Poetic Essays (Examples)

Thus, by contrast with Bradstreet's self-imposed humility, Fuller displays a very high-regard for herself, obviously influenced by the Transcendentalist movement which was centered on the self. In her writings and meditations, Fuller makes use of the Transcendentalist philosophy to extol the self and at the same time to promote the equality between men and women, which is a logical consequence of the privileged position of the human being and of the spirit in the hierarchy of the creation. In he poetry as well as in her essays and memoirs, Fuller's most tackled themes are the position of Man in the universe, the importance of the human self, and the necessity for recognizing the place of women as equal to men in society. The gender hierarchy is thus one of the most poignant themes of her work. As Romano Carlin has shown, Fuller's probably most competent critic, Charles Capper, defended…

Poetic Style in Pablo Neuda "twenty love poems"
Pablo Neuda's Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despai was inspied by an unhappy love affai, which accounts fo the poems expessing young, passionate, unhappy love pehaps bette than any book of poety in the Romantic tadition (Manuel E. Duan, Pofesso of Hispanic Liteatue, Yale Univesity, Bitannica Nobel Pizes web site).

The two poems, basis, which, this pape discusses the poetic style of Pablo Neuda, ae "Tonight I Can Wite" and " A Song of Despai." Both poems have seveal common themes, the most obvious being 'unhappiness ove a lost love.' In "Tonight I Can Wite," the theme is clealy expessed thoughout the poem in lines such as: "Because though nights like this one I held he in my ams / my soul is not satisfied that it has lost he." (30-31)

The same tone of unhappiness ove lost love comes though in "…

Poetic Analysis of "Divorces"
In contemporary poetry in American literature, conventional themes about the deconstruction of the family institution through the emergence of divorce as a legal marital practice have become prevalent. Legally, divorce as a legal issue is already accepted by the American society, but in the highly rigid and conservative society in America, divorce as a social phenomenon is not widely accepted especially when put into moralistic standards. As a social phenomenon, divorce is a topic commonly discussed in American literature, particularly poetry.

The theme of the constructive norm of marriage and its anti-thesis, divorce, is the main idea expressed in the poem, "Divorces." The poem, which will be the unit of analysis of this paper, will be studied through the themes of the following ideas: (1) description of the process of marriage; (2) divorce as an unpopular practice in the society; and (3) the subjective point-of-view of the poet/Speaker…

However, Cheevy sees Romance as wandering about town, homeless. Likewise, Art is a "vagrant," someone seen as a nuisance who has no home and begs for money. Both Art and Romance have lost their high standing; as Cheevy sees it, they are no longer respected as they should be. Similarly, Cheevy is also a beggar whom people despise, and he feels he should be more respected -- even though, as Robinson makes clear, he has done nothing to gain that respect. Cheevy might be where he is in life because of his lowly birth, but he has done nothing to improve himself.
While he may be thinking to himself or speaking to someone, Prufrock in T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Profrock" displays insecurities and feelings of failure, just as Miniver Cheevy does. The speaker of the poem, he considers that there will be "…time yet for a…

e. cummings seems to embody an American ideal, that of the wild cowboy who admits no compassion and no law into his code of ethics, a showman who rides a: "watersmooth-silver / stallion/and break onetwothreefourfive pigeons justlikethat / Jesus." The creator of the "ild est Show" that made spectacles of violence attractive and engaged in shameless self-promotion can perhaps be best embodied in a figure like Arnold Schwarzenegger, an action movie hero that took his celebrity to new levels, entering politics and making violence seem cartoon-like, fun and almost wholesome and American. As an American archetype of entertainment and culture, despite the title of cumming's poem, Buffalo Bill is anything but "defunct." Although the cowboy is no longer as glorified as it was in American society during Buffalo Bill's day, the affection for lawless, violent men who possess charm and showmanship lives on.
orks Cited cummings, e.e. "Buffalo Bill's Defunct." 19…

poetic is used as a superlative to describe something, it means that whatever that thing is, is evocative of poetry in the best way possible. The true definition of the term poetic, then, relates to the definition of poetry. Despite the fact that there are a number of different connotations that poetry can take on, as denoted by the many varieties of poems and characteristics of them, above all else poetry is a human form of shaping words to describe the indescribable. The best of poetry is ineffable, especially via conventional methods of writing and speaking. Thus, the only way someone can describe something that is truly sublime, that has the ability to transcend reality with a truth or a form of beauty, is by relying on poetry.
Therefore, when one refers to the term poetic as an adjective for something such as a sunset, or a lunchbox, or a…

poetic turn:' "Lower east side poem"
The 'poetic turn' is the moment in which a poem takes the reader by surprise and fundamentally shifts the reader's perspective of the poem. This is seen in Miguel Pinero's "Lower east side poem" which takes a conventional poetic subject -- death and life after death -- and celebrates the poet's desire to embrace seemingly negative and immoral aspects of New York City. Instead of repenting the error of his ways and seeking peace from a life of hustling and drug dealing, Pinero's poem turns all of these conventions on their heads and instead begs the reader to ensure that he can enjoy all of these things, even after death.

The poem begins with a vision of the author standing on a tenement building, dreaming of his death and seeing a vision of his ashes scattered across New York. The refrain of the poem "the…

The windows for example would depict a large image of a saint, with smaller images from his or her life at the bottom. In this way, the windows could be seen as a conduit of the divine light bathing the congregation within. More complex themes were incorporated for rose windows, including prophets, apostles saints and angels.
Another interesting component of the divine light brought to the citizenry in this way is that the society of the time was largely illiterate. Hence stained glass windows illuminated, so to speak, the message of the bible in visual terms. Not only scholars, therefore, but also children, the simple and the illiterate could access the various legends depicted in this way. The "divine light" takes on a more literal significance in this way, with the windows not only symbolizing, but literally illuminating the bible for those who could not access it by reading. Later,…

Poetic Elements in Three Spiritual Poems
Biblical poetry (50): Both Sample Poem 1 and 2 could be considered examples of biblical poetry, as both Thomas and Hopkins explore themes relating to divinity, spirituality and faith. Hopkins' poem "God's Grandeur" in particular demonstrates the tenets of biblical poetry.

Figurative language (161): Each of the sample poems contains numerous examples of figurative language, as this is a cornerstone of poetic expression. In Sample Poem 1, for example, Thomas writes that "my youth is bent by the same wintry fever," even though youth cannot be bent and winter cannot be feverish.

Figure of speech (161):

Implied author (208):

Implied reader (208):

hetorical figure (391):

Structural Elements

hyme (392): Out of the three sample poems provided, the use of rhyme is most evident in Sample Poem 2, as Hopkins writes "It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;/It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil/Crushed. Why do men…

poetic form involves some kind of structural formula dictating how it is to be written. Beyond this, myriad of differences exist among abstract or genre poems. The three poems, "My Last Duchess," by Robert Browning, "Richard Cory" by Edwin Arlington Robinson and "We Real Cool," by Gwendolyn Brooks truly exemplify such variety.
In "My Last Duchess," Browning offers readers a personal view of an aristocratic Duchess from the mid-1840s. While standing in front of his late wife's portrait, Alfonso II, Duke of Ferrara of Italy talks about her failings and imperfections to a member of his fiancee's family. The ironic twist comes when it is realized that the young wife's faults were simply "a heart too soon made glad, too easily impressed." In other words, she was too friendly to others -- especially men -- and thus the arrogant, jealous and controlling Duke had her killed.

The poem offers an example…

Alfred Lord Tennyson "Break, Break, Break"
The poem "Break, Break, Break" is a short four stanza poem with each stanza containing four lines wit irregular syllables. The rhyme scheme throughout the four stanzas takes the ABCB scheme and the poet uses this particular rhyme scheme for a particular reason as will be seen herein. From the onset, it is expressed that this is an internal dialogue that the persona is having with self and nature. He speaks to the internal emotions and feelings as well as the nature around him.

The persona in the poem is a sad individual seated motionless by the sea, overwhelmed by emotions of how indifferent the nature and the people around him are to his emotional predicament of losing a person he was close to, most likely a friend or lover. He looks at the ways from the sea, and they repeatedly batter the rocks by the…

Semantic vs. Poetic Meaning in Human
Language

Rhetorically speaking, semantic (i.e., useful) and poetic (i.e., artistic) uses of human language may seem different from one another, in form as well as function. Semantic meaning is the literal, utilitarian meaning of a word, that is, the way or ways a word is typically used in everyday speech and/or writing. Poetic meaning, on the other hand, generally has to do with way(s) in which a word is used artistically, that is, metaphorically, as synecdoche, or in various other symbolically inflected ways. For example, in comparing the two sentences "Earth has five oceans" and "She cried oceans of tears," comparative semantic and poetic meanings of the word "oceans" become clear. However, the argument exists that semantic and poetic meanings are inherently the same, due to the imbedded "Symbolic Action" ("Burke, Kenneth") of words themselves, i.e., the theory that words themselves are so deeply symbolic in…

nature of the poetic turn, the structural component of a poem, which may occur multiple times in a poem, in which your expectations are upended or displaced, in which you are surprised or affected by the direction the poet is taking. What is the purpose of the turn and how is it accomplished? Why is it an important part of a contemporary poem and how does it function particularly in the poem you selected for this week's DB. For many of you, you might begin with the poem and discuss how it sets its reader up for the turn, delivers the turn -- or turns -- and to what effect and use that discussion to allow you to reflect on the questions you've been asked.
Miguel Pinero's poem 'A lower east side' is about his pride in being a citizen of the Lower East Side and his subsequent desire that…

Rather than Klein's more stagnant relationship with his father, a man locked, in the past, the subject of the poem "Keine Lazarovitch" is almost as complex as the ebb and flux of Jewish life as a whole, rather than one segment of it, and her hold upon Layton is likewise more stormy, cyclical, and complex than the relationship of old to young detailed in Klein's poem about his father.
In Klein's poem the physicality of the father's books function the touchstone with which the poet accesses his father's memory, rather than his physical, father -- the father in death, much like the father in life is of the book, rather than a loving and guiding force, or even a force to be clashed with, as in Layton's poem. Klein's poem makes reference to the father's pamphlets, prayers, and tomes, as if these are the subjects of the man's life entirely,…

It is impossible to have one without the other. The progression of shadows is used to indicate the passage of time in Ando's work. One can watch the progression of shadow across a light piece of concrete and track the passage of time.
It can be said that light represents the concept of somethingness and shadow represents the concept of nothingness. It is the nothingness that humans seek to understand in their spiritual endeavors. The world of somethingness represents the reality that we know in our physical world. Light allows us to see our world and the things in it. Darkness, however, masks these objects. The objects themselves are still there, only we cannot see them until it is light again. Shadow represents the human journey into the nothingness of the soul. hen we sit in the shadow and cannot see our physical world, we are forced to confront the…

Barstow, Marjorie. "Oedipus Rex as the Ideal Tragic Hero of Aristotle." The Classical
eekly, vol. 6, no. 1, 2-4, 1912. Print.

Barstow observes one of Aristotle's fundamental points in her essay, which is that "Aristotle finds the end of human endeavor to be happiness…[which proceeds] from a steady and comprehensive intellectual vision which views life steadily and distinguishes in every action the result to be gained" (2). Poetry, like Oedipus Rex, helps illustrate Aristotle's point that human happiness is dependent upon one's grasp of reality.

Dodds, E.R. "On Misunderstanding the Oedipus Rex." Greece and Rome, vol. 13, 37-

Print.

Dodds asks, "In what sense, if in any, does the Oedipus Rex attempt to justify the ways of God to man?" (37). The fact that Sophocles' work tackles the question is important evidence that drama is worthy of serious study and capable of teaching profound truths. Thus, Dodds' essay validates Aristotle's argument for the inclusion of…

Dante's Poetic Revelation Of His Own New Life In Vita Nuova
The main thrust of the primary narrative thread or 'plot' of Dante's Vita Nuova, or "New Life," is of the love of the poet for the beautiful Beatrice. Beatrice was a woman from Dante's social circle who was holy and beautiful in her manner and countenance. Yet she married another man. Despite this, Dante continued to adore Beatrice from afar, after seeing her and falling in love with her at first sight when both of these poetic protagonists were children. Even though his passion could only take place from a worshipful distance. Dante continued to love Beatrice as his adored poetic and spiritual muse, even after the poet wed another woman, and Beatrice remained faithfully wedded to another man.

The thematic progression of Dante's Vita Nuova is not simply about love. Overall, it tells of the narrator's coming to life as…

The dramatic imagery, heavy with the terrain and her response to it, is most reflected in the poem that won her recognition as the North Carolina Poet Laureate.

And now that a few buds appear

On the sycamore, I watch the road

Winding down this mountain

Not even a mule can clinb

Without a struggle. Long daylight

Wildwood Flower, 5-10]

The connection of the people to their land is the nature of an Appalachian soul; it is the galvanizing hum that motors generations through its tangled thicket and cold ridge. yer knows this, feels this, and sets it alive before putting it to rest in her poetry. Through careful image choice, she joins the ranks of the southern literary elite. It is not coincidental that the great writers of the South are not known for social commentary, pink fiction, or the juvenile wandering epitomized by Kerouac, Eggers, and Davies; they are known for their work that puts…

Like the first stanza, in keeping with the villanelle structure of repeated refrains, it ends in the word "disaster." However, the references to loss in this stanza have become more specific, such as lost keys. Only in the fourth and fifth stanzas does the poet's personal emotion break into the form of the poem, and the tone become more personalized and confessional: "I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or next-to-last, of three loved houses went. The art of losing isn't hard to master." Against the generic repeated line of the first stanza, the first-person narration sounds as if the poet is trying to convince herself, rather than instruct the reader.
Structurally, this sense of the pain of losing is intensified, as more irreplaceable thing are lost by the poet than a hour or keys, like watches and houses as the poem unfolds. The fifth stanza further personalizes…

Being of nature, a supposedly passive entity does not necessarily stime the female poet, it can also, in Bishop's construcion, empower her as a speaker.
Yet, there is one caveat -- for Bishop's poem remains tantalizingly silent about her own gender as a female. Thus, even as late as Bishop, the idea of an openly female speaker within a poem associating herself with nature, and seeing herself reflected in nature remains tenuous. Thus, although not Byronic in its imposition of meaning upon the natural world, nor Barrett Browning like in its denial of it, Bishop does not comlpetely deny the cultural assumptions of associating women with nature that still haunt female poets today. Unlike men, women must grapple with this association as authors, of passivitity and feminine voicelessness as mere subjects of the poetic experience -- while men can chose to view nature as neutrals, rather than as conciously gendered…

Moving from the humor of matzo balls and used cars, the images of the poem grows darker as Terman recalls: "the dandruff of my dead friend's dark hair" that he values more "than the inscribed stones Moses/bloodied his flesh -- twice -- to attain." The reader begins to wonder why Terman values his friend's dandruff -- but this image recalls the hair left over from the victims of the Holocaust, hair shaved from the scalps of Jewish victims to make wigs. This stanza suggests that Terman is not merely deflating obscure mysticism, but suggesting that too much focus on piety and not enough focus on politics and the real lives and concerns of the Jewish people can have devastating consequences for the community. He is not merely speaking to a poet of the past, but to leaders of the present. Focus on the needs of the here and now, Terman…

" The repetition of the "f" sound, which also sounds like the "v" sound in heaven, is indicative of the sound of swiftly moving air, which alludes to the speed the author wishes this blaze would destroy her husband's means for leaving her.
However, the ghostly quality of this poem that coincides with the sadness the poet feels is suggested by the connotations of the word "ashes," which is suggestive of cremation and the end of life. There is a definite mortal quality of this poem, which becomes clearer to the reader when analyzing the second and final stanza, which is contained within the following quotation. "These are the clothes/Your adoring woman has sewn,/Thoughts all astray./to keep until the day we meet again/Do not be troubled about me:/if only life lasts" (Nakamura 2009, 7-8). The poet emphasizes the fact that a reunion with her husband is largely dependent upon their ability…

/This desire, perfection./Your closed eyes my extinction./Now I've forgotten my/idea.... (Lee, 2002, This Room and Everything in it)
Each work demonstrates how easy it is to become complacent about the mundane character of even the most sincere of emotional expression, that of sensual love and then makes an attempt to etch something that is essential to life into memory, as Lee was taught to do by his father. Lee, as a child gave riper persimmons to his father and the persimmons became a tool of symbolism for the child, as he grew to a man;

Finally understanding/he was going blind,/my father sat up all one night waiting for a song, a ghost./I gave him the persimmons,/swelled, heavy as sadness,/and sweet as love. (Lee, 2002, Persimmons)

The poignant memory of a young boy offering his father a consoling gift of two now ripened persimmons that he had found in the cellar, and coveted through…

Billy Collins' poem is a lyric poem because mainly it expresses highly personal emotions and feelings. Many lyric poems involve musical themes or tones, and in fact in Shakespeare's era the word "lyric" meant that the poem was accompanied by a musical instrument (a lyre). But while Collins' poem doesn't give off a musical idea or theme (unless the sound of a fork scratching across a granite table is music), it does use metaphor and achieves a dramatic impact.
The metaphor has two people, presumably married and in a love partnership who have divorced. (It is known that although un-married couples who have been together for a long time and break up are also involved essentially in a "divorce" of their partnership.) The metaphor of "two spoons" shows two people locked together, snuggling would be a good word, in a warm bed. "Tined" means prongs on a fork -- or it…

Poetry is a very complex concept, as it can be used to relate to a series of ideas and these respective ideas can be interpreted in numerous ways, depending on each individual's perspective. Ranging from pure amusement that some poets intended to put across to intense philosophical discussions that others aimed to express, poetry can be used in a multitude of ways and it can make it possible both for individuals creating them and for people interpreting them to experience all sorts of feelings as a consequence of interacting with poems in general.
An octet is responsible for introducing tension in the poem and is based on an ABBAABBACDCDEE rhyme type. The sonnet is relatively simple and is written in a loose iambic pentameter.

John Donne's 1609 poem "Death Be Not Proud" was the poet's attempt to provide the world with a different understanding of the idea of death. The poem aims…

Poetic Comparison:
"Hawk oosting" by Ted Hughes and "Grass" by Carl Sandburg

Both "Hawk oosting" by Ted Hughes and "Grass" by Carl Sandburg are narrated in the voices of silent, living objects in the natural world. Hughes' poem is told in the first person of a hawk while Sandburg's poem is narrated by the grass. Through personification both poets examine the place of humanity in a larger context, highlighting the extent to which what people think is important seems small when seen in relation to the big picture of nature. Hughes' poem achieves this by showing how in the eyes of an ordinary hawk, the bird is all-powerful because of his predatory capacity. The grass of Sandburg's poem is similarly powerful as it blankets the dead, without any apparent concern for the heroism the soldiers might have shown in battle or in any other facet of their lives.

The hawk's triumphant view of…

Pantoum in Two Poems
The poetic form of the pantoum is prevalent and makes up the structure of the following two poems: My Brother at 3 A.M. By Natalie Diaz and Incident by Natasha Trethewey. Each poet is able to use the pantoum distinctly and with a certain level of aplomb and effectiveness in order to convey the underlying feeling of the overall poem. The pantoum refers to a literary structure which is able to strongly evoke the past, and memories of the past as a result of its dreamy and enchanting repetitions. This form of poetic structure originated in France, derived from one which was evoked from Malaysia in the 15th century; the form first became popular within Europe and North America in the 19th and 20th centuries (Unst, 2013). One of the more riveting aspects of this form of poetic and structural device is that "subtle shifts in…

Although "Midsummer" is a shot work, in keeping with more of the original modernistic style of poetry writing, it is no less poignant in the message it conveys.
Conclusion

In many ways, DH Lawrence is a visionary that offers the reader imagery and creativity that engulfs the reader into the world in which he creates with his words. As with Walcott, it was not necessary for Lawrence to achieve cadence in his writing though the use of rhyme. There is a balance that is struck that clearly reads as poetic. Lawrence's expressive language and use of interesting characters helps to tell the stories of dehumanization that only comes with man's lack of recognition for the power of nature, and moving too fast in directions unknown under the call for modernization.

"If one thinks a poem is coming on… you do make a retreat, a withdrawal into some kind of silence that cuts…

In "Federigo's Falcon," the female protagonist Monna Giovanna was widowed by her husband who suddenly fell ill and passed away. Her husband was a very wealthy man, and together they had a son who become the sole beneficiary of his father's estate. From the beginning of the story, female's roles in the Middle Ages become apparent. The story writes, "...he made his son, who was growing up, his heir, and, since he had loved Monna Giovanna very much, he made his/her heir should his son die without a legitimate heir..." Instead of the wife and mother becoming the beneficiary of her husband's finances, it is the male son, who is still not old enough to take care of himself yet, that inherits all of his father's fortune. The wife inherits the money only if the son dies before she does. This notion however, is very reflective of the given…

Save the Cat
Author introduces himself and his history in the world of screenwriting

eason for writing the book -- to help readers not make the same mistakes he made and to avoid common screenwriting pitfalls

Meaning of 'Save the Cat:' Using scenes that define who the hero is that are dramatic (like saving a cat)

Selling the story

Importance of a good 'logline' (attention-getter for the person to whom your pitching the film). A film cannot be 'sold' without a good logline, no matter how strong the picture

Importance of 'high concept' (movies that are easy to visualize), even today

Make sure your story falls into one of the 10 basic genres to enable it to be marketed to a target audience

Creating characters

A. Need a hero

Use Jungian archetypes that the audience can easily identify with when constructing characters

C. Never cast the movie before you write the script: you never know what actors will be available

Pacing the…

These young men were not immersed in the high modernist traditions of Virginia Woolf and T.S. Eliot: rather, they were immersed in the experience of war and their own visceral response to the horrors they witnessed.
Thus a multifaceted, rather than strictly comparative approach might be the most illuminating way to study this period of history and literature. Cross-cultural, comparative literary analysis is always imperfect, particularly given the linguistic challenges presented by evaluating German poetry in relation to its British counterparts. Contextualizing the British war poets requires a certain level of understanding how the war was seen by the other side, and by alien eyes. More is likely to be gained than lost by reading the German war poets in translation. Yet reading the German poets in translation allows the reader to appreciate the influence of symbolism and expressionism in their work that was not present even in the harsh…

Nelson's violent images call upon the reader to behold the corpse of Till, forcing the reader into a state of seismic cultural shock, as America has long been eager to forget its racist legacy (Harold, 2006, p.263). Trethewey's first lines of her book are gentler, but there is always the urge to remember: "Truth be told, I do not want to forget anything of my former life" (Trethewey, p.1)
The calls her poetic collection an act of memory "Erasure, those things that get left out of the landscape of the physical landscape, things that aren't monumented or memorialized, and how we remember and what it is that we forget. I wanted to kind of restore some of those narratives, so those things that are less remembered (Brown, 2007). Her use of the sonnet form over her cycle of poems is not as perfectly consistent as Nelson's, but repetition and remembrance…

Sergeant
In Lady Gregory's The Rising of the Moon, the character of the Sergeant begins the action as an already transformed man. He was once loyal to his home country, Ireland. As he grew older, however, the lure of money and good living brought him to his profession of Sergeant and his loyalty to England. It is with the Sergeant in this position that the play begins. The central conflict then occurs within the Sergeant, who is ultimately transformed to let his former ideals overrule his loyalty to English law.

The ragged man, who is the protagonist of the play, makes his appearance as the Sergeant waits alone to make the arrest. According to Saddlemyer (94) the freedom fighter and criminal represents the Sergeant's "antithetical self." In other words, the ragged man reminds the Sergeant of the importance of all the ideals that he has betrayed. Apparently these ideals are still…

Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The cliched image of the Romantic poet is of a solitary tortured genius; it is ironic that the work of the poets collectively regarded as the 'Romantic School' is marked by collective and co-operative effort as much as by individual creativity. For none of the great figures of Romantic poetry is this so true as it is for Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The first-rate poetic output of this extraordinary, multi-faceted man lasted only a few years, from approximately 1797 to 1802, and he has even been regarded by some historians and critics as 'merely a channel for the work and ideas of others' (Jasper, 8) rather than as a creative figure in his own right. It is as if his own creative character has become lost in the extraordinary wide-ranging and complex interplay of relationships between poets, thinkers, writers and critics which swirled around him. It is also the…

Wanna Hear a Poem
I agree with you that Steve Coleman's piece "I Wanna Hear A Poem" would be an excellent choice of a first poem to study in an introductory poetry class, given the way that it frames all of the many weighty and sometimes contradictory expectations teachers and students bring to poetry. Questions which inevitably arise in a class when students begin to discuss poetry are: what is poetry? How is it different from prose? What purpose does poetry uniquely fill in the literary landscape? Coleman's ambitious demands for poetry, rendered as a long, searching, compelling drumbeat of a list highlight the 'specialness' we demand of the poetic format. Poetry must mean something that transcends the surface meaning of the poet's words. I also agree the poem is an excellent jumping-off point for discussing the various functions poetry has fulfilled in societies across the ages.

However, as well as…

This tragic flaw is very clearly apparent in Okonkwo, the protagonist of Achebe's Things Fall Apart. He is very strong and very masculine according to the expectations of his people, and this both helps him to win success amongst his people despite the shame of his family background -- his father was not well respected in the community -- and causes him to be banished from the villages. This banishment somewhat ironically -- though in a perfect twist for a tragic plot -- weakens the villages and enables the white newcomers' ways to dominate the society, which ultimately leads to Okonkwo's "weak" death at his own hands. The beginning of the change can be seen when Okonkwo convinces himself to take part in the ritual slaying of a kidnapped boy from another village, despite warnings that he should avoid participation: "When did you become a shivering old woman,' Okonkwo asked…

Your answer should be at least five sentences long.
The Legend of Arthur

Lesson 1 Journal Entry # 9 of 16

Journal Exercise 1.7A: Honor and Loyalty

1. Consider how Arthur's actions and personality agree with or challenge your definition of honor. Write a few sentences comparing your definition (from Journal 1.6A) with Arthur's actions and personality.

2. Write a brief paragraph explaining the importance or unimportance of loyalty in being honorable.

Lesson 1 Journal Entry # 10 of 16

Journal Exercise 1.7B: Combining Sentences

Complete the Practice Activity on page 202 of your text. After completing this activity, read over your Essay Assessment or another journal activity you've completed.

* Identify three passages that could be improved by combining two or more sentences with coordinating or subordinating conjunctions. Below the practice activity in your journal, write the original passages and the revised sentences you've created.

* Be sure to indicate which journal or writing assignment they came from.

The…

The second aspect is that the subtlety of the sickness keeps it under the surface of an apparently healthy whole. The indication appears to be that the casual observer would not detect the illness. However, a person who moves closer to the rose will begin to see the signs of the illness that is in the process of consuming the life of the rose from within.
The words "bed" and "crimson joy" appear to refer to love that has been consummated by sex. This provides further possibilities for interpretation. It could be that the romance of young love was corrupted by sex -- "crimson" could refer to the loss of virginity. From a modern point-of-view, however, the disease could be the deception of one of the partners while the other is faithful. This deception then destroys the relationship from within. This interpretation can be substantiated by the phrase "dark secret…

Shakespeare's Othello: Is it a tragedy according to Aristotle?
Aristotle and tragedy

Aristotle defines tragedy as imitation of an action that is serious and has a certain dramatic and complete magnitude. Tragedy to Aristotle is something that is:

"A form of drama exciting the emotions of pity and fear. Its action should be single and complete, presenting a reversal of fortune, involving persons renowned and of superior attainments, and it should be written in poetry embellished with every kind of artistic expression. (Poetics, Part IX)

Aristotle saw tragedy as a simulation of an event that aroused pity and fear in the individual and, by doing so, served as a form of catharsis in the individual could identify with the plot and feel a certain sort of purging or relief (VI.2).

In fact, it is this sense of purging that most distinguishes the tragedy from the comedy or epic (for instance) in that it is the…

"
After the advertisement is placed, then Liz, a lawyer, enters into the picture and poetry of John's life. Liz Donati attracts John by writing him two sonnets, and of course, the use of a personal advertisement as a meeting place provides even more evidence of how individuals still connect, even in the sterile and technical modern world, through prose. Even the most prosaic individuals such as Liz and John find ways to express their lust and then their love in the form of a verbally astute dance.

The other couple that dominates the text is Liz's brother, Ed. Ed is gay and is involved with John's old college roommate, Phil. The conflicts created by homosexuality destroy Ed and Phil's tryst, making their coupling in poetic terms the more traditional of the two that are depicted in the Golden Gate, in terms of the sonnet medium's frequent depiction of unhappy lovers as…

His belief that literature is a magical blend of thought and emotion is at the very heart of his greatest works, in which the unreal is often made to seem real.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge effectively freed British (and other) poetry from its 18th century Neo-classical constraints, allowing the poetic (and receptive) imagination to roam free.

orks Cited

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Kublai Khan. In The Portable Coleridge, I.A. Richards

Ed.). New York: Penguin, 1987. 157-158.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. In The Portable Coleridge, I.A. Richards

Ed.). New York: Penguin, 1987. 80-105.

Moore, Christopher. "Introduction." Samuel Taylor Coleridge. New York:

Grammercy, 1996. 10.

Nokes, David. Raillery and Rage: A Study of Eighteenth Century Satire. New York: St. Martin's, 1987. 99.

Pope, Alexander, The Rape of the Lock. Representative Poetry Online. Retrieved September 22, 2005, from: http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:0gO7fceq2_

AJ:eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem1644.html+text+of+Pope%27s+The+Rape+of+the+Lock&hl=en&lr=&strip=1.html>.

Romanticism." ikipedia. 3 Apr. 2005. Retrieved September 22, 2005, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanticism.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)" Prentice Hall Literature:

Author Biographies. Retrieved September 22, 2005, from: http://www.phschool.com/atschool/literature/author_biographies/coleridge_…

Killing Shot to the Heart of the Rhetoric of the Pro-ar Movement:
The Man He Killed" by Thomas Hardy

Often, 'poetry' is narrowly though popularly defined as the use of heightened or self-consciously poetic language to deal with a particular theme that exists outside of the realm of everyday life. Poetry is seen as impractical, as opposed to an essay, for instance, a written medium that directly engages on an intellectual level with issues of importance. However, Thomas Hardy's poem "The Man He Killed" powerfully punctures such notions of poetry being removed from the language and the issues of real life. The poem, through the use of colloquial rather than metaphorical language, captures the voice of a soldier who has just killed a member of the opposing army. The soldier expresses an inner humanity that exists beyond the empty rhetoric of national propaganda. However, Hardy also makes use of irony in…

To recognize something as beautiful can be deemed as dirty. If every life and every twist in life has its own beauty, why is there such judgment that comes with each of those lives or twists in lives?
It has been believed that beauty has had to be neglected because it was regressive (i.e., considering the Oedipal model). To see something as beautiful can be viewed as base. Beauty has become something that can only be mentioned in certain situations -- at the right place, at the right time because of what we associate beauty with.

Beauty has often been symbolic of the solely aesthetic approach, which produces some sort of embellishment rather than any kind of sincere meaning. By developing the soul -- or the psyche, we discover the beauty of ourselves. When a beauty of the soul is cultivated, it will be far more beautiful than any kind of…

What many of these other people have to say about themselves and their situation an about the change of hear they may have now that they have heard Pippa sing could be fodder for a dramatic monologue in the way Browning would later shape that form.
The poem covers an entire day, New Year's Day, a day of remembrance and renewal, a day of change from one year to the next and from one state of mind to another. Significantly, then, Pippa's songs serve as a form of forced New Year's resolution for many of these people, making them rethink their lives and make a decision where before they could not. This story contrasts in some ways with that of Sebold and Ottima. The lovers now are Jules and Phene. Jules is the butt of a cruel joke by his fellow art students. He is inclined to leave Phene and…

Although there may be "bright April suns" spring also brings "the rain, the pulsing tide," (line 2). The narrator is profoundly sad at the love lost, symbolized by the passing of winter. At the same time, the narrator welcomes the turning tide of the seasons, the hope that lies embedded in each new blossom.
In fact, it seems that much time has passed since the death of the loved one because the narrator is not overly emotional or melodramatic in "Lonely is the Heart." The tone is of subdued sadness, a sadness that has mellowed and matured through time and wise reflection. From the first line, "How lonely is the heart that used to know," the narrator notes that a hole has been left in his or her heart (line 1). The narrator appears forever changed by having known the individual who passed away and has spent "endless nights" in…

Let the wenches dawdle in such dress

As they are used to wear, and let the boys

Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.

Let be finale of seem.

The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

The children gather around the curls of cream, to wonder at the miraculous substance and this ordinary, humble labor is made momentarily great by his trade, a European Emperor who can give and take at will, and thus also seems faintly sinister in his muscularity.

Stevens celebrated "the emergence from old ideologies in the form of what was rapidly becoming an aesthetic ideology," a form of "American home-grown" modernist abstraction that still had its roots in the concrete, the concrete nature of imagism, and also of plain, simple, profound American reality. Unlike other American modernists, like T.S. Eliot (who eventually became a British citizen and converted to Anglicanism) or Ezra Pound (a permanent expatriate) Stevens had no self-consciousness of not…

This suspicion becomes even more ironically clear as we read further. As we progress with the analysis of the protagonist's description of his love we find even more apparently negative comparisons. For example, he states that that in comparison to perfumes his "mistress reeks" and that music has a much more "pleasing sound" than her voice. He also states that she is no goddess in the lines,

I grant I never saw a goddess go;

My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground

However in the final couplet of the sonnet there is a dramatic change of tone and a radical change in our perception of the loved one. The final two lines read as follows.

And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare

As any she belied with false compare.

These two lines should be carefully considered as they ironically overturn the meaning and intention of the metaphorical comparisons that have been…

The things that ruins his life is his humanity and while this is a sad tale, it is one filled with knowledge for those who want to see how not to ruin one's life. It teaches us and one of the most resilient characteristics of man is that he can learn from his mistakes if he is courageous enough.
Plato considered drama and tragedy from another perspective, namely an isolated one. He wrote, "e would not have our guardians grow up amid images of moral deformity . . . until they silently gather a festering mass of corruption in their own soul" (Plato X) and he also expressed the notion that artists would better serve the world if they were "gifted to discern the true nature of the beautiful and graceful" (X). In Book X, he writes we should "remain firm in our conviction that hymns to the gods and…

" The speaker nevertheless remains full of hope and faith: "Yet hope I well, that when this storme is past / My Helice the lodestar of my lyfe / will shine again, and looke on me at last, / with louely light to cleare my cloudy grief." Until the storm passes, however, the speaker is doomed to "wander carefull comfortlesse, / in secret sorow and sad pensiuenesse." Furthermore, Helice also symbolizes the beloved, a romantic love interest the speaker is currently apart from.
Spenser employs a variety of poetic devices to convey the underlying meaning and tone of the poem. First, a sonnet is traditionally a form of love poetry, which is why Helice probably refers to a human being as well as to a star. As a sonnet, this poem is structured with fourteen lines and a distinct rhyming scheme: ABABBCBCCDCEE. As with most sonnets, the final two lines of…

However, in line with the Paz prompt at the outset of this discussion, Keats merely uses this tradition as a bridge on which to extend toward motivation on behalf of the evolving form. The subject matter is where this work takes a step toward modernity. The manner in which Keats describes the reality of dying is startling for its time primarily because it lacks religiosity. In describing death, the poet tells, "where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies; / here but to think is to be full of sorrow / and leaden-eyed despairs; / here beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, / or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow."
The notion of discussing death from a decidedly humanistic rather than spiritual perspective is more daring and innovative than perhaps we are won't to give credit for. It is remarkable that the poet would invert a steadfastly traditional form…

Night the Crystals Broke
Write where you got inspiration from?

The inspiration from this poem comes from my grandmother and her family, who lived through the pogroms and just before the Nazis took over Hungary. The title refers to the Kristallnacht, the event in which the Nazis burned synagogues and their religious items, and broke the windows. They also broke the windows of the local businesses. This poem also refers to the journey that was scary and arduous, over the Atlantic in the ship to Ellis Island. The statue at the end of the poem is the Statue of Liberty, which welcomed the "poor" and "hungry" masses, like my grandmother's people.

(2) Which author and poem did you refer to when writing this poem?

There is no one author or poem I referred to here. This is a completely original work. However, it is written in the form of a ballad. The ballad…

Irish Literature
Ireland has a rich literary tradition with a legacy of authors who have each contributed something to the creation of a cultural identity. For centuries, the authors of Ireland have utilized the beautiful landscape as a counterpoint to the violent political history of the Emerald Isle. Quite literally, the whole history of Ireland can be traced through the literature of the country's writers, both the good and the bad. This tradition lives on in contemporary Irish authors and poets. Two such poets, Ciaran Carson and Allan Gillis, have used their chosen literary type to illustrate their own understanding of Ireland's history. Through their poetry, readers can simultaneously travel back in time and also listen to the eye witness of Ireland's current historical moment. This can be traced through Carson's "Belfast Confetti" and Gillis's "The Ulster ay" in the poetic form, the techniques that the poets utilize, and then…

.....people the opportunity to see life from a new perspective, to be entertained, enlightened, and to experience some level of catharsis through engagement with a dramatic experience in reading. It can also provide a comedic experience or poke satirical fun at society.
The importance of reading has changed from in earlier eras in the sense that books are now old media (new media consists of digital technology) and we have a hundred other ways to entertain ourselves today aside from books. For this reason, I believe genres like flash fiction have emerged -- because the world is so fast-paced today as a result of technology that few have the time or inclination to sit down with a book and read it. Twitter-speak is now the preferred method of communication, and flash fiction fits that impulse better than the long narrative epic.

Thus, I think Clugston's quote is valid because perceptions regarding the…

Additionally, the power of this poem is that it is universal; rather than being about two specific lovers, it is about romance and indirect -- the trials and tribulations of what lovers might expect: "Love is not all; it is not meat nor drink." Directly after this we are given to a wild oceanic storm, and can picture a man in the sea who is desperately struggling to survive against the dramatic power of nature. As the waves take him down and he struggles to grab hold of something tangible, all he things of is love. "Nor yet a floating spar to men than sink, And rise and sink again." s love a blessing, or is love a curse? t is both -- it is neither.

Word choice is important in this poem to tell the reader that if one must define love only in the logical, one will fail. Millay…

Juliet's speeches to the Friar after learning that she must marry Paris in a week's time indicate this as she lists the horrors she would rather endure: "bid me leap... / From off the battlements of any tower...lurk / here serpents are; chain me with roaring bears..." (Riverside 1130, IV.i. 77-80). She continues in much the same vein, and this is not her only moment of such emotional extremity. To see this as comedic, it must be remembered that Juliet is only twelve years old, and Romeo probably around fourteen, and although people married younger in those days it is ridiculous to assume that they could possibly have had the same emotional maturity as other of Shakespeare's heroes and heroines.
In Baz Luhrmann's 1997 film version of Romeo and Juliet, certain aspects of the storyline are also ridiculously overblown. Luhrmann does not attempt to approach comedy in the tragic moments…

Let the unknowable touch the buckle of my spine.

Let the wind turn in the trees, and the mystery hidden in the dirt (Oliver).

Thus, the differences between the two narrators can be seen clearly through these two stanzas. hile Olds' narrator gives the impression of urgency, frustration, sadness, and overwhelming emotion, Oliver's narrator is calm, released, and accepting.

Thus, a comparison of Sharon Olds' "Little Summer Poem Touching The Subject Of Faith" and Mary Oliver's "The Daughter Goes To Camp" reveals that the poems have both similarities and difference. Both poems take place during summer, are narrated by a rather female voice, and discuss the subject of worry. Differences, however, suggest that the poems may, indeed, be antithesis of each other. hile an urgent, worried, narrator who is overcome with emotion narrates Olds' poem, Oliver's poem gives the reader a sense of calmness and acceptance. Thus, while one poem ends with a…

Renaissance Art
An Analysis of Love in the Renaissance Art of Sidney, Shakespeare, Hilliard and Holbein

If the purpose of art, as Aristotle states in the Poetics, is to imitate an action (whether in poetry or in painting), Renaissance art reflects an obsession with a particular action -- specifically, love and its many manifestations, whether eros, agape or philia. Love as a theme in 16th and 17th century poetry and art takes a variety of forms, from the sonnets of Shakespeare and Sidney to the miniature portraits of Hilliard and Holbein. Horace's famous observation, ut picture poesis, "as is poetry so is painting," helps explain the popularity of both. Indeed, as Rensselaer . Lee observes, the "sister arts as they were generally called…differed in means and manner of expression, but were considered almost identical in fundamental nature, in content, and in purpose" (Lee 196). In other words, the love sonnets of…

Oedipus Exemplifies or Refutes Aristotle's Definition of a Tragic Hero
Aristotle's, the Greek philosopher definition of a tragic hero and tragedy has been influential since he set these definitions down in The Poetics. These definitions were viewed as important during the Renaissance, when scores of writers shaped their writings on the works of the ancient Rome and Greece. Aristotle asserted that tragedies follow the descent of a tragic hero or a central character, from a noble and high position to a low one. A tragic hero posse some tragic flaws, which cause his, fall from fortune, or turnaround of fortune, and to some point, the tragic hero realizes that his own mistakes have caused the turnaround of his fortune. Aristotle also noted that the tragic fall of a hero or a central character in a play stirs up fear to the audience or the reader given that the audience sympathizes…

Hammad
Poetry is one of the most ancient of all the literary genres known to humanity, yet contemporary poems can still speak to occasions which grip the human consciousness in the here and now. I agree that this is manifested in Suheir Hammad's poem, in which she speaks directly to the reader about her experiences as an Arab-American in a post-9/11 world. Hammad's poetry is in the vernacular in the sense that it mimics human speech with its raw, angry quality, but poetic techniques are evident in the way that it uses repetition and colorful language.

"One more person ask me if I knew the hijackers.

One more motherfucker ask me what Navy my brother is in.

One more person assume no Arabs or Muslims were killed"

Poetry can rhyme and follow a strict format, such as a ballad or a villanelle, or it can pour out in uncontrolled free verse as in the case…

Native American Poetry Reading: Natalie Diaz and Orlando White
Native American culture has traditionally been an oral culture, and although the Native American poets Natalie Diaz and Orlando White are published authors, hearing them speak aloud provides the listener with a critical, additional appreciation of their art. The Aztec-American poet Natalie Diaz's work "I Lean Out the Window and She Nods Off in Bed, the Needle Gently Rocking on the Bedside Table" is a poem that must be heard aloud to be fully appreciated. The poem unfolds in a series of luxurious, sensuous images: "I've brushed glowing halves of avocados/lamping like bell-hipped women in ecstasy. / A wounded Saint Teresa sketched to each breast." The poem paints a picture in words of the woman who is being observed, and Diaz's emotion, the detail with which she describes the figure and the intensity of her inflection give additional weight to every image…