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To the drowsy horses' tramp.
His axles winnow the sprays
Of the hedge where the rabbit plays
In the light of his single lamp.
He hears a roar behind,
A howl, a hoot, and a yell,
A headlight strikes him blind
And a stench o'erpowers the wind
Like a blast from the mouth of Hell.
He mends his swingle-bar,
And loud his curses ring;
But a mother watching afar | Hears the hum of the doctor's car
Like the beat of an angel's wing! | So, to the poet's mood,
Motor or carrier's van,
Properly understood, | The motor of “the doctor’s car” sounds like “the beat of an angel’s wing” because his arrival signifies safety, being healed.
Nothing like being aurally Touched by an Angel .
| Rudyard Kipling | Contradictions |
How it dwells
On the Future! — how it tells
Of the rapture that impels
To the swinging and the ringing
Of the bells, bells, bells
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells
Bells, bells, bells —
To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!
III.
Hear the loud alarum bells —
Brazen bells!
What tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells! | In the startled ear of night | How they scream out their affright!
Too much horrified to speak
They can only shriek, shriek | This is the third time the night is referenced. In stanza I, it was icy ; in stanza II, it was balmy ; but now, it is being personified as a startled character.
Typically, the night is associated with terror; for the night to even be scared gives us chills. | Edgar Allan Poe | The Bells |
Funky, down
Nasty
Hey! Listen to the man
Rap, Godfather
Payback!
Cold blooded
People, people, we've got to get over
Before we go under
Yeah, Lord
People, people, we've got to get over
Before we go under
Hey, country, you didn't say what you meant | You just changed, a brand new funky president | Hah
Stock market going up, jobs going down
It ain't no funky job to be found, ugh | While this song, as mentioned, was written about Gerald Ford, it has been trotted out in recent years to apply to a different U.S. leader | James Brown | Funky President People Its Bad |
Why do you stand by the window
Abandoned to beauty and pride
The thorn of the night in your bosom
The spear of the age in your side
Lost in the rages of fragrance
Lost in the rags of remorse
Lost in the waves of a sickness
That loosens the high silver nerves
Oh chosen love, Oh frozen love
Oh tangle of matter and ghost
Oh darling of angels, demons and saints | And the whole broken-hearted host | Gentle this soul
And come forth from the cloud of unknowing
And kiss the cheek of the moon | The host (from Latin hostia is the sacramental bread used in the Christian ritual of the Eucharist. Together with the wine it represents Jesus' body during Holy Communion – a recurring trope in Cohen’s poetry.
| Leonard Cohen | The Window |
They were calling certain styles of whiskers by the name of “lilacs.”
And another manner of beard assumed in their chatter a verbal guise
Of “mutton chops,” “galways,” “feather dusters.”
Metaphors such as these sprang from their lips while other street cries
Sprang from sparrows finding scattered oats among interstices of the curb.
Ah-hah these metaphors—and Ah-hah these boys—among the police they were known | As the Dirty Dozen and their names took the front pages of newspapers | And two of them croaked on the same day at a “necktie party” … if we employ the metaphors of their lips. | Nowadays, The Dirty Dozen is best known as the title of a 1967 war film, about a fictional unit in WWII:
Sandburg is talking about a street gang, presumably fictional, although the famous Depression-era gangster John Dillinger was the leader of a gang by that name as a kid . | Carl Sandburg | Alley Rats |
So, we'll go no more a-roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.
For the sword outwears its sheath, | And the soul wears out the breast, | And the heart must pause to breathe,
And Love itself have rest.
Though the night was made for loving, | This echoes the previous line, implying that the spiritual man, the speaker, is still prepared for the challenge of life, but the ‘breast’, or the physical being, is exhausted, or worn out.
Note the two lines are syntactic parallels , the second time Byron has used this device. It sustains the rhythm and the sense that, beneath the weariness, there is still vitality. | Lord Byron | So well go no more a-roving |
There is an eye, there was a slit.
Nights walk, and confer on him fear.
The strangler tree, the dancing mouse
confound his vision; then they loosen it.
Henry widens. How did Henry House
himself ever come here?
Nights run. Tes yeux bizarres me suivent
when loth at landfall soft I leave.
The soldiers, Coleridge Rilke Poe,
shout commands I never heard. | They march about, dying & absurd. | Toddlers are taking over. O
ver! Sabbath belling. Snoods converge
on a weary-daring man. | This could refer to the fact that were all soldiers. As soldiers tend to go through a great deal of suffering, it’s a safe assumption that all three of them were very stressed.
(Found on biographies about each poet.) | John Berryman | Dream Song 12 Sabbath |
null | Pushing my cart through the supermarket
Today
The thought passed through my mind
That I could start
Knocking cans from the shelves and
Also rolls of towels, toilet paper
Silver foil
I could throw oranges, bananas, tomatoes
Through the air, I could take cans of
Beer from the refrigerated section and
Start gulping them, I could pull up
Women's skirts, grab their asses
I could ram my shopping cart through
The plate-glass window... | Then another thought occurred to me:
People generally consider something
Before they do it | Has it ever occurred to you that there is nothing immediately stopping you from doing anything you physically wanted in that moment? Of course you would go to jail or get yourself in a lot of trouble, but there is nothing anyone can immediately do to prevent you from doing anything you wanted for one moment.
Humans in reality are just really smart animals. We still have primal forces within us, and the only thing keeping us from acting like complete animals is society. Society acts as both our protector and our jailer. Society suppresses our socially unacceptable primal nature, yet also keeps us from being truly free. The speaker’s primal nature has suddenly resurfaced and is tempting him to do completely crazy things. | Charles Bukowski | A Close Call While Shopping |
Three sang of love together: one with lips
Crimson, with cheeks and bosom in a glow,
Flushed to the yellow hair and finger-tips;
And one there sang who soft and smooth as snow
Bloomed like a tinted hyacinth at a show; | And one was blue with famine after love, | Who like a harpstring snapped rare harsh and low
The burden of what those were singing of.
One shamed herself in love; one temperately | This is odd and ambiguous. Does it imply that the woman achieved love, but lost it, hence the “famine”? The word “after” could be interpreted as “sought after”, so the line would mean that she was starved of love, having looked for it and failed to find it. Rossetti leaves this unclear. | Christina Rossetti | A Triad |
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep, | But I have promises to keep, | And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep. | This line marks a major change in the narrator. He does not allow himself to enter the darkness of the woods. The narrator is pulled back by his responsibilities and societal obligations, though the sublime beauty of nature and of death were enough to make him halt his journey for a while. | Robert Frost | Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening |
A drop fell on the apple tree
Another on the roof
A half a dozen kissed the eaves
And made the gables laugh
A few went out to help the brook
That went to help the sea
Myself conjectured, Were they pearls
What necklaces could be!
The dust replaced in hoisted roads
The birds jocoser sung
The sunshine threw his hat away | The orchards spangles hung | The breezes brought dejected lutes
And bathed them in the glee
The East put out a single flag | The orchard (referring back to the apple tree from the first line) is sparkling in the sunlight.
Spangles are a type of glittery decorative material.
| Emily Dickinson | Summer Shower |
There is a deep brooding
In Arkansas.
Old crimes like moss pend
From poplar trees.
The sullen earth
Is too much too | Red for comfort. | Sunrise seems to hesitate
And in that second
Lose its | Red is the colour of blood, and because of this it has historically been associated with sacrifice, danger, and courage.
Angelou uses the term “red” in her poem to refer to a sign of danger. | Maya Angelou | My Arkansas |
Rarely it wakes. Unless, coaxed out by lusters
Extraordinary, like the octopus
From the gloom of its tank half-swimming half-drifting
Toward anything fair, a handkerchief
Or child's face dreaming near the glass, the writher
Advances in a godlike wreath
Of its own wrath. Chilled by such fragile reeling
A hundred blows of a boot-heel
Shall not quell, the dreamer wakes and hungers.
Percussive pulses, drum or gong,
Build in his skull their loud entrancement,
Volutions of a Hindu dance. | His hands move clumsily in the first conventional
Gestures of assent. | He is willing to undergo the volition and fervor
Of many fleshlike arms, observe
These in their holiness of indirection | The dreamer is clumsily becoming accustomed to the spirit’s presence. He moves his hands to mimic the dance of Shiva, conforming with the apparition. “Gestures of assent” implies a certain agreement with and understanding of the monstrous spiritual presence, though this agreement is clumsy and feels unnatural. | James Merrill | The Octopus |
As the spear lifted, Hector skipped in range;
As Ajax readied, Hector bared his throat again;
And, as Ajax lunged Prince Hector jived on his right heel
And snicked the haft clean through his neck,
Pruning the bronze nose off - Aie! - it was good to watch
Big Ajax and his spear, both empty topped,
Blundering about for - Oh, a minute went
Before he noticed it had gone.
But when he noticed it he knew
God stood by Hector's elbow, not by his;
That God was pleased with Hector, not with Ajax;
And, sensibly enough, he fled. | The ship was burned. | null | The final succinct line mirrors the opening. If this were a film, a shot of a burnt out ship would be sufficient to convey to an audence the outcome of the battle. | Christopher Logue | From War Music |
Your Momma kissed the chauffer, | Your Poppa balled the cook, | Your sister did the dirty,
in the middle of the book,
The thirteens. Right On. | Corresponding with the last line, not only is the kid’s mother a cheater, but so is his father, as he too cheated on her, maybe in payback form perhaps? This is never mentioned. | Maya Angelou | The Thirteens White |
Oh, to be in England
Now that April's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough | In England—now! | And after April, when May follows,
And the white-throat builds, and all the swallows!
Hark I where my blossomed pear tree in the hedge | The stanza finishes as it began, with the emphatic ‘In England — now!’. There is a dash, creating a pause or caesura after ‘England’, as the poet builds up to his dramatic climax; the exclamatory ‘now!’. Punctuation in this line is important. | Robert Browning | Home Thoughts from Abroad |
This is for the kids who die,
Black and white,
For kids will die certainly.
The old and rich will live on awhile,
As always, | Eating blood and gold, | Letting kids die.
Kids will die in the swamps of Mississippi
Organizing sharecroppers | The upper class will continue, as always, to eat the blood of the poor people that die in the thousands every day, along with their expensive gold, finding nourishment in it. | Langston Hughes | Kids Who Die |
For Dwight Macdonald | Under the too white marmoreal Lincoln Memorial,
the too tall marmoreal Washington Obelisk, | gazing into the too long reflecting pool,
the reddish trees, the withering autumn sky,
the remorseless, amplified harangues for peace--- | Lowell is pointing out the ideology that the state architecture of Washington references – the monuments are marmoreal (meaning, similar to marble) and thus are like the monuments of Rome and Lowell also chooses the word “obelisk” to reference the Egyptian empire.
He feels out of place and uncomfortable. Uncomfortable both with the state of the U.S.A. and with his place in the march. Everything is done up to eleven or super-sized: “too white,” “too tall,” “too long.” | Robert Lowell | The March 1 |
null | Now, God be thanked Who has matched us with His hour, | And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping,
With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power,
To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping, | The poem’s opening may bring to mind a prayer or a church sermon. The declarative “Now”, draws the reader’s attention. God is to be thanked for this opportunity for young people to demonstrate their patriotism. “His hour” is, of course, the call to arms.
In terms of rhythm, the line has a solid, emphatic beat, following almost perfectly the iambic pentameter metre appropriate to a sonnet. | Rupert Brooke | Peace |
She rose to his requirement, dropped
The playthings of her life
To take the honorable work
Of woman and of wife
If aught she missed in her new day
Of amplitude, or awe
Or first prospective, or the gold
In using wore away
It lay unmentioned, as the sea
Develops pearl and weed
But only to himself is known | The fathoms they abide | null | It ends subtly. The line may indicate the wife’s complete “submersion” in the male sea, and perhaps a hint at resulting depression and isolation. The consonant rhyme concludes the poem, suggesting an unfulfilled life with no access to these drowned objects that once had potential to provide happiness. | Emily Dickinson | She rose to his requirement dropped |
I looked in my heart while the wild swans went over.
And what did I see I had not seen before?
Only a question less or a question more; | Nothing to match the flight of wild birds flying. | Tiresome heart, forever living and dying,
House without air, I leave you and lock your door.
Wild swans, come over the town, come over | This gives the swans status, and meaning can be drawn from them — beauty, the mystery of flight, for example.
Continuing the repetition, the poet uses ‘flight’ and ‘flying’, a noun and a verb respectively. The trope of flight to represent freedom is much-used in poetry. | Edna St. Vincent Millay | Wild Swans |
by William Blake
The wild winds weep,
And the night is a-cold;
Come hither, Sleep,
And my griefs infold:
But lo! the morning peeps
Over the eastern steeps,
And the rustling birds of dawn
The earth do scorn.
Lo! to the vault
Of paved heaven,
With sorrow fraught | My notes are driven: | They strike the ear of night,
Make weep the eyes of day;
They make mad the roaring winds, | His notes fly up towards the vaulted sky as they would in a room with vaulted ceilings. | William Blake | Mad Song |
null | When the voices of children are heard on the green, | And whisperings are in the dale,
The days of my youth rise fresh in my mind,
My face turns green and pale. | This poem is the mirror of a poem from Songs of Innocence . This nurse, unlike the nurse of Songs of Innocence , does not allow children to experience their youth and freedom.
| William Blake | Nurses Song Songs of Experience |
The rover no longer feels its stones.
Your windows are steamed by dumpling laughter
The snowplough's buried on the drifted moor.
Carols shake your television
And nothing moved on the road but the wind
Hither and thither
The wind and three
Starving sheep.
Redwings from Norway rattle at the clouds
But comfortless sneezers puddle in pubs.
The robin looks in at the kitchen window
But all care huddles to hearths and kettles. | The sun lobs one wet snowball feebly
Grim and blue | The dusk of the coombe
And the swamp woodland
Sinks with the wren. | The ‘snowball’ is a human approximation of this minute demonstration of the sun’s power. Kind of like God clearing his throat.
There’s always a bit of via negativa in Hughes– the idea that in order to understand something this colossal (it was a theological term, initially) you must first accept total ignorance of its magnitude, then work from there. | Ted Hughes | Christmas Card |
Not less because in purple I descended
The western day through what you called the loneliest air,
Not less was I myself.
What was the ointment sprinkled in my beard?
What were the hymns that buzzed around my ears?
What was the sea whose tide flowed through me there?
From my own mind that golden ointment rained
And my ears made the blowing hymns they heard
I was myself the compass of that sea.
I was the world in which I walked, and what I saw
Or heard or felt came not but from myself. | And there I found myself more truly and more strange. | null | Through this experience, it conveys a sort of ostracism to the speaker—it makes him feel alienated from this elite environment.
The speaker is satisfied with his world, but these external stimuli caused grief with his formerly held disposition. Such events made the speaker reconsider his perception in general. This/these experience(s) grounded him, from which he found himself “more truly and more strange,” perhaps from the shock which his perceptions sustained, with this elite environment.
The interplay of the “true” and the “strange” is of the essence of poetry. Take Isabella from the last scene of Measure for Measure , 5.1.:
ISABELLA Most strange, but yet most truly, will I speak: That Angelo’s forsworn; is it not strange? That Angelo’s a murderer; is ’t not strange? That Angelo is an adulterous thief, An hypocrite, a virgin-violator; Is it not strange and strange?
DUKE Nay, it is ten times strange.
ISABELLA It is not truer he is Angelo Than this is all as true as it is strange: Nay, it is ten times true; for truth is truth To the end of reckoning.
or again, pieces of Stevens' own “The Man With the Blue Guitar”
| Wallace Stevens | Tea at the Palaz of Hoon |
After great pain, a formal feeling comes –
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs –
The stiff Heart questions ‘was it He, that bore,'
And ‘Yesterday, or Centuries before'?
The Feet, mechanical, go round –
A Wooden way
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought –
Regardless grown, | A Quartz contentment, like a stone – | This is the Hour of Lead –
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow – | Quartz is a metamorphic rock, which undergoes a huge change that cannot be reversed. The speaker feels like a stone, lifeless and dead inside, yet she’s accepting of it. She was changed by the great pain she felt but feeling nothing is better than feeling that pain.
“Quartz contentment” combines abstract and concrete. It suggests a— paradoxically— feelingless kind of contentment— a numbness encapsulated in the simile of a stone. | Emily Dickinson | After great pain a formal feeling comes J341 F372 |
The two executioners stalk along over the knolls,
Bearing two axes with heavy heads shining and wide,
And a long limp two-handled saw toothed for cutting great boles,
And so they approach the proud tree that bears the death-mark on its side.
Jackets doffed they swing axes and chop away just above ground,
And the chips fly about and lie white on the moss and fallen leaves;
Till a broad deep gash in the bark is hewn all the way round,
And one of them tries to hook upward a rope, which at last he achieves.
The saw then begins, till the top of the tall giant shivers: | The shivers are seen to grow greater with each cut than before: | They edge out the saw, tug the rope; but the tree only quivers,
And kneeling and sawing again, they step back to try pulling once more.
Then, lastly, the living mast sways, further sways: with a shout | The tree rocks more and more, as the two workers saw away at the trunk of the tree. | Thomas Hardy | Throwing a Tree |
In far Tibet
There lives a lama.
He got no papa,
Got no mama.
He got no wife,
He got no chillun.
Got no use
For penicillun.
He got no soap,
He got no opera. | He don't know Irium | From copra.
He got no songs,
He got no banter. |
Wikipedia explains:
[The toothpaste Pepsodent] was advertised for its purported properties fighting tooth decay, attributed in advertisements to the supposed ingredient Irium. Irium is another word for sodium lauryl sulfate, an inexpensive ionic surfactant. However, in a 1994 speech, then-FCC chairman Reed Hundt claimed that the “Irium” mentioned in Pepsodent advertisements “didn’t exist.” | Ogden Nash | I Will Arise and Go Now |
null | Neal Cassady drops dead | And Allen Ginsberg's tears shampoo his beard
Neal Cassady drops dead
And Allen Ginsberg's lips tighten and thin | Neal Cassady (1926-1968) was an author and poet. He was a major figure of the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the psychedelic and counterculture movements of the 1960s. Cassady was a friend and contemporary of famous literary figures Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, and was sometimes featured as a character in their work.
He died at the age of 41 after being found in a coma along a railroad track in Mexico. He had been walking there after a party in cold and rainy weather, wearing only a t-shirt and jeans. The exact cause of death is unknown – some speculate that it was drug-related, though “exposure” is commonly cited as his cause of death.
| Morrissey | Neal Cassady Drops Dead |
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Posthumous Poems", 1824.]
1.
The warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing,
The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are dying,
And the Year
On the earth her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead,
Is lying.
Come, Months, come away,
From November to May,
In your saddest array;
Follow the bier | Of the dead cold Year, | And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre.
2.
The chill rain is falling, the nipped worm is crawling, | The elongated vowels in ‘dead cold Year’ give this line and longer, more mournful sound fitting for the subject. ‘Year’ is capitalised to suggest its importance. It is more than just one year, but represents the cosmic phenomenon, the Year in abstract. | Percy Bysshe Shelley | Autumn: A Dirge |
My prime of youth is but a frost of cares,
My feast of joy is but a dish of pain,
My crop of corn is but a field of tares,
And all my good is but vain hope of gain.
The day is gone and I yet I saw no sun,
And now I live, and now my life is done. | The spring is past, and yet it hath not sprung, | The fruit is dead, and yet the leaves are green,
My youth is gone, and yet I am but young,
I saw the world, and yet I was not seen, | Despite the jaunty rhythm of this line its meaning is sad.
The technique of using a root word in different grammatical forms in a line of poetry is polyptoton . The effect is rhythmic and the repetition ‘spring’ and ‘sprung’ is memorable. Note also that the two words are alliterative with the matching ‘spr’s and consonantly rhymed. | Chidiock Tichborne | Tichbornes Elegy |
She is neither pink nor pale,
And she never will be all mine;
She learned her hands in a fairy-tale,
And her mouth on a valentine.
She has more hair than she needs;
In the sun 'tis a woe to me!
And her voice is a string of colored beads,
Or steps leading into the sea.
She loves me all that she can,
And her ways to my ways resign; | But she was not made for any man, | And she never will be all mine. | This at first seems to contradict the title, “Witch-WIFE”, but when the word “MADE” in this line is enunciated, it all makes sense.
This woman was not MADE for any man–all of her womanly/feminine qualities had nothing to do with a relationship or man.
The word “man” has a triple meaning-by “MAN”, she can mean “everyone”. She was not doing anything to impress anyone. Also, “man” could mean “tough people”.
To make things more complicated, this can ALSO be read as “she was not made for ANY man”, meaning that she is unique in her own way. | Edna St. Vincent Millay | Witch-Wife |
I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat | And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain. | I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street | Unwilling to explain what? The speaker won’t tell us. The idea of the poet as a keeper of secrets, or a withholder of answers from unworthy seekers, is a recurring one in Frost’s work. Compare this passage near the end of “Directive”:
I have kept hidden in the instep arch Of an old cedar at the waterside A broken drinking goblet like the Grail Under a spell so the wrong ones can’t find it, So can’t get saved, as Saint Mark says they mustn’t .
In addition, the watchman seems to be portrayed as an ominous figure, as the narrator “dropped [his] eyes” instead of looking directly at the watchman. Rather than meeting a comforting figure, the first person the narrator mentions seems menacing. Also, the narrator is “unwilling to explain,” implying that the narrator could be hiding something. A person walking alone at night could be seen as suspicious; to the watchman the narrator could be a thief or murderer. However, a reason that the narrator would be “unwilling to explain” is that he doesn’t want to admit to the watchman, and to himself, that he is alone. | Robert Frost | Acquainted with the Night |
None were braver in the fight.
From the blazing breach of Wagner
To the plains of Olustee,
They were foremost in the fight
Of the battles of the free.
And at Pillow! God have mercy
On the deeds committed there,
And the souls of those poor victims
Sent to Thee without a prayer.
Let the fulness of Thy pity
O'er the hot wrought spirits sway
Of the gallant colored soldiers | Who fell fighting on that day! | Yes, the Blacks enjoy their freedom,
And they won it dearly, too;
For the life blood of their thousands | The speaker is referring to the soldiders who lost their lives in battle.
| Paul Laurence Dunbar | The Colored Soldiers |
null | I looked in my heart while the wild swans went over. | And what did I see I had not seen before?
Only a question less or a question more;
Nothing to match the flight of wild birds flying. | The opening line begins without preamble; the poet is reaching deep within herself (‘looked in my heart’) and relating her soul-searching to the image of the swans. The line is end-stopped for emphasis.
| Edna St. Vincent Millay | Wild Swans |
It sifts from Leaden Sieves -
It powders all the Wood
It fills with Alabaster Wool | The Wrinkles of the Road - | It makes an Even Face
Of Mountain, and of Plain -
Unbroken Forehead from the East | Snow smooths out the “wrinkled” roads by covering them up and making them a little more even. | Emily Dickinson | It sifts from Leaden Sieves - 311 |
All week she's cleaned
someone else's house,
stared down her own face
in the shine of copper-
bottomed pots, polished
wood, toilets she'd pull
the lid to--that look saying | Let's make a change, girl. | But Sunday mornings are hers--
church clothes starched
and hanging, a record spinning | The italicized one-line stanzas in the poem create and adjust the overall rhythm. It’s a way to break from the metered paradigm while still fine-tuning an organic sense of pace and timing.
These also serve as very brief snippets of insight from the woman’s mind. It’s not enough to clarify or flesh out the other parts of the poem – if anything, they inject ambiguity. But they do provide a different, less removed focalization that can take the verse into different directions.
For instance, what is this change she’s urging herself to make? What kind of tone is this – serious? Wishful? Ironic? Practical? Why? | Natasha Trethewey | Domestic Work 1937 |
Also rolls of towels, toilet paper
Silver foil
I could throw oranges, bananas, tomatoes
Through the air, I could take cans of
Beer from the refrigerated section and
Start gulping them, I could pull up
Women's skirts, grab their asses
I could ram my shopping cart through
The plate-glass window...
Then another thought occurred to me:
People generally consider something
Before they do it | I pushed my cart along... | A woman in a checkered skirt was
Bending over the pet food section
I seriously considered grabbing her | He continues along. On the outside he looks normal, but on the inside two sides of human nature are battling between each other for control over his thoughts. | Charles Bukowski | A Close Call While Shopping |
What does it mean when we are told
That that Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold?
In the first place, George Gordon Byron had enough experience
To know that it probably wasn't just one Assyrian, it was a lot of
Assyrians.
However, as too many arguments are apt to induce apoplexy and
thus hinder longevity.
We'll let it pass as one Assyrian for the sake of brevity.
Now then, this particular Assyrian, the one whose cohorts were
gleaming in purple and gold,
Just what does the poet mean when he says he came down like a
wold on the fold? | In heaven and earth more than is dreamed of in our philosophy
there are great many things. | But I don't imagine that among them there is a wolf with purple
and gold cohorts or purple and gold anythings.
No, no, Lord Byron, before I'll believe that this Assyrian was | Sound familiar? A rephrasing of the famous lines found in Hamlet Act I, Scene 5:
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. | Ogden Nash | Very Like a Whale |
I felt my bosom swell—
For the words rang as a knell,
And the voice seemed his who fell
In the battle down the dell,
And who is happy now.
But he spoke to re-assure me,
And he kissed my pallid brow,
While a reverie came o'er me,
And to the church-yard bore me,
And I sighed to him before me,
(Thinking him dead D'Elormie,)
"Oh, I am happy now!" | And thus the words were spoken, | And this the plighted vow,
And, though my faith be broken,
And, though my heart be broken, | Unlike the other stanzas, this one is perfectly iambic, without extra unstressed syllables slipped in-between. Ironic, considering the fact that this is when the speaker feels the least perfect. Another thing to take note of is the change from seven-line to six-line stanzas. This may be indicating a close in the poem. Here, Poe slips in another repetition scheme: anaphoras. Anaphoras are repetition of certain words among lines. | Edgar Allan Poe | Bridal Ballad |
Pod of the Milkweed
Calling all butterflies of every race
From source unknown but from no special place
They ever will return to all their lives,
Because unlike the bees they have no hives, | The milkweed brings up to my very door
The theme of wanton waste in peace and war | As it has never been to me before.
And so it seems a flower's coming out
That should if not be talked then sung about. |
see this burst pod – soon the wind will recklessly disperse its contents.
things “blowin' in the wind” often make people think of the carnage of war.
The milkweed stuff is what makes me personally think of wanton waste, but the speaker seems to be talking about the near infestation of butterflies the milkweed causes. This is an interesting cynical perspective on the brightly-colored creatures that we usually associate with happy vitality, treasures in themselves. | Robert Frost | Pod of the Milkweed |
A solitary mister
Propped between trees and water
From the opening of the garden lock
That lets the trees and water enter
Until the Sunday sombre bell at dark
Eating bread from a newspaper
Drinking water from the chained cup
That the children filled with gravel
In the fountain basin where I sailed my ship
Slept at night in a dog kennel
But nobody chained him up.
Like the park birds he came early | Like the water he sat down | And Mister they called Hey Mister
The truant boys from the town
Running when he had heard them clearly | This is difficult to interpret, but it could be linking him to nature; to the trees and the water nearby. He sits down, perhaps, because he has to settle somewhere, in the way water naturally settles. Water will always flow down to the lowest point, and metaphorically so does the hunchback. | Dylan Thomas | The Hunchback in the Park |
Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor.
He played a few chords then he sang some more--
"I got the Weary Blues
And I can't be satisfied.
Got the Weary Blues
And can't be satisfied--
I ain't happy no mo'
And I wish that I had died."
And far into the night he crooned that tune.
The stars went out and so did the moon.
The singer stopped playing and went to bed
While the Weary Blues echoed through his head. | He slept like a rock or a man that's dead. | null | Sleeping is said to be “The Cousin of Death”. This ending line could suggest that the Negro, wishing he was dead had found an experience similar to death. | Langston Hughes | The Weary Blues |
They are the loneliest
They are the loneliest
They are the loneliest
They are the loneliest
Still
Through my cell window
Hear the loft boys sing
Come on you R's
Carried on the wind
Every morning
I'll be singing
Like a caged bird who might say | John, Paul, George and Ringo | Help me pass the hours away
Free as a bird
Would I be |
The 4 members of The Beatles | Pete Doherty | Broken Love Song - 447705 |
It is the pain, it is the pain endures.
Your chemic beauty burned my muscles through. | Poise of my hands reminded me of yours. | What later purge from this deep toxin cures?
What kindness now could the old salve renew?
It is the pain, it is the pain endures. | [Refrain 2] Poise of my hands reminded me of the pain in remembering yours. | William Empson | Villanelle It is the pain... |
Panoramas are not what they used to be.
Claude has been dead a long time
And apostrophes are forbidden on the funicular.
Marx has ruined Nature,
For the moment.
For myself, I live by leaves,
So that corridors of clouds,
Corridors of cloudy thoughts,
Seem pretty much one:
I don't know what. | But in Claude how near one was
(In a world that is resting on pillars,
That was seen through arches) | To the central composition,
The essential theme.
What composition is there in all this: | Because Claude was an artist of the Baroque period, any evidence of humans that his landscapes held pointed towards nobility, opulence, and classical styles of architecture and dress. In fact, some of his paintings actually included Greco-Roman figures galavanting.
| Wallace Stevens | Botanist on Alp No. 1 |
Why is the cuckoo's melody preferred
And nightingale's rich song so fondly praised
In poet's rhymes? Is there no other bird
Of nature's minstrelsy that oft hath raised
One's heart to extacy and mirth as well? | I judge not how another's taste is caught: | With mine, there's other birds that bear the bell
Whose song hath crowds of happy memories brought.
Such the wood-robin singing in the dell | This could represent the poet’s modesty.
The idea that ‘taste’ can be ‘caught’ is neat and concise. | John Clare | The Wren |
null | Dear critic, who my lightness so deplores, | Would I might study to be prince of bores,
Right wisely would I rule that dull estate—
But, sir, I may not, till you abdicate. | The way that the author writes this poem like a letter makes you infer, as the reader, that he is referring to a single person. By using the word critic and the tone of the poem he is most likely referring to someone he is not fond of, but knows that he needs them. | Paul Laurence Dunbar | To A Captious Critic |
UP with the sun, the breeze arose,
Across the talking corn she goes, | And smooth she rustles far and wide | Through all the voiceful countryside.
Through all the land her tale she tells;
She spins, she tosses, she compels | The smooth breeze blows through and rustles every leaf, tree and plant in the area. | Emily Dickinson | An English Breeze |
943
A Coffin — is a small Domain | Yet able to contain | A Citizen of Paradise
In it diminished Plane
A Grave — is a restricted Breadth | The coffin is small and narrow but yet is spacey enought to contain a body.
| Emily Dickinson | A Coffin — is a small Domain |
Time will say nothing but I told you so,
Time only knows the price we have to pay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.
If we should weep when clowns put on their show,
If we should stumble when musicians play, | Time will say nothing but I told you so. | There are no fortunes to be told, although,
Because I love you more than I can say,
If I could tell you I would let you know. | Capitalizing “Time” to show its authority is something often done in Auden’s works. The usage of it in this line forces us as readers to imagine Time as an arrogant, smug observer.
This may also symbolize a loss of childhood, something that Time smugly steals from us, only to say afterwards “I told you so” | W. H. Auden | If I Could Tell You |
For David P—B
The eye follows, the land
Slips upward, creases down, forms
The gentle buttocks of a young
Giant. In the nestle,
Old adobe bricks, washed of
Whiteness, paled to umber,
Await another century.
Star Jasmine and old vines
Lay claim upon the ghosted land,
Then quiet pools whisper
Private childhood secrets. | Flush on inner cottage walls | Antiquitous faces,
Used to the gelid breath
Of old manors, glare disdainfully | “Flush” refers to a flush of light, maybe from a window or a crease in the wall from someplace. It could also be a whole, worn down in the wall from it’s age and weather conditions. | Maya Angelou | California Prodigal |
in a cage;
Chatterton taking rat poison;
Hemingway's brains dropping into
the orange juice;
Pascal cutting his wrists
in the bathtub;
Artaud locked up with the mad;
Dostoevsky stood up against a wall;
Crane jumping into a boat propeller;
Lorca shot in the road by Spanish
troops;
Berryman jumping off a bridge; | Burroughs shooting his wife; | Mailer knifing his.
-that's what they want:
a God damned show | In 1951, William S. Burroughs accidentally shot and killed his wife in a drunken game of “William Tell” (when one’s supposed to shoot an apple off another person’s head) Though he managed to stay out of prison, this accident scarred him for life as he later expressed.
“So the death of Joan brought me in contact with the invader, the Ugly Spirit, and maneuvered me into a life long struggle, in which I have had no choice except to write my way out.” | Charles Bukowski | What they want |
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky.
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I grow old,
Or let me die! | The Child is father of the Man; | And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety. | An apparent paradox that means our younger selves engender (“father”) our older selves. Compare the Jesuit motto “Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man.”
The belief that childhood determines the course of our adult lives was endorsed by Freud and persists among parents who fight to send their children to the best private preschools. It also inspired Michael Apted’s Up Series documentaries .
Wordsworth later used the last three lines of this poem as a self-quoting epigraph to his “Immortality Ode.” | William Wordsworth | My Heart Leaps Up |
Look at those oysters,
just a few hours ago they were shifting
on the ocean floor,
until a solitary Scottish diver came,
swaying in the night time North Sea
like an idea in a simple giant's mind,
to pick them, and carry them
up through the heavy water
and out into the air,
to here, presented on a plate,
white as snow, smooth as marble
hard as bone. | And so it goes, | until the last cover leaves
and the submarine slows
and the waiters shed their gold, | Sheers repeats this line again, a refrain that reminds us of the inevitability of this type of work, accepted seemingly without question by the hard-working staff. | Owen Sheers | Service |
943
A Coffin — is a small Domain
Yet able to contain
A Citizen of Paradise
In it diminished Plane
A Grave — is a restricted Breadth
Yet ampler than the Sun
And all the Seas He populates
And Lands He looks upon
To Him who on its small Repose
Bestows a single Friend | Circumference without Relief | Or Estimate — or End | The coffin in literal terms may be closed in. But in a way the dearly departed may be surrounded by happiness and peace. Without relief means their peace is forever uninterrupted.
| Emily Dickinson | A Coffin — is a small Domain |
Both hands are stopped at noon.
We are beginning to live forever,
in lightweight, aluminum bodies
with numbers stamped on our backs.
We dial our words like Muzak.
We hear each other through water.
The genre is dead. Invent something new.
Invent a man and a woman
naked in a garden,
invent a child that will save the world,
a man who carries his father
out of a burning city. | Invent a spool of thread
that leads a hero to safety, | invent an island on which he abandons
the woman who saved his life
with no loss of sleep over his betrayal. | Theseus was lead out of the labyrinth by a spool of thread given to him by Princess Ariadne.
| Lisel Mueller | The End of Science Fiction |
'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too:
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
"Their colour is a diabolic die." | Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain,
May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train. | null | Color and race are not the criteria for making heaven. Christianity is not meant for people of a certain color or race. It is open to all. All true Christians, regardless of their color or race, should be entitled to live freely (not under slavery), and make heaven.
Wheatley makes reference to the then-popular belief among racist Christians that black people are the descendants of Cain , the world’s first murderer, whom God cursed . Of course, this is an ignorant reading and is even inconsistent with the Bible itself – Cain’s descendants all died off during the deluge of Noah. | Phillis Wheatley | On Being Brought from Africa to America |
Then
Another.
One is left,
Then
It too
Is gone.
My typewriter is
Tombstone
Still.
And I am
Reduced to bird
Watching. | Just thought I'd
Let you
Know,
Fucker. | null | He is addressing the reader directly here while also using the colloquial word “fucker” to possibly show endearment in the same way you might call a close friend a “fucker”.
Although it’s possible he is just expressing his dislike of most of his readers…Bukowski is an enigma. | Charles Bukowski | 8 Count |
XXVII
“IS my team ploughing,
That I was used to drive
And hear the harness jingle
When I was man alive?”
Ay, the horses trample,
The harness jingles now;
No change though you lie under
The land you used to plough.
“Is football playing
Along the river shore,
With lads to chase the leather, | Now I stand up no more?” | Ay, the ball is flying,
The lads play heart and soul;
The goal stands up, the keeper | “Now I stand up no more?” simply emphasizes the fact that we are indeed talking to a dead man. And the joy, life, and sense of action we get from the next paragraph gives us a very clear contrast to that line. | A. E. Housman | Is My Team Ploughing |
Into the center giving divine perfect light
I am bad
I sat on the throne
Drinking nectar with Allah
I got hot and sent an ice age to Europe
To cool my thirst
My oldest daughter is Nefertiti
The tears from my birth pains
Created the Nile
I am a beautiful woman
I gazed on the forest and burned
Out the Sahara desert | With a packet of goat's meat
And a change of clothes
I crossed it in two hours
I am a gazelle so swift
So swift you can't catch me | For a birthday present when he was three
I gave my son Hannibal an elephant
He gave me Rome for mother's day | The speakers refers to herself as a gazelle, an animal that can run up to 60 miles an hour, because she crossed 3,500,000 square miles in only 2 hours.
| Nikki Giovanni | Ego-Tripping there may be a reason |
I'd welcome any moderate disaster
That might be calculated to postpone
What evidently nothing could conclude.
The thing that made me more and more afraid
Was that we'd ground it sharp and hadn't known,
And now were only wasting precious blade.
And when he rasied it dripping once and tried
The creepy edge of it with wary touch,
And viewed it over his glasses funny-eyed,
Only disinterestedly to decide
It needed a turn more, I could have cried
Wasn't there danger of a turn too much? | Mightn't we make it worse instead of better?
I was for leaving something to the whetter. | What if it wasn't all it should be? I'd
Be satisfied if he'd be satisfied. | Cf Frost to Louis Untermeyer, August 18 1917: “Sometime the world will try cutting the middle class out of our middle. But my mind misgives me that the experiment will fail just as the eighteenth century experiment of getting rid of the lowest class by cutting it out and dumping it on distant islands failed. You know how the lowest class renewed itself from somewhere as fast as it was cut out.” | Robert Frost | The Grindstone |
Of all her train, the hands of Spring
First plant thee in the watery mould,
And I have seen thee blossoming
Beside the snow-bank's edges cold.
Thy parent sun, who bade thee view
Pale skies, and chilling moisture sip,
Has bathed thee in his own bright hue,
And streaked with jet thy glowing lip.
Yet slight thy form, and low thy seat,
And earthward bent thy gentle eye,
Unapt the passing view to meet
When loftier flowers are flaunting nigh. | Oft, in the sunless April day,
Thy early smile has stayed my walk; | But midst the gorgeous blooms of May,
I passed thee on thy humble stalk.
So they, who climb to wealth, forget | The flower brings color to this gray, sunless sight in April. | William Cullen Bryant | The Yellow Violet |
Since you ask, most days I cannot remember.
I walk in my clothing, unmarked by that voyage.
Then the almost unnameable lust returns.
Even then I have nothing against life.
I know well the grass blades you mention,
the furniture you have placed under the sun.
But suicides have a special language.
Like carpenters they want to know which tools. | They never ask why build. | Twice I have so simply declared myself,
have possessed the enemy, eaten the enemy,
have taken on his craft, his magic. | Carpenters just do their jobs without asking themselves about a larger purpose. Here Sexton frames suicide (as seen by the suicidal) as a kind of eerie craft or calling. | Anne Sexton | Wanting To Die |
LONG DISTANCE?
O.K.ed it when?
My goodness, Central
That was then!
I'm mad and disgusted
With that Negro now
I don't pay no REVERSED
CHARGES nohow
You say, I will pay it--
Else you'll take out my phone?
You better let
My phone alone | I didn't ask him
To telephone me | Roscoe knows darn well
LONG DISTANCE
Ain't free |
Johnson disputes the charges the phone company wants to invoke against her. She feels justified that since another party incurred the long distance charge, she didn’t agree to using the premium service and thus owes nothing to the company. | Langston Hughes | Madam and the Phone Bill |
I look at the world
From awakening eyes in a black face—
And this is what I see:
This fenced-off narrow space
Assigned to me.
I look then at the silly walls
Through dark eyes in a dark face—
And this is what I know:
That all these walls oppression builds
Will have to go!
I look at my own body
With eyes no longer blind— | And I see that my own hands can make
The world that's in my mind. | Then let us hurry, comrades,
The road to find. | After taking a better look at one’s self, it is possible to know both the limits and the real possibility of dreams and aspirations. The speaker has now taken a good look at the world around him/her as well as his self/her self, and envisions a world that is free of oppressive walls. The speaker, with newfound freedom, is taking the previous call to action and has decided to try and make a change for equality. This is similar to the acts of the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, Washington Marches, and other social justice movements that have occurred throughout time.
| Langston Hughes | I Look At The World |
A shilling life will give you all the facts:
How Father beat him, how he ran away,
What were the struggles of his youth, what acts
Made him the greatest figure of his day;
Of how he fought, fished, hunted, worked all night,
Though giddy, climbed new mountains; named a sea: | Some of the last researchers even write | Love made him weep his pints like you and me.
With all his honours on, he sighed for one
Who, say astonished critics, lived at home; | Here the speaker presents, with slight mockery of its cuteness, the point of view of his own day, which wants great men to be “just like you and me.” | W. H. Auden | Whos Who |
Calling | Mexico, 1969 | Why not make a fiction
of the mind's fictions? I want to say
it begins like this: the trip | During 1969, Natasha Trethewey went on a family trip to Mexico and the only surviving photograph was of her sitting on a mule. This photo inspired her to write this poem.
| Natasha Trethewey | Calling |
null | Now the flames they followed Joan of Arc | As she came riding through the dark
No moon to keep her armour bright
No man to get her through this very smoky night |
This song is constructed as a dialogue between Joan of Arc – who of course can represent many other women – and the fire which burned her after she was condemned as a heretic. The fire could be a man, who warms her cold heart but ultimately destroys her. A relationship that was meant to be intense, but fleeting. | Leonard Cohen | Joan of Arc |
For an unholy usage; they raked up,
And shivering scraped with their cold skeleton hands
The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld
Each other's aspects—saw, and shrieked, and died—
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend. The World was void,
The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless— | A lump of death—a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes, and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirred within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea, | And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropped
They slept on the abyss without a surge—
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave, | Earth has become the epitome of death. There is no more life, or sound, or warmth. Only darkness remains. Darkness and silence.
This worth a comparison to Genesis 1:2 “and darkness [was] upon the face of the deep” , however, no “Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters” in Byron’s vision. The world is abandoned without God or hope of salvation.
Where is the source of this cancerous darkness? The deprivation of light has caused the earth to decay into a caracas. Once harboring life with light; now a sailor-less sea. Clay is not living and is representative of a primordial essence. Nietzsche refers to an unchiseled block of clay as an aphorism for the untainted Dionysian realm, which has not been formed (or defiled) by the Apollonian light from the sun.
The “hard clay” could also be a reference to Genesis, in which Adam is made from clay. Instead, in Byron’s vision, the clay is not malleable, capable of being formed into creation, it is “hard” and “chaos” (an antithesis of artistic creation). The Biblical clay that created human life is but a “lump of death”. | Lord Byron | Darkness |
To right they cling; the hymns they sing
Up to the skies in beauty ring,
And bolder grow each hour.
Be proud, my Race, in mind and soul;
Thy name is writ on Glory's scroll
In characters of fire.
High 'mid the clouds of Fame's bright sky
Thy banner's blazoned folds now fly,
And truth shall lift them higher.
Thou hast the right to noble pride,
Whose spotless robes were purified
By blood's severe baptism. | Upon thy brow the cross was laid,
And labour's painful sweat-beads made
A consecrating chrism. | No other race, or white or black,
When bound as thou wert, to the rack,
So seldom stooped to grieving; | Dunbar talks about the idea of the African race being blessed now because of what they have been through. | Paul Laurence Dunbar | Ode To Ethiopia |
'I'm a Princeton professor
God knows what drove me to this.
I have a wife and family;
I've known marital bliss.
'But things were turning humdrum,
And I felt I was being false.
Every night in our bedroom
I wished I were someplace else."
What is the weather outside?
What is the weather within
That drives these two to excess
And into the arms of sin? | They are the children of Eros. | They move, but not too fast.
They want to extend their pleasure,
They want the moment to last. | Eros is the Greek God of love (his Roman counterpart is Cupid).
Eros | Mark Strand | The Couple |
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more,
He sampled all her killing store;
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate the king when healths went round.
They put arsenic in his meat
And stared aghast to watch him eat;
They poured strychnine in his cup
And shook to see him drink it up:
They shook, they stared as white's their shirt:
Them it was their poison hurt.
-I tell the tale that I heard told. | Mithridates, he died old. | null | Mithridates died at the age of 57, which isn’t terribly ancient but is pretty good for a king of the ancient East, considering how many people attempted to kill him during his reign. He was finally done in when Pompey the Great defeated his armies and he committed suicide to keep from being taken prisoner by the Romans. There are two versions of his initially-botched suicide.
Appian:
Mithridates then took out some poison that he always carried next to his sword, and mixed it. There two of his daughters, who were still girls growing up together, named Mithridates and Nysa, who had been betrothed to the kings of Egypt and of Cyprus, asked him to let them have some of the poison first, and insisted strenuously and prevented him from drinking it until they had taken some and swallowed it. The drug took effect on them at once; but upon Mithridates, although he walked around rapidly to hasten its action, it had no effect, because he had accustomed himself to other drugs by continually trying them as a means of protection against poisoners. These are still called the Mithridatic drugs. Seeing a certain Bituitus there, an officer of the Gauls, he said to him, “I have profited much from your right arm against my enemies. I shall profit from it most of all if you will kill me, and save from the danger of being led in a Roman triumph one who has been an autocrat so many years, and the ruler of so great a kingdom, but who is now unable to die by poison because, like a fool, he has fortified himself against the poison of others. Although I have kept watch and ward against all the poisons that one takes with his food, I have not provided against that domestic poison, always the most dangerous to kings, the treachery of army, children, and friends.” Bituitus, thus appealed to, rendered the king the service that he desired.
Cassius Dio:
Mithridates had tried to make away with himself, and after first removing his wives and remaining children by poison, he had swallowed all that was left; yet neither by that means nor by the sword was he able to perish by his own hands. For the poison, although deadly, did not prevail over him, since he had inured his constitution to it, taking precautionary antidotes in large doses every day; and the force of the sword blow was lessened on account of the weakness of his hand, caused by his age and present misfortunes, and as a result of taking the poison, whatever it was. When, therefore, he failed to take his life through his own efforts and seemed to linger beyond the proper time, those whom he had sent against his son fell upon him and hastened his end with their swords and spears. Thus Mithridates, who had experienced the most varied and remarkable fortune, had not even an ordinary end to his life. For he desired to die, albeit unwillingly, and though eager to kill himself was unable to do so; but partly by poison and partly by the sword he was at once self-slain and murdered by his foes.
| A. E. Housman | Terence this is stupid stuff |
null | I cried over beautiful things knowing no beautiful thing lasts. | The field of cornflower yellow is a scarf at the neck of the copper sunburned woman,
the mother of the year, the taker of seeds.
The northwest wind comes and the yellow is torn full of holes, new beautiful things | There is a certain symmetry in using the phrase “beautiful thing” twice, and without a comma to separate the two ideas. It is also worth noting that each stanza is a full sentence, making this the only single-line sentence/stanza in this whole poem. This suggests that this is the only thought the speaker is fully sure of, before the description he paints in the next lines spiral out of control [in form].
( image source )
This poem tackles the main topic of this poem immediately, unlike other poems of the same theme that give away the theme mid-way or in the very end. | Carl Sandburg | Autumn Movement |
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West, | My working week and my Sunday rest, | My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one; | These lines indicate the encompassing nature of the speaker’s love. In the interpretation of ‘The Poetry Foundation’ the poem, published in 1936, coincided with a period of political upheaval preceding the Second World War. Hence, the speaker’s sense of loss and security can be deepened by the political situation in Europe.
Critics have noted the role of Auden’s Anglican upbringing in the citing of the ‘working week’ and ‘Sunday rest’. The loss and the chaos in the mind of the speaker can be interpreted as a loss of faith
“W.H. Auden: 1907-1973.” The Poetry Foundation. Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute. | W. H. Auden | Funeral Blues Stop all the clocks |
My mother, always smiling, wanting us all
To be happy, told me, "be happy Henry!"
And she was right: it's better to be happy if you
Can
But my father continued to beat her and me several times a week
While
Raging inside his 6-foot-two frame because he couldn't
Understand what was attacking him from within
My mother, poor fish
Wanting to be happy, beaten two or three times a
Week, telling me to be happy: "Henry, smile!
Why don't you ever smile?" | And then she would smile, to show me how, and it was the
Saddest smile I ever saw | One day the goldfish died, all five of them
They floated on the water, on their sides, their
Eyes still open | The smile was a lie. The reality of what it covered, and knowing she did it anyway – for his sake – made it the saddest the narrator had seen. | Charles Bukowski | A smile to remember |
Come to me in the silence of the night;
Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
As sunlight on a stream;
Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years.
O dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,
Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,
Where souls brimful of love abide and meet;
Where thirsting longing eyes
Watch the slow door | That opening, letting in, lets out no more. | Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live
My very life again though cold in death:
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give | This balanced final line resolves the tension of the previous two shorter lines. The ‘slow door’ at last opens. The two related clauses ‘letting in’ and its opposite ‘lets out no more’ form a rhythmic balanced, but opposing pair, a device known as chiasmus | Christina Rossetti | Echo |
Doe I not see that fayrest ymages
Of hardest Marble are of purpose made?
for that they should endure through many ages,
ne let theyr famous moniments to fade.
Why then doe I, untrainde in lovers trade,
her hardnes blame which I should more commend?
Sith never ought was excellent assayde,
which was not hard t'atchive and bring to end.
Ne ought so hard, but he that would attend,
mote soften it and to his will allure:
so doe I hope her stubborne hart to bend,
and that it then more stedfast will endure. | Onely my paines wil be the more to get her,
but having her, my joy wil be the greater. | null | Both lines of this closing couplet end with an extra unaccented syllable, making it sound perhaps inconclusive? | Edmund Spenser | Amoretti: Sonnet 51 |
Your plasticity is tested by our formless assault
The sun can answer questions in tune to all your sacrifices
But why will our new Jazz-age give us no more mind-expanding puzzles?
Enter John
Blow from under, always and never
So that the morning, the sun, may scream of brain-bending saxophones
The third-world arrives with Yusef Lateef and Pharaoh Sanders
With oboes straining to touch the core of your unknown soul
Ravi Shankar comes with strings attached,
Prepared to stabilize your seven sins, your black rhythm
Up and down a silly ladder run the notes without the words
Words are important for the mind, but the notes are for the soul | Miles Davis, so what? | Cannonball, Fiddler, Mercy
Dexter Gordon, one flight up
Donald Byrd, playing Cristo, but what about words? | Miles Davis had a well-known song titled “So What.” Here the title is used to convey the way Black artists are often dismissed. | Gil Scott-Heron | Plastic Pattern People |
I have sharpened my knives, I have
Put on the heavy apron.
Maybe you think life is chicken soup, served
In blue willow-pattern bowls.
I have put on my boots and opened
The kitchen door and stepped out
Into the sunshine. I have crossed the lawn.
I have entered | The hen house. | null | Mary Oliver is using the farm in this poem to symbolize life and death. When Oliver says “I have sharpened my knives”, she might be saying that she is getting ready for death. When she crosses the lawn she is crossing over to death. | Mary Oliver | Farm Country |
null | Do not go gentle into that good night. | Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right, | The ‘wild’ men are urged not to go ‘gentle’ — what they are least likely to do. This contrasts with the previous stanza where the ‘good’ men are urged to ‘rage’.
The villanelle structure continues, with the third line of this stanza matching the third line of the first stanza. | Dylan Thomas | Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night |
Another Maiden like herself,
Translucent, lovely, shining clear
Threefold each in the other clos'd
O, what a pleasant trembling fear!
O, what a smile! a threefold smile
Fill'd me, that like a flame I burn'd
I bent to kiss the lovely Maid
And found a threefold kiss return'd
I strove to seize the inmost form
With ardor fierce and hands of flame
But burst the Crystal Cabinet
And like a weeping Babe became | A weeping Babe upon the wild
And weeping Woman pale reclin'd | And in the outward air again
I fill'd with woes the passing wind | The weeping Babe is likely either a post-coital tristesse or a literal infant, and the weeping woman a devirginized partner or a maternally dead maiden, respectively. | William Blake | The Crystal Cabinet |
Give me your hand
Make room for me
to lead and follow
you
beyond this rage of poetry. | Let others have
the privacy of
touching words
and love of loss
of love. | For me
Give me your hand. | The most common themes of poetry are of love (“ touching words ”) and the pain from losing a relationship. By saying “ let others have, ” she’s insisting that she doesn’t want to write about such. | Maya Angelou | A Conceit |
And death shall have no dominion.
And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion.
And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears | Or waves break loud on the seashores; | Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails, | The sea has been mentioned once every stanza, each doing a different movement every time: now the sea is described as ceasing to “break loud on the seashore” | Dylan Thomas | And Death Shall Have No Dominion |
For Michael S. Harper
Billie Holiday's burned voice
had as many shadows as lights,
a mournful candelabra against a sleek piano,
the gardenia her signature under that ruined face.
(Now you're cooking, drummer to bass,
magic spoon, magic needle.
Take all day if you have to
with your mirror and your bracelet of song.)
Fact is, the invention of women under siege
has been to sharpen love in the service of myth. | If you can't be free, be a mystery. | null | This line can be interpreted in the literal sense that if you are oppressed, treated unjustly, or given unequal opportunity, as African-Americans were throughout the pre-Civil Rights Era (and after), you must keep to yourself to escape from the oppression. Secrets must be guarded and dirty work must be done, because in situations like these, the majority are against you. “Mystery” suggests that one must almost wear a mask to appear unaffected by the surrounding situation, and not let one’s true feelings prevail, as this will most likely end up in ultimate loss.
| Rita Dove | Canary |
Two boys uncoached are tossing a poem together,
Overhand, underhand, backhand, sleight of hand, everyhand,
Teasing with attitudes, latitudes, interludes, altitudes,
High, make him fly off the ground for it, low, make him stoop,
Make him scoop it up, make him as-almost-as possible miss it,
Fast, let him sting from it, now, now fool him slowly,
Anything, everything tricky, risky, nonchalant, | Anything under the sun to outwit the prosy, | Over the tree and the long sweet cadence down,
Over his head, make him scramble to pick up the meaning,
And now, like a posy, a pretty one plump in his hands. | When you are playing catch and the ball gets thrown high into the air. The person receiving the ball has to look up usually right at the sun making it hard to see the ball. If the person receiving the ball doesn’t block out the sun they won’t be able to catch it. | Robert Francis | Catch |
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair'd the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express,
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.
And on that cheek, and o'er that brow, | So soft, so calm, yet eloquent, | The smiles that win, the tints that glow,,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below, | This line could have two meanings:
Along with the previous line, it could be referring to the lights reflecting on her cheek and forehead.
It could also be describing her personality and intelligence and ability to speak well.
Women at the time would have been valued only for passivity and external beauty, but the poet’s feelings go beyond this, given that this woman is both intelligent and beautiful.
This is another lyrically balanced line, with the emphatic repetition of ‘so’, the soft alliterative ’s’s and the satisfying triplet of adjectives. | Lord Byron | She Walks in Beauty |
And I don't like these drugs that keep you thin
I don't like what happened to my sister
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin
I'd really like to live beside you, baby
I love your body and your spirit and your clothes
But you see that line there moving through the station?
I told you, I told you, told you, I was one of those
And I thank you for those items that you sent me
The monkey and the plywood violin
I practiced every night, now I'm ready
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin
(I am guided) | Ah remember me, I used to live for music (baby) | Remember me, I brought your groceries in (ooh baby yeah)
Well it's Father's Day and everybody's wounded (baby)
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin | Eventually, he knows he’ll drift away from his initial goals and ideals, like he drifted away from being a common man. More likely than not, he will make compromises and turn into something different in order to “take” the world.
In an exhortation to those who he has, and will, leave behind, he asks them to remember simpler times, where he was idealistic enough to live for music by its own sake.
| Leonard Cohen | First We Take Manhattan |
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.
The land's sharp features seemed to be
The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I. | At once a voice arose among | The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited; | The use of the verb “arose” might suggest a more intense arrival, as though the voice had just been revived from some deep sleep. | Thomas Hardy | The Darkling Thrush |
What man has made of man.
Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,
The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;
And 'tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.
The birds around me hopped and played,
Their thoughts I cannot measure:—
But the least motion which they made
It seemed a thrill of pleasure.
The budding twigs spread out their fan,
To catch the breezy air;
And I must think, do all I can, | That there was pleasure there. | If this belief from heaven be sent,
If such be Nature's holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament | This suggests that the narrator believes the creatures derive pleasure by simply existing as they naturally are. | William Wordsworth | Lines Written in Early Spring |
Drink to me only with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a kiss but in the cup,
And I'll not look for wine.
The thirst that from the soul doth rise
Doth ask a drink divine; | But might I of Jove's nectar sup,
I would not change for thine. | I sent thee late a rosy wreath,
Not so much honouring thee
As giving it a hope, that there | The speaker doesn’t wish to drink ‘Jove’, or god’s nectar, but Celia’s. This places her on the levelof a goddess.
The word ‘Jove’ can be applied to any god, including a Christian one. But it is also the name of Zeus, the ancient Greek king of the gods. It isn’t clear that Jonson is specifying one over the other.
| Ben Jonson | Song To Celia |
I dreamt a dream! What can it mean?
And that I was a maiden Queen
Guarded by an Angel mild | Witless woe was ne'er beguiled! | And I wept both night and day
And he wiped my tears away
And I wept both day and night | This is saying that foolish sadness (‘witless woe’) is never ‘beguiled’, the latter being a now rarely-used word meaning ‘entrance’ or ‘tempt’. In short this ‘maiden Queen’ was receptive to the loving guardian ‘Angel’.
In Blake’s time innocence was a valued ideal. The angel is there to protect the maiden. | William Blake | The Angel |
The rhythm of life
Is a jazz rhythm,
Honey.
The gods are laughing at us.
The broken heart of love,
The weary, weary heart of pain,-
Overtones,
Undertones,
To the rumble of street cars,
To the swish of rain. | Lenox Avenue, | Honey.
Midnight,
And the gods are laughing at us. |
Lenox Avenue was considered the “heartbeat of Harlem.” | Langston Hughes | Lenox Avenue: Midnight |
The scene is a midtown station.
The time is 3 a.m.
Jane is alone on the platform, | Humming a requiem. | She leans against the tiles.
She rummages in her purse
For something to ease a headache | This line’s importance will reveal itself at the poem’s conclusion.
A requiem (especially in the Roman Catholic Church) is a mass for the repose of the souls of the dead. | Mark Strand | The Couple |
Mist is when the sky is tired of flight
And rests its soft machine on the ground:
Then the world is dim and bookish
Like engravings under tissue paper
Rain is when the earth is television
It has the properites of making colours darker
Model T is a room with the lock inside --
A key is turned to free the world
For movement, so quick there is a film
To watch for anything missed
But time is tied to the wrist
Or kept in a box, ticking with impatience | In homes, a haunted apparatus sleeps
That snores when you pick it up
If the ghost cries, they carry it
To their lips and soothe it to sleep
With sounds. And yet, they wake it up
Deliberately, by tickling with a finger | Only the young are allowed to suffer
Openly. Adults go to a punishment room
With water but nothing to eat | Some say its a baby, some say it’s a telephone….
you be the judge | Craig Raine | A Martian Sends a Postcard Home |
Whatever you see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful---
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully. | She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness. | In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish. | The ‘woman’ — this other Plath — relies on the mirror. The fact that she cries suggests she is disappointed by the way she looks, and ‘agitation of hands’ suggests the woman breaking the smooth surface of the water to obscure what she sees there. It also reveals she is worried by the changes in her appearance as she grows older. That she ‘comes and goes’ suggests time passing. | Sylvia Plath | Mirror |
FROM childhood's hour I have not been
As others were — I have not seen
As others saw — I could not bring
My passions from a common spring —
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow — I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone —
And all I lov'd, I lov'd alone —
Then — in my childhood — in the dawn
Of a most stormy life — was drawn
From ev'ry depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still — | From the torrent, or the fountain — | From the red cliff of the mountain —
From the sun that 'round me roll'd
In its autumn tint of gold — | From a torrent, powerful, forceful, rapid movement of water, to the delicate motion of droplets of water from a fountain. A contrast between how different water can flow, the water a possible metaphor for the flow of life and how it can be harsh or gentle… No matter how the water flows the narrator is still alone, drowning in the depths of solitude
| Edgar Allan Poe | Alone |
the owners are not responsible
for church bells, barking dogs,
or firecrackers.
It is early in the morning.
Antonio is sweeping the blossoms away.
I am feeling something, incredibly,
like peace.
The wren is busy, my pencil idle.
The silks of the jacaranda, as though
it is the most important work in the world,
keep falling.
3. | The tops of the northbound trains are dangerous.
Still, they are heaped with hopefuls. | I understand their necessity.
Understanding, however, is not sharing.
Oh let there be a wedding of the | A reference to the immigrants headed towards the United States border. | Mary Oliver | First Days in San Miguel de Allende |
daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem
less wondrous than your joy;
And you would accept the seasons of your heart,
even as you have always accepted the seasons that
pass over your fields.
And you would watch with serenity through the
winters of your grief.
Much of your pain is self-chosen.
It is the bitter potion by which the physician within
you heals your sick self.
Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy
in silence and tranquillity: | For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by
the tender hand of the Unseen, | And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has
been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has
moistened with His own sacred tears. | “The Unseen” does not necessarily refer to God in the Abrahamic sense of the word, not yet. But there are so many godlike qualities of the universe that it needn’t be. Call it Destiny, Fate, the Universe, the Numinous, the Ineffable: what Kahlil is alluding to what the Greek philosopher Lucretius called de rerum natura , the nature of things.
The popular spiritual writer Eckhart Tolle commented:
Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at the moment.
Tautological, sure. But think about it and you may be able to see that it is destined that you should feel this pain: the heavy hand of your own instincts are guided by fate. God has a tough love approach. | Kahlil Gibran | On Pain |
But not your heart away;
Give pearls away and rubies
But keep your fancy free."
But I was one-and-twenty,
No use to talk to me.
When I was one-and-twenty
I heard him say again,
"The heart out of the bosom
Was never given in vain;
'Tis paid with sighs a plenty
And sold for endless rue." | And I am two-and-twenty, | And oh, 'tis true, 'tis true. | Not literally true! “When I Was One-and-Twenty” is a dramatic monologue from the collection A Shropshire Lad (1896), published when Housman was 37 years old. However, it’s possible the poet is adopting the voice/stance of his younger self.
| A. E. Housman | When I Was One-and-Twenty |
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