Poetry could be said to have always been new and inventive, although at certain periods of time, it certainly was supposed to stick close to literary conventions. However, based on the 18th century efforts of great poets like Mallarmé and Rimbaud poetry sought deliberately to break literary and social conventions. During the second half of the 20th century, this effort is greatly accentuated as poets such as Beckett deliberately play with the structure of poetry and language itself in order to explore the very foundations of meaning and sense, creating in that way new and inventive forms of expression.
