical outlook of poets who
love individual freedom more than anyone else - a special literary trait in their personality. It
normally originates at the personal level and gradually shapes up to be the voice of the masses. To
illustrate, the philosophical speculations of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre, Marcel, Karl Jaspers
and Camus, to name only a few, have influenced generations of writers / poets from New York
School of poets, the Beat Generation, the Movement Poets to the Postmodernist poets to strive for
individual freedom, in a way, to put “existence before essence,” and the trend continues. Put
differently, “literary culture is patterned literary praxis triggered by the dispositional creativity of
the individual author as a dispositional literary reaction (through his inclinational-informational-
habitual complex of svabha:vam) to the contextual literary action and gradually evolved by
Individual-Contextual-Collective-Standardization (ICCS) in a spatiotemporalmaterial,
socioculturalspiritual context (Bhuvaneswar, 2011)”. However, it is not clearly established
whether the contemporary poets’ rallying cry for freedom is oriented more towards personal
freedom, regardless of social relevance of aesthetics, or their interests encompass the larger (social)
issues involved in the concept of individual freedom.
In this paper, an attempt has been made to critically evaluate the literary characteristics of this
rallying cry for individual freedom and to show that contemporary poets are disenchanted with
the ‘culture of suspicion’ of postmodernism, and the fresh air of change in the new poetics
indicates an active awareness towards larger social issues involved in the practice of literature
with reference to themes and content as well as style.
Key words: individual freedom, protest literature, existentialism, contemporary poetry, aesthetics
and social concerns.
I. Introduction
A quick glance through the contemporary English poetry reveals a perceptibly
strong voice for individual freedom in the themes, content, and style of the poems
of prominent British and American literary figures, a case of perceptible change
from those of the postmodernist poets. As such, we notice a visible thematic turn
off the postmodernist tradition in poetic composition with reference to themes,
content, and style. As a result, the contemporary poets’ individual choice of
themes and content seems to be directed more towards social concerns in
comparison to the predominantly personal concerns of their immediate
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predecessors; in addition, this choice is accompanied by a corresponding change

in style from abstract, elitist to a simple style with mass appeal. Therefore, there
is felt a need to analyze whether contemporary poets perceive that social
“engagement” with mass appeal in style is an essential aspect of successful poetic
endeavor so that modern poetry can be relocated in a new spectrum.
In this article, an attempt has been made to empirically find out whether such
changes really took place and are systemically brought out or they are still
nascent in their literary development. To do so, a few prominent representative
British and American poets have been selected and their poetry has been
examined in terms of themes and their development for social engagement; and
to elaborate the points further, some aspects of their compositions have been
compared and contrasted with that of the poetry of their immediate predecessors
with a few comments on their style.
In this analysis it has been argued that a discontent and disenchantment among
the contemporary poets about the postmodernist tradition triggered the change
because it is unapproachable to the common masses, which is the essential
prerequisite for the survival of poetry.
1. 1. Aims and Objectives

The aim of the present research is to analyze selected poems of contemporary
English poets to find out whether their poetry leans more towards social
concerns rather than rejecting society as a site for grand narratives,and whether it
is accompanied by a change in style.
The objectives of the present research are:
1. to analyze a few themes and stylistic features of the contemporary English poet
Simon Armitage using insights gained from Ka:rmik Critical Literary Analysis,
especially the points related to dispositional and contextual aspects of the
creation of poetry, and refer to some other poets (publishing at the turn of the
millennium and after) through comparison with selected postmodernist poets;
2. to show the distinct aspects of their poetry – with special reference to Simon
Armitage – to motivate the variation in their literary trends through sociocultural
and literary dispositional traits.
1. 2. Materials and Methods

For the present study I have picked up the well-known poems of some British
and American poets who have got enough recognition in literary circles and are
mostly award-winning authors in their country. For instance, Simon Armitage
(Give), Colette Bryce (Wish You Were), Matthew Caley (Towards a Philosophy of
Speed), Kate Clanchy (Poem for a Man with No Sense of Smell), Julia Copus
(Cleave, A Short History of Desire, An Easy Passage), Michael Donaghy (Glass),
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Carol Ann Duffy (Prayer), Douglas Dunn (Land Love), Mark Ford (Inside),
Seamus Heaney (From Lightenings: VIII), Kathleen Jamie (Julian of Norwich),
Roddy Lumsden (Pagan), Sarah Maguire (The Invisible Mender [My First
Mother]), Jamie McKendrick (Apotheosis), Roger McGough (The Way Things
Are), Sean O’Brien (Cousin Coat), Alice Oswald (Sonnet), Jacob Polley (A Jar of
Honey), Robin Robertson (Wedding The Locksmith’s Daughter), Neil Rollinson
(Constellations, French), Anne Rouse (Nocturne), Henry Shukman (Snowy
Morning), Hugo Williams (Old Boy) and Helen Dunmore (The Malarkey) are
some of the representative poets whose poems I havechosen for analysis. Some
more poems of Simon Armitage are selected for more focus to fulfill the
objectives.
The methodology involves the analysis of these poets from the perspective of
expression of individual freedom in their poetry. In the process, the
contemporary poets’ approach with that of their immediate predecessors is
compared as I see some points of departure there; and the features of expression
of individual freedom are motivated from a dispositional, sociocognitive
linguistic framework with networks and diagrams as outlined in the ka:rmik
linguistic paradigm (see Bhuvaneswar 2009 for more details).
1. 3. Hypothesis
My hypothesis in the present study is that the thematic aspects in contemporary
English poetry tend to reflect individual freedom of the poets which is mainly
committed to social concerns and accordingly the form and style in their poetry is
undergoing a change, making poetry more approachable and appealing even to
the laymen, in linguistic and referential terms.
1. 4. Scope and Limitation

Thus, based on this hypothesis, my analysis of poems – with special reference to
Simon Armitage – is restricted to (i) thematic aspects of selected contemporary
poems reflecting social concerns of poets, which Sartre calls “engagement” of the
artist, and (ii) form and style in contemporary poems, which seem more
approachable to common reading public.
In the present study, I have analyzed and drawn conclusions from only one or
two representative poems of the poets included in the study as a test case with
reference to the points mentioned above, without a study of prosodic features
and aesthetics inherent in contemporary poetry as well as value judgments on the
postmodernists or contemporary poets. Therefore my conclusions are meant to
initiate and encourage further research in this area for a comprehensive analysis
of contemporary poetic trends as a whole.
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1. 5. Significance of the Study

Poetry, in which generally form and content blend inseparably, is closer to
deeper emotions and sensibilities of people. Poets as ka:rmik actors (i.e.,
dispositional, soicoculturalspiritual, experiential, literary actors) generally have
awareness of these deeper emotions and sensibilities and react to them according
to their literary dispositional traits. Such literary action-reaction sequences may
faithfully reflect them or may challenge or call for a change. Thus, poetic trends
represent the deeper experiential personality of the artists, and in turn, of the inner
aspirations and tribulations of the ka:rmikmasses (i.e., masses as experiencers of
the genre of poetry).
The significance of this study lies in: 1. highlighting a transition of poetic trends
identifiable in the compositions of contemporary poets, in visualization and
expression of experienced social concerns in rather more simple words than their
predecessors used, and in form and style of composition; 2. motivating them
through a dispositional, sociocognitive literary linguistic analysis called Ka:rmik
Critical Literary Analysis (KCLA) - based on Ka:rmik Literary Criticism (KLC) as
proposed by Chilukuri Bhuvaneswar (2010, 2011) as an application of Ka:rmik
Linguistic Theory; 3. revealing that the individual freedom enjoyed by the
contemporary poet as well as the changing aspirations of people seem to have
motivated this change; and 4. showing that the contemporary poet is more
committed towards the masses, that too in the language and idiom of the masses.
II. Literature Review

Postmodernist experiment in poetry appeared late and slow in comparison to the
adaptation of the “cultural logic of late capitalism,” as Fredric Jameson termed it,
to other forms of creations and expressions like music, painting, sculpture,
architecture, etc.. It is so because as it appears, people were initially shocked and
flabbergasted by this avant-garde style in literature. And, there have always been
mixed reactions for as well as against this style of writing. To cite a few examples:
Marjorie Perloff (The Dance of the Intellect: Studies in the Poetry of the Pound
Tradition, 1984), though praises the postmodern poets and their avant-garde
poetry, feels that devoid of referentiality in language use such poetry is just a
linguistic gimmick; Lynn Keller (Re-making It New: Contemporary American Poetry
and the Modernist Tradition, 1988) draws readers’ attention to the close links
between Modernist and Postmodernist aesthetics in poetry; Albert Gelpi (“The
Genealogy of postmodernism: Contemporary American Poetry,” 1990) is a very
good analysis of the prominent features of Modernist and Postmodernist thought
with reference to poetry, and I agree with his opinion that the postmodernist
poets set themselves diagonally opposite, in every respect, to their predecessors
to assure their success. Gelpi makes an interesting comment: “The very fact that
Postmodernism has not devised a name for itself indicates that it is what is left of
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Modernism. In fact, the crucial shift in the aesthetics of the two halves of his
century might be reduced to the following formula: Modernism – Romanticism =
Postmodernism”; C. John Holcombe (“Postmodernism in Poetry,” 2007) also
summarizes the features of Postmodern poetry.
Postmodernism is, supposedly, a predominantly American movement. Keith

Tuma (Fishing by Obstinate Isles: Modern and Postmodern Poetry and American
Readers, 1998) while exploring the complex relationship between British and
American poetries opines that British poetry, viewed as anti-modern by
American critics, is persistent in the rhetoric of national identity. He says that in
the late 1970s much of British poetry was thought to be either inscrutable or
irrelevant to Americans; Mutlu Konuk Blasing (Politics and Form in Postmodern
Poetry: O'Hara, Bishop, Ashbery, and Merrill, 1995) challenges the widely accepted
view that only experimental poetry signifies political opposition whereas
traditional poetry is politically conservative.
To cite only a few out of the vast repertoire of writing on Postmodern poetry is
not a justified approach; still, Marjorie Perloff (Whose New American Poetry?:
Anthologizing in the Nineties, 1996), Richard Harland (Superstructuralism: The
Philosophy of Structuralism and Post-structuralism, 1987), Alex Callinicos (Against
Postmodernism: A Marxist Critique, 1990), Shannon Weis and Karla Wesley
(Postmodernism and Its Critics, 2009 ), Robert Kauffman (Sociopolitical
[Romantic] Difficulty in Modern Poetry and Aesthetics, 2003), George Hartley
(Textual Politics and the Language Poets, 1989), Eleana Kim (Language Poetry:
Dissident Practices and the Makings of a Movement, 1994), and Tim Love (The
End of the Line for Modern Poetry, 2008) are some more books/article that
discuss Postmodern poetry/poetics at length.
But none of these studies look at the very recent poetry in English, which, to me,
is charting out a different course. The present study was triggered by Albert
Gelpi’s “The Genealogy of Postmodernism: Contemporary American Poetry”
where he traces the origin of Postmodernism in Modernism, and of course,
except a few exceptions, he favours the modernist trend in poetry. On closer
examination of some of the contemporary poets’ creations I realized that a
‘modernist-like’ trend in poetry is making a return which aroused my curiosity to
know what must have inspired the contemporary poets to disfavor the avant-
garde.
Ka:rmik Critical Literary Analysis (an offshoot of Ka:rmik Linguistic Theory) is

proposed by Bhuvaneswar around 2000 but he was busy with the linguistics
aspect of his theory and did not focus his attention on it. The first application of
his theory was made by Mabrooka Ishtewi (2009) in a conference in Ghasar Khiar
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in Libya which I attended and later on had discussions on it with Bhuvaneswar. I

accessed the networks and other data from him.
III. Perspectives on Individual Freedom in Selected Contemporary British and

American Poets: A Ka:rmik Literary Theoretical Analysis
In the history of western literary criticism, numerous literary theories have
cropped up right from Plato (360 BC) to the present day. One researcher Resty S.
Odon (2010) has identified 31 types in his list of literary theories. The Purdue
OWL document on Literary Theory and Schools of Criticism identifies 11 schools
of criticism starting from 360 B.C. (from Plato) to the present day. Among these
11 schools, the emphasis is mainly on Moral Criticism, Dramatic Construction,
Formalism, Psychoanalytic Criticism, Marxist Criticism, Reader-Response
Criticism (1960s-present), Structuralism and Semiotics, Postmodern Criticism,
New Historicism, Cultural Studies, Post-Colonial Criticism, Feminist Criticism,
Gender Studies and Queer Theory as these important literary theories point out
(Purdue OWL 2010). A detailed analysis of these theories is beyond the scope of
this article and the reader is referred to a succinct review of them in the Purdue
OWL document or a comprehensive review in the John Hopkins University
Literary Theory articles and Bhuvaneswar (2009) for a contrastive analysis with
Ka:rmik Literary Criticism on which this review draws heavily by lifting large
chunks of analysis verbatim to facilitate easier understanding, especially on
Simon Armitage and literary theories – with his (Bhuvaneswar) permission to do
so freely.
What is very important to know for our purpose is that, as Bhuvaneswar (ibid.)
points out, all these theories are atomic and each one looks at literature from its
own vantage point, for example, “Marxist Criticism in terms of Marxist principles
of class differences, oppression of the working classes, distribution of wealth, etc.,
and Reader-Response Criticism in terms of the active participation by the reader
in constructing the meaning leading to the death of the author and rejection of
the (author)itarian role of the, and writer psychoanalytic criticism in terms of
Freudian and Jungian concepts of Id, Ego, Super Ego, etc. and repression,
Oedipal dynamics, psychoanalytic analysis character’s behavior, narrative
events, the author’s psychological being, and reader’s psychological motives in
his interpretation. Literature not only reflects class struggle, or emotional style
conflicts such as the Oedipal dynamics, or structural configurations in terms of
grammar, , and use of literary devices, or social concerns, etc. but also represents
one or more than one of them, or all of them in a whole.” To put differently, all
these types of features are only a part of the whole (literary work) where “the
whole is equal to (in a formal perspective), or greater than the part, or sum of the
parts (as in a gestaltian view), or even beyond them (in a causal or ka:rmik
perspective since the parts are derived from the whole by addition, subtraction,
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or evolution where the whole remains constant as it is with the parts as variable,
not vice versa)”. As such “the application of any one of these atomic theories to
interpret a work of art, which should be considered in toto but not in parts, fails
in doing justice to the work as well as the literary craft of interpretation”
(Bhuvaneswar 2009).
What we need isa (w)holistic theory that takes into account all the cause-means-
effect features of literature and motivates literary analysis in an I-I-I networking
of the form, function, meaning, content, style, and context, and creation of the
literary work in a unified framework - as a means for the construction of
experiential reality of the poet. Such a theory will be able to account for the
general as well as the particular issues in literary criticism and motivate the
causality, processing, patterning, and structuring of the content, form, and style
of the creative output. (ibid.)
In order to know about the nature of individual freedom in the selected
contemporary British and American poets, we have to first analyze their poetry,
second identify their prominent features, then compare and contrast them to find
out the distinguishing features, and finally interpret the findings systematically.
In order to analyze their poetry, we need a framework for analysis. This
framework should first identify all the features that exist in a poem.
In the existing theories, only a few features are highlighted and selected for
analysis; whereas in the Ka:rmik Literary Theory (KLitT), Ka:rmik Critical
Literary Analysis (KCLA) is conducted in a (w)holistic manner. A poem and poetry
are considered products of dispositional creativity of the poet at the individual
level and of the poets of a period or school at the collective level for the
construction of their poetic ka:rmik reality and the consequent experience of the
results of their poetic creativity. First, a poet exists and lives in a context; second,
in that context, he acts and creates a poem; alternatively, he reacts to the situation
(in protest or support) and creates a poem. To explain further, the poet is
impelled by his disposition and gets a desire to write a poem as an action or
reaction to the context. Let us call this first phase the Stage of Poetic Motivation
(Inspiration and Support/Protest). In this stage, WHY he is writing the poem (the
Cause) is decided. Second, as he is inspired and gets the desire to compose a
poem, he makes poetic exertion and composes the poem. Let us call this second
phase, the Stage of Poetic Composition. In this stage, HOW he should write the
poem in terms of the form-content-function-style-context (i.e., the Pattern and the
Structure and the Procedure in terms of manner, place, and time as Means) is
decided. As he exerts, he performs poetic composition through Dispositional-
Socioculturalspiritual-Contextual-Cognition of (Poetic) Action (DSCCA) and produces
the product (Effect) which is the poem. This is a complex stage where different
processes come into play depending upon the dispositional power of the poet: if
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he is totally equipped with all that is necessary to compose a poem, the

processing is automatic and the whole poem is cognized spontaneously with a radial
networking (like the spokes of a wheel) of all the components of the poem as a
cogneme (a single unified conception of the entire poem in terms of its form-content-
function-style in the perceived context; it is shown in the form of a graph in DSCCA
below); if he is partially qualified (with some aspects not well-conceived and
seen), it will be heuristic with a few trials and errors and the whole poem is
evolved gradually but quickly in a parallel process (like singing and dancing at the
same time) as a cogneme; and if he is poorly qualified, it will be algorithmic with
many revisions and great effort and waste of time in a linear process (doing things
one by one as first A, then B, then C…). In this stage, WHAT is produced is
materialized. Let us call this third phase, the Stage of Poetic Production. After
the poem is created, it is presented to the readers and it is spread. Let us call this
fourth phase, the Stage of Presentation. When a poem is created, its result is
experienced by the poet as pleasure or pain; again, when it is presented, its result
is experienced by the readers as well as the poet for its appeal. This completes the
First Cycle of Composing Poetry.
As the poem is propagated, other poets read it, react to it by getting inspired or
by revolting against the poem in terms of its form, content, function, style, and
context. Consequently, they follow it up and support it by writing more poems in
that manner and subsequently create a group or school in a Stage of Propagation;
or, revolt against it partially or completely and blaze a new trail in a Stage of
Protest and Innovation.In both the stages of propagation and innovation, there is
Individual-Collective-Contextual-Conjunction (of poetic action and its) Standardization
(ICCCS). Again, in the Stages of Poetic Composition and Innovation, there is
DSCCA. This completes the Second Cycle of Reading Poetry. This is the process
of poetic composition. To sum up, a poem is processed through two phases of
creation and transmission in six stages: 1. Creation: Motivation, Composition, and
Production; and 2. Transmission: Presentation, Propagation, and Protest and
Innovation.
In order to motivate the variation in poems and poetic schools or periods, and
find out the nature of individual freedom in the creation of them, what we need
to do is to I-I-I all these six stages as captured in equation (3) and get a
comprehensive profile of their characteristics, reception, and experience. This I-I-
Iing is done as a post-creative stage of poetry. In this stage, a poem/poetry is
interpreted from the perspective of the produced text in terms of its phase of
creation (from Motivation to Production) of its form-content-function-style in the
given context in a linear process. This is a dynamic view (as captured in the
equation (2)) of how a poem is composed and interpreted. Then it is compared
and contrasted with the target poem/poetry to find out variation and motivate its
emergence from an experiential perspective, not necessarily a rhetorical
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perspective. In an experiential perspective, the overall effect is taken into

consideration without a strict adherence to the rhetorical principles. In such a dynamic
view of interpretation, the interpretation can be limited to a few features (limited
interpretation) or it can be comprehensive (comprehensive interpretation). In KCLA,
both limited and comprehensive interpretations can be carried out depending
upon the resources and time available. However, limited interpretations are not
final and should be done as a part of comprehensive interpretation.
Interpretations can be done from a synoptic perspective also in which all these six
stages are I-I-Ied in a random process – they are generally muddled without
scientific rigour and fail to provide a principled account of the poems/poetry.
They can also be carried out in a potential perspective (as captured in the
equation (1)) in which the first three stages of motivation-composition-
production will be in their unmanifest state in the poet’s imagination and the
remaining stages unfold as they are executed. In such cases, the first three stages
are not taken care of by the critic – these are also incomplete.
(1) Motivation Composition
● Presentation - Propagation -
Innovation
Production A. Potential State of Creation of a Poem
(2) Motivation Composition Production Presentation

Propagation Innovation
B. Dynamic State of Creation of a Poem
(3) Motivation Composition

Production ● Presentation Innovation
Propagation C. Synoptic State of Creation of a Poem
In the next section, let us discuss all these stages one by one and motivate
variation between Postmodernist Poetry and Contemporary Poetry by Dynamic
Interpretation. First, let us propose a basic framework of the features of a poem to
serve as a reference point for comparison and contrast and variation.
3. 1. A Basic Network of the Characteristic Features of a Poem
Bhuvaneswar (2009) provides a very comprehensive network of various
components of a poem and their sub-classification. He visualizes a poem as
consisting of five components as follows: 1. Form; 2. Content; 3. Function; 4.
Style; and 5. Context. Each of them is divided further and further to its highest
delicacy to provide extensive analytical knowledge of the features of a poem. For
example, Content is divided into two parts: Propositional Content (Semantics)
and Rhetoric. Again, the propositional content is further classified into five types:
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1. Material; 2. Intellectual; 3. Social; 4. Spiritual, and 5. Mixed. Furthermore, each

of these levels is further classified into a very high order of delicacy. For example,
Social is divided into Social, Cultural, and Religious and they are further
classified and so on. For example, Social is further classified according to Age,
Gender, and Class which is again classified into Elite and Common. Since the
networks are too long, a basic network is adapted for the purpose of this paper as
in Network 1a and 1 given below.
Title Phonetics
Line Sentence Phonology
Body Stanza Lexis
Canto Syntax
Form Language
Move
Speech Act
Stress Exchange
Prosody Rhythm Discourse Transaction
Rhyme Structure Event
Meter Situation
Network 1a: Basic Components of a Poem- Form (Adapted from Bhuvaneswar 2009)
3. 2. Context of Poetic Composition

In the Basic Components of a Poem network 1, Context is given at the end
because of the focus on components of a poem. However, when a poem is
composed, it happens in a context as a contextual action/reaction. Therefore,
context is described first to motivate the disposition which itself becomes an
environment since a poet is under the influence of his disposition all the time.
Finally, Consciousness-qualified-Disposition generates-specifies- composition of
poetry in a linear process. In KLC, context is classified into three types according
to the physical, social, and dispositional environments in which the poet is
situated. The first is the surrounding concrete natural environment of space, time,
and matter (objects, states of being of objects and their activities). The second is
the abstract cultural environment of the society, culture, religion, and spirituality.
The third is the individual’s directs-materializes all poetic activity right from its
inspiration-to-composition-to-creation-to-presentation-to-(propagation)-to-
innovation.
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Material Intellectual
Body Semantics Mental Emotional
Language Delusional
Prosody Propositional Age
(See Network1a for Content Social Gender Elite
more details) Class
Social Cultural Mass
Religious
Spiritual
Form Mixed
Subject
Content Discipline
Topic
Noumenal
Category
Phenomenal
Rhetoric Theme Movement
Structure
Logic
Function Motif Ideology
Components Symbol Authorial Point o f View
of a Poem Function Leitwortstil
Didactic
Purpose Artistic
Purposeless
Imagery
Symbolism
Voice
Emotion
Tone General
Appeal
Style Figures of Speech Particular
Function
Body
Form Language
Prosody
Semantics
Content Dispositional
Rhetoric Cognitive
Aesthetic Appeal Socioculturalspiritual
Cotextual Actional
Actional
Spatio-Temporal-Material (STM)
Context Socio-Cultural-Spiritual (SCS)
Inclinational-Informational-Habitual (IIH)
Network 1: Basic Components of a Poem (Adapted from Bhuvaneswar 2009)
3. 2. 1. The Spatiotemporalmaterial Context

The United States of America and The United Kingdom are the sites of
contemporary poetry. The time frame extends from 1980s to the present day. The
affluent American and Western material paraphernalia in all their variety, range,
and depth with all kinds of gadgets and material comforts, especially, computer-
based technological equipment, form the material setting of the space. In
addition, the natural environment is polluted, disfigured and damaged
disturbing the ecological balance and diversity. In addition, their material
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resources are constrained by the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the threat of
terrorism.
The background to the contemporary poetry is that of the postmodernist poetry
whose time frame is considered to be between 1950 -1980 in America and the
United Kingdom. America and the West had just emerged from the devastating
World War II and were reconstructing their countries.
3. 2. 2. The Socioculturalspiritual Context
In order to understand the socioculturalspiritual context of postmodernism, we
must understand the context of modernism and then what happened as the
context of postmodernism. According to Felluga’s discussion of Modernism in
the Introductory Guide to Critical Theory (2011www.cla.purdue.english.theory), the
period from 1898 to the Second World War (1945) is generally considered to be
the modern period. This period evolved as a protest against Romanticism and as
a consequence of this protest there is wild experimentation in many walks of life
including literature, music, art, and even politics. Thinkers of this period still
believed in such concepts as truth and progress but the means adopted to achieve
their utopian goals are extreme. This extremity gave rise to many -isms such as
Fascism, Nazism, Communism, Anarchism and so on and each group has
brought out wild manifestos to bring in a better future. In the case of art also,
manifestos were issued and each one is different from the other. For example,
Surrealism, Dadaism, Cubism, Futurism, Existentialism, Expressionism,
Primitivism, and Minimalism sprang forth during this period only with each one
having its own special manifesto. They were radical and revolutionary in their
approach because they suspected the Enlightenment Values of the Victorian
Period and religion, bourgeois domesticity, capitalism, utilitarianism, decorum,
empire, industry, etc. In general, “there is a fear that things have gone off-track
(a feeling exacerbated by World War I), and we have to follow radically new
paths if we are to extricate ourselves (ibid.)”. According to Gelpi (1990), “the key
to Modernism resides in its attempt, in the wake of declining faith and debunked
reason and decadent Romanticism, to affirm the imagination as the supreme
human faculty of cognition for (and against) a secular, skeptical age”.Some of the
features of the modern aesthetic work in poetry include: 1. radical
experimentation in form including a breakdown in generic distinction (e.g.,
between poetry and prose, French prose poem, and the poetic prose of Gertrude
Stein and Virginia Wolf as prominent examples); 2. Fragmentation in Form and
Representation (e.g., T.S. Eliot’s Wasteland); and 3. Some experimentation in the
breakdown between high and low forms (e.g., Eliot’s and Joyce’s inclusion of folk
and pop cultural material in their work), though rarely in a way that can be
understood by the general masses.
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Postmodern poetic sensibility, it seems, formulates itself as a critique of

paradoxes inherent in Modernism such as, (i) Modernist poetry seems to aim at
indeterminacy, but, as Marjorie Perloff and Hugh Kenner argue, they were
aiming at achieving a “coherent splendor,” (ii) Modernist poets very vehemently
encouraged a counter ideology to Romanticism, but, as argues Albert Gelpi,
“Modernism represents an extension and reconstitution of the salient issues that
Romanticism set out to deal with,” and, (iii) Modernism, especially Modernist
poetry, stands out as an experimental phase in creative literature of the time, but,
even in their most pronounced experimental creations too the artists desire their
creations to be seen as complete pictures, not as experimental scattered pieces.
Steve McCaffery writes in "Sound Poetry" of "the deformation of poetic form at
the level of the signifier": "To align, realign, and misalign within the anarchy of
language. . . .Cuttings. Fissures. Decompositions (inventions). Not intention so
much as intensions. Plasticizations. Non-functionalities. Shattered sphericities.
Marginalities." (as cited in Gelpi 1990).
2. 3. The Dispositional Context

R
R(ajas) S
[Activity] T
Karma Traits (Guna:s) S(attva)
[Conceptuality]
Choice of T(amas)
Language [Inactivity]
Disposition D. F. P.
Desire
(for Writing a
Poem)
Knowledge/ Analyticity (Jna:nam)
Knowledge of Language D.F.P ‘

Dispositional
Habits (Va:sana:s) Functional
Pressure’
Internalized Habits of Using/Creating Language

Network 2. Ka:rmik Network for Composition of a Poem
These poets have been disenchanted with the mega-projects of modernity, like,
for example, the claims of scientific research to shape an excellent destiny of the
world, whereas the world witnessed the greatest catastrophe of the time in WW
II (mainly because of unbridled power gained by man through science), or the
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ethics of the modern western civilization that rest largely upon exploitation. They
expressed their dissatisfaction with the meaning and the medium. To them, the
author, the text, the medium, the meaning and the recipient (the reader/audience)
all became suspect, as conspirators, not free from the concerns of the system they
are part of – all carrying the traces of their make-up, none of them transparent
and none an absolute entity.
Now, surprisingly, poetry published after late 1980s has begun showing some
signs of change in the poets’ attitude towards this general suspicion of the system
and its constituents. Although, once again, this may not be taken as a general
atmosphere or a sweeping wind of change, yet those whose writings and attitude
favour a change seem to be more in number. This is true of the younger
generation (some scholars dubbed them as “New Generation Poets”) as well as
some of the older poets.
The individual disposition of the poet is a complex of guNa:s (traits), knowledge,
and va:sana:s (internalized habits). His disposition is rooted in his Root Nature
which is a complex of Sattva (Luminosity), Rajas (Activity), and Tamas (Inertia).
These three constituents of Nature become the source of disposition and
constitute and qualify traits as Sa:ttvik, Ra:jasik, and Ta:masik. Consequently,
they impact on Knowledge and Habits and colour them accordingly. Sattva is
luminosity and is the source of meaning, conceptualization, clarity, harmony,
perfection, equilibrium, etc. and brings in pleasure. Rajas is activity, patterning
and structuration, ornamentation, complexity and is the cause of likes and
dislikes, attachment and aversion. Tamas is inertia, materiality, heedlessness,
delusion, dullness, imperfection, broken, etc. Any action takes place under the
influence of Rajas and so does the composition of a poem also.
Traits decide the choices made according to the likes and dislikes of the ka:rmik
actor, here, the poet, which he has in the form of his traits. To explain further,
these traits decide which type of a poem or poetry to like or dislike and which
type of a poem to write or not to write by dispositional bias leading to response
bias leading to choice (leading to variation) through thePrinciple of Choice given in
(5).Consciousness-qualified-Disposition is inherently constituted with the power
of acting or reacting in a context to construct its own dispositional reality
through triple action (mental-vocal-physical). Therefore, people with different
dispositional make-ups react differently to the same context – this view therefore
gives primacy to disposition over context. When D.F.P. develops in the poet to write
a poem, the desire to write a poem erupts in him. Consequently, he makes an
effort and performs the action of writing a poem according to his dispositional
make-up through the Principle of Action given in (4). This action produces a result
in terms of writing the poem: he succeeds/fails in composing the poem and in
composing it well as well as getting recognition. This result is experienced by
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him as pleasure/pain/none. These two aspects are captured in the following

equations:
(4) Disposition Desire Effort Action Result Experience
(5) Disposition Dispositional Bias Response Bias Choice
Variation Action.
The development of D.F.P. to write a poem takes place in a context as an action or
reaction. And the desire to write a particular type of a poem in a particular
context is again impelled by the dispositional make-up of the poet. Thus traits
decide the choice of all the formal, contextual, functional, and stylistic features to
their highest delicacy as shown in the Basic Components of a Poem Network 1 in
the given context.
i. Dispositional States of Postmodernist and Contemporary Poets

As we have already noted, disposition is a complex of traits, knowledge, and
va:sana:s. These components are abstract and complex in a person and therefore
difficult to qualify and quantify. Nonetheless, they can be inferred and
constructed by using the Effect-to-Cause Logic (adapted from anumana of the Indian
philosophy) employed in the Ka:rmik Linguistic Theory. In such logic, the qualities
of the effect indicate the nature of the cause. For example, there is smoke on the
mountain. From our experience, we know that smoke can be there only if fire is
there. Therefore, from the effect that is smoke, we infer the cause as fire.
Applying this logic to the postmodernist and contemporary poets, we can
construct their poetic disposition in a bottom-up process to arrive at the Cause of
their poetry to be this and that as so and so in such and such manner and then in a
top-down process impute the cause to have brought about such effects. Finally, the
top-down and bottom up processes are linked with the view-around the process
toconstruct the ultimate experiential reality of the poem/poetry.
From such an analysis conducted below in the following sections, it will be

shown that the dispositional states of postmodernist poets are rajasik-tamasik
and those of contemporary poets are sattvik-rajasik. As a result, the poetry
written by the postmodernists is also rajasik-tamasik making it as it is. In a
similar way, the rejection of the postmodernist tradition by the contemporary
poets is due to their sattvik-rajasik disposition. In other words, it is a choice
impelled from their disposition as individual freedom. Therefore, it is rooted in
one’s disposition because freedom of choice is based on response bias which is a
product of dispositional bias generated from one’s disposition. It is this
individual and gradually evolving into a group disposition that is responsible for
a protest against modernism and the reemergence of social engagement,
purposeful writing, preference for existence to essence, mass appeal, simple form
and style. A detailed description of the characteristics of Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas
will be undertaken in the analysis of postmodern and contemporary English
poetry.
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3. 3. The KCLA of Creation of a Poem

In Section 3, in the phase of creation, the first three important stages of poetic
creation are mentioned as 1. The Stage of Poetic Motivation; 2. The Stage of
Composition; 3. The Stage of Production of the Poem which are not only crucial
in the creation of a poem but also in comprehensively understanding the nature
of the poem. Let us discuss these stages with reference to contemporary poetry
and show that it is bifurcating into a new genre with reference to social
engagement in themes, purpose, mass appeal, individual freedom, and form and
style.
3. 3. 1. Stage of Poetic Motivation (Inspiration and Protest)
The dispositional contexts of postmodernist poetry and contemporary poetry
contrast sharply with each other, obviously, because of disenchantment with the
status quo. In the case of postmodernism, the four important characteristic
features of postmodernism: 1. Iconoclasm; 2. Formlessness; 3. Groundlessness;
and 4. Populism were born in the background of modernism’s rejection of
Enlightenment values as well as postmodernism’s extension of modernism in
many respects such as the “use of self-consciousness, parody, irony,
fragmentation, generic mixing, ambiguity, simultaneity, and the breakdown
between high and low forms of expression” (Felluga 2011). In the case of
contemporary poetry, these four important characteristics form a network, as it
were, of choices for a protest against postmodernism by the contemporary poets.
The reason is that the contemporary poets are dissatisfied and fed up with the
iconoclastic, formless, groundless, and unreachable populist poetry of the
postmodernist poets and they felt that poetry should have social engagement,
language should not be a mere play of signs without any signification, and it
should appeal to the masses without which it will not survive. As a result, there
is a protest against postmodernist poetry by the poets mentioned in the
Literature Review, followed by variation in their poetry.
Equation (2) of KLT now gets apparently transformed to instantiate this variation
as follows:
(2a) Disposition (Sattvik-Rajasik Traits)
Dispositional Bias (Disgust with Rajasik-Tamasik Action)
Response Bias (Sattvik-Rajasik Reaction) Choice (Sattvik-Rajasik Poetry)
Variation (as Contemporary Poetry).
This choice of Sa:ttvik-Ra:jasik poetry is made from the knowledge component of
the poet taking into consideration the poetic features mentioned in Basic Features
Network I as a protest against the Basic Characteristics of Postmodernist Poetry
Network 2 (see Bhuvaneswar 2009).
Let us construct a network of choices for postmodernist poetry to serve as a
reference for motivating protest in contemporary poetry by selecting the
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important sub-features of the four important characteristics of postmodernism as

shown in the Network 3 given below.
Cultural Standards
Decanonization Previous Art Works
Authorities
Impersonal Authorship
Contradiction
Parody
Subversion Irony
Pastiche
Ethnic
Iconoclasm Anti-Repression Gender
Cultural
Context
Minimalism
Content
Radicalism
Lack of Referentiality
Primary
Promotion
Unmediated
Groundlessness Art Magic realism
Fictitious Multiple Endings
Life None
F. Indeterminacy
O.
P-M Disharmony
Distance
Fragmentation
Formlessness Defiguritivization
Genre Mixing
Fluidity
Adaptability
Wide Social Material
Non-Elitist
Popular
Language Non-Literary
Serious
Avoid
Populism Responsible
Promotion Arbitrary
Promote
Playful
Media Imagery
Network 3: The Basic Network of Features of Postmodernism (F.O.P-M)
John Holcombe (2007) in his elaborately pointed analysis of the characteristic

features of postmodernism has listed a number of characteristics. In addition, the
insightful articles of Mary Clagis (2011) and Albert Gelpi (1990) also throw light
on the important features of postmodernism. They are all taken together to
formulate this Basic Network of Features of Postmodernism as shown in
Network 3.
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In the case of contemporary poetry, there is a rejection, at least a partial rejection,

of postmodernism by many poets in terms of 1. Social Engagement in Themes, 2.
Social Purpose of Writing; 3. Mass Appeal; 4. Individual freedom; and 5. Form and Style.
The reason is that the contemporary poets are dissatisfied with the iconoclastic,
formless, groundless, and unreachable populist poetry of the postmodernist
poets and they felt that poetry should have social engagement, language should
not be a mere play of signs without any signification, and it should appeal to the
masses without which it will not survive. As a result, there is a protest against
postmodernist poetry by the poets mentioned in the Literature Review.
Let us capture some of these points in the form of a table for a quick reference.
S. Characteristics of Postmodernist Poetry Characteristics of Contemporary

N Poetry
o
1 Celebrates the idea of fragmentation, Advances wholeness and
provisionality or incoherence. coherence of ideas.
2 The world is meaningless; let’s not The world is not mere
pretend that art can make meaning then; meaninglessness; there is meaning
let’s just play with nonsense. and purpose in life too; art gives
expression to the meaning of life
creatively, in simple style.
3 Consumer capitalist or multinationalist Abhors capitalist and market-
ideas. oriented forces; advocates equality
and social justice; that is how it is
appealing to the masses.
4 a. Critiques grand narratives as masking Favours truth, reason, stability
the contradictions and instabilities that and universal appeal of meaning,
are inherent in any social organization or but at the same time takes up
practice. issues involved in local and
b. Favours mini-narratives which are situational meaning-making
situational, provisional, contingent and exercise as well.
temporary, making no claim to
universality, truth, reason, or stability.
5 There are only signifiers and no The idea generally seems to be
signifieds except only simulacra. favoring the correlation of
signifier and signified.
6 Knowledge is functional – you learn Knowledge is functional as well as
things not to know them but to use them. ideational.
Table I. Characteristics of Postmodernist and Contemporary Poetry
Once the poet is motivated to react against the postmodernist values, this reaction sets
up a D.F.P. in him which impels a desire to write poetry that shares the values he
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believes in and which are against postmodernist values. This can be captured by
apparently transforming equation (1) as follows:
(1a) Disposition (Sattvik-Ra:jasik) Desire (for Contemporary Poetry
Characteristics) Action (Contemporary Poetry) Result
Experience
The D.F.P. impels desires within the major desire to be fulfilled through the
means of lingual action (poem/poetry) and thus leads to the choice of form-
content-function-style features of the concerned poem/poetry in the form of the
cognition of a cogneme in the givencontext recursively - in cogneme-cognition
networks - until all the desires to fulfill the major desire are fulfilled.
In the case of contemporary poetry, there are many features that can be identified
that compare or contrast with postmodern poetry. However, only theme,
purpose, mass appeal, form and style and preference for existence over essence
are chosen in this article for a partial analysis - to initiate further research towards
a comprehensive analysis as an ongoing project - in this article owing to constraints
of space and time and resources.
3. 3. 2. Composition of a Poem
Once a poet is inspired to write a poem, his dispositional creativity impels him to
make an exertion to fulfill his desire to write the poem. Consequently, he
performs the poetic action to create the poem and experience the results of his
action as pleasure or pain or none. But writing a poem is not as simple as talking
in a conversation, since it is a very complex process that demands poetic
knowledge, and skills in addition to inspiration. As a result, he must have a
thorough understanding of WHY he wants to write the poem, HOW to write the
poem, and WHAT should be the poem as a whole. Unless and otherwise, he
takes into consideration WHY he wants to write the poem, he will not be able to
successfully plan and execute the manner, place, and time of writing the poem.
The WHY of the poem leads to its causality, without which the WHAT and HOW
of the poem become meaningless. What is more, at all these levels, the poet has to
make choices and he should have individual freedom to make these choices. To
put it metaphorically, the WHY is the concept of the house which is the poem
(WHAT). As such it contains every aspect of the poem in its unmanifest state, as its
CONCEPT, which is called the Pasyanthi state of language in Indian Grammar
(shown as the inner circle in KLT Graph 2 in this paper). This CONCEPT of the
poem, say, A Vision, evolves into the PATTERN AND STRUCTURE of the poem
(Madhyama in Indian Grammar) as we see in print like the blue print of the house
evolving into the constructed house. This pattern and structure of the poem is
cognized through the dispositional creativity of the poet (just like an architect) by
I-I-Iing the choice of various components of a poem. To do so, the poet, according
to KCLA, should do Exploration of Contextual Variables (ECV) (looking for the
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available options from the networks of Components of a Poem, Productive Extension of

Variables (PEV), or Creation of New Variables (CNA) of Contextual Variables (CV)
available. To put it in the words of Armitage, a poet has to go out in search of
HOW and WHAT of the poem: “when I've sort of gone out and got the poem, I've
gone looking for it, because I've been in that mood,..” when he is already inspired: to
go out and get the poem, he has to make choice to get the poem and he should
have individual freedom to do so. Questions like these crop up in the poet’s
mind: Does he want to write the poem with a social purpose?; Does he want to
write the poem with a mass appeal?; Does he want to write the poem in a
particular form, using a particular type of line arrangement, choice of language,
and prosodic structure?; What type of content he should choose and with what
themes, motifs, symbols, and leitworstil? What functions should the poem
perform? What type of style should he use in terms of imagery, symbolism, tone,
voice, figures of speech, etc? Or, does he write simply as it comes by without any
specific planning and accept it as it is? Such an action may or may not give a
good poem.
[Such questions as well as their answers can be motivated in a principled manner

by using the same KLT Graphs of Cogneme-Cognition Networks. For example,
the choice of an ideology such as the preference of existence over essence is a
dispositional choice; the postmodernists gave preference to essence over
existence and chose it whereas the contemporary writers opted for a reverse
choice both through individual freedom. Consequently, their cogneme-cognition
is impelled in that direction. In a similar way, the choice of form and style, and
mass appeal can also be motivated as dispositional choices through individual
freedom and explained through CCNs.]
In the case of Simon Armitage, he does brainstorming. As he puts it, “most of my

poems start with daydreams; an idea leads to another idea leads to another idea and really
before I know what I am doing I am somewhere into the poem. I have to snap out of the
daydream and actually that’s the stuff poems are made of (Armitage 2010)”: unless and
otherwise he exercises individual freedom to snap out, he cannot do so. For
example, in developing a pattern and structure to the poem A Vision, there is a
visualization of “the theme of how the passing of time affects our sense of
optimism for the future” by superimposing (adhya:sam) it on the topic of town
planning with reference to an event in his home town Marsden. We can also
assume on the basis of his interview that the poet contemplated on what to write
as the poem and how to write it. In this process, he will again choose the function
and the content of the poem - automatically, or heuristically, or algorithmically
but in this case heuristically.
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3. 3. 3. Motivation of Individual Freedom in Social Engagement in Themes,

Social Purpose, Preference for Existence over Essence, Simple Form and Style,
and Mass Appeal
In this section, a partial analysis is made to bring out the differences between
postmodernist and contemporary poetry and ascribe the causes for this variation
to the individual freedom of the poets springing from their disposition. Social
Engagement in Themes, Social Purpose, Preference for Existence over Essence, Simple
Form and Style, and Mass Appeal are chosen for motivating individual freedom as
the cause for variation.
3. 3. 3. 1. Social Engagement in Themes
i. Postmodernism: No Social Engagement in Themes
Although it may be wrong to assume that there has been a very conspicuous
movement in literature called “Postmodernism” after 1950s since many
prominent literary figures of the time even abhorred to be associated with the
umbrella term, still, because the adherents and sympathizers of the groundless,
formless and uncertain semiotics called postmodernism (Travis Jeppesen makes
an interesting observation that, “there is a literary avant-garde that still exists, but
it’s somehow become taboo to talk about it in such terms. The idea being that we
woke up one day and everything that once mattered was suddenly over, finished.
Everything’s been done before….that’s the basic motto of postmodernism”) i have
been more than its detractors, we may generalize that yes, for almost thirty years
(that is, from 1950s to 1980s) a generation has been under the influence of the
linguistic turn in literature, that shaped the poetry of the period. Consider, for
example the lines from IS ABOUT, an iconoclastic poem by a highly influential
linguistic poet Allen Ginsburg (1986)ii: I quote this because I feel a clear break in
poetic trend from postmodernism, which I term as ‘contemporary poetry,’ is
discernible only after late 1980s.
Dylan is about the individual against the whole creation
Beethoven is about one man’s fist in the lightening clouds
The Pope is about abortion & the spirits of the dead…
Hitler Stalin Roosevelt & Churchill are about arithmetic &
Quadrilateral equations, above all chemistry physics & chaos theory—
Who cares what it is all about?
The poem is just a free floating artifact constructed of a language that has nothing
to reveal. In other words, the poem is about nothing! Or, if we insist on some
meaning, it is (intended) to decanonize the (previous) authorities established
through tradition. To the poet, life itself is as fictitious as the art. Drawing a
comparison between the major concern in the Modernist thought and the
postmodernist ideals, Albert Gelpi (1990: 2) writes, “The critical discussion of
Modernism has concentrated on the shattering of formal conventions as an
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expression of the disintegration of traditional values, and this is the aspect of

Modernism that anticipated Postmodernism.”iii But the postmodernists do not
stop at this. Postmodern poetic sensibility, it seems, formulates itself as a critique
of all types of paradoxes inherent in Modernism. These poets have been
disenchanted with the mega-projects of modernity, like, for example, the claims
of scientific research to shape an excellent destiny of the world, whereas the
world witnessed the greatest catastrophe of the time in WW II (mainly because of
unbridled power gained by man through science), or the ethics of the modern
western civilization that rest largely upon exploitation. They expressed their
dissatisfaction with the meaning and the medium. To them, the author, the text,
the medium, the meaning and the recipient (the reader/audience) all became
suspect, as conspirators, not free from the concerns of the system they are part of
– all carrying the traces of their make-up, none of them transparent and none an
absolute entity.
ii. Contemporary Poetry: Definite Social Engagement in Themes

According to Bhuvaneswar, “Individual freedom is the freewill in choice
exercised through one’s svabhavam for living by triple action. Individual freedom
of a poet is the freedom of the individual poet either to follow the status quo or to
break out from it and blaze a new trail in any one or more than one or all of the
five levels of a poem which are its form, content, function, style, and context. This
freedom is essentially a freedom of dispositional choice of the individual or group
of poets generated-specified-directed-materialized by the traits-knowledge-
va:sana complex of disposition: it is impelled by their traits to like this or that
choice, informed by their knowledge about this or that choice as so and so in such
and such manner, and finally realized as this or that choice as so and so choice in
such and such manner by their vasana:s” (personal communication)”
A cursory glance at the poetry of contemporary poets reveals evidence for a
definite involvement of the poets in social issues, especially, related to the
domain of socioculturalspiritual themes. Let’s take the case of the most popular
British poet of his generation Simon Armitage to illustrate this observation of a
major desire evolving into an I-I-Ied network of poetic desires to fulfill it for the
poetic experience of the results. This type of analysis can be similarly extended to
other contemporary poets to show that there is social engagement in themes.
The dispositional makeup of Simon Armitage impelled him to make a major
choice in his career by deciding to become a poet instead of pursuing geography
which he studied. This is a case of individual freedom in the choice of a career.
This major desire – among his other desires impelled equally by his disposition -
lead to writing poetry as a means to fulfill it: one desire leads to another I-I-I
desire in a linear process in time. When he wanted to write poetry, as already
mentioned above, there is a trait component in him which likes social themes
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with a purpose and mass appeal in an appealing form and therefore impels him
to choose them - according to the strength of his will, habits and knowledge. As a
result, he is motivated to write on social themes, with a purpose and mass appeal
in a particular form. This liking of social themes, etc. – as a dispositional action-
reaction – has sprung from his personal experience of the society and its ways, by
reading the poetry of others, and by looking for ideas. In that process, he got
excitement when he thought about such issues as town planning as in the poem
A Vision, about poor people without jobs as in A Clown Punk, about war widows
as in Manhunt, about family relations and trust in Homecoming, about begging as
in the poem Give, about a child growing up and overcoming the influence of its
heroes as in the poem Kid, etc. which led to effort-action-result-experience.
In KCLA, each and every lingual act is explained through a Cogneme-Cognition
Network (CCN) given below in KLT Graphs 1 and 2. It isborrowed from the root
Ka:rmik Linguistic Theory in order to provide more psychological validity by its
motivation through dispositional cognition, more descriptive and explanatory
adequacy by a cause-means-effect derivation and explanation of the features in a
holistic manner.In the CCN, there are four quadrants in a graph: Dispositional
Quadrant (I); World View Quadrant (II); Concept Quadrant (III); and Context
Quadrant (IV). These quadrants are created by a vertical axis and a horizontal
axis to further create the apparent divisions of dispositional reality, socio-
cultural-spiritual reality, cognitive reality and contextual actional reality; the two
diagonal lines splitting each quadrant function as the action lines: dispositional
action, SCS action, cognitive action, and contextual poetic action. The arrow
marks point to the direction of action: the two arrows at the tips of the diagonal
lines point outwards indicating their realization as mental and vocal action; the
arrow marks pointing towards the star indicate integration of their action in the
Consciousness. Dispositional action is the primary action indicated by four
arrows, each arrow representing its action on each quadrant. It impacts on SCS
and jointly becomes Poetic-SCS Dispositional Action in the ji:va (the living
being); then it impacts on context, and it becomes jointly Poetic-SCS-Contextual
Dispositional Action; and finally it impacts on the cognition and jointly becomes
Poetic-SCS-Contextual-Cognitive Dispositional Action as mental action as shown
by the upward arrow in the third quadrant. This cognemic cognition materializes
as the Poetic-SCS-Contextual-Cognitive-Lingual Action in the context as shown by
the downward arrow in the reverse direction in the fourth quadrant.
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A Cogneme-Cognition Network for a Poem

Legend
In the case of poetic motivation of Armitage, his liking for poetry (GuNa:s) and
his knowledge to write poetry impact on his va:sana:s to produce poetic
dispositional knowledge stored in his Consciousness-qualified-Disposition.
When the being (ji:va) of Armitage is situated in his STM-SCS context of
Marseden and Yorkshire and Northern England, the DFP in him activates
individual freedom and impels his poetic dispositional knowledge – as he puts it: “I
think probably at the base of it is some kind of urge, you know, there is an urge to write,
to create something, to express yourself. ” - to think through his society and culture
to get a world view to write poetry.
I suppose sometimes there's an idea that I'm passionate about: it might be a
political idea and I feel as if I want to write about it, or language might come
along and I might overhear something and I want to take that language on,
take it further, but I think probably at the base of it is some kind of urge, you
know, there is an urge to write, to create something, to express yourself. I think
that's probably at the very pit of it for me because I have had occasions when I've
felt the urge to write with nothing to write about, when I've sort of gone out and
got the poem, I've gone looking for it, because I've been in that mood,.. (An
Interview with Simon Armitage, Poetry Archives, 2012).
The phrases a political idea and overhear something are rooted insocial engagement
and they are pursued through his individual freedom because his predecessors,
the postmodernist poets, are against this kind of social engagement. Armitage
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breaks out from this web by his disenchantment with the postmodernist
tradition.
His Dispositional Knowledge impacts on his World View (spirituality) to
produce the desire to write poetry on social issues with a purpose. This overall
purpose on choosing social issues as town planning projects, or begging, or
violence, etc. is “a way of manifesting ourselves to ourselves”. In this connection,
it is pertinent to quote from what he said about his poetry:
I think it's certainly a consequence, it's a kind of human consequence, and I think we
are a species that looks for pattern, and looks for significance, and looks for meaning
in a life, probably where there isn't that much meaning or significance, you know,
unless you're devoutly religious. So I think it's a way of not finding significance but
actually inventing it, inventing significance and sort of proving it to yourself, and I
think it's a way of manifesting ourselves to ourselves, so it's important on that level.
(An Interview with Simon Armitage, Poetry Archives, 2012)
This desire is nothing but propositional knowledge which is cognized as
differential awareness of this and that as so and so in such and such manner in the
form of language. This differential awareness which is cognized as a desire, or as
a component of poetic lingual action (form-content-function in a particular style),
or as the whole poem is called a cogneme- its variety, range, and depth can be just
a word, or it can extend up to an epic and even more. This is the means of all
dispositional, sociocognitive linguistic action which is Ka:rmik Linguistic Action.
In this connection, we have another interesting remark made by Armitage about
how he begins a poem:
I tend to think that poems come pre-packaged, and that when the idea suggests
itself to me the form comes with it: I sort of see it in my mind's eye - particularly
with poems that come as blocks of text, you know, that look like gravestones or
something like that, or those that come as quatrains and look like hymns. They
don't always stay in that form because when I start writing I'll sometimes notice
that there is a pattern of language, perhaps a rhyme or a repetition, and that might
suggest some further, you know, physical form or shape on the page, but I think I
do imagine these things to be predetermined in some way - that they are somehow
in concert with the whole idea of the poem and with the style of the poem because I
don't think I would ever embark on a poem unless I knew its style - style
is everything to me, in writing. You know, the subject is almost - well it's not
kind of insignificant but the style is the main thing: I think that is what people are
interested in poems. (An Interview with Simon Armitage, Poetry Archives,
2012)
[The sentence emphasized here again asserts the role of individual freedom in
choice at a personal level and at a poetic level – the postmodernists are averse to
stylistic choices of rhyme, rhythm, etc.]
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Cogneme-Cognition action is recursive and it occurs at each and every phase of

activity right from its motivation to its final realization. For example, the
cognition of a social theme as thecogneme 1, purpose as thecogneme 2, mass appeal
as the cogneme 3, the particular form as the cogneme 4, and style as the cogneme 5
occur recursively. It is atomic-(w)holistic in the sense that it occurs at the atomic
level of the parts of the whole action - cognition occurs at the levels of cognition
of the cognemes 1-5 as parts - and again recursively at the level of cognition of
the whole poem as the whole as a single, unified unit; finally, it can be mental-vocal-
physical and take place as a thought for mental, as speech for vocal and as
material for physical actions. For example, when a person only thinks of an
action, it becomes a mental cogneme; when he speaks, it becomes a vocal
cogneme; and when he acts physically, it becomes a physical cogneme.
Motivation to write a poem can occur automatically (by spontaneity), heuristically
(by trial and error), and algorithmically (by serial thinking) For example, the
motivation to choose social themes/purpose/mass appeal/form and
style/individual freedom may be automatic as the poet visualizes his poem, or it
might have been got by trial and error by purposeful observation, interpretation,
identification, representation, initiation, communication, and experience of
individual and collective action in a linear, parallel, and radial processes, or
algorithmically by serial thinking from A..to...B…Z. What is more, it can come
from any source. Whatever be the case, choices propelled by individual freedom
need not be necessarily status quo – they are generally break-outs.
We can explain these processes by following a top-down, bottom-up, or around-the-
object processes. When we have the historical details of the evolution of the poem,
we can use the top-down process by starting from the poet’s motivation in a
context and analyzing the content-function-form-style, which is the most
authentic; if we don’t have such details, we can go for a bottom-up process using
the effect-to-cause logic by analyzing the text and inducing the motivation; and
finally, if the historical and textual details are inadequate, the around-the-object
process can be used by looking at the text internally, historically, and
contextually and joining the bits and pieces of evidence to interpret the whole by
inference.
Let us take the example of A Vision written by Simon Armitage to motivate social
engagement in themes by a KCLA of his poem A Vision. In his video on A Vision,
Simon Armitage informs us that the original stimulus for that poem came from a
visit to the town planning department in his home town and the effect this visit
had on his imagination as a child. In terms of KCLA, this means that we can
motivate the inspiration to write the poem A Vision by a top-down process since we
have first hand information from the horse’s mouth, the poet himself. Again, the
poem is not written immediately with a spontaneous overflow of emotional
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feelings by automaticity; but it has been written a long time after his childhood,
and probably by a heuristic process, about “the theme of how the passing of time
affects our sense of optimism for the future”. If we use the Cogneme-Cognition
Graph, we can motivate this inspiration as follows. First, the effect of his visit to
the town-planning department [the experience (bho:gam) of the result (phalam)
of his visit (karma ‘action’) - karmaphalabho:gam] is stored as an impression in his
long term memory (a va:sana) and becomes a part of Knowledge in his
Disposition (Svabha:vam) in the first quadrant of the graph. The poetry-writing
Trait in his Disposition impacts on this stored knowledge at a later time when he
became a poet and produces a desire – through individual freedom - to write a
poem from his poetic va:sana:s (internalized habits or skills). This dispositional
knowledge works through the resultant world view quadrant 2 of his society and
culture to produce an SCS-Dispositional Knowledge (as world view). This again
impacts on the fourth quadrant of contextual lingual action resolved from the
context and the lingual action to produce SCS-Contextual-Dispositional Action.
Finally, this impels a desire – again through individual freedom - to write the poem
A Vision and cognize the poem in the third quadrant of cogneme-cognition
recursively to visualize the parts and the whole in an atomic-(w)holistic I-I-I
network. Then the poem A Vision is materialized in ink on a paper/(or orally as in
extempore poems) through the fourth quadrant by a reverse materializing action.
From this analysis, we understand how this theme is first motivated in the socio-
cultural-spiritual (SCS) context of his home town in a past-present-future spatio-
temporal-material (STM) context of the particular instance of town planning in
the inclinational-informational-habitual (IIH) context of writing the poem by the
poet about the social issue of town planning – all as a result of individual freedom.
This can be captured in the following diagram.
Dispositional (IIH) Context
Material (STM) Context ● Social (SCS) Context
The Poem: A Vision

Network 6: Atomic-(w)holistic Cogneme Network of the Poem A Vision
KCLA is dispositional, socio-cognitive linguistic in its framework and has

therefore more explanatory power than other theories since it explains the intricate
mechanism of creating a poem; more descriptive adequacy than other theories since
it takes into consideration all the available data of form-content-function-style-
context and then scientifically describes the process of creating a poem; and
finally more psychological validity than other non-psychological theories since it
captures the real psychological processing of the poem in a real context.
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We can also motivate social engagement in many of his poems such as The Clown
Punk, Give, Song, etc. as well as other contemporary poets’ poetry in a similar
way. Much of the writings of Julia Copus, Kate Clanchy, Roger McGough, Alice
Oswald, Sarah Maguire, Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, Carol Ann Duffy, Seamus
Heaney, Sean O’Brien, Jacob Polley, Lemn Sissay and Helen Dunmore, et al, are
writings with a clear-cut social engagement. For example, The Shuttered Eye
(1995), In Defence of Adultery (2002) and The World’s Two Smallest Humans
(2012), poetry collections from Julia Copus, for instance, are acclaimed by critics
as artworks from a talented writer with human sensibility. John Sears, in his
review of Copus’s collection In Defence of Adultery writes, “Copus is, above all, a
poet of enquiry and careful scrutiny, using conceits of almost metaphysical
intensity (in ‘Love, Like Water’ and ‘Glimpses of Caribou’, for example) to trigger
the reader’s curiosity. This curiosity is in turn nurtured and expressed through an
aesthetic that is conscious of how we rationalize our lives, making sense out of
nonsense, meaning out of absurdity.”
The Scottish poet Kate Clanchy’s collections Samarkand (1999), Slattern (2001)
and Newborn (2004) move forward the struggle a woman as a writer has taken
up to get her voice heard, and to remind us how far feminism is yet to go, not just
as an ideology but as a system of economic transaction that governs the lives of
millions of women. Her poetry is notable as testament of the common
experiences of countless women, especially often their helplessness concerning
their body and some unavoidable circumstances related to that body, like, for
example, pregnancy. various factors.
Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, an Irish poet, is another artist who has a deep-rooted

sense of social commitment. Roger McGough is recognized as a performance
poet. He comes from working class and has been sensitive about it. About his
poems he says, "My poems had to be accessible and entertaining rather than
difficult. It was liberating in a way. A lot of people who did literature at
university had a terror of putting pen to paper because they knew too much
about it, whereas I had no problem. I almost thought I had made the genre up.
That I was the first to do it." The poem The Way Things Are from his collection
with the same time (2000) is strikingly straightforward statement of the facts of
life, contrasting reality and illusion in daily life. The poet takes up his
responsibilities towards his society seriously and comments on much
misunderstanding, ignorance, innocence and insecurity growing in the younger
generation due to engagement. She is devoted to Irish language and literature,
rather proud of her Irish background as she says, “Irish is a language of beauty,
historical significance, ancient roots and an immense propensity for poetic
expression through its everyday use.” Her poetry collections, for example,
Pharaoh’s Daughter (1990), The Astrakhan Cloak (1992) and The Water Horse
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(1999) draw upon ancient Irish culture, myths and tradition since she feels that
myths are the fundamental structuring of our reality.
Alice Oswald is rightly dubbed as a ‘nature poet.’ Her first collection The Thing
in the Gap-Stone Stile (1996) and her second collection Dart (2002) are testimony
to her poetic talent and her commitment to social engagement through striking a
balance between human needs and the nature around: “I mustn’t gauge or
give/more than I take – which is a way to balance/between misprision and belief
in love.” Quite often she very finely blends the flora and fauna, human spirit and
myths in her poetry.
Sarah Maguire is a poet highly sensitive towards nature and human life. Her
commitment to social causes is very much visible in her The Pomegranates of
Kandahar (2007). I quote here what Dr. Jules Smith, writing for British Council
Literature (2012), comments on the collection: “The poem makes a brilliant
analogy between the ‘joyful fruit’ that this region of Afghanistan was once famed
for growing, and the deadly effects of landmines now strewn across the same
land. ‘Come, let us light candles in the dust / and prise them apart - // thrust your
knife through the globe / then twist / till the soft flesh cleaves open // to these
small shards of sweetness’. It concludes: ‘a city explodes in your mouth / Harvest
of goodness, / harvest of blood’. Such evocations of the human costs of war, and
its sympathies, are fully in keeping with Maguire’s links of friendship with
Arabic writers. She has focussed attention by translating their works, showing an
informed knowledge of their cultures from her visits to Arab countries, and has a
longstanding commitment to their causes.” Sarah’s touching poem The Invisible
Mender (My First Mother) imagines her mother, absent now, at not only sewing
but many of her daily cares and chores. More than that, Sarah doesn’t leave even
the minutest details I her description of the world as well as her emotions and
feelings.
Carol Ann Duffy, Britain’s Poet Laureate since 2009, is known for her poems
addressing issues of mass appeal, such as gender issues, violence in society
(specially, domestic violence) and issues of oppression in general and oppression
of women in particular. She has tackled issues of social importance, like,
government expenses, World War heroes, extinction of species from our planet,
climate change, war in Afghanistan, and people suffering from HIV, etc.
I suppose these examples will suffice to show that the poetry of the
contemporary poets mentioned in the Literature Review distinguishes itself from
the postmodern poetry with regard to social engagement, mass appeal and
meaningfulness.
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3. 3. 3. 2. Social Purpose
i. Social Purpose in Contemporary Poetry
Function in KCLA is studied under two divisions: 1. Purpose; 2. Speech Act
Function. Let us take the case of the poem A Vision once again. According to
Bhuvaneswar (2009), the poet has to keep in mind the purpose for which he
wants to write the poem and the form and content of the poem should embody
that purpose through the theme (how the passing of time affects our sense of
optimism for the future) and the speech acts in the form of language in the
content – the poet in a free society has the individual freedom to choose that
function he wants to bestow in and on the poem; “with it he can “do, undo, or do
otherwise”; without it, he cannot.” The poem A Vision has a stated purpose to tell
the reader about the neglect of grand plans for a beautiful future by the
government, with special reference to town planning and an implied purpose to
criticize inefficient governance in town planning, which is stated in the very first
line: The future was a beautiful place, once and again supported in the last stanza:
I pulled that future out of the north wind
at the landfill site, stamped with today’s date,
riding the air with other such futures,
all unlived in and now fully extinct.
This purpose and theme are embodied by the choice of three assertives and three
directives, the former in the form of three sentences and the latter in one sentence
and two long-winding noun phrases with adjectival modification, possessive
noun phrases, etc. with an implied “(You) remember” at the beginning of each
sentence.
The future was a beautiful place, once. (First Sentence – an assertive)

Remember the full-blown balsa-wood town
on public display in the Civic Hall. (Second Sentence – a directive)
((You) Remember) The ring-bound sketches, artists’ impressions,
blueprints of smoked glass and tubular steel,

board-game suburbs, modes of transportation
like fairground rides or executive toys. (First Group of Phrases- a
directive)
((You) Rememmber) Cities like dreams, cantilevered by light.
And people like us at the bottle-bank

next to the cycle-path, or dog-walking
over tended strips of fuzzy-felt grass,
or model drivers, motoring home in
electric cars. Or after the late show -
strolling the boulevard. (Second Group of Phrases- a directive)
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They were the plans,

all underwritten in the neat left-hand
of architects - a true, legible script. (Third Sentence – an assertive)
I pulled that future out of the north wind

at the landfill site, stamped with today’s date,
riding the air with other such futures,
all unlived in and now fully extinct. (Fourth Sentence – an assertive)
(From Simon Armitage’s collection Tyrannosaurus Rex Versus the
Corduroy Kid.)
These speech acts are embodied by the following important types of selected
propositional content in the style of a narrative sequence.
1. outdated visions of the future popularized by TV shows like The Jetsons or
Earth 1999; and 2001: A Space Odyssey .
2. the architect's technical drawings or 'blueprints'
3. The American style grid layouts or street plans shown on the drawings
becoming board-game suburbs (think Monopoly), with the little squares
reflecting blocks and cul-de-sacs as squares on a board game.
4. Futuristic cars similar to those in Star Wars or The Jetsons and their
comparison with 'executive toys' such as tabletop golf, model sports cars
and magnetic puzzles.
5. the bottle bank where 'people like us', that is the people who live in their
future city, are going about their perfectly sociable and lovely habits,
walking dogs, caring for the environment, wandering across picture
perfect 'over tended' grass and motoring about in their perfect little model
cars.
6. left-hand signed or 'underwritten' drawings in a 'true legible script';
7. finding of plans from landfill site;
8. stamped drawings with today's date
In addition, he decides on the other qualities of the theme in terms of its type,
class, and structure. This purpose and this theme have to be embodied by the
content through a form and style in the unmarked case of creating a poem – the
creation of a poem can occur from any angle, sometimes from a formal
perspective, sometimes from a stylistic perspective, and sometimes from a
contextual perspective depending on the dispositional inclinations of the poet. So
as he visualized the poem A Vision, he must have seen in his ‘mind’s eye’, the
form and style – in a parallel process, i.e., all the three components of the poem
(content, form, and style) - in which it should be written, as Armitage talked
specifically about form and style in a recent interview:
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I tend to think that poems come pre-packaged, and that when the idea suggests
itself to me the form comes with it: I sort of see it in my mind’s eye – particularly
with poems that come as blocks of text…I think I do imagine these things to be
pre-determined in some way – that they are somehow in concert with the whole
idea of the poem and with the style of the poem – style is everything to me, in
writing. I think that is what people are interested in poems. (An Interview, The
Poetry Archives)
In the selection of all these details, we see a direct engagement with social
practices obtained in his society: tv shows of visions of future, technical drawings
of urban architecture, children’s games of monopoly, executive toys, and a
landfill site. Each item is assigned a social purpose to contribute to the central
theme in an I-I-I network in atomic-(w)holistic functionality: the whole as the
drawings of a city pointing to the necessity of a beautiful living environment
containing the parts of the street plans, model car rides, perfectly social and
lovely habits, walking dogs, and over-tended grass as models of fine living that
are needed to make living worth living. The metaphor ‘board game suburbs’
used serves the purpose of capturing how the child imagined the architect’s
model of the future city. The metaphor ‘executive toys’ serves the function of
depicting the present day fancies of executives. Finally, the unfortunate dumping
of these plans is the last nail on the coffin about such impractical plans and the
careless attitude towards such plans.
Karma Disposition Desire Effort
Purpose Propositional
Function Content
Poetic
Speech Acts Action Rhetorical
Imagery Symbolism Body Language
Voice Style Tone Form
F. O. S Content Prosody
Form Aesthetic Appeal Result (Poem)

Experience
Network 4: Radial Network of Poetic Action
All these features serve the overall function to tell the story with the intended
purpose and project the theme. In addition, these details have a great mass
appeal since they affect and reflect the day to day life of the masses. In other
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words, there is a superimposition (a:dhya:sa) of mass appeal on the social

practices selected.
In the radial network 4 given above, the entire process of poetic action is
captured as a ka:rmik process:
(4) Karma-Disposition-Desire-Effort-Poetic Action in Context
[Function-Content-Form-Style]-Result-Experience.
We see such social engagement in themes, social purpose and mass appeal in
contemporary poetry in contrast with the poems of postmodernist poets whose
themes have reference to the signified only with signs to connect them with other
signs in the syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations of signs, with the awareness
that they never refer to anything outside the system of signification. That art
should not have any social concern, in principle, is just art for art’s sake. It may
survive, for a short period, if it possesses an excellent aesthetic value in itself.
Postmodernism does not even like to be called a moment espousing aesthetics.
So, how can it survive long?
Contemporary poetry seems to be more purposeful as can be seen from some

more poems which are reproduced, in part (but not analyzed at length as has
been the case with Armitage), here:
No, the candle is not crying, it cannot feel pain.
Even telescopes, like the rest of us, grow bored.
Bubblegum will not make the hair soft and shiny.
The duller the imagination, the faster the car,
I am your father and that is the way things are.
(Roger McGough, The way Things Are)iv
Notwithstanding the metaphors yoked to a purpose different from what the

Romantics or the Modernists would have done, the poem speaks of pain,
boredom, human appetite for beauty, the acts of imagination and experience –
issues of social concern appealing the masses in general. And even metaphors are
also not ‘deshaped’ and language is rather ‘literary’ in a pre-modernist sense in
this case.
Sean O’Brien’s commitment towards truth, honesty and the voice of conscience -
values that give meaning and purpose to life - give the poem a long-lasting
impression:
Be with me when they cauterise the facts.
Be with me to the bottom of the page,
Insisting on what history exacts.
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Be memory, be conscience, will and rage,

And keep me cold and honest, cousin coat,
So if I lie, I'll know you're at my throat.
(Sean O’Brien, Cousin Coat)v
Similarly, look at the concern the poet shows towards the general struggle for
survival every creature in the world puts up; to the poet it is a great virtue:
You hold it like a lit bulb,

a pound of light,
and swivel the stunned glow
around the fat glass sides:
it's the sun, all flesh and no bones
but for the floating knuckle
of honeycomb
attesting to the nature of the struggle.
(Jacob Polley, A Jar of Honey)vi
I do not wish to impose a meaning and intended purpose to these compositions,

but I strongly believe that the poets haven’t picked up the pen aimlessly.
Consider some more excerpts from contemporary poems and I am sure you will
agree with me that contemporary poetry is purposeful. In Simon Armitage, as
discussed above, we discern a clear concern for social issues, issues of social
justice, feeling for the downtrodden and a voice for the suffering humanity as is
visible in the following lines from Give, a poem devoted to beggars:
Of all the public places, dear
to make a scene, I’ve chosen here.
Of all the doorways in the world
to choose to sleep, I’ve chosen yours.
I’m on the street, under the stars.
(Simon Armitage, Give)vii.
Look at another example from Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill who puts in poetry quite a
strong hope:
I place my hope in the water
in this little boat
of the language, the way a body might put
an infant
---
only to have it born hither and thither
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not knowing where it may end up;

in the lap, perhaps,
of some Pharaoh’s daughter.
(Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, The Language Issue)viii
Hope, for a future sprouting of meaning (although not sure what form it might
take after the creation is cut off at birth from the creator; in a sense meaning is
indeterminate from beginning till end), sets the purpose of the aesthetic exercise
in for the poet, a clear point of departure from the postmodern trend.
Seamus Heaney’s excellent poem Lightenings: VIII, as opines Ines Praga Terente,
“perfectly highlights the fact that the ordinary and the marvellous are categories
defined and opposed only by human perception. This is what the monks of
Clonmacnoise must have thought when they saw a ship in the air while praying,
just before devoting themselves to the not in the least less extraordinary task of
preserving texts on paper for posterity”:ix
The annals say: when the monks of Clonmacnoise
Were all at prayers inside the oratory
A ship appeared above them in the air.
The anchor dragged along behind so deep

It hooked itself into the altar rails
And then, as the big hull rocked to a standstill,
A crewman shinned and grappled down the rope

And struggled to release it. But in vain.
‘This man can’t bear our life here and will drown,’
The abbot said, ‘Unless we help him.’ So

They did, the freed ship sailed, and the man climbed back
Out of the marvelous as he had known it.
(Seamus Heaney, Lightenings: VIII)x
Or, look how beautifully, in a simple but sumptuous language, Sarah Maguire
expresses the feelings of love, loss and longing in The Invisible Mender. It is rare to
find such, almost Keatsean, receptiveness towards sense-perceptions, lyrical
imagination and concern towards the material world even in contemporary
poetry as is visible in Sarah Maguire:
I think of you like this —

as darkness comes,
as the window that I can't see through
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is veiled with mist

which turns to condensation
slipping down tall panes of glass,
a mirror to the rain outside —
and I know that I'll not know
if you still are mending in the failing light,
or if your hands (as small as mine)
lie still now, clasped together, underground.
(Sarah Maguire, The Invisible Mender [My First
Mother])xi
ii. Lack of Social Purpose in Postmodernist Poetry

In contrast, just think what social purpose the following lines, from Charles
Bernstein’s poem “I and the” may be construed as serving:
I and the
to that you
it of a
know was uh
in but is
this me about
just don’t my
what I’m like
or have so
it’s neat think

be with he
well do for
The source/inspiration of the poem is a list of words compiled by a researcher in
descending order of frequency of usage from a data base consisting of the
transcripts of 225 psychoanalytic sessions! Bernstein simply delineates the list
and presents it as a poem. Although some scholars, for example, Albert Gelpi,
may find it a good poem on “the pathology of usage” and Bernstein’s grouping
of words in tercets “makes for lively word-play within the line,” the poem
doesn’t touch any cord in my heart.
Another example, to show how purposeless an exercise the writings of [some of]
the postmodernists seems to be, I present a “paragraph” from Christopher
Dewdney, which is well commented by Albert Gelpi. He observes: Christopher
Dewdney’s “Fractal Diffusion” seems just a stunt as he gradually and
mechanically replaces the vowels in his flat, manual-like prose with another
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phoneme: “ave” for “a,” “but” for “b,” “co” for “c,” “dio” for “d,” “et” for “e,”
“far” for “f.” “Fractal Diffusion” thus begins:
“In this article I am going to reify a progressive syllabic/letter
transposition in units of ten. Starting with the letter A and working
through the alphabet I will replavece eavech letter with ave syllaveble
normavelly starting with the paverticulaver letter in question…..” xii
And it wouldn’t be out of place to quote what Albert Gelpi has to say about this:
It looks less like Finnegans Wake than like pig Latin punched out by madly
logical computer, that is to say, deliberately deprived of purpose and
resonance and even content, it is not at all like Finnegans Wake.xiii
Postmodernism appears to be suitable to only academic purpose, as Albert Gelpi

comments:
Theory swallowed all: poetry submerged into criticism and linguistics,
words about words; even Marxism exercised itself not in political action
but about academic analysis.xiv
To sum up, the poets writing today are concerned about the purpose of their
compositions, that appear to me, to form the basis for the realization by them that
postmodernist approach, generally lacking in purpose, is rather counter-
productive and thus unsuitable to their purpose.
3. 3. 3. 3. Existence before Essence

There is a sharp contrast in the thinking of contemporary poets when compared
with that of postmodernists. Postmodernists opted for essence while
contemporary writers prefer existence over essence. In this regard, Julia Copus’
poem An Easy Passage may be read as a case in point, keeping in mind what
contemporary English poets strive for, influenced, as I see it, by Existentialist
thought:
Once she is halfway up there, crouched in her bikini
on the porch roof of her family's house, trembling,
she knows that the one thing she must not do is to think
of the narrow windowsill, the sharp
drop of the stairwell; she must keep her mind
(Julia Copus, An Easy Passage)xv
Non-conformity to the “Universal” standards of ‘moral laws’ here makes the
meaning of the individual as an individual, not losing the self-identity; there is
enough space for choice, and at the same time one can be authentic to oneself.
What gives the individual (in this case a female) meaning to her life is the
freedom of choice and the sense of fulfillment as an individual; and her
authenticity demands that even if her action doesn’t conform to the universal
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dictates of ethics (which are oppressive to the individual), she must go for her
choice.
Postmodern poets on the other hand, seem to see some kind of complicity
between ‘engagement’ or social responsibility of the writer and the socio-
economic and political factors that shape this engagement. Look, for instance, at
Thing Language by Jack Spicerxvi:
This ocean, humiliating in its disguises
Tougher than anything.
No one listens to poetry. The ocean
Does not mean to be listened to. A drop
Or crash of water. It means
Nothing.
-----
Al Filreis’s courses on modernism and postmodernism
John Cage quotations
DeHumanufactured: Postmodern poetry
Postmodern poetries
Not only is the poet averse to any social engagement impelled by individual
freedom and authenticity, he makes a strong case for essence and compels us to
believe that there is no possibility of individual choices, perhaps fearing that
choices demand authenticity, a commitment to live up to them. The poem is a
living example of all the features identifiable in any postmodernist poem, e.g.,
iconoclasm, that is, denial of the authorial intention and the claims of the author;
groundlessness, that is, images here have no reference beyond themselves and no
final meaning is traceable in poetry; formlessness, that is, harmony and
organizational structure of the composition are denounced; and finally,
populism, that is, the composition neither uses shapely metaphors nor literary
language, rather, the language is “DeHumanifactured.”
But, now the doubting poet appears to be returning to more certainty of faith in
engagement, which is to combat the normative force of morality decoupled from
divine sanction. Meaningful experience is made meaningful by the individual
himself/herself. The strong individual takes responsibility for the meaning s/he
adheres to. To cite Julia Copus once again:
For now both girls seem
lit, as if from within, their hair and the gold stud
earrings in the first one's ears; for now the long, grey
eye of the street, and far away from the mother
who does not trust her daughter with a key, (emphasis mine)
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3. 3. 3. 4. Form and Style in Contemporary Poetry and Postmodernist Poetry

The poets quoted above, it goes without saying, wish to convey something in
simple words; they wish to be understood; they wish to connect with people and
not remain imprisoned in the chain of signification; and they wish so despite
their awareness of the constraints of language. To this end they have to return to
the form and style of the poetry of the era when poetry used to be the direct
vehicle of meaning; when meaning was central to the existence of the poem and
the poet, not like the postmodern poet and his poem which appear to a common
reader of poetry an-end-in-itself exercise.
Perhaps the contemporary poet is fed up with the self-contradictory nature of the
postmodernist art. Yes, their art is always self-contradictory. For instance, to the
postmodernists the linguistic medium is opaque, still they wish to use the opacity
of this medium to carry the opacity of the sign to the reader/audience; though the
driving force behind the postmodernist thought is the common masses living at
the margins of life, their art is unreachable to and unapproachable by the
common masses since it is an untraceable code for all but the experts decoding
the hair-splitting theories with the sharpened tools to crack the underlying theory
and the rhetoric at the base of such an art. Social engagement, I insist at the risk
of repetition, is sustained through a simple style and form since only the artwork
crafted in mass idiom connects the artist with the masses and fulfills the desire of
the artist to be authentic to his/her individual choices made taking full
responsibility of his/her actions. Postmodernism could never become a movement of
the masses; it has been rather a movement off the masses for the same logic. Travis
Jeppesen goes to the extent of saying that postmodernism has been a movement
of the talentless and the frightened:
But then everything that’s already been done is increasingly evoked as an excuse
for the talentless, the frightened, and the third rate imitators who, by virtue of the
so-called logic of “postmodernism,” are more numerous and infinitely more
successful than ever before.
Of course, the use of language as an opaque medium, and all things avant garde in
poetry, was initiated by Ezra Pound who was very fond of playing with shifting
metaphors/signifiers and who, in the form of Imagism, made a case to forgo
traditional rhyme and meter in poetry, or anything traditional, a very strong
advocacy of iconoclasm, so to say. Mathew Caley, a contemporary British poet,
considers Pound as the most contemporary writer for the same reason.
Postmodernist poets owe a great deal to Pound for many innovations in form,
technique and ideas. Look, for instance, at the excerpt from Mathew Caley’s
poemxviiTowards a Philosophy of Speed:
Baby, if the burden of being the fastest thing ever seen
or heard
258 | P a g e
is granted to the paper-plane or humming-bird

hurtled down the central aisle of Concorde,
then a fat man running away
from himself is the very definition of velocity,
baby, even his aftermath-blur achieves solidity.
The way the lines appear on paper is the technique that reminds us of Pound. We
also notice the use of irregular meter here. Let’s take another example of Ezra
Pound being present in the blood of postmodernists. Look at the play of shifting
signifiers in Tjanting (1981)xviiiby Ronald Silliman:
Of about to within which,
Of about to within which what without
Of about under to within which what without
Of about under to within which of what without into by.
Not only play of words but, as Albert Gelpi comments, it is a “random, staccato
proliferation of words phrases and short sentences.” xix Let me present an excerpt
from one more postmodernist poem, which closely follows Ezra Pound’s strong
advocacy to forgo everything traditional in poetry, whether language, rhyme,
rhythm, meter or the usual tropes. It is an excerpt from a poem by Charles
Bernstein, titled Dysraphismxx:
Dominion demands distraction – the circus
ponies of slaughter home. Braced
by harmony, bludgeoned by decoration
the dream surgeon hobbles three steps over, two
steps beside. “In those days you didn’t have to
shout to come off as expressive.”
Although Marjorie Perloff in The Dance of the Intellect: Studies in the Poetry of the
Pound Tradition (1985) remarks that "'Dysraphism' playfully exploits such
rhetorical figures as pun, anaphora, epiphora, metathesis, epigram, anagram, and
neologism to create a seamless web of reconstituted words," she questions the
efficacy of the speaking subject and referentiality in poetry, and thinks that such
poetry, for all its Marxist talk, might be seen as “no more than a mandarin game
designed to entertain an elite coterie!”xxi
Thus, apart from the poets quoted above, John Ashbery (The Burden of the Park),
Frank O’Hara (Khrushchev is coming on the right day!), Barbara Guest (Wild Gardens
Overlooked by Night Lights), Charles Bernstein (Thinking I Think I Think), Andrew
Levy (tom hanks is a homosexual), Jim Rosenberg (Completing the Square), Tom
Raworth (All Fours), J.H. Prynne (On the Matter of Thermal Packing), David Antin
(War), Jackson MacLow (Very Pleasant Soiling), Michael Basinski (The Atmosphere
259 | P a g e
of Venus), Susan Howe (Eikon Basilike) Kenneth Goldsmith (Fidget), Robert Grenier
(Greeting), Richard Brautigan (All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace) and
Allen Ginsburg (Is About), to name only a few, have contributed to the world of
literature poetry collections that are more of iconoclastic statements or play with
signifiers than intended at any meaning.
In an interview given to Alan Francs on his new poetry collection Seeing Starsxxii
(Times Online, April 24, 2010), Simon Armitage Says: ‘They’re poems because I
say they are.’ Simon Armitage argues in favour of his prosaic poetry, “With
poetry we are beyond the point where you can prove or disprove what a poem is.
You take these things on trust. This is a poetry publisher [Faber] publishing
poems by someone who claims to be a poet. I think they can be read in that spirit,
no matter that they seem to be impersonating prose on the page.” But, look at one
of his poems I’ve selected for analysis here and you will agree that Armitage
himself is more comfortable with the regular lines and rhythm in compositions:
For coppers I can dance and sing.
For silver-swallow words, eat fire.
For gold-escape from locks and chains.
It’s not as if I’m holding out

for frankincense or myrrh, just change
You give me tea. That’s big of you.
I’m on my knees. I beg of you.
(Simon Armitage, Give)xxiii
Here I cannot resist the temptation to cite some more excerpts that support my
view that the contemporary poets are inclined towards a more aesthetically
pleasing form in poetry – with proper rhyme, rhythm and meter. Like, for
instance, Alice Oswald’s poem Sonnet is in actual sonnet form:
I can't sleep in case a few things you said
no longer apply. The matter's endless,
but definitions alter what's ahead
and you and words are like a hare and tortoise.
Aaaagh there's no description — each a fractal
sectioned by silences, we have our own
skins to feel through and fall back through — awful
to make so much of something so unknown.
(Alice Oswald, Sonnet)xxiv
And look at the traditional rhyme scheme ab ab cc, in Sean O’Brien’s Cousin
Coat.xxv
260 | P a g e
You are my secret coat. You're never dry.

You wear the weight and stink of black canals.
Malodorous companion, we know why
It's taken me so long to see we're pals,
To learn why my acquaintance never sniff
Or send me notes to say I stink of stiff.
Or, the beautifully arranged tercets in Douglas Dunn’s Land

Lovexxvi:
We stood here in the coupledom of us.
I showed her this — a pool with leaping trout,
Split-second saints drawn in a rippled nimbus.
We heard the night-boys in the fir trees shout.

Dusk was an insect-hovered dark water,
The calling of lost children, stars coming out.
a. Not Mere Word Play

Look at the following lines from Jackson MacLow’s Words nd Ends from Ez
(1989)xxvii
En nZe eaRing ory Arms,
Pallor pOn laUghtered lain oureD Ent
aZure teR,
un-
tAwny PpingcOme d oUt r wing-
joints,
preaD Et aZzle.
spRing-
water,
ool A P”
The very first look at the poem tells even the laymen that in the name of poetry it
is just a word play, or rather a gimmickry. What MacLow has done is just turned
the language of Poundxxviii to Gibberish, through what he calls as “diastic chance
selection method!” He picked up from Pound’s text ‘letter strings’ in which
letters from Ezra Pound’s name take places corresponding to the ones they fill in
the names!
This kind of trickery seems not to be favoured any more. All the poems I have
scanned for this paper show a disdain for a mere word play. Consider the
example below from Carol Ann Duffy’s poem Prayerxxix:
261 | P a g e
Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer

utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.
I would like to quote Travis Jeppesen once again to strengthen my point here:
“And there is, in fact, an advanced literary work that is being created that is
neither pretentious nor academic – its virulent militancy (even when it comes in
the form of understatement) prevents it from being so.” (Travis Jeppesen, 2009:
1).
3. 3. 3. 5. Mass Appeal
Any art form needs a wider patronage even for its survival and existence. This is
especially true in the case of poetry. Other art forms like, painting, music,
architecture and dress-styles can survive in their postmodernist forms too, with
or without public support. For instance, painting is patronized today by
billionaires even in postmodernist form and postmodernist architecture is
appreciated even by laymen. But the same is not true for the art of versification;
the poet has to connect; s/he has to speak the emotions, in the idioms of the
people, like the excerpts below:
This is simply to inform you:
that the thickest line in the kink of my hand

smells like the feel of an old school desk,
the deep carved names worn sleek with sweat;
that beneath the spray of my expensive scent

my armpits sound a bass note strong
as the boom of a palm on a kettle drum;
(Kate Clanchy, Poem for a Man with No Sense of
Smell)xxx
Kate’s poem is a very strong statement of the declaration of independence for
women and a staunch support for the ongoing struggle for women’s freedom,
especially, for the women facing repression and resistance against recognition of
their individual selves.
And note how quickly Lemn Sissay, a British poet of Ethiopian origin, connects
with his audience when he recites his poems, for instance, Invisible Kisses. This is
better experienced when one attends his poetry sessions. I attended one such
session where he recited the poem and found everyone in the audience in
rapture:
262 | P a g e
If there was ever one

Whom when you were sleeping
Would wipe your tears
When in dreams you were weeping;
Who would offer you time
When others demand;
Whose love lay more infinite
Than grains of sand. (Lemn Sissay, Invisible Kisses)xxxi
Who would care for the poetry meant to crack the head but not please the heart?
The postmodernists misunderstood the duty of individual freedom and misused
their right for it! Can a poet survive just on poetry these days if his/her art doesn’t
connect him/her to a wider reading public? How many upcoming poets can live
on prize money and how many get the prizes and, most importantly, how many
can really have the patience to wait to hit the success?
4. Conclusion
Using insights gained from Ka:rmik Critical Literary Analysis (KCLA) and
Ka:rmik Literary Theory (KLitT) I have made an attempt in the foregone pages to
show, first of all, that KCLA and KLitT are holistic theories of literary analysis,
especially as non-Eurocentric theories of Indian origin, and secondly, that a
change in poetic trends is perceptible in contemporary poetry on a close scrutiny
of some major poets, and that this change reflects poets’ emphasis on individual
freedom leading to their concern for social engagement, social purpose, and mass
appeal, favouring a change in form and style and putting existence before
essence. The analysis brings to the fore and proves the dispositional and
contextual aspects like inclinational-informational-habitual context,
spatiotemporalmaterial context and socioculturalspiritual context of the genesis
of poetry, which is a seminal contribution of KCLA vis-à-vis other leading
literary theories which, for all these centuries in western and oriental literary
criticism, have not made disposition central to their critical approaches.
As discussed in the previous sections, it is clear that there is a change in the

poetry of some contemporary writers like, Simon Armitage, Kate Clanchy, Roger
McGough, Alice Oswald, Sarah Maguire, Julia Copus, Lemn Sissay and others, to
name only a few. The contemporary poet has shifted his/her gaze away from the
‘linguistic turn’ predominant in their predecessors the postmodernists, and has
focussed it towards issues that connect him strongly with the masses, issues like,
gender inequality, domestic violence, environmental degradation, religious
prejudices, ethnic prejudices, poverty, alienation of the self, and the likes.
263 | P a g e
However, reading these poets of today, the crucial questions that crop up in the
mind of a reader fed on the theories of poststructuralist suspicion are:
1. What has changed after the 1980s?
2. Is there a perceptible change in the world or in the condition of the
individual during the last 30 years or so?
3. Or, is it a sign of fatigue with the dull, drab and meaningless looking
exercise with words (emphasis mine) of the postmodernist thought?
I feel that the major thrust for this change in perspective comes from the
commitment of contemporary poets to social engagement. A major argument in
favour of postmodernist linguistic turn in literature has been that we have been
much alienated, and also self-alienated, and language is so much appropriated by
late-capitalism that the only way out is to use language to show it as a
constitutive mechanism within the system. But, though I agree with the thrust of
the argument, I feel the methods adopted to counter the effects of such alienation
have led to further alienation of the individual. In this regard I go with Albert
Gelpi’s observation that, “whether this premise represents the counsel of despair
or an exorcism precluding the formation of a new language and grammar, its
immediate consequence is to paralyze the capacity of language for change and
effecting change and to reduce the range of reference and resonance to mere
spread of surface.”xxxii
I agree that some of the trends of the postmodernist ethics are still in practice in
contemporary poetic creations, but it looks like the contemporary poets are rather
returning to what Sartre calls ‘engagement’ of the artist as discussed earlier. ‘The
single individual’ as Kierkegaard would term it, finds an echo in the poems of
contemporary poets.
Also, my strong belief is, yes, there is a change in the poetic sensibility of the
contemporary poet since the poet wishes for an effective change in the society
around him/her. But the idea leads us to think: what does this change reflect?
Does it reflect a change in the world scenario? If so, who is it a welcome change
for? Or, is the new generation miles away from the effects of disillusionment with
the modern life that the previous generation had and is trying to come to terms
with the new facts of their lives in their own way? These questions need probing
further, deeper. In this paper I have tried to address some of the issues with the
help of a fresh, but challenging, non-Eurocentric literary theory, with the hope
that the issue would be taken up for further research by interested scholars.
264 | P a g e
REFERENCES
Andrews, Bruce and Charles Bernstein (eds.) (1984). The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Book.
Southern Illinois University Press.
Bhuvaneswar, Chilukuri (2009). “Variation in Poetry and Its Analysis: A KCLA”.
Unpublished Paper.
_____ (2010). “The Gradual Evolution of a Poem: A KCLA”.
Unpublished Paper.
_____ (2011). “Proverbial Linguistics: Theory and Practice in the

Ka:rmik Linguistic Paradigm”. Plenary Speech delivered at the International
Symposium on Proverbs, Paris Diderot 7, Paris.
Bush, Ronald. "Art versus the Descent of the Iconoclasts: Cultural Memory in Ezra
Pound's Pisan Cantos," in Modernism/Modernity (January 2007), 14.1.Pp. 71–95.
Caley, Mathew. “Aspects of the Contemporary (ii) Neo-hogbutchererbigdriftities: tracing
a line out of the mainstream.” Magma 29 (September 2004). Carshalton: UK.
Flynn, Thomas R. (2006). Existentialism: A Very short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Gelpi, Albert. “The Genealogy of Postmodernism: Contemporary American Poetry.”
The Southern Review (Summer 1990). Pp. 517-541.
Ginsberg, Allen. “Is About,” THE NEW YORKER magazine, October 21/28, 1996.
Hassan, Ihab (1987). The Postmodern Turn: Essays in Postmodern Theory and Culture. Ohio
State University Press.
Holcombe, C. John (2007). “Postmodernism in Poetry.” www.textetc.com (Accessed on
12 April 2011).
Mabrooka Ishtewi (2009). “Perception of the Desert in Arabic and English Poetry”.
Paper presented at the English Conference, Arts and Science College, Al-Mergib
University Campus, Ghasar Khiar, Libya.
Ogden, Rachael. "Preview: Simon Armitage."The North Guide (UK: North Guide, June
2001).
Perloff, Marjorie (1985). The Dance of the Intellect: Studies in the Poetry of the Pound
Tradition. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press.
Terrell, Carroll F. (1980). A Companion to The Cantos of Ezra Pound. University of
California Press.
NOTES
Travis Jeppesen, “On Tomaz Salamun, Poet.” Yahoo Contributor Network. October 15, 2009. P. 1.
i
(Travis Jeppesen is an American writer based in Europe. He is the author of several novels and volumes of
poetry. He writes about art, literature, and travel for a variety of publications.)
ii
Allen Ginsberg, “Is About.” THE NEW YORKER Magazine, October 21/28, 1996.
iii
Albert Gelpi, “The Genealogy of Postmodernism: Contemporary American Poetry.” The Southern Review.
Summer 1990. Pp. 517-541.
iv
Roger McGough, “The Way Things Are.” From The Way Things Are. Penguin, 2000.
v
Sean O’Brien, “Cousin Coat.” From, Cousin Coat: Selected Poems. Picador, 2001.
vi
Jacob Polley, “A Jar of Honey.” From, The Brink. Picador, 2003.
vii
Simon Armitage, “Give.” From, The Dead Sea Poems. Faber, 1995.
265 | P a g e
viii
Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, “The Language Issue.” From, Pharaoh’s Daughter. The Gallery Press, 1990.
ix
Ines Praga Terente, Estudios Irlandeses, Vol. 1, No. 0. March 2005.
x
Seamus Heaney, “Lightenings: VIII.” From, Seeing Things. Faber & Faber, 1991.
xi
Sarah Maguire, “The Invisible Mender (My First Mother).” From, The Invisible Mender. Cape, 1997.
xii
Christopher Dewdney, “Fractal Diffusion,” in, Bruce Andrews and Charles Bernstein (eds.) The
L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Book. Southern Illinois University Press, 1984.
xiii
Gelpi, “The Genealogy,” P. 8.
xiv
xv
Julia Copus, “An Easy Passage.” The Guardian.co.uk. Thursday, 7 October 2010.
Julia Copus won the Forward Prize 2010 for Best Single Poem, for An Easy Passage.
xvi
Jack Spicer, “Thing Language.” From, The Collected Books of Jack Spicer. Black Sparrow Press, 1975.
xvii
Mathew Caley, “Towards a Philosophy of Speed,” from Thirst. Slow Dancer, 1999.
xviii
Ronald Silliman, Tjanting. Massachusetts: Great Barrington, 1981; Applecross: Salt Modern Poets
Series, 2002.
xix
Gelpi, “The Genealogy.” P. 9
xx
Charles Bernstein & Ron Silliman, The Sophist. Sun and Moon Press, 1987. “Dysraphism” is from the
same collection and the poem appeared first in Sulfur, 8 (1983). P. 39.
xxi
Marjorie Perloff, The Dance of the Intellect: Studies in the Poetry of the Pound Tradition. Cambridge &
New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985. (Originally published in American Poetry Review (May-June
1984), 13(3): 15-22).
xxii
Seeing Stars is published by Faber and Faber, 2010.
xxiii
Simon Armitage, “Give.” The Dead Sea Poems. Faber, 1995.
xxiv
Alice Oswald, “Sonnet.” From, The Thing in the Gap-stone Stile. Oxford, 1996.
xxv
Sean O’Brien, “Cousin Coat.” From,Cousin Coat: Selected Poems. Picador, 2001.
xxvi
Douglas Dunn, “Land Love.” From, Elegies. Faber, 1985.
xxvii
Jackson MacLow’s Words nd Ends from Ez is a postmodernist deconstruction of parts of Ezra Pound’s
ideogrammic masterpiece The Cantos.
xxviii
Ezra Pound, The Cantos. New York: New Directions, 1948.
xxix
Carol Ann Duffy, “Prayer.” From, Mean Time. Anvil, 1993.
xxx
Kate Clanchy, “Poem for a Man with No Sense of Smell.” From, Slattern. Picador, 2001.
xxxi
Lemn Sissay, “Invisible Kisses.” Quoted from his blog ‘Lost at the Shore.’ (Sunday 15 February, 2009).
Accessed on 20 April 2012.
Lemn Sissay is a British Poet, of Ethiopian descent. Poet, playwright, author, T.V and radio presenter and,
children’s rights activist, Lemn Sissay has published many poetry collections. Presently, he is
commissioned to inscribe some of his famous poems at the sides of buildings for the 2012 London
Olympics.
xxxii
266 | P a g e

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The Indo-Libyan Linguist P K Sharma and C Bhuvaneswar Individual Freedom 2014

Individual Freedom: Perspectives on Selected Contemporary British and

predecessors; in addition, this choice is accompanied by a corresponding change

1. 1. Aims and Objectives

1. 2. Materials and Methods

1. 4. Scope and Limitation

1. 5. Significance of the Study

II. Literature Review

Postmodernism is, supposedly, a predominantly American movement. Keith

Ka:rmik Critical Literary Analysis (an offshoot of Ka:rmik Linguistic Theory) is

in Libya which I attended and later on had discussions on it with Bhuvaneswar. I

III. Perspectives on Individual Freedom in Selected Contemporary British and

he is totally equipped with all that is necessary to compose a poem, the

perspective. In an experiential perspective, the overall effect is taken into

Production A. Potential State of Creation of a Poem

(2) Motivation Composition Production Presentation

(3) Motivation Composition

1. Material; 2. Intellectual; 3. Social; 4. Spiritual, and 5. Mixed. Furthermore, each

3. 2. Context of Poetic Composition

3. 2. 1. The Spatiotemporalmaterial Context

Postmodern poetic sensibility, it seems, formulates itself as a critique of

2. 3. The Dispositional Context

Knowledge of Language D.F.P ‘

Internalized Habits of Using/Creating Language

him as pleasure/pain/none. These two aspects are captured in the following

i. Dispositional States of Postmodernist and Contemporary Poets

From such an analysis conducted below in the following sections, it will be

3. 3. The KCLA of Creation of a Poem

important sub-features of the four important characteristics of postmodernism as

John Holcombe (2007) in his elaborately pointed analysis of the characteristic

In the case of contemporary poetry, there is a rejection, at least a partial rejection,

S. Characteristics of Postmodernist Poetry Characteristics of Contemporary

Table I. Characteristics of Postmodernist and Contemporary Poetry

available options from the networks of Components of a Poem, Productive Extension of

[Such questions as well as their answers can be motivated in a principled manner

In the case of Simon Armitage, he does brainstorming. As he puts it, “most of my

3. 3. 3. Motivation of Individual Freedom in Social Engagement in Themes,

expression of the disintegration of traditional values, and this is the aspect of

ii. Contemporary Poetry: Definite Social Engagement in Themes

A Cogneme-Cognition Network for a Poem

Cogneme-Cognition action is recursive and it occurs at each and every phase of

Dispositional (IIH) Context

Material (STM) Context ● Social (SCS) Context

The Poem: A Vision

KCLA is dispositional, socio-cognitive linguistic in its framework and has

Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, an Irish poet, is another artist who has a deep-rooted

The future was a beautiful place, once. (First Sentence – an assertive)

blueprints of smoked glass and tubular steel,

And people like us at the bottle-bank

They were the plans,

I pulled that future out of the north wind

Karma Disposition Desire Effort

Imagery Symbolism Body Language

Voice Style Tone Form

Form Aesthetic Appeal Result (Poem)

words, there is a superimposition (a:dhya:sa) of mass appeal on the social

Contemporary poetry seems to be more purposeful as can be seen from some

Notwithstanding the metaphors yoked to a purpose different from what the

Be memory, be conscience, will and rage,

You hold it like a lit bulb,

I do not wish to impose a meaning and intended purpose to these compositions,

not knowing where it may end up;

The anchor dragged along behind so deep