Unfair
Robert Francis was an American poet whose work is reminiscent of Robert Francis, his mentor. Francis' writing has often compared to other writers such as Frost, Emily Dickinson, and Henry David Thoreau. Although Francis's work has frequently been neglected and is "often excluded from major anthologies of American poetry," those that have read his work have praised him and his writing. In "Fair and Unfair," Francis comments on balance in nature and in society. Like Frost, Francis contends nature has the ability to provide guidance if only man is smart enough to observe it. In "Fair and Unfair," Francis is able to find balance through what is written and how it is written.
The poem is told from a first person, omniscient perspective and the narrator appears to be addressing the general public; it appears as though the narrator seeks to bring attention to how nature has become disregarded as…...
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Works Cited
Francis, Robert. "Fair and Unfair." Web. 7 November 2012.
Apparently Plath wrote the poem during her stay in the hospital, which can be a depressing place notwithstanding all the nurses and orderlies dressed in white. The appendectomy followed a miscarriage that Plath had suffered through, so given those realities in the poet's life -- especially for a woman to lose a child she had been carrying -- one can identify with the bleak nature of the poem. Confronted with the birth that turned out to be death, and then a painful appendectomy, the tulips are used as something of an abstraction and the redness of them gives her pain because it "corresponds" to the wound in her body from the surgery.
The opening stanza's first few lines seem rather peaceful and restful: "The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here / look how white everything is / How quiet, how snowed-in / I am learning peacefulness / lying…...
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Works Cited
Brower, Reuben a. (1963). The Poetry of Robert Frost: Constellations of Intention. New York:
Dobbs, Jeannine. 1977. "Viciousness in the Kitchen: Sylvia Plath's Domestic Poetry.
Modern Language Studies, 7(2).
Frost, Carol. (2012). Sincerity and inventions: On Robert Frost. Poets. Retrieved May 3,
Dickinson "I Felt a Funeral in My Brain"
Filled with words and phrases laden with imagery of death, drowning, and droning drums, Emily Dickinson's haunting poem "I Felt a Funeral in My Brain" provides insight into a fractured mind. The poet employs a plethora of poetic techniques such as alliteration, repetition, rhyme and rhythm to create mood and convey the central themes of emptiness and mental chaos. Alliteration and repetition reflect the motif of drums beating, while rhyming evokes the tonal qualities of the bells that the speaker hears. Therefore, in conjunction with the musical motifs in "I Felt a Funeral in My Brain," the poem is itself highly lyrical and rhythmic. The poet's use of repetition also creates the thematic tension much like the crescendo of a shaman's drums induces a trance. In addition to the poem's overt lyricism and musicality, Dickinson's work also includes powerful subtleties that contribute to…...
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.
Most individuals fail to appreciate life to the fullest because they concentrate on being remembered as some of the greatest humans who ever lives. This makes it difficult for them to enjoy the simple pleasures in life, considering that they waste most of their time trying to put across ideas that are appealing to the masses. While many did not manage to produce ideas that survived more than them, others succeeded and actually produced thinking that remained in society for a long period of time consequent to their death.
Creativity is generally regarded as one of the most important concepts in society, considering that it generally induces intense feelings in individuals. It is responsible for progress and for the fact that humanity managed to produce a series of ideas that dominated society's thinking through time. In order for someone to create a concept that will live longer than him or her,…...
The imagery is very clear and stark; the objects and people she recalls in this stanza are not pleasant or beautiful, much of it is ugly and disgusting, such as a worm that lived in a cat's ear, presumably ringworm, or some other type of disease. Perhaps, she is comparing love to all of these awful, drab things. In the places we could find love, such as in the everyday objects we enjoy, or the people who are supposed to bring us spiritual clarity or advice, such as the preacher, are disgusting, dangerous, and full of death. She certainly does not have a positive view of religion, or the representative of religion, as she describes the preacher with thin lips, who scuffles, and looks for scapegoats. She did not describe him as pious and sweet, as we might think the average preacher is, and for him to be coming by…...
To Autumn by John Keats is a testimonial of the omantic Era. The poem is filled with the importance of individual fulfillment at the behest of societal decline. The stoic nature of Keats's To Autumn is viewed by most as despairingly melancholic. However, when looking for hope one finds an eternal hopefulness amongst his opining. Autumn is used to symbolize the dichotomy in existence of life and death happening at once and forever. Keats sees in autumn the irony of life, and the contrast of humanity to the individual.
A general motif of the omantic era became the inevitable decline of humanity. Philosophers and writers alike viewed industrialism as an evil driving innocence further from the reach of the collective. In short, the precipitous pace of history was leaving innocence in its wake. More over, tramping it along the way. "Society embodied forces opposed to individual…...
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Reference Guide to English Literature. Ed. D.L. Kirkpatrick. 2nd ed. Chicago St. James Press, 1991
Hugo, Howard and Patricia Spacks, The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces, Vol.
2, W.W. Norton and Company Inc. 1995
Sheil, Andrew P.. Keats To Autumn, Explicator, Fall 99, Vol. 58 Issue 1, p15, 5p
Night funeral in Harlem: When the funeral was completely over and the boy's coffin was carried out to the hears, which drove too fast down the street, the streetlight even seemed like it was crying for the boy. He was well-loved by everyone, and their love made the funeral magnificent, even if things looked more poor.
Connotation: The meaning behind the literal sense of the poem seems to be that despite what hardships, disadvantages, and unfairness, human relationships are the really important things that make us rich. The words that Hughes uses juxtaposes symbols of money, greed, and death with love, friendship, and life -- insurance men with satin boxes, flowers and the greedy preacher man, etc. This implies that many people just don't understand what's really important.
Devices: As stated above, the rhyme and meter of the poem enhance the poem's varying meanings. In addition, the use of repetition drives…...
Often a poem's meaning is apparent from only the title. This is not the case with "The Memory of Elena," a poem written by Carolyn Forche in 1981. At first, the title suggests a poetic recollection of Elena, but as the poem develops, we see that it is at first a memory of a lunch with Elena and then Elena's own recollection of the tragic events that destroyed her life. The memories of the poet and Elena merge, becoming as one. The poet remembers her meal with Elena even as Elena recalls her last night with her husband years earlier in Buenos Aires. In the poem, Forche uses the simple symbolism of a meal shared together to bring to light how important remembrance is and how important it is to mourn and recognize the sacrifices others make on our behalf.
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,…...
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Works Cited
Klein, a.M. "Heirloom." From 15 Canadian Poets X 3. Edited by Gary Geddes. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003.
Layton, Irving. "Keine Lazarovitch: 1870-1959." From 15 Canadian Poets X 3. Edited by Gary Geddes. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003.
Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard" is a powerful poem that brings to light some very compelling ideas. One cannot read this poem but once and acquire a true understanding of its significance. Rather, one must read it twice, three times, even four times before grasping the various meanings hidden throughout the poem. To take this a step further, one should read the poem aloud, for Gray uses certain musical devices (i.e., tone and sound of sense) to further thrust his feelings upon his readers.
A poem written with tone and sound of sense is much more than mere words on paper; its meaning lies in how those words are spoken, and how the tone of one's voice implicates different emotions. Gray understood this idea. It was not only his brilliant words that conveyed his notion of death, but it was also how…...
Throughout the poem, the narrator discusses the geese's journey, and her envy for that journey. She wishes for something that could make her pulse pound in the same way that the geese are compelled to complete their journey. However, the meaning goes beyond the journey. The narrator conveys an intense feeling of loneliness. The narrator is solitary and makes it clear that she has no place to call her home. When one considers the fact that she points out that the geese are coupled in pairs, her loneliness becomes even more apparent.
Devices
Throughout the poem, the narrator employs the technique of repeating words. The geese call "each to each, each" and later she seeks a heartland that will "call me, call me." She repeats the idea of a group repetitively calling to one another with the idea of the heartland calling to her. She repeats other words in the poem,…...
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References
Faller, J. (Unk). Wanderer. Retrieved January 9, 2012 from Georgia High School
The fly is a gruesome image because flies gather around decaying corpses. However, while this image is startling, it is still shocking that the poet is not more in shock of dying, of being dead, or witnessing just a fly upon her death.
The poem consists of four stanzas, which include slant rhymes on the second and fourth lines. The lines alternate between six and eight syllables. Dashes in the poem force the reader to slow down and take time to read each phrase. The tone of the poem is lyrical but the message of it is somber. Dickinson uses a simile in the poem In the line, "The Stillness in the Room / as like the Stillness in the Air" (2-3). This image is important because it reveals the poet's notion that there is nothing special that awaits us after death. The still air is a stark contrast to…...
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Work Cited
Dickinson, Emily. "I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died." An Introduction to Literature. Ed. Sylvan
Barnet, et al. 13th ed. New York: Harper Collins. 2004.
He also loses his robe in the process; this increases his pathetic quality and allows for a mantle to be passed on to someone with twice the art.
Swift's Gulliver's Travels
5) Based on what you've read, is this really a work for children? What is going on here that might fly right over the heads of most young children? This book satirizes almost every institution of Swift's day, from the government to the Church. The fact the Lilliputians and Blefuscuans are fighting over which end of the egg to eat first is funy to children, but has deeper and somewhat sadder implications for adults.
6) Describe the narrator. What kind of character is he? What observational details does he choose to focus on? What, if anything, do these observations tell us about his own preoccupations or obsessions? Te things Gulliver notices seem to shift with each new country and his changing…...
The overall effect is like slogging through sucking mud -- there is a depressive inertia in the poem, as if one does not want to go on but must.
2) What does he mean by "blind skyscrapers"? What does this mean symbolically? The line before this one comments on the "neutral air" in New York (this is before they entered WWII), making the blind skyscrapers perhaps "blind" in the sense that they aren't taking sides; blind like Justice is blind. They are also blind to the evils being committed in Europe where war has been going on for awhile. All of this is symbolic; it is also possible that Auden is alluding to tall buildings of a bygone era, where towers and lighthouses -- the tallest building -- were built specifically to see.
3) in the seventh stanza... what is the "ethical life" of which he speaks in the first line?…...
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