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But I would rather be horizontal. | I am not a tree with my root in the soil
Sucking up minerals and motherly love
So that each March I may gleam into leaf, | Nor am I the beauty of a garden bed
Attracting my share of Ahs and spectacularly painted,
Unknowing I must soon unpetal. | The speaker stands apart from the life cycle of a tree, which seems to have a pre-ordained purpose. She doesn’t blossom the way she feels she should or fulfill a / destiny like the tree does.
Curiously, the concept of “motherly love” is characterized as being strong in a tree’s existence, when in fact nearly all tr... | Sylvia Plath | I Am Vertical |
null | Queen Victoria | My father and all his tobacco loved you
I love you too in all your forms
The slim and lovely virgin floating among German beer | Although Cohen refers to some factual information about Queen Victoria (1819-1901) in this poem/song, the monarch herself is just the pretext for a string of surreal images.
Victoria'a 63 years reign became known as the Victorian era. Great Britain underwent enormous change in every field of life, the British Empir... | Leonard Cohen | Queen Victoria |
I died for Beauty — but was scarce
Adjusted in the Tomb
When One who died
for Truth, was lain
In an adjoining room
He questioned softly "Why I failed"?
"For Beauty", I replied
"And I — for Truth — Themself are One
We Brethren, are", He said | And so, as Kinsmen, met a Night
We talked between the Rooms | Until the Moss had reached our lips
And covered up — our names | Even after death, the two spend the nights having long conversations enjoying each other’s company. It is almost as though death has had no effect on them other than confining their bodies to the space of their coffins. | Emily Dickinson | I died for Beauty — but was scarce |
null | In my secret life | In my secret life
In my secret life
In my secret life | Cohen often speaks about poetry as reporting on the interior landscape, or “the poem is the constitution of the inner country” a line which he reads in this poem: For Cohen, to venture into the interior landscape is to ask what is really going on? What happened between us? Here “My Secret Life” seems to be a synonym f... | Leonard Cohen | In My Secret Life |
And while the blast blew strong and loud,
The clear moon mark'd the ghastly crowd,
Where the green billows play'd.
And then above the haunted hut
The curlews screaming hover'd;
And the low door, with furious roar,
The frothy breakers cover'd.
For in the fisherman's lone shed
A murder'd man was laid,
With ten wide gashe... | A shipwreck'd mariner was he,
Doom'd from his home to sever | Who swore to be through wind and sea
Firm and undaunted ever!
And when the wave resistless roll'd, | As noted previously Robinson’s poem is strikingly similar to Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” Robinson is this poem chose to completely cut off the mariner’s ties to his home and essentially kills him off in the poem. | Mary Robinson | The Haunted Beach |
Besides the Autumn poets sing
A few prosaic days
A little this side of the snow
And that side of the Haze -
A few incisive mornings - | A few Ascetic eves - | Gone - Mr Bryant's "Golden Rod" -
And Mr Thomson's "sheaves."
Still, is the bustle in the brook - | An inconspicuous line which has the power to add a new layer of meaning to the poem. Up to this point the poem seems merely to be describing the onset of autumn (albeit in a very pointed, lyrical manner), but a “A few Ascetic eves -”, following the casual phrasing of its previous line, throws the subject into a new l... | Emily Dickinson | Besides the Autumn poets sing 131 |
A married state affords but little ease:
The best of husbands are so hard to please
This in wifes Carefull faces you may spell,
Tho they desemble their misfortunes well
A virgin state is crown'd with much content,
It's allways happy as it's inocent
No Blustering husbands to create your fears,
No pangs of child birth to... | Therefore, madam, be advised by me: | Turn, turn apostate to love's Levity.
Supress wild nature if she dare rebell,
There's no such thing as leading Apes in hell | The poet changes the mood from complaints to a definite emphatic statement of strong advice, addressed frankly to other women. | Katherine Philips | A Married State |
Let's sing another song, boys, this one has grown old and bitter
Ah his fingernails, I see they're broken | His ships they're all on fire | The moneylender's lovely little daughter
Ah, she's eaten, she's eaten with desire
She spies him through the glasses | While this seems like a simple sentiment of hopelessness, and can also be interpreted along the vein of “Merchant Of Venice” , it may in fact reflect a powerful experience Cohen had in Greece.
Cohen moved to the Island of Hydra in 1960 and bought a small house only 10 minutes from the Aegean sea. Hydra is home to... | Leonard Cohen | Sing Another Song Boys |
She said at last I was her finest lover
And if she withered I would be to blame
The judges said you missed it by a fraction
Rise up and brace your troops for the attack
Ah the dreamers ride against the men of action
Oh see the men of action falling back
But I lingered on her thighs a fatal moment
I kissed her lips as t... | So on battlefields from here to Barcelona | I'm listed with the enemies of love
And long ago she said "I must be leaving
Ah but keep my body here to lie upon | Cohen admired the Spanish writer Federico García Lorca (1898-1936) who often visited Barcelona, had his art exhibited there and one of his plays premiered. See “ Take This Waltz ”.
“When I was fifteen years old I discovered a book of his poems that I always took with me, until the book began to lose its pages. He i... | Leonard Cohen | The Traitor |
For her this rhyme is penned, whose luminous eyes,
Brightly expressive as the twins of Leda,
Shall find her own sweet name, that nestling lies
Upon the page, enwrapped from every reader. | Search narrowly the lines!- they hold a treasure | Divine- a talisman- an amulet
That must be worn at heart. Search well the measure-
The words- the syllables! Do not forget | This is Poe’s hint to the reader that the name of his lover lies within the poem. Edgar Allan Poe strategically placed words within the poem to create a riddle. When solved the riddle reveals Poe’s secret lover
| Edgar Allan Poe | A Valentine |
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the la... | And, nothing himself, beholds | Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is. | When the listener sees the world without making judgements about it, he is finally able to see everything. | Wallace Stevens | The Snow Man |
all to yourself and
how good the water felt when you got your bath
from one of those
big tubs that folk in chicago barbecue in
and somehow when you talk about home
it never gets across how much you
understood their feelings
as the whole family attended meetings about Hollydale
and even though you remember
your biograph... | And though you're poor it isn't poverty that
concerns you
and though they fought a lot
it isn't your father's drinking that makes any difference | but only that everybody is together and you
and your sister have happy birthdays and very good
Christmases | Just because the narrator was poor, and their parents fought a lot. That didn’t seem to phase them. Also, the dad would often drink, but that also didn’t seem to phase them.
Through the trials and tribulations, the author was able to find solace in knowing that her/his family was together. That notion appears to be m... | Nikki Giovanni | Nikki-Rosa |
In the shade of the banks. Here, every spring,
I would fill jampotfuls of the jellied
Specks to range on window-sills at home,
On shelves at school, and wait and watch until
The fattening dots burst into nimble-
Swimming tadpoles. Miss Walls would tell us how
The daddy frog was called a bullfrog
And how he croaked and ... | Then one hot day when fields were rank | With cowdung in the grass the angry frogs
Invaded the flax-dam; I ducked through hedges
To a coarse croaking that I had not heard | The voice changes to the older Heaney. There is a sharp contrast between his perspective as a child, fascinated and curious about the natural world, and his later attitude.
The second stanza signifies passing time, now probably summer. The ‘hot day’ seems oppressive and the ‘rank’ fields' create an unpleasant, rest... | Seamus Heaney | Death of A Naturalist |
He came to us from the creator,
trailing creativity in abundance.
Despite the anguish, his life was sheathed in mother love,
family love, and he survived and did more than that.
He thrived with passion and compassion,
humor and style.
We had him whether we know who he was or did not know,
he was ours and we were his.
W... | And we laughed and stomped our feet for him. | We were enchanted with his passion because he held nothing. He gave us all he had been given.
Today in Tokyo, beneath the Eiffel Tower, in Ghana's Black Star Square.
In Johannesburg and Pittsburgh, in Birmingham, Alabama, and Birmingham, England | MJ, perhaps more than any other celebrity or artist, was loved by his fans. They admired, cherished, and put him on a pedestal. They loved to dance to his music and just have fun and enjoy themselves. Sometimes even getting carried away with themselves in his presence
| Maya Angelou | We Had Him |
From the night before, and the whistling green
Shrubbery are doomed. Ice
Has got its spearhead into place.
First a skin, delicately here
Restraining a ripple from the air;
Soon plate and river on pond and brook;
Then tons of chain and massive lock
To hold rivers. Then, sound by sight
Will Mammoth and Sabre-tooth celebr... | And now it is about to start. | null | The final sentence is ambiguous. The reader might wonder what is “about to start”? The Ice-age in this poem certainly has already started. The changes that lead to successive past ages, ultimately to the modern world and modern society and civilisation, follow.
The value placed on this is left an open question. What ... | Ted Hughes | October Dawn |
I saw Jesus on the cross on a hill called Calvary
"Do you hate mankind for what they done to you?"
He said, "Talk of love not hate, things to do - it's getting late
I've so little time and I'm only passin' through." | Passin' through, passin' through | Sometimes happy, sometimes blue
Glad that I ran into you
Tell the people that you saw me passin' through | A live rendition of the song in Tel Aviv, 1980, features an additional verse, probably written by Cohen himself.
I had so very much to say To lady Billie Holiday I said, “Are these songs you sing, Are they really true?” She said, “They’re neither false, they’re neither true, I did not expect that question from someo... | Leonard Cohen | Passing Through |
A little black thing in the snow
Crying "weep! weep!" in notes of woe!
"Where are thy father and mother? Say!"
"They are both gone up to the church to pray
"Because I was happy upon the heath | And smiled among the winter's snow | They clothed me in the clothes of death
And taught me to sing the notes of woe
"And because I am happy and dance and sing | He pretended to be happy and conceal his real misery. The motivation may have been his belief that no-one would care enough to improve his lot. The ‘winter snow’ is a metaphor for his terrible life. | William Blake | The Chimney Sweeper Songs of Experience |
From a single cloud the lightening flashes,
Whilst a thousand isles are illumined around,
Earthquake is trampling one city to ashes,
An hundred are shuddering and tottering; the sound
Is bellowing underground.
3.
But keener thy gaze than the lightening's glare,
And swifter thy step than the earthquake's tramp;
Thou dea... | From billow and mountain and exhalation | The sunlight is darted through vapour and blast;
From spirit to spirit, from nation to nation,
From city to hamlet thy dawning is cast,— | The world ‘billow’, the first in this triplet, could be a verb or a noun, and may refer to ‘billowing’ clouds, while ‘exhalation’ probably refers to wind. There are two conjunctions, so this is a syndetic list, The repetition of ‘and’ gives emphasis. | Percy Bysshe Shelley | Liberty |
Forbear dark night, my joys now bud againe,
Lately grown dead, while cold aspects did chill
The root at heart, and my chief hope quite kill,
And thunders struck me in my pleasures' waine
Then I alas with bitter sobs, and pain,
Privately groan'd, my Fortunes present ill;
All light of comfort dimm'd, woes in prides fill,... | Late gone as wonders past, like the great Snow, | Melted and wasted, with what, change must know:
Now back the life comes where as once it grew. | Those better times have long been gone, just as all wonders pass on, as the snow does…it melts away and is wasted; things change. | Lady Mary Wroth | Forbear dark night my joys now bud again |
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.
When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been. | We all have reasons | for moving.
I move
to keep things whole. | In the previous lines, the spotlight was set only on the speaker (“I”) , but now the speaker brings us in the picture by addressing “we”. Relating his own thoughts to everyone around him brings the poem together in a way. | Mark Strand | Keeping Things Whole |
Over the river, and through the wood,
To grandfather's house we go; | The horse knows the way | To carry the sleigh
Through the white and drifted snow.
Over the river, and through the wood— | HE’S GOT IT. Quit backseat sleigh-driving | Lydia Maria Child | A Boys Thanksgiving Day Over the river and through the wood |
A Floor too cool for Corn –
But when a Boy and Barefoot
I more than once at Noon
Have passed I thought a Whip Lash
Unbraiding in the Sun
When stooping to secure it
It wrinkled And was gone –
Several of Nature's People
I know and they know me
I feel for them a transport
Of Cordiality
But never met this Fellow | Attended or alone | Without a tighter Breathing
And Zero at the Bone. | “the impression left by the Snake was too deep, and all the Cordiality in the world can’t shut out “this Fellow” (and the death he can bring). The fear he causes is not mitigated by the presence of human companions; the speaker, whether “attended or alone” remains (in memory) terrified, the breath constricted, the cord... | Emily Dickinson | 1096 |
I said, Listen,
Before I'd pay
I'd go to Hades
And rot away!
The sink is broke,
The water don't run,
And you ain't done a thing
You promised to've done.
Back window's cracked,
Kitchen floor squeaks,
There's rats in the cellar,
And the attic leaks. | He said, Madam,
I ain't pleased! | I said, Neither am I.
So we agrees! | The rent collector claims to Mrs. Johnson that he’s no happier than she is about coming for her debt.
| Langston Hughes | Madam and The Rent Man |
Went to a committee; they offered me a chair;
Asked me politely to return next year:
But where shall we go to-day, my dear, but where shall we go to-day?
Came to a public meeting; the speaker got up and said;
"If we let them in, they will steal our daily bread":
He was talking of you and me, my dear, he was talking of ... | Went down the harbour and stood upon the quay, | Saw the fish swimming as if they were free:
Only ten feet away, my dear, only ten feet away.
Walked through a wood, saw the birds in the trees; | There is a sense of yearning in this line. The harbour and quay represent a route to escape to freedom. This is denied the refugees. | W. H. Auden | Refugee Blues |
If I am the grass and you the breeze, blow through me.
If I am the rose and you the bird, then woo me.
If you are the rhyme and I the refrain, don't hang
on my lips, come and I'll come too when you cue me.
If yours is the iron fist in the velvet glove
when the arrow flies, the heart is pierced, tattoo me.
If mine is th... | Oh would that I were bark! So old and still in leaf. | And you, dropping in my shade, dew to bedew me!
What shape should I take to marry your own, have you
- hawk to my shadow, moth my flame - pursue me? | The next line explains it. She is looking forward to the future; one day their relationship, if ever it is established, will be in it’s elderly stage. The writer is speaking of growing old with her lover. Elderly people move slowly and are often still and rooted. The leaf on an old tree could be a tough one that resist... | Mimi Khalvati | Ghazal |
We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties. | Why should the world be over-wise | In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask. | The world being “over-wise” is a metaphor for society having too much say in the well-being or choices of the narrator. This is a quote of liberation that still acknowledges that the narrator is influenced by the standards of the “overly-wise world.” | Paul Laurence Dunbar | We Wear the Mask |
Earth hath not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, | Ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples lie | Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep | The poet is exploring the diverse power of London in this line. All things mentioned are man made. The ships and towers may represent the militaristic power of the British empire, with London as it’s hub. The ships also show the trading power, which is closely linked to the economy of imperialism. The domes and temples... | William Wordsworth | Composed upon Westminster Bridge September 3 1802 |
the impossibility of being human
Burroughs killing his wife with a gun
Mailer stabbing his
the impossibility of being human
Maupassant going mad in a rowboat
Dostoyevsky lined up against a wall to be shot
Crane off the back of a boat into the propeller
the impossibility
Sylvia with her head in the oven like a baked pot... | Artaud sitting on a madhouse bench | Chatterton drinking rat poison
Shakespeare a plagiarist
Beethoven with a horn stuck into his head against deafness | French playwright Antonin Artaud spent the end of his life receiving electroshock treatments in various insane asylums.
| Charles Bukowski | Beasts Bounding Through Time |
One Sister have I in our house -
And one a hedge away
There's only one recorded
But both belong to me
One came the way that I came -
And wore my past year's gown - | The other as a bird her nest
Builded our hearts among | She did not sing as we did -
It was a different tune -
Herself to her a Music | Dickinson refers to her friendship with Susan. The bird is a symbol for freedom. Her friendship with Susan is free from obligation, as opposed to the former. | Emily Dickinson | One Sister have I in our house 14 |
I would to heaven that I were so much clay,
As I am blood, bone, marrow, passion, feeling -
Because at least the past were passed away -
And for the future - (but I write this reeling,
Having got drunk exceedingly today,
So that I seem to stand upon the ceiling) | I say - the future is a serious matter -
And so - for God's sake - hock and soda water! | null | Hock is a sort of German white wine that was often mixed with soda water.
Byron, good sybarite that he is, elsewhere claims that becoming intoxicated (on wine, women, glory, wealth) is one of the finest things in life, perhaps a good way to forget, through a heightened state of immediacy, the existential burdens of ... | Lord Byron | Headpiece to Don Juan I would to Heaven |
null | And Robert Capa, how was he to know? | As the ramps were lowered and the air turned lead
and the marines before him dropped into the water,
that those photographs he took - | Sheers begins as if in the middle of a sentence while telling a story. This technique is known as in media res , Latin for ‘in the middle of things’. The effect is a hook that draws the reader into the narrative.
The question ‘how was he to know?’ is rhetorical , creating a feeling of rapport between the speaker an... | Owen Sheers | Happy Accidents |
(—My psychiatrist can lick your psychiatrist.) Women get under
Things
All these old criminals sooner or later
Have had it. I've been reading old journals
Gottwald & Co., out of business now
Thick chests quit. Double agent, Joe
She holds her breath like a seal
And is whiter & smoother
Rilke was a jerk
I admit his griefs... | Where the vile settle & lurk | Rilke's. As I said,— | Damned settlers and lurkers, stepped over by Dante and Vergil.
| John Berryman | Dream Song 3 A Stimulant for an Old Beast |
8-12-86
Hello John:
Thanks for the good letter. I don't think it hurts, sometimes, to remember where you came from. You know the places where I came from. Even the people who try to write about that or make films about it, they don't get it right. They call it "9 to 5." It's never 9 to 5, there's no free lunch break at... | Now in industry, there are vast layoffs (steel mills dead, technical changes in other factors of the work place). They are layed off by the hundreds of thousands and their faces are stunned: | "I put in 35 years..."
"It ain't right..."
"I don't know what to do..." | Though Bukowski was in his mid sixties when this letter was written, and had lived through many economic downturns and upturns, his dissatisfaction with the concept of a regular job may have been influenced by recent economic crisis.
Unemployment lingered at an abnormally high rate throughout the early eighties, some... | Charles Bukowski | Letter to John Martin 1986 |
Your friend is your needs answered.
He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.
And he is your board and your fireside.
For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.
When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the "nay" in your own mind, nor do you withhold the "ay." | And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart;
For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed. | When you part from your friend, you grieve not;
For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.
And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit. | The closest of friends often do not even need to speak to convey their thoughts (similar to “twin telepathy”) | Kahlil Gibran | On Friendship |
In my daydream College for Bards, the curriculum would be as follows:
1) In addition to English, at least one ancient language, probably Greek or Hebrew, and two modern languages would be required. | 2) Thousands of lines of poetry in these languages would be learned by heart. | 3) The library would contain no books of literary criticism, and the only critical exercise required of students would be the writing of parodies.
4) Courses in prosody, rhetoric and comparative philology would be required of all students, and every student would have to select three courses out of courses in mathemati... | #Why Memorize Things?
There are countless benefits to memorizing great poems and passages. Here are a few for consideration:
Improved writing. As you memorize great poetry and other worthy pieces of literature, you’ll be begin to internalize the rhythm and structure employed by some of the world’s greatest writers... | W. H. Auden | College for Bards |
Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
It's had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor—
Bare.
But all the time
I'se been a-climbin' on,
And reachin' landin's,
And turnin' corners,
And sometimes goin' in the dark
Where there ain't been no light. | So, boy, don't you turn back.
Don't you set down on the steps.
Cause you finds it's kinder hard.
Don't you fall now— | For I'se still goin', honey,
I'se still climbin',
And life for me ain't been no crystal stair. | The mother shifts from describing life through indicative verbs in her extended metaphor to giving her son advice with imperatives.
The mother reveals her purpose with these lines: to convince her son to persevere in life despite its difficulty. The beginning of the poem is discouraging, and afterwards the mother t... | Langston Hughes | Mother to Son |
washed-up, on shore, the old yellow notebook
out again | I write from the bed
as I did last
year. | will see the doctor,
Monday.
"yes, doctor, weak legs, vertigo, head- | Goodreads :
Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I’m not going to make it, but you laugh inside — remembering all the times you’ve felt that way. | Charles Bukowski | Are You Drinking? |
null | She came home running | back to the mothering blackness
deep in the smothering blackness
white tears icicle gold plains of her face | The girl no longer thinks her home is actually her home and that the darkness and loneliness is now her home and her escape from reality.
| Maya Angelou | The Mothering Blackness |
Explosions will continually shake the earth
Radiated robot men will stalk each other
The rich and the chosen will watch from space platforms
Dante's Inferno will be made to look like a children's playground
The sun will not be seen and it will always be night
Trees will die
All vegetation will die
Radiated men will eat... | The last few survivors will be overtaken by new and hideous diseases | And the space platforms will be destroyed by attrition
The petering out of supplies
The natural effect of general decay | The last of humanity who survived through all of the violence will eventually be wiped out by new and deadly diseases. | Charles Bukowski | Dinosauria We |
As,—why must one, for the love foregone
Scout mere liking?
Thunder-striking
Earth,—the heaven, we looked above for, gone!
Why, with beauty, needs there money be,
Love with liking?
Crush the fly-king
In his gauze, because no honey-bee?
May not liking be so simple-sweet,
If love grew there
'Twould undo there
All that bre... | Is the creature too imperfect, say? | Would you mend it
And so end it?
Since not all addition perfects aye! | That is, is the “pretty woman” so imperfect that she must be improved by love? Browning’s narrator answers in the negative. | Robert Browning | A Pretty Woman |
Her mind is as secret from her
As the water on which she swims,
As secret as profound as ominous.
Weeping bitterly for her ominous mind, her plight,
Up the river of white moonlight she swims
Until a treacherous undercurrent
Seizing her in an icy amorous embrace
Dives with her, swiftly severing
The waters which close ab... | ('Come on, come back') | Waiting, whiling away the hour
Whittling a shepherd's pipe from the hollow reeds.
In the chill light of dawn | This line is the title of the poem and the title of a war song, referring to the longing of soldiers' families for them to return. But in this context it encapsulates the poem’s ambiguity, and is itself multi-layered. ‘Come on’ implies that the sentinel is urging her to continue to swim until she is drowned; ‘come back... | Stevie Smith | Come On Come Back |
And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground.
What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself;
Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun,
Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound—
And that was why it whispered and did not speak.
It was no dream of the gift of idle hours,
Or easy gold at the hand of... | My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make. | null | The idea of leaving the hay to ‘make’ suggests that, after labor, the making of hay — or poetry — is out of the laborer’s hands. It must ‘make itself’. So, the mowing and scything and the resulting hay connotes passing of time. And, of course, death.
So time itself is anthropomorphized . The final line evokes Sha... | Robert Frost | Mowing |
Sundays too my father got up early
And put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, | Then with cracked hands that ached
From labor in the weekday weather made | Banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call, | From this, the reader can infer that the father has a job where he has to do manual labor, since his hands ache. The hard consonantly rhyming ‘cracked’ and ‘ached’ emphasize the intensity of the work that the father is doing. “Blueblack” and “cracked” are rhymed for emphasis to evoke cold discomfort, but also toughne... | Robert Hayden | Those Winter Sundays |
null | [SPAIN.] | I.
It is a lie---their Priests, their Pope,
Their Saints, their ... all they fear or hope | The story is set at an unspecified time. Spain is chosen because of its strict conservatism, and the power of the Church. Those who broke chastity rules suffered severe punishment. | Robert Browning | The Confessional |
Was there some thud of foot in the mist and the silence
That stiffens whisker and ear in sound's fierce absence,
Some smell means man?
I see the dewdrop trembling upon the rushes,
All else is the mist's now, river and rocks and ridges.
Poor lump of movable clay, snuffling and blinking,
Too thick in the head to know wha... | To earth again. | null | The poem’s final note refers back to the Australian vision of survival and the power of the natural world | Douglas Stewart | Wombat |
They're waiting to be murdered,
Or evicted. Soon
They expect to have nothing to eat.
As far as I know, they never go out. | A vicious pain's coming, they think. | It will start in the head
And spread down to the bowels.
They'll be carried off on stretchers, howling. | Simic uses “vicious pain” as a euphemism for death. It feels like an understatement, but still manages to express the physical, human nature of death. | Charles Simic | Old Couple |
null | When I go up through the mowing field,
The headless aftermath, | Smooth-laid like thatch with the heavy dew,
Half closes the garden path.
And when I come to the garden ground, | The “Mowing Field” could possibly be a metaphor for the World. The Earth.
The headless aftermath can mean that he Robert never thought that the way the World worked would ever be realistic. The horrible things in Life was not imaginable for Robert. | Robert Frost | A Late Walk |
Frankie Laine, he was singing Jezebel | I pinned an Iron Cross to my lapel | I walked up to the tallest and the blondest girl
I said, "Look, you don't know me now but very soon you will
So won't you let me see" | The Iron Cross was a military decoration in the Kingdom of Prussia, and later in Germany from 1817 till 1945. The Nazis added a swastika in the center of the cross.
| Leonard Cohen | Memories |
You're the one for me, fatty
You're the one I really, really love
And I will stay
Promise you'll say
If I'm in your way
You're the one for me, fatty
You're the one I really, really love
And I will stay
Promise you'll say
If I'm ever in your way
A-hey | All over Battersea | Some hope and some despair
All over Battersea
Some hope and some despair | In his autobiography, Morrissey states that there is no specific meaning behind the use of ‘Battersea’ other than the fact it rhymes with ‘fatty’. | Morrissey | Youre the One for Me Fatty |
The birds they sang
At the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don't dwell on what
Has passed away
Or what is yet to be
Yeah the wars they will
Be fought again | The holy dove | She will be caught again
Bought and sold
And bought again | Leonard Cohen refers to a “the holy dove” in Hallelujah : “I remember when I moved in you / and the holy dove was moving too”.
In the context of the first verse, this may refer to the dove in the story of Noah’s arc whose return served as the announcement for the end of the flood and time to “start again”.
It co... | Leonard Cohen | Anthem |
null | Detroit Conference of Unity and Art | (For HRB)
We went there to confer
On the possibility of | Attendees of this convention aimed to make it legal for blacks to hold important government offices. Nikki attended this convention in May of 1967. | Nikki Giovanni | Detroit Conference of Unity and Art For HRB |
Life contracts and death is expected,
As in a season of autumn.
The soldier falls.
He does not become a three-days' personage,
Imposing his separation,
Calling for pomp.
Death is absolute and without memorial,
As in a season of autumn,
When the wind stops.
When the wind stops and, over the heavens, | The clouds go, nevertheless,
In their direction. | null | Death is an ordinary thing of which nature takes no particular notice. Compare the end of Philip Larkin’s “Cut Grass.”
Wind propels clouds through the sky. The speaker opens with “When the wind stops” to “The clouds go, nevertheless,” perhaps hinting toward the inviolable continuity or flow of life‚ as even without w... | Wallace Stevens | The Death of a Soldier |
You did not come, | And marching Time drew on, and wore me numb,— | Yet less for loss of your dear presence there
Than that I thus found lacking in your make
That high compassion which can overbear | Time is an important theme, here capitalised for emphasis. That it is “marching” indicates aggression; the speaker is passive, out of control, unable to compete with a natural force like time. That he is worn “numb” suggests he is ground down and perhaps has experienced such disappointment before. | Thomas Hardy | A Broken Appointment |
Ask nothing more of me, sweet;
All I can give you I give. | Heart of my heart, were it more,
More would be laid at your feet— | Love that should help you to live,
Song that should spur you to soar.
All things were nothing to give, | These lines are quoted by Buck Mulligan in the first episode of James Joyce’s Ulysses , “Telemachus”.
| Algernon Charles Swinburne | The Oblation |
Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly
Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.
Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us; | The small grains make room. | Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding, | The soil makes way: Plath subtly characterizes the soil as being a passive enabler of the mushrooms' growth: its grains simply “make room” rather than, for example, “get pushed out of the way”.
The four monosyllabic words, and the full stop which completes the line, suggest inevitability. The emphatic monosyllables... | Sylvia Plath | Mushrooms |
The crowd hems the young musician in,
faces glazed with wonder: from where could this
strange music have come? Surely not this hemisphere.
A drone as deep as yet unexcavated ruins, far older
even than the Forum: Armani, Ray-Ban, Dolce
& Gabbana, all sink at once into equivalence.
He doesn't do the kangaroo, the mosquit... | I want to bolt up the stairs of the fountain | and claim that sound as the sound of my home—
but stop when I recall how rarely I slow to hear
the truer player busking in King George Square. | Colloquial language: “bolt” implies a rapid movement. The persona hears a familiar noise and wants to run to its source. | Jaya Savige | Circular Breathing |
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day,
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows that he was once in hospital but left it cured.
Bot... | He was married and added five children to the population,
which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation, | And our teachers report he never interfered with their education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard. | Notice the use of added ; the use of the word makes it seem like they’re only statistics and not actual people, keeping up with the impersonal tone towards the unknown citizen .
Also from the perspective of the state it’s good that he had so many children because a growing population helps a nation’s economy. | W. H. Auden | The Unknown Citizen |
And see the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.
There I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroider'd all with leaves of myrtle;
A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair li... | With coral clasps and amber studs; | And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love.
Thy silver dishes for thy meat | More stock imagery, in perfect iambic meter:
With cor al clasps and amb er studs ; | Christopher Marlowe | The Passionate Shepherd to His Love |
Just like his old man.
My grandfather could cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, digging down and down
For the good tur... | But I've no spade to follow men like them. | Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it. | Suggests the speaker’s anxiety about living up to the example of his elders. Time has moved on; as a well-educated writer, he may have ascended to a higher social standing; he can’t follow family tradition to the letter, so he must find a way to honour it as best he can. | Seamus Heaney | Digging |
null | Did you hear 'bout Ticklish Tom? | He got tickled by his mom.
Wiggled and giggled and fell on the floor,
Laughed and rolled right out the door. | Did I hear of Ticklish Tom? Ohhhhh you mean the kid who was chased out of his town by a bunch of creepy, tickle-happy adults and then got hit by an oncoming train and died? Yeah. I did hear about that poor kid. | Shel Silverstein | Ticklish Tom |
Not for that city of the level sun
Its golden streets and glittering gates ablaze—
The shadeless, sleepless city of white days
White nights, or nights and days that are as one— | We weary, when all is said , all thought, all done | We strain our eyes beyond this dusk to see
What, from the threshold of eternity
We shall step into. No, I think we shun | We are all sad and tired when our lives are complete, yet ready to move on to the next world…
| Charlotte Mew | Not for that City |
null | There came a Wind like a Bugle - | It quivered through the Grass
And a Green Chill upon the Heat
So ominous did pass | A “Bugle” is a brass instrument similar to a trumpet and is used for military signals.
This line suggests that the wind from the storm came like a warning signal or an alarm. | Emily Dickinson | There came a Wind like a Bugle |
Your open mouth in anger
makes nations bow in fear.
Your bombs can change the seasons,
obliterate the spring.
What more do you long for?
Why are you suffering?
You control the human lives
in Rome and Timbuktu.
Lonely nomads wandering
owe Telstar to you.
Seas shift at your bidding,
your mushrooms fill the sky. | Why are you unhappy? | Why do your children cry?
They kneel alone in terror
with dread in every glance. | Why are the people unhappy with what is being done? Why might they feel unsatisfied with themselves even though they did what they had to do? | Maya Angelou | These Yet to be United States |
null | I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the | Flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. | Hughes is connecting the life of the American Negro to that of the continent of Africa. He makes it clear from the beginning that this poem is about pointing out the history of black people in America – Negro – and how this history flows across the seas back to the ancient rivers which witnessed the birth of humanity. ... | Langston Hughes | The Negro Speaks of Rivers |
Abortions will not let you forget.
You remember the children you got that you did not get,
The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair,
The singers and workers that never handled the air.
You will never neglect or beat
Them, or silence or buy with a sweet.
You will never wind up the sucking-thumb
Or scuttle off ... | Return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye. | I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed children.
I have contracted. I have eased
My dim dears at the breasts they could never suck. | This line starts with a grotesque image of the speaker talking about making “a snack of them (the unborn children).” As if children provide crucial nourishment to the mothers that they cannot survive without. Also, the use of “mother-eye” sounds a lot like mother-I when spoken out loud and this line could be discussing... | Gwendolyn Brooks | The Mother |
There's a certain Slant of light
Winter Afternoons –
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes –
Heavenly Hurt, it gives us –
We can find no scar
But internal difference
Where the Meanings, are –
None may teach it – Any –
'Tis the Seal Despair –
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the Air – | When it comes, the Landscape listens – | Shadows – hold their breath –
When it goes, 'tis like the Distance
On the look of Death – | The speaker states “When” and not “if”, implying inevitability. It also implies universality; the broken seal and affliction is send through the “Air” and the “Landscape” also responds. It suggests a sort of negative Pantheism , affliction that permeates the natural world, just as God lives in nature in a positive sen... | Emily Dickinson | Theres a certain Slant of light |
Seems like a long time
Since the waiter took my order.
Grimy little luncheonette,
The snow falling outside. | Seems like it has grown darker
Since I last heard the kitchen door
Behind my back
Since I last noticed
Anyone pass on the street. | A glass of ice-water
Keeps me company
At this table I chose myself | It’s getting later and later, it’s probably already evening, though the word ‘luncheonette’ suggests the order was taken at lunch time. This is taking a real, real long time. | Charles Simic | The Partial Explanation |
Then Almitra spoke again and said, And what of Marriage, master?
And he answered saying:
You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore. | You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days. | Aye, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. | “‘til death do us part.” in modern marriage vows.
| Kahlil Gibran | On Marriage |
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. | Mosses are small flowerless plants that usually grow in dense green clumps or mats, in damp or shady locations.
The author uses nature as a symbol. For instance, she uses the moss to describe the “old crimes” of Arkansas, almost graffitiing the poplar trees.
| Maya Angelou | My Arkansas |
null | I, being born a woman and distressed | By all the needs and notions of my kind,
Am urged by your propinquity to find
Your person fair, and feel a certain zest | The poem opens with a statement about Millay’s innate biology, in the vein of the hysterical woman archetype.
There is a strong element of social satire here – Millay is writing within the tradition of early twentieth century feminist authors like Edith Wharton whose writing was concerned with the lack of choices ava... | Edna St. Vincent Millay | I being born a woman and distressed Sonnet XLI |
Whose woods these are I think I know.
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 a... | 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, | The narrator, on the other hand, hears the horse but doesn’t end his contemplation just yet. The speaker returns to the practical description of the noise of the wind and snow. The lyrical-sounding easy wind, the “downy flake” (downy means feathery), is evocative of relaxation and rest. The sublime woods sing a siren ... | Robert Frost | Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening |
Some tragic falling off from a first world
Of undivided light. Or the other notion that
Because there is in this world no one thing
To which the bramble of blackberry corresponds
A word is elegy to what it signifies.
We talked about it late last night and in the voice
Of my friend, there was a thin wire of grief, a ton... | I felt a violent wonder at her presence | Like a thirst for salt, for my childhood river
With its island willows, silly music from the pleasure boat,
Muddy places where we caught the little orange-silver fish | To feel wonder is often associated with a child’s perception of phenomena that are explainable yet impressive. Violent wonder implies a lustiness, an adult’s sense of wonder as the result of sexual desire and the libido. | Robert Hass | Meditation At Lagunitas |
In the hollows of afternoons
Young mothers assemble
At swing and sandpit
Setting free their children.
Behind them, at intervals,
Stand husbands in skilled trades,
An estateful of washing,
And the albums, lettered
Our Wedding, lying
Near the television:
Before them, the wind
Is ruining their courting-places | That are still courting-places | (But the lovers are all in school),
And their children, so intent on
Finding more unripe acorns, | Larkin now focuses again on the children and how the mothers are unable to live their own lives and they are merely looking in. Their dreams, aspirations and needs have been put to one side. This is a metaphor that suggests the vestiges of romance still exist.
The repetition implies that the next generation is doom... | Philip Larkin | Afternoons |
He sang of life, serenely sweet,
With, now and then, a deeper note.
From some high peak, nigh yet remote,
He voiced the world's absorbing beat.
He sang of love when earth was young,
And Love, itself, was in his lays. | But, ah, the world, it turned to praise
A jingle in a broken tongue. | null | People offered praise, but the praise was for music or poems that were perhaps imperfect.
The line is often viewed as a larger point from Dunbar that audiences preferred his dialect poems (i.e. in so-called broken English) as opposed to his formal verse. | Paul Laurence Dunbar | The Poet |
For there in the middle of the waiting-hall
Should be standing the one that I love best of all.
If he's not there to meet me when I get to town
I'll stand on the side-walk with tears rolling down.
For he is the one that I love to look on,
The acme of kindness and perfection.
He presses my hand and he says he loves me,
... | If I were the Head of the Church or the State,
I'd powder my nose and just tell them to wait. | For love's more important and powerful than
Even a priest or a politician. | Auden appreciated, and utilzed, the range of possibilities offered by rhyme. In this poem of rhyming couplets, the rhymes are used for various different effects. In this case, “just tell them to wait” stands in humorous contrast with “Head of the Church or the State”: the latter phrase is long and fussily formal, whi... | W. H. Auden | Calypso |
Stryve not as doth the crokke with the wal.
Daunte thiself, that dauntest otheres dede;
And trouthe shal delyvere, it is no drede.
That the is sent, receyve in buxumnesse;
The wrestlyng for the worlde axeth a fal.
Here is non home, here nys but wyldernesse.
Forth, pylgryme, forth! forth, beste, out of thi stal!
Know th... | Unto the world; leve now to be thral. | Crie hym mercy, that of hys hie godnesse
Made the of nought, and in espec{i}al
Draw unto hym, and pray in general | Cease now to be slaved
| Geoffrey Chaucer | Truth |
Old passports can't do that, my dear, old passports can't do that.
The consul banged the table and said,
"If you've got no passport you're officially dead":
But we are still alive, my dear, but we are still alive.
Went to a committee; they offered me a chair;
Asked me politely to return next year:
But where shall we go... | O we were in his mind, my dear, O we were in his mind. | Saw a poodle in a jacket fastened with a pin,
Saw a door opened and a cat let in:
But they weren't German Jews, my dear, but they weren't German Jews. | The exclamatory ‘O’ either expresses terror and panic, or is a wry, ironic remark. | W. H. Auden | Refugee Blues |
null | Lincoln? | He was a mystery in smoke and flags
Saying yes to the smoke, yes to the flags,
Yes to the paradoxes of democracy, | “Lincoln” refers to Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth president of the United States. Abraham Lincoln, or referred to as Lincoln, was notorious for fighting for and eventually abolishing slavery, preserving the union, and being assassinated. Lincoln serves as a theme throughout the poem as Sandburg explores his life and ... | Carl Sandburg | The People Yes |
null | To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee. | One clover, and a bee,
And revery.
The revery alone will do, |
Recipe for Prairie (makes 1 prairie):
Ingredients: 1 clover 1 bee
Method: Combine and serve. | Emily Dickinson | To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee |
My skin is kind of sort of brownish
Pinkish yellowish white.
My eyes are grayish blueish green, | But I'm told they look orange in the night. | My hair is reddish blondish brown,
But it's silver when it's wet.
And all the colors I am inside | After mentioning various colors that human eyes can be, the speaker goes on to say that his eyes appear “orange in the night.” Orange eyes are not characteristic of people, but are often found on animals. Perhaps Silverstein added in the color orange to point out that, just as all people share fundamental qualities wit... | Shel Silverstein | Colors |
If you are the rhyme and I the refrain, don't hang
on my lips, come and I'll come too when you cue me.
If yours is the iron fist in the velvet glove
when the arrow flies, the heart is pierced, tattoo me.
If mine is the venomous tongue, the serpent's tail,
charmer, use your charm, weave a spell and subdue me.
I am the l... | If I rise in the east as you die in the west, | die for my sake, my love, every night renew me.
If, when it ends, we are just good friends, be my Friend,
muse, lover and guide, Shamsuddin to my Rumi. | This line reflects her love for him and also that they will never be together as the Sun and the Moon will never met.
Though this line can suggest an incompatibility it can also suggest an ongoing relationship and the need of both parties to exist, complementing each other. Each lover possesses their own quality an... | Mimi Khalvati | Ghazal |
There was never a sound beside the wood but one,
And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground. | What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself; | Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun,
Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound—
And that was why it whispered and did not speak. | The poet asks a rhetorical question. The conversational tone is typical of Frost, The reader is drawn in to his speculation. | Robert Frost | Mowing |
null | And who by fire, who by water | Who in the sunshine, who in the night time
Who by high ordeal, who by common trial
Who in your merry merry month of May | “Who by fire” is a direct quote from the Unetanneh Tokef prayer on which the song is based:
… who will die at his predestined time and who before his time; who by water and who by fire , who by sword and who by beast, who by famine and who by thirst, who by upheaval and who by plague, who by strangling and who by st... | Leonard Cohen | Who by Fire |
Piping down the valleys wild
Piping songs of pleasant glee
On a cloud I saw a child.
And he laughing said to me. | Pipe a song about a Lamb; | So I piped with merry chear,
Piper pipe that song again—
So I piped, he wept to hear. | William Blake uses lamb as a symbol of purity. The title Songs of Innocence is exemplified by the use of Lamb, particularly a representation of Jesus Christ. Lambs are considered docile, innocent and appear frequently in the bible. Blake develops this in his song, The Lamb .
| William Blake | Introduction to the Songs of Innocence |
Hurt once and for all into silence
A long pain ending without a song to prove it
Who could stand beside you so close to Eden
When you glinted in every eye the held-high razor
Shivering every ram and son?
Now, silent looney-bin
Where the shadows live in the rafters like day-weary bats
Until the turning mind, a radar sig... | Lures them to exaggerate mountain-size on the white stone wall | Your tiny limp
How can I leave you in such a house?
Are there no more saints and wizards | Probably a reference to Plato’s allegory of the cave about the happy state of unknowing (til you see the light of knowledge). The way Cohen uses the imagery here also reminds the reader of hallucinations and paranoia, induced by mental illness (A.M. Klein was suffering from mental illness). | Leonard Cohen | To a Teacher |
Now in Vienna there's ten pretty women
There's a shoulder where Death comes to cry
There's a lobby with nine hundred windows
There's a tree where the doves go to die
There's a piece that was torn from the morning
And it hangs in the Gallery of Frost
Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz
Take this waltz with t... | On a chair with a dead magazine | In the cave at the tip of the lily
In some hallway where love's never been
On a bed where the moon has been sweating | Imagine a magazine splayed open, half of its pages draped over the edge of the seat.
Juxtaposition of Eros and Nous or the intellectual. The desire to make love where reading had once occurred. | Leonard Cohen | Take This Waltz |
I too beneath your moon, almighty Sex,
Go forth at nightfall crying like a cat, | Leaving the lofty tower I laboured at | For birds to foul and boys and girls to vex
With tittering chalk; and you, and the long necks
Of neighbours sitting where their mothers sat | Reading with clues from the rest of the poem ( “reared To Beauty” , “it is my own” ), it’s reasonable to say that this tower refers to Millay’s poetry and building the tower as pursuit of a “high art” form (high-lofty-coincidence?).
During the day, the poet labors at writing poetry, which is a far cry from the dirty... | Edna St. Vincent Millay | I Too Beneath Your Moon Almighty Sex |
null | You are not the Mona Lisa | with that relentless look.
Or Venus borne over the froth
of waves on a pink half shell. | In the first line, “You are not the Mona Lisa”, Billy Collins is saying that nobody is perfect. Mona Lisa can either be seen smiling or frowning, which is why Collin then goes on to say ‘relentless look.’ Collins chose to reference the painting because it is a very well know piece of art work.
| Billy Collins | Sweet Talk |
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run? | Does it stink like rotten meat? | Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags | Formerly alive, the dream now rots. What was vital has become putrid. The “stink” may imply resentment or a corruption of the character as a result of lifelong frustration.
| Langston Hughes | Harlem What happens to a dream deferred? |
Is that the wrong description?
Outside that door,
taking shelter in the shadows,
is a freedom-fighter.
I haven't got this right.
Outside, waiting in the shadows
is a hostile militant.
Are words no more
than waving, wavering flags?
Outside your door,
watchful in the shadows,
is a guerrilla warrior. | God help me. | Outside, defying every shadow,
stands a martyr.
I saw his face. | The poet is clearly troubled and appeals to God for help. She, like the reader, is unable to make sense of the situation. This is a watershed in the poem and the mood changes here. The exclamatory ‘God help me’ is a like pivot, followed by a caesura . Beyond this, the mood changes. | Imtiaz Dharker | The Right Word |
as he walks on the gravel.
In the garden suspended in time
my mother sits in a redwood chair:
light fills the sky,
the folds of her dress,
the roses tangled beside her.
And when my father bends
to whisper in her ear,
when they rise to leave
and the swallows dart
and the moon and stars
have drifted off together, it shin... | Even as you lean over this page,
late and alone, it shines: even now
in the moment before it disappears. | null | Strand uses this last statement to give the poem an “infinitely magical” feeling. It allows the reader to feel like they can relate to the entire poem as a whole, not just while reading it, but forever. It reduces the personal aspects of the poem without having to take out personal content. | Mark Strand | The Garden |
I can remember you, child, | As I stood in a hot, white | Room at the window watching
The people and cars taking
Turn at the traffic lights. | Clarke is at the window either between contractions or after the birth of her daughter. Significantly, she is standing and not lying in bed, as if alert and preparing for the complex years ahead.
The adjectives ‘hot’ and ‘white’ are oxymoronic , creating a stark, oppressive, tense atmosphere. ‘Hot’ suggests the pas... | Gillian Clarke | Catrin |
Henry was not a coward. Much.
He never deserted anything; instead
he stuck, when things like pity were thinning.
So may be Henry was a human being.
Let's investigate that.
. . . We did; okay.
He is a human American man.
That's true. My lass is braking.
My brass is aching. Come & diminish me, & map my way.
God's Henry's... | I couldn't feel more like it. --Mr Bones, | as I look on the saffron sky,
you strikes me as ornery. | Kevin Young claimed that Berryman wrote his dream songs to counter every trend in American poetry at the time, ie: Modernism. Well one of the most prominent trends of Modernism at the time is the unreliable narrator. Here we see Berryman use first person, however this person is not Berryman. With that being said who is... | John Berryman | Dream Song 13 |
The Sunday lamb cracks in its fat.
The fat
Sacrifices its opacity....
A window, holy gold.
The fire makes it precious,
The same fire
Melting the tallow heretics,
Ousting the Jews.
Their thick palls float
Over the cicatrix of Poland, burnt-out
Germany.
They do not die. | Grey birds obsess my heart, | Mouth-ash, ash of eye.
They settle. On the high
Precipice | The birds seem not to represent anything positive — they are clearly not doves of peace — but manifestations of the Holocaust which “obsess” the narrator’s heart. They are grey like the smoke from the gas ovens. They would seem to reinforce her identification with the Jews and heretics.
| Sylvia Plath | Marys Song |
The stars of the night
Than the eyes of the radiant girl!
And never a flake
That the vapor can make
With the moon-tints of purple and pearl,
Can vie with the modest Eulalie's most unregarded curl—
Can compare with the bright-eyed Eulalie's most humble and careless curl.
Now Doubt—now Pain
Come never again,
For her soul... | Astarté within the sky, | While ever to her dear Eulalie upturns her matron eye—
While ever to her young Eulalie upturns her violet eye. | Astarte is the Mesopotamian Moon God of fertility and love. She resembled the Greeks' Aphrodite, Juno, and Artemis.
Astarte is also referenced in Poe’s Ulalume . | Edgar Allan Poe | Eulalie |
Miners,
Farmers,
Mechanics,
Mill Hands,
Shop girls,
Railway men,
Servants,
Tobacco workers,
Sharecroppers,
GREETINGS!
I am the black worker,
Listen: | That the land might be ours, | And the mines and the factories and the office towers
At Harlan, Richmond, Gastonia, Atlanta, New Orleans;
That the plants and the roads and the tools of power | The speaker appears to be against large corporations or what he might deem greedy employers when he claims “the land” for the Black and white worker, the “us” of the line. I see this connection because of several references to labor unions throughout the poem, and the general Marxist rhetoric of class. | Langston Hughes | Open Letter to the South |
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.
The infection slept (custom or changes inures)
And when pain's secondary phase was due
Poise of my hands... | My heart pumps yet the poison draught of you. | Poise of my hands reminded me of yours.
You are still kind whom the same shape immures.
Kind and beyond adieu. We miss our cue. | At face value this can be read with the following meaning:
My heart still pumps the poisonous liquid of your essence.
The reference to the circulatory system points to the way the poem is written. The same “stuff” is pumped around over and over again. In this case, it is the poison draught that is pumped through – ... | William Empson | Villanelle It is the pain... |
Louis XIV, the Sun King, was a proud and arrogant man who wanted to be the center of attention at all times; he could not countenance being outdone in lavishness by anyone, and certainly not his finance minister. To succeed Fouquet, Louis chose Jean-Baptise Colbert, a man famous for his parsimony and for giving the dul... | Such is the fate, in some form or another, of all those who unbalance the master's sense of self, poke holes in his vanity, or make him doubt his preeminence. | "When the evening began, Fouquet was at the top of the world. By the time it had ended, he was at the bottom."-Voltaire, 1694-1778 | Although rapper 50 Cent claims he dismissed artist Game from G-Unit after Game refused to support them in a feud with Murder Inc., it is more likely that Game had threatened 50’s pride.
This is backed up by the fact that 50 Cent continually claimed to have written 6 of the songs on Game’s debut The Documentary ... | Robert Greene | Law 1: Never Outshine the Master - Interpretation of Transgression |
Month after month the gathered rains descend
Drenching yon secret Aethiopian dells,
And from the desert's ice-girt pinnacles
Where Frost and Heat in strange embraces blend
On Atlas, fields of moist snow half depend.
Girt there with blasts and meteors Tempest dwells
By Nile's aereal urn, with rapid spells
Urging those w... | O'er Egypt's land of Memory floods are level | And they are thine, O Nile—and well thou knowest
That soul-sustaining airs and blasts of evil
And fruits and poisons spring where'er thou flowest. | In Ancient Egypt, many peoples' livelihoods depended on the Nile’s annual flood, which watered crops, and brought trade to cities in the desert.
| Percy Bysshe Shelley | To The Nile |
Escape
Shadows, shadows,
Hug me round
So that I shall not be found
By sorrow:
She pursues me
Everywhere,
I can't lose her
Anywhere.
Fold me in your black | Abyss, | She will never look
In this,--
Shadows, shadows, | This “abyss” is a very vague and dark image. It is also ironic that the “abyss” is usually associated with “a bottomless gulf or pit” (Merriam-Webster) and something intrinsically negative, yet it is what will ultimately protect her from sorrow. Could it be death? Is Johnson challenging the notion of heaven in the a... | Georgia Douglas Johnson | Escape |
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