Poetry Essays (Examples)

At this point, the emerging women's movement during the 1960s provided Rich with the ratification she needed. The movement articulated the very feelings of conflict she was experiencing on a personal, sexual and cultural level. This also allowed her to participate in a dialogue with her environment via the platform developed by the social movements arising during this time. Whereas her first poetry was therefore formal and unemotional, both her own development and that in the society of time allowed her poetry to become more uniquely her own than it ever was before. It is from this platform that Rich was able to begin writing poetry not only to voice her own experiences and feelings, but also to inspire others to abandon social complacency.

Another important development in Rich's life is her family's movement to New York in 1966. Here she began to teach in a remedial English program for…

Poetry captures both the personal and the political, and it allows for collective exploration of an internal psychic world. The poet shares an internal psychic world by clocking emotional forms into language. Poetry appeals to our need to understand ourselves and the universe by using an art form of metaphor and semantics in much the same way that a musician uses notes, chords, and harmonies. It is to this service of poetry that Lucille Clifton writes "The Lost Baby Poem." This poem reveals the confluence of the personal and the political in poetry.
Contemporary poetry is unique in that it does not confine itself to formal structures. hile poets are free to draw from the likes of the sonnet or the haiku, free verse has become and remains an equally valid form. "The Lost Baby Poem" is in free verse, and is therefore quintessentially modern. The poet does not consciously…

" (lines 20-21) the journalist, the activist... must be the observer and not make the news. Lastly the point-of-view of the unnamed dead, "enemy" whose ears were cut off to use an example of cruelty and to elicit fear, "Some of the ears on the floor/caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the ears on / the floor were pressed to the ground." (lines 31-33) Perhaps the ears were still listening to the messages of their cause, while others were either deaf to it, blocked by the arbitrary falling upon the floor or even listening for the future. hen one places an ear to the ground, he or she is listening intently and with every shred of his or her being for coming danger or change, yet the disembodied and now personified ears could not have realistically been listening, they were symbols in a small grocery sack and now…

Poetry is often used to express emotion at its most romantic and infatuated, but sometimes it is used to describe the pillars of life behind that romance -- the sexuality, insecurity, devotion, and fidelity. Dorianne Laux, Anne Bradstreet, and Barbara Greenberg explore their very different relationships through poetry, examining this causal underpinnings through poetry. Using careful word choice, expressive imagery, and specific audience, each poet expertly wields her tool to limn the life of the relationship inside the life of a partner.
Dorianne Laux treats the elaborate prose of "The Shipfitter's Wife" as a rosetta stone to the relationship she and her lover share as an escape from and culmination to the demands of the hard day's work that characterizes life tied directly to the ocean. Her meter is perpetually changing, but a constant alliteration and consonance carries the reader through the caesura distinguishing the stream of descriptions, one from…

Poetry by Knight and Groddeck
There are facets of Etheridge Knight's poem, "A asp oman Visits a Black Junkie in Prison" that both participate in a dying tradition as posited by Groddeck and which also attest to a variation of the notion of democracy -- which is far from ideal. In that respect, one can successfully defend the notion that this work of the author actually embraces more of the former concept than the latter. An examination of the language, its connotations, and the events that take place in the poem readily attest to this fact.

One of the aspects of this poem that is most enjoyable to the reader is the fact that it is highly realistic in its depiction of the conventional relations between African-Americans and Anglo-Saxons, particularly during the fiery time period in which the poet was composing this and other works that deal with a similar…

The horse race that Bukowski remarks upon as meaningless acts as a metaphor for life in general. We are all racing to win, but against the light of eternity, what does any of it mean. Are there any winners in life? This defeatist thinking is something everyone does; it is something that I have done, but when I step back and see that for myself the horse race is against myself and the race is one when I've reached my own goals. I'm young, however, and the weariness that I've experienced would most likely pale against what Bukowski alludes to throughout the poem in his experiences working in menial jobs for twenty years.
With the conversation between the motel clerk and Bukowski he remarks that he is leaving the horse race because he finds it boring to which the clerk responds, "If you think it's boring / out there," he…

For example, in the third stanza, he describes the dawn as " yellows bright as wood -columbine (8)
The metaphor used in the following line also attests to the beauty and mystery of nature

or was only a fuzzed moth in a flannel storm (9)

Note as well the use of alliteration in the above line, which adds to the harmony and depth of the metaphor. In his search for meaning through the encounter with nature the protagonist encounters a mysterious of communication between things in the wilds.

ut he found the mountain was clearly alive (10)

This aliveness and energy in nature is emphasized by words like "whizzing" and "booming," which communicates the intensity and the activity that is alive in nature. His vision of nature increases and includes mythological connotations; for example, the comparison of ospreys with Valkyries in line 16. Valkyries means "Choosers of the Slain" in…

Poetry during the 17th century often shared similar themes, narratives, and messages. These topics often revolved around concepts of innocence, romance, loss, temptation, and desire, especially when it came to courtship. Andrew Marvell, a prominent English metaphysical poet and politician, whose "To His Coy Mistress," thought to have been written during the 1650s, explores themes of innocence and temptation, especially in terms of courtship. Moreover, "To His Coy Mistress" can be categorized as a carpe diem poem, as the narrator attempts to convince his mistress to lower her inhibitions and give in to his desires. "To His Coy Mistress" explores the conflict the narrator perceives between innocence and temptation through a detailed use of imagery and metaphors that allow Marvell to elaborate on the narrator's urgency.
"To His Coy Mistress" can be classified as a carpe diem poem because of the demands the narrator makes of his mistress. In the…

A common fear is incompetence, resulting in often-heard comments such as 'I can't draw,' 'I can't sing,' and 'I can't dance.' These fears are, to some extent, rooted in the mistaken belief that skills in the arts are innate and inherited rather than sets of component skills that can be learned and integrated into a whole skill" (p. 147). Notwithstanding the adage concerning old dogs and new tricks, though, the elderly are certainly capable of acquiring the skills they need to actively participate in a therapeutic treatment setting using poetry as the focal point. The quality of the poetry involved, of course, is not the issue, but rather the manner in which these works are used. In this regard, Ziff and Beamish also note that, "The arts are powerful tools in counseling. Like many counseling techniques, the arts have the potential to remove barriers, create intimacy, and promote self-discovery" (p.…

This is evident from the first as the poet writes,
I am inside someone -- who hates me. I look out from his eyes (1-3).

This approach allows him to take a jaundiced view of himself and criticize his own shortcomings, as if they were those of someone else. He says he hates himself, meaning more that he hates some of the things he has done and that he may expect more from himself than he has been able to deliver. The way he pauses at the end of the first line emphasizes the next part of the sentence, that he is inside someone who hates him, meaning himself. He observes himself and does so as if observing the act of observing as well, creating a double distance between himself as poet and himself as man. The poet writes, "I look / out from his eyes" (2-3), again seeing himself…

Among the many other literary devices used in the poem is alliteration. Alliteration is used to add to the central meaning of the poem and in line three, for example, the alliteration " wanted wear" is intended to stress that it is important to take the route or road less traveled and not simply to follow the conventional choice. In the final line of the poem, the poet clearly states that taking an unusual and alternative route in life l has "made all the difference."

3. 'Shall I Compare Thee to a Summers Day' and Howard Moss' ironic takeoff.

This famous sonnet is in fact an extended metaphor. The poet compares his love to a summer's day. A central poetic device used in the poem is a form of wit known as a "conceit." This is where seemingly extravagant and exaggerated claims or views are espoused, which the poet justifies…

Poetry That Grabs Your Attention
I agree with you that poetry, by virtue of its compressed form, needs to grab the reader's attention immediately in the way that prose does not. While readers of a novel might be willing to read a book for thirty or so pages if they are assured that the action will eventually 'pick up,' a poem needs to use intense images and arresting language from the first line onward. Every word must be special, and perhaps this is even truer of poems like Dorianne Laux's poem "The Laundromat" which is about an apparently mundane subject. I agree with you that the Laux poem brings out the apparently animalistic, tumultuous side of this ordinary environment, and as a result of reading the poem, I will never look at the Laundromat in the same way.

I also agree with you that what is so wonderful about this…

Poetry is used by writers and authors to convey their feelings, beliefs, and thoughts in a concise manner. Throughout the ages, poetry has developed into an art form, one in which every country, culture, and generation has been able to contribute to it. American poets such as Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, and Langston Hughes have contributed to the genre, each in their respective time periods. Regardless of when these poets wrote their works, they continue to influence people today. Among the most recognizable pieces written by Whitman, Frost, and Hughes are "A noiseless patient spider," "Birches," and "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," respectively. Each poem differs in narrator and perspective, imagery, and message.
Walt Whitman's "A noiseless patient spider" is told from a first-person perspective. An unnamed narrator observes how a spider is isolated from its surroundings, but has the power to connect itself to these surroundings by launching "filament,…

.." The imagery of these two stanzas has a two-fold meaning. First of all, under the force of love, the self goes forth or withdraws into its own core again. Moreover, the alternating seasons of spring and winter hint to the life and death power that love holds over the poet. The force of love is thus pulsating with the rhythms of life itself.
Through the beauty and intensity of love, one can have a taste of death, intimated by the fragility of the poet's beloved, as well as a taste of immortality or infinite power. As the poet states, love is not comparable with any other power existent in the world: "nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals / the power of your intense fragility..." The poet's beloved, although very fragile, is able to compel and to fascinate the beholder: "[fragility] whose texture / compels me…

Poetry about struggle: The African-American experience
Poetry is a medium which naturally lends itself to dealing with the topic of oppression. It enables members of historically-marginalized groups, such as African-Americans, to express themselves in covert ways that challenge the dominant paradigms of the societies in which they live. Through the use of the techniques of metaphor and simile, symbolism, and other literary methods, authors such as Paul Lawrence Dunbar, the author of "e ear the Mask: and Langston Hughes, the author of "A Dream Deferred" could speak the unspoken truths about the racial obstacles which they were forced to deal with on a daily basis. The modern African-American poet Rita Dove's work is more elliptical and less explicitly referential to politics in her works like "Persephone, Falling -- " than that of Dunbar's and Hughes' but still touches on common themes of struggle, namely how one 'fall' from purity can…

For this, I found it to be quite interesting. With hints of rhyme, the progression of the tale expresses something dark, which is constantly eluded after the depiction of undesired ash. This poem altered in mere few, subtle absences and additions with the revised edition. Both poems provoke an interest as to what the main issue and dilemma remains for the poet. It progresses smoothly without escaping the vestige of mystery surrounding its focus on the remains on the buffet in a glass. The change incline to title made much more sense in the terms of the revision as compared to the first set of poems.
The third poem is perhaps, the most mysterious of the three. After several readings, my idea of the second subject aside from the narrator, I am unable to conclude the definition of their woes or where they inflict them. Three different guesses arise as…

Poetry, Drama, Aristotle, Sophocles's Oedipus
To Aristotle, Oedipus the King represented the embodiment of the perfect tragedy and the idealistic representation of a hero. He saw the renown figure of a hero battling mythical creatures transposed into the image of a hero battling with his own self, in terms of his existence and behaviour. He drew certain elements concerning tragedy in his work Poetics, where he also revealed the tragic hero as "an intermediate kind of personage, not pre-eminently virtuous and just," but subject of a personal judgement error that inevitably leads to his downfall. Aristotle's vision of a tragic hero is best understood when in context with Sophocle's Oedipus, where the elements of the Aristotelian tragic hero are present: hamartia, anagnorisis and peripeteia.

Hamartia

A. Translated as a "tragic flow," it is represented as a human weakness and in Oedipus, the protagonist hero is the subject of his own…

gallaudet.edu/englishworks/literature/poetry.html).
Other components which are very important in understanding poetry's power to express include "tone" (the poet's attitude toward the subject); "theme" (what statement is the poet making regarding the subject being embraced?); and "structure" (the format through which the poem is present).

The Unknown Citizen: ystan Hugh Auden, the author of the poem, was not at all an unknown citizen. He became a very well-known and highly respected poet, in fact. He was born in England in 1907, published his first book of poetry at age 21, and his first noted work, Poems, published in 1930, "established him as the leading voice of a new generation," according to Justin Erenkrantz, University of California at Irvine author and lecturer (www.erenkrantz.com).

Auden was once deeply steeped in socialism and Freudian psychoanalysis but after becoming an American citizen, "his central preoccupation became Christianity and the theology of modern Protestant theologians," Erenkrantz writes.…

The object, therefore, is never the same to different people. The clouds vary from moment to moment. The mountains assume different hues. The boys frolic and constantly change their motions. And man's mood shifts in transformation. It is the perceiver, therefore, that crafts the other in his or her own image, whilst the other remains static in its essence. Perception therefore is a masquerade. And poetry is a glorified and euphomeous masquerade of the substance.
"Deities had entered the field" They were costumed actors and "What we generally call "Indian music" was blaring from the open platform shed from which the epic would be narrated" but consumed actors become "princes and gods" and the music itself became an evocation of Caribbean mysteries. Walcott correctly observes, "this was not theater" but "faith." Poetry, therefore, takes on the trappings of a religious ritual. It is religion in that it clothes the mundane…

Poetry & Politics: Forché and Rich Introduction
Carolyn Forché and Adrienne Rich are two female American poets whose work integrated the personal and the political into the poetry. Forché, for example, was responsible for coining the phrase “poetry of witness,” as she felt her poems were testimonies to the political events that were oppressing people around the world (Poetry Foundation, 2018). Rich likewise made her poetry into a type of testimony, though her aim was different. Whereas Forché focused on issues like the civil war in El Salvador, Rich focused on the political situation at home and the rise of the Feminist Movement (Martin, 1984). This paper will show how Rich and Forché used their own personal experiences and observations to give voice to marginalized people, those oppressed both abroad and at home, and those in need of testimony.
The Poetry of Forché
One of Forché’s best known poems is…

The poem 1601 by Emily Dickinson opens up with the religious line ‘Of God we ask one favor’ which is a provocation of the supernatural into the poem. This gives the supernatural the supreme power and sets the tone for the poem, one that is spontaneous. The poem is short and the poet seems to speak with laconic conscious, submitting to the hands of God and fate. The persona tries to appease the presence of God in his life, submitting to the direction that the supernatural may initiate, asking forgiveness for all that he may have done, even those that are not known to him, all with the aim of enjoying the happiness that is in heaven, further described as the ‘magic prison’. There is use of consonance, which are words of similar consonants used at the end of every other line. Forgiven (line 2), hidden (line 4), prison (line…

Poetry Slam in the ClassroomPoetry Slam (2009) on Teacher Tube is an inspiring, energetic example of how ordinary activities that are part of student life can be the subject of poetry. The subject of the poem is gaming, and the student poet uses sound, body language, as well as the highly visual language of poetry to create a memorable piece of performative art. Showing this video in class might be one way to highlight students the a data-href=' nature ' class ='4' style ='color:#000;text-decoration: underline!important;' id='custom' target='_blank' href='https://www.paperdue.com/topic/nature-essays'>nature/a> of living poetry in their everyday lives. First, the teacher can brainstorm with students as a class about what types of subjects students associate with poetry. The teacher can write the list of subjects on the board. This is likely to be subjects like flowers, a data-href=' love,' class ='5' style ='color:#000;text-decoration: underline!important;' id='custom' target='_blank' href='https://www.paperdue.com/topic/love-essays'>love/a>, and special occasions like the presidential…

Melville and Clarel Introduction
Herman Melville is typically mostly known for his novel Moby-Dick, but the prose writer turned to poetry in his later years after his novels (following Moby-Dick) failed to be best-sellers. Poetry, it was thought, would be a creative outlet for him that would refresh his reading audience and spark new life into his readership and following. The attempt failed to produce much of anything in the way of literary recognition at the time. However, Melville produced the longest American epic poem ever written—Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land (1876), a work of 18,000 lines making it longer than Paradise Lost, the Iliad, or the Aeneid. The subject of Clarel is a metaphysical one, like so many of Melville’s works; even when rooted in a time and place with a specific conflict, plot and arc, his works tend to have a metaphysical backdrop that tells…

“not good enough not pretty enough not smart enough” are the words that echo and persist throughout Janice Mirikitani’s poem “Suicide Note.” The literal title of Mirikitani’s poem alerts the reader to the tragic ending, which the speaker claims is a result of her being psychologically abused by her parents. An angry tone pervades “Suicide Note,” laden with bitterness and sarcasm. The speaker even uses the word “bitter” to emphasize her sullen state of mind. The concrete details that stand out the most in “Suicide Note” include the use of repetition and the emphasis on the speaker’s gender. The speaker has internalized her parents’ disapproval, but it remains unclear whether her parents were earnestly pushing her to try harder or if they were, as she suggests, prejudicing her for her gender. “If only I were a son, shoulders broad...I would see the light in my mother’s eyes, or the golden pride reflected in…

The Politics of Twentieth Century Poetry: Amiri Baraka versus Allen Ginsberg
The poetry of Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and Allen Ginsberg are example of how serious literary works can be used as a vehicle of social change. Both poets wrote during tumultuous times in American history. Ginsberg is primarily associated with the Beat movement of American poetry, in which poets used sprawling, freeform verse to criticize American capitalism and American values. Baraka is associated with the American Civil Rights movement, particularly with its most radical branches, which emphasized an eviscerating critique of racial relations in a society which claimed to support equality. Both poets made frequent use of literary allusions and derived new and innovative structures for their poems, rather than relied upon past conventions. But Ginsberg was more apt to favor more ironic and satiric tones in his poetry, versus Baraka’s frequently foul-mouthed, angry takedowns of white privilege from…

Poetry Explication of Langston Hughes’ “Theme for English B” Langston Hughes himself is the narrator in his poem “Theme for English B” and the poem is composed of free verse without any respect to meter form or any clear focus on the development of particular stanzas, though the poem could be said to have 5 somewhat distinct sections or stanzas. The verse is unrhymed and the first section is brief, setting up the context for the poem: it is an English assignment from his instructor: “Go home and write / a page tonight. / And let that page come out of you— / Then, it will be true” (Hughes ll. 2-5). The second section picks up with Hughes wondering “who” he is and how he can know anything “true.” He describes his environment as though this were himself—he identifies his birthplace, the place where he lives now, and his route…

Outline Thesis: A poem about the ravages of time and the fallibility of human power, Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias” exemplifies the use of irony, imagery, and symbolism.
I. Context
A. Shelley wrote “Ozymandias” during the period known as Romanticism.
B. Context has an important role to play in poetry due to the cultural and historical implications of the symbols and imagery used in “Ozymandias.”
C. The Romantic era hearkened to an idealized past, with special affection for ancient civilizations, which is why Shelley uses imagery of ancient Egypt in “Ozymandias.”
II. Themes
A. Although brief, “Ozymandias” is a complex poem with interlocking and layered themes related to time, power, and identity.
B. One of the main themes of Shelley’s poem is the passage of time, and how people from different eras perceive reality differently.
C. Another main theme of “Ozymandias” is the fallibility and fleeting nature of authoritarian power in…

Sonia Sanchez Sonia Sanchez is a poet who specializes in giving focus to the black identity in works that combine socio-political elements with more maternal and matriarchal tones to effect a unique voice of blackness in America. Born in Alabama but raised in New York, Sonia incorporated the sounds and linguistic expressions of urban blacks in Harlem into her poetry. As an adult, she introduced Black Studies at her college where she was teaching. She was a follower of Malcolm X and a member of the Nation of Islam for a few years in the 1970s. However, her views on women’s rights conflicted with those of the Nation of Islam, so they parted ways (Daniel, 2002).
Sanchez viewed the socio-political struggle of blacks as integral to their stories, and she represented a type of militant blackness at times while also retaining her core maternal feelings and expressions. Her first book…

More a synopsis of emotional entanglement than a treatise on gender or sexuality, T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” encapsulates the ennui and numbness of the modern world. The speaker reveals gender only tacitly, as through two separate mentions of encroaching baldness. The choral incantations of the women who “come and go/ talking of Michelangelo” refer to a bourgeoisie existence and do not reveal gender discrimination (lines 14;36). The speaker’s frustrated sexuality comes more from a lack of intimacy or authenticity in human relationships than from a desire for power or dominance. Therefore, accusations of misogyny against Eliot are unfounded, at least with regards to the poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” Prufrock, the speaker in Eliot’s poem, comes across as bitter and disillusioned as he muses about love and physical intimacy in human relationships. He shifts back and forth between a familiar, second person…

In support of this, the speaker then relates "I'd like to get away from earth awhile/and then come back to it and begin over" (lines 48-49, p. ) which indicates that the speaker is tired of his loneliness and the desperation of life and wishes a fresh start.
In "Design," the speaker equates design with "a dimpled spider, fat and white" (line 1, p. ) which has managed to capture a white moth in its web. For the moth, such a fate is undoubtedly a desperate situation, for he is trapped in the web and cannot escape. A sense of utter loneliness is also apparent, for the moth is all alone within the spider's web, waiting to be devoured.

In "Directive," the narrator pines for simpler days and symbolizes this desire by comparing it to a "graveyard marble sculpture in the weather" (line 4, p. ). Also, the narrator supports…

Poetry in an Prosaic World:
Marianne Moore and Rafael Camp's Metapoetic Texts on the Form

Both the first lines of "Poetry" by Marianne Moore and the title of the poem "The Next Poem Could Be Your Last" by Rafael Campo startle the reader from a moment of literary complacency into a new point-of-view about the language. "I too dislike it," says Moore, regarding the subject of poetry. How could a poet dislike her media, the reader is suddenly provoked to ask? The words jolt the reader from the page and force a pause.

This sense of pausing in between thoughts is reinforced by the rendering of the poem itself, on the printed page spread out before the reader. Even the sight of the poem, therefore, causes a complementary questioning of Moore's assertion. The poem makes use of considerable white space, breaking up continuous lines of thought that in speech would…

3. Effects of sound -- The sound of the poem is evocative of action, words like BEHIND, JUMPED, SPIT, combining humor and active verbs.

4. Images -- The image makes the owl human, but part of nature; and an explanation for the natural world (rain) told in a way that children might think- cause and effect.

5. Emotions/Evocative, Alterative -- Teaches children that owls are wise, that nature is not meant to be captured; the poem is evocative and a journey.

6. Message -- a bit ecologic, owls part of nature, and not meant to be caught, but meant to be part of the world in which a child's imagination might inhabit.

Find and analyze TWO songs w/lyrics - these may be types or genre identified above, and/or holiday songs, hymns and spiritual songs, or patriotic. MAKE SURE THEY ARE TWO DIFFERENT GENRE. How might you present these as poetry…

Fern Hill (Dylan Thomas)
The "Poetry Explications" handout from UNC states that a poetry explication is a "relatively short analysis which describes the possible meanings and relationship of the words, images, and other small units that make up a poem."

The speaker in "Fern Hill" dramatically embraces memories from his childhood days at his uncle's farm, when the world was innocent; the second part brings out the speaker's loss of innocence and transition into manhood. This explication will identify and critique Thomas' tone, imagery (including metaphors) and expressive language (as it contributes to the power of the poem). ("Fern Hill" uses 6 verse paragraphs; there are 9 lines in each paragraph.)

"Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs / About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green / the night above the dingle starry / time let me hail and climb / golden…

The message of the poem is the longing for life and youth. In this case as well the images have a strong symbolical dimension, the light must be understood as life and youth, whereas the night as death and decay. Just as the title suggests it, there are people who will not easily accept their fate. "Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, / And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, / Do not go gentle into that good night" (Thomas, 10-12). Wild is a state of mind and the sun in flight is a symbol of freedom and creation. The imagery creates spiritual landscapes which unite the poet and the reader.
Shakespeare in his sonnet "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun" makes a clear opposition between elements of nature and parts of the body of the woman he loves. On the…

Poetry and Art of William Bake
Infant Sorrow Guide and Exposition of Illustration Used

Infant Sorrow was one of the poems written by William Blake. It talks of a child being born into a world they aren't familiar with. The poem captures the experience with simplicity, hope and anxiety. Blake pens how the child leaps into the world helpless and naked yet the welcoming world is one which is characterized with precarious situations and activities. Since the newborn is still naive, they don't know how to properly respond to this world. Feelings of helplessness befall upon the baby and the only consolation the baby gets is the opportunity to sulk on the mother's breast.

Blake employs various poetic devices to convey the meaning of the poem. With only two stanzas and eight lines, the poem uses very simple language. One of the devices employed is imagery. For example, Blake uses…

poetry, but it is only a chosen few who make it to the status of classic. Most poets who are considered classic artists write poems that call forth emotions of the reader through the use of their words. It has often been said that poets lead tragic lives, so that they can have something to write about, but this is not always the case. One of the most widely read and respected poets of all time, obert Frost, did not lead a poor and tortured life, yet he produced many of the poems that are considered classics in the history of the genre.
obert Frost provides evidence to the world that one does not have to live tragically to write well as long as he is able to empathize and feel the tragedies of others.

Background

obert Frost was born in 1874 in the city of San Francisco and lead…

In "An Agony. As Now," the poet is looking inside himself to find answers. The poem reads as a piece of literature that reveals the torment of the speaker. The poet is experiencing torment, among other things and, at times, we might even think he is past the brink of sanity. This mood is captured with incomplete sentences and awkward line breaks. The poet dissociates himself from the man in the mirror, which is our first clue that he might be unstable. It is not until later in the poem do we discover that the poet is speaking to himself. His conversation might seem aimless but he does at arrive at a conclusion after some examination. The speaker talks to himself, realizing that he has abandoned his soul. He lives in hate and pain where "the mind / silver spiraled whirled against the / sun, higher than even old men…

Though the reader understands that this is impossible as the beauty of youth cannot last forever, Shakespeare makes a point to remedy this. The speaker in the poem notes that his love's timelessness will be ensured through his actions of writing about her. No matter what happens to either of them through the course of their own lives, the beauty of the woman being written about and love that existed at the moment of the poem's writing will be carried unaltered through the ages to come -- which has proven true for centuries.
Ezra Tompkins' poem, "What is it that Compels," focuses on the themes of love, death, and the fleetingness of human existence. The poem centers upon the speaker after the death of his father and his observance of the way his mother is handling the death of her husband. Tompkins' poem deals with the hardships that come when…

Emily Dickinson
The poems of Emily Dickinson have been interpreted in many ways and often it is hard to separate the narrator of her works with the woman who wrote them. Dickinson lived such a small and sad little life that it is easy to see these feelings of loneliness and despair in the words she writes. She never married and spent her days isolated from her primarily Christian community for her family's beliefs in a less rigid and more spiritual idea of what God is and how they could communicate with Him. People have speculated about Dickinson's mental state. She became known for wearing only white and for living a reclusive existence until she finally died. Her poems came not from a desire to sell, but from her individual need to express herself. Emily Dickinson never intended to publish her poems. Rather the poems we have were found among…

The most important structural changes in this second draft are the removal of passive voice and the creation of a complete these, so the paragraph stands alone, as an introduction.
Draft 3

Poetry can be quickly developed and then easily smuggled out of any situation in the coat pocket of the writer or even written years later in memory of an event where life and/or liberty had been lost. This power is left the poet; to recount atrocity and build ideas associated with awareness for social change. The reader can then respond emotionally or even actively, by envisioning and challenging the ideas in the work or by taking action to change them in the future. It can remind the reader of a needed demand for social and political change and an expression of the debasement of individual rights, that can be applied to other situations. The images that poetry conveys…

Rabindranath Tagore
When we consider the career of Rabindranath Tagore as a "nationalist leader," it is slightly hard to find comparable figures elsewhere in world-history. Outside of India, Tagore is most famous as a poet: he won the 1913 Nobel Prize for Literature for his engali poetry collection Gitanjali. Perhaps the closest contemporary analogue to Tagore would be the Irish poet and "nationalist leader" W.. Yeats, who would win the Nobel Prize for Literature ten years after Tagore. Ironically enough, it was Yeats who introduced Tagore to Europe, quite literally -- the English translation of Gitanjali had an introduction by Yeats recommending Tagore in the highest possible terms to European readers. And Yeats was a "nationalist leader" in the same way as Tagore: Yeats, after all, believed that his own poetry and drama in favor of Irish independence had inspired the 1916 Irish "Easter Rebellion" against the ritish Empire, and…

Gende in Poety / Liteatue Lesson
Lesson Duation

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Rational: This is an intoduction to the gende issues which wee so pevalent in the Victoian ea, and a backdop to show why they still exist today and the ham they can inflict.

Syllabus Outcome: This pat of the lesson helps meet outcome 1, o the ability to intepet meanings and themes within texts. By using abstact thinking pocesses, the students will make connections between the texts pesented and show how they ae, o ae not elated. Accoding to the eseach, "A student esponds to and composes inceasingly sophisticated and sustained texts fo undestanding, intepetation, citical analysis and pleasue" (Boad of Studies fo NSW 2003 p 32).

Syllabus Content: This will help meet outcome 4, whee "a student selects and uses languages foms and featues, and stuctues of texts accoding to diffeent puposes, audiences and contexts, and descibes and explains thei…

poetry of Robert Frost and Carl Sandburg
Robert Frost and Carl Sandburg are both important poets in their own right. Although they both grew up in the same era, their poetry styles have many differences. The paper firstly states their different origin, history and poetic style. Secondly, it analyzes a selected major work - "The Road Not Taken" and "The Road and The End," - of Frost and Sandburg respectively. It is worth noticing that the chosen poetries of both poets contain many elements of similarity. This makes the chosen sample most suitable to distinguish the most minor, as well as the major differences in the poetic styles of the writers. Thus, in the paper, their lives and poetry styles are compared and contrasted using an example of their poetry.

About Robert Frost

As we read of Frost, we grow in awe of him - his thinking, his understanding, his…

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…

Motivation of Writing Poetry
According to Benjamin Saenz

Why Poetry: the Definition and Motivation of Writing Poetry According to Benjamin Saenz

In his narrative at the end of Elegies in Blue, Benjamin Saenz says that when he first started writing poetry, he was "learning a new language" (Saenz 1, 95), and in his essay, Meditations on Writing: A Novena, he says that "every language is a way of translating the world, and that no language translates the world without a particular bias" (Saenz 2, para. 31). The act of writing poetry, therefore, is an attempt to translate the world and one's experience within the world via a particular language; while the motivation to write poetry stems from an innate desire to communicate experience.

Whose experience? In Elegies Saenz endeavors to communicate his own experience, as well as that of his family and fellow Chicano countryman. "I live on the border,"…

Arabic Poetry
Arabic is among the youngest of the Semitic languages, emerging around the fourth century C.E. And rising to prominence only after the death of Muhammad. The spread of Islam enabled the growth of the Arabic language, giving rise to its first literary manifestations. The earliest forms of Arabic language poetry were oral, "memorized and handed down from one generation to another," only written towards the end of the seventh century including the pre-Islamic poems of the nomadic peoples ("Arabic Literature: Introduction," n.d.). Some pre-Islamic poets like Imru' al-Qays have reached "legendary" status (Farrin, 2011, p.2). The pre-Islamic stage of Arabic language poetry is roughly classified as lasting between 500 and 622 CE and the rise of Islam. Although pre-Islamic poetry is the poetry of the nomadic, tribal Semitic peoples, it is neither narrative nor epic in nature (Badawi, 1975). Instead, themes like death, honor, and heroism are explored…

Mongolian poet Galsan Tschinag, poetry is "an enormous counter-force against the oppressing weight of the material world." Robert Bly expresses a similar sentiment in "A Meditation on a Poem by Goethe." In "A Meditation on a Poem by Goethe," Bly reflects on Georg Groddeck's essay "Charakter and Typus," a psychoanalytic essay that exemplifies a new era of human consciousness, according to Bly. Bly notes that Goethe's poem "anderers Nachtlied II," and Groddeck's analysis of the poem, represent a shift away from what Tschinag calls "the oppressing weight of the material world." Goethe discusses the stillness and silence from a detached point-of-view, as if channeling a universal voice. In "anderers Nachtlied II," Goethe does not write to show the impact of nature on the narrator so much as he is "sending his energy, or it is being pulled out of him by the hills at evening," (Bly 280). Although the value…

Defense of Poetry," Mongolian poet Galsan Tschinag defines poetry as the "interrelation between Nature and Man." Although writing about completely different types of poetry and poets, Robert Bly comes to similar conclusions about the function of poetry. In "A Meditation on a Poem by Goethe," Bly states that during the early twentieth century, there was a crossroads in literature. The dominant form of literature was author- or poet-focused. ith the ego at the helm, the poems that were written promoted the inner psychological state of human beings. However, there is a different type of poetry, according to Bly. That type of poetry can be exemplified by the likes of Goethe, who imparted a sense of awe and wonder at nature. It is the feeling of being overwhelmed by nature that characterizes the second type of poetry, which is the same type of poetry that Tschinag describes in "Defense of Poetry."…

English/Poetry and Literature
Classics could turn in their graves if they heard how poetry sounds today. In fact, they would not even be able to understand it. They would not recognize it as poetry. If Michelangelo could see a Pollock painting what would his thoughts be about it? Would he be able to recognize it as a painting? Most certainly not. Considering this chain of logical thinking, the same may be applied to poetry. Different times ask for different forms. Language is a living entity, constantly changing and adapting. Poetry, the most personal form of expression, puts the inside out in a way that allows the author to call it art. William Wordsworth an Shakespeare have created poems and sonnets obeying the rules of classic poetry, sonnets that are a testimony of their creative genius. They sound absolutely wonderful as long as the reader or listener is ware of the…

Frost's Poetry And Landscape
The Rise of Modernist Poetry

Between the years of 1912 and 1914 the entire temper of the American arts changed. America's cultural coming-of-age occurred and writing in the U.S. moved from a period entitled traditional to modernized. It seems as though everywhere, in that Year of 1913, barriers went down and People reached each other who had never been in touch before; there were all sorts of new ways to communicate as well as new communications. The new spirit was abroad and swept us all together. These changes engaged an America of rising intellectual opportunities and intensifying artistic preoccupation.

With the changing of the century, the old styles were considered increasingly obsolete, and the greatest impact was on American arts. The changes went deep, suggesting ending the narrowness that had seemed to limit the free development of American culture for so long. That mood was not…

American Poetry
Michael igglesworth, Edward Taylor, and Anne Bradstreet can all be classified as American Puritan poets. God makes an appearance in nearly every poem penned by each of these three writers. Yet the poetry of igglesworth, Taylor, and Bradstreet differs significantly as well. Bradstreet exhibits neoclassical trends: especially in poems such as "The Prologue," in which the poet refers directly to the Greeks: "shure the ancient Greeks were far more mild." In "The Prologue," Bradstreet also mentions figures from Greek mythology and literature like Calliope. Edward Taylor's poetry is far more Christian in nature and imagery. The first line of "Upon edlock, and Death of Children" is "A Curious Knot God made in Paradise." Equally as religious are the poems of Michael igglesworth, who makes ample Biblical references in his poem "The Day of Doom." igglesworth, Taylor, and Bradstreet represent the common elements in Puritan writing, but each presents…

Imagist poetry is in many ways the essence of what poetry strives to be -- it is concise, concrete, and creates a visual image through carefully selected language. As a poetic movement, Imagism began around 1912 with poetry by Amy Lowell, Ezra Pound, and Hilda Doolittle (usually written H.D.), among others, and the movement carried on into the twentieth century to produce some very popular and highly expressive works. The Imagists produced four anthologies of their work -- Des Imagistes, 1914; Some Imagists, 1915, 1916, 1917; and the magazines Poetry (from 1912) and The Egoist (from 1914); and these included the work of a dozen or more Imagist poets. It has been some time since a strong collection of Imagist poetry has been made, and this anthology is intended to present some of the works that help define this poetic movement.
The approach is largely chronological, carrying the reader from…

Irish poetry is unavoidably shaped by its historical, social, and political context. The Troubles have infiltrated poets throughout several generations, permitting unique artistic insight into the conflict. Younger poets writing about The Troubles in Northern Ireland understandably have a different point-of-view than poets from a previous generation. Their personal experiences were different, and the historical events they witnessed or were surrounded by in the media likewise differed from their predecessors. Yet there are also shared themes that provide the inextricable cultural links between all poets of Northern Ireland. Some poets, like Seamus Heaney, rely heavily on literalism and a direct political commentary in addition to poetic tropes like symbols of colonization. Likewise, Derek Mahon does not hold back in terms of diction related to The Troubles. hen examining poets from an earlier generation, who wrote during some of the most violent occasions of The Troubles, allusions and metaphors seem to…

"The Sleeping Beauty" by Lord Alfred Tennyson uses several narrative techniques. The first of which can be seen in the second line of the first stanza. "She lying on her couch alone" (). The phrase uses incorrect English to change the tone of the poem. Although the poem does not try to establish a rhyming pattern in the BC in the first stanza with "grown" and "form," the two words sound well together as though they rhyme. The pattern however is ABABCDCD with BC sounding like they should rhyme. All the "slumberous light" uses personification to describe light.

Many of the lines within the first stanza are filled with imagery of this woman: "A braid of pearl" and "rounded curl." She is so beautiful and magnificent that even the smallest things she does are explained or described on a grand scale. She is the epitome of beauty and wears the…

Penetrating Poetry:
An Examination of Cultural Poetry

Every country, culture, and time period has had poets living within their society to help record the very essence of which their people live. These poets, known for expressing raw emotion, have become particularly talented at expressing their experiences. From Australia to England, Japan to Pakistan, during the ninth century or the twentieth, poets have learned to capture their true meaning of the word "love."

Christopher Brennan was an Australian poet, librarian, and lecturer born 1870, passing away in 1932. Among the many famous pieces he wrote was, "Because She Would Ask Me Why I Love Her." Brennan expresses romantic frustration and dissatisfaction with the question of why he loves his significant other. When questioned, he replies to her, vividly and picturesque: Do not ask why I love you, or if I love you (Brennan, 2010). He claims that his love will last…

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…

It also fosters their language development. The poems are categorized according to the topics like self, animals, seasons, seashore, bedtime, and adventure which can become a springboard for introducing certain topics. This way, the book becomes ideal for a thematic curriculum. It also contains foreign and classic poems like Shakespeare's "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer Day" which may help children appreciates poetry at an early age.
From an adult's perspective, I like the book since it contains a lot of my well-liked poems like "The Owl and the *****cat," "Psalm 23," "The Road Not Taken," "Keep a Poem in Your Pocket" among others. From an early childhood educator's point-of-view, the book is more apt for early graders than preschoolers. It may be sturdy but the book is relatively bulky and heavy for a preschooler's hands to handle. The children may also not appreciate the small font size of…

American poetry is dependent on Walt Whitman's arguments about democracy and the political role of the poet. This is a very interesting proposition, one I had not considered before, and I was excited to read the essay and analyze the arguments made by the author to substantiate the claims that Whitman's views on democracy and the political role of a poet need to be understood in order to comprehend contemporary American poetry.
While I was initially drawn to the subject because I believed it was going to focus on Whitman's definition of democracy and the political role of the poet, I was unsure about what the paper was going to be about because there did not appear to be a clearly defined thesis. I thought perhaps the author was going to explain how creativity is a political act because the author argued that creativity requires that an individual open up…

This is why wars are fought with bloodletting, why torture takes place, and why neither violence nor war is limited to the physical carnage of the battlefield.
Nordstrom 59)

The early death of Clifton's mother, as a result of having to powerlessly rely on a liar and a letch who could not provide for his family, is the ultimate example of self-inflicted violence, as is Gillman's character resorting to an expression of madness to resist her powerlessness. It was only slightly more "appropriate" for a women to realize madness as it was for her to throw herself from a three story window.

orks Cited

Clifton, Lucille "forgiving my father" in Schilb, John & Clifford, John. Making Literature Matter 3rd Edition. New York: Bedford, St. Martin's, 2005, 314.

Gelfant, Blanche H., and Lawrence Graver, eds. The Columbia Companion to the Twentieth-Century American Short Story. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000.

Gillman,…

Romantic ideal in the poetry of William Blake, William Wordsworth and Walt Whitman shares the attitude that the most worthy part of human existence lies in simplicity and deep emotion rather than rational thought. Romanticism is based upon a movement away from the rationality of Enlightenment and the wealth-driven society inspired by Industrialism. This ideal is reflected in the work of the poets mentioned above. To demonstrate this, "The Chimney weeper," "Ode: Imitations of Immortality" and "I ing the Body Electric" from each respective poet are considered.
William Blake

Blake's poetry emphasizes the evils of existing power systems within society, and how these are used to oppress the poor and powerless. This is shown in his poem "The Chimney weeper." The little chimney sweeper is representative of the poor and oppressed suffering under the current systems of power. The parents and the church are images reflecting the oppressive forces. The…