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I found a dimpled spider, fat and white
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
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Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth--
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Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth--
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It’s no coincidence that all three of these organisms (the spider, the flower, and now the moth) are described as white . Frost may be telling us that the cruel predator (spider), the pitiful prey (moth), and the beautiful healer (flower) are all connected in a web of life and may have more in common than they seem.
Here, Frost is also using juxtaposition by describing satin cloth–something smooth and silky–as “rigid”.
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Robert Frost
|
Design
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Thy various works, imperial queen, we see,
How bright their forms! how deck'd with pomp by thee!
Thy wond'rous acts in beauteous order stand,
And all attest how potent is thine hand.
From Helicon's refulgent heights attend,
Ye sacred choir, and my attempts befriend:
To tell her glories with a faithful tongue,
Ye blooming graces, triumph in my song.
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Now here, now there, the roving Fancy flies,
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Till some lov'd object strikes her wand'ring eyes,
Whose silken fetters all the senses bind,
And soft captivity involves the mind.
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Here and throughout the poem, “Fancy” means “The mental faculty through which whims, visions, and fantasies are summoned up” (American Heritage Dictionary). Wheatley personifies Fancy and depicts her flying around, as in the old expression “flights of fancy.”
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Phillis Wheatley
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On Imagination
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Do you need to hold a leash to be a lady?
I know you're gonna make it, make it on your own
Why don't you try to forget him?
Just open up your dainty little hand
You know this life is filled with many sweet companions
Many satisfying one-night stands
Do you want to be the ditch around a tower?
Do you want to be the moonlight in his cave?
Do you want to give your blessing to his power
As he goes whistlin' past his daddy, past his daddy's grave?
I'd like to take you to the ceremony
Well, that is if I remember the way
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You see Jack and Jill, they're gotta join their misery
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And I'm afraid it's time for everyone to pray
You can see they've finally taken cover
They're willing, yeah they're willing to obey
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“Jack and Jill” is a well-known English nursery rhyme dating back to the 18th century:
Jack and Jill Went up the hill To fetch a pail of water Jack fell down And broke his crown, And Jill came tumbling after.
So Cohen is quite right in describing Jack and Jill’s life as “misery”. Even more since R. D. Laing used the two names for a very popular book of poems, “Knots” (1970) where Jack and Jill get entangeld in ever more complex and complicated misunderstandings.
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Leonard Cohen
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Why Dont You Try?
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I've got the children to tend
The clothes to mend
The floor to mop
The food to shop
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Then the chicken to fry
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The baby to dry
I got company to feed
The garden to weed
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There are many clues to the setting of ‘Woman Work’ within the poem itself. For example, the protagonist says that she will prepare fried chicken for the family’s next meal. “Deep South Fried chicken” is a dish common in the southern states of America.
When it was introduced to the American South, fried chicken became a common staple. Later, as the slave trade led to Africans being brought to work on southern plantations, the slaves who became cooks incorporated seasonings and spices that were absent in traditional Scottish cuisine, enriching the flavor. Since most slaves were unable to raise expensive meats, but generally allowed to keep chickens, frying chicken on special occasions continued in the African American communities of the South.
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Maya Angelou
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Woman Work
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Much Madness is divinest Sense -
To a discerning Eye -
Much Sense - the starkest Madness -
`Tis the Majority
In this, as All, prevail -
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Assent - and you are sane -
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Demur - you're straightway dangerous -
And handled with a Chain -
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Agree with the majority, and you will be deemed sane by most.
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Emily Dickinson
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Much Madness is divinest Sense
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How many slams in an old screen door?
Depends how loud you shut it.
How many slices in a bread?
Depends how thin you cut it.
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How much good inside a day?
Depends how good you live 'em.
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How much love inside a friend?
Depends how much you give 'em.
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You can decide how good your day or life is. If you think positively and think happy thoughts, you can easily have a good day. If you think nothing but negative thoughts, chances are you will have a bad day. It’s all about perspective, a subject Silverstein often explores in his poetry.
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Shel Silverstein
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How Many How Much
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Your friend is your needs answered.
He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.
And he is your board and your fireside.
For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.
When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the "nay" in your own mind, nor do you withhold the "ay."
And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart;
For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed.
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When you part from your friend, you grieve not;
For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.
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And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.
For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught.
And let your best be for your friend.
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Just as you cannot see the totality of the mountain save for when you are off it, so too is it impossible to comprehend that which you love most in a friend save in their absence
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Kahlil Gibran
|
On Friendship
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And are you still thinking of
All of those pretty rhymes
And perfect crimes
Like you used to love
And if you're still alive
When you're twenty five
Should I kill you like you asked me to
If you're still alive
When you're twenty five
Would I kill you I know you told me to
But I really don't want to
I remember every single thing you said to me
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You played the man and I was Calvary
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And you said, ah you said
New love grows on trees
New love grows on trees
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In You’re My Waterloo Peter says he’ll be Carl’s “Calvary” . Carl also describes himself as being “the man” in Bucket Shop
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Pete Doherty
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New Love Grows On Trees
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Since you ask, most days I cannot remember.
I walk in my clothing, unmarked by that voyage.
Then the almost unnameable lust returns.
Even then I have nothing against life.
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I know well the grass blades you mention,
the furniture you have placed under the sun.
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But suicides have a special language.
Like carpenters they want to know which tools.
They never ask why build.
|
She is able to see positive qualities in things surrounding her, even if she herself cannot feel positive about them.
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Anne Sexton
|
Wanting To Die
|
While
Raging inside his 6-foot-two frame because he couldn't
Understand what was attacking him from within
My mother, poor fish
Wanting to be happy, beaten two or three times a
Week, telling me to be happy: "Henry, smile!
Why don't you ever smile?"
And then she would smile, to show me how, and it was the
Saddest smile I ever saw
One day the goldfish died, all five of them
They floated on the water, on their sides, their
Eyes still open
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And when my father got home he threw them to the cat
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There on the kitchen floor and we watched as my mother
Smiled
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The death meant little to him. There was no remorse. No emotion found in his response.
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Charles Bukowski
|
A smile to remember
|
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.
In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Polack friend
Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root.
I never could talk to you.
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The tongue stuck in my jaw.
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It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich.
I could hardly speak.
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Plath laments that she could never talk to her father, because her tongue was always stuck. She continues to say that the area where her tongue got stuck was like a barbed wire snare. Perhaps her father made her nervous or scared, or she’s not great at speaking German. She continues to proclaim that her tongue got stuck so bad that she could only stammer “Ich, ich, ich,” which is the German word for “I.”
Barbed wire would rip a tongue to shreds
|
Sylvia Plath
|
Daddy
|
From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
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And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
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Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.
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The Ball Turret on the B-17, B-24, and PBY-1 were so small that the gunner had to curl into an awkward fetal position to sit inside it, with his back propped against one wall, laying the guns by a sight mounted between his feet. The Ball turret is spherical and mounted ventrally, and the interior of these aircraft were unpressurized.
So this poor fellow is curled up inside the rotund belly of a bomber, wrapped in electrically-heated leather and wool against the freezing cold.
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Randall Jarrell
|
The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
|
null |
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
|
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
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As the speaker is walking through a wood full of yellow fall trees, the road divides. Which path should he take and where will it take him? What if he chooses wrong? Existential dread — that is the initial confusion in the face of an apparently meaningless or absurd world!
This famous opening line contains possible echoes of other classic poetry. Frost may be thinking of Shakespeare’s Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 3) , in which the title character complains: “My way of life / Is fall’n into the sere, the yellow leaf.” If so, that would suggest that this is a midlife poem, whose speaker is past the age (the spring/summer of youth) at which he can casually “start over” on new paths. Frost may also have in mind the opening of Dante’s Inferno , which describes the original midlife crisis:
Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark, For the straightforward pathway had been lost. (Henry Longfellow trans.)
(For a similar allusion, see Frost’s “Birches.” )
Alternatively, early spring buds are usually yellow-green, a sign that this is a poem about spring and starting out on life’s journey, rather than middle age. It is open to interpretation.
This opening line alludes to the many metaphorical “roads” a person takes in life, with roads symbolizing the various choices a person faces and makes. At the time of making a choice, one may not know what the long-term implications may be, but philosophically, every decision on which “road” someone decides to take could inevitably play a role in the overall direction of ones' life.
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Robert Frost
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The Road Not Taken
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Now in Vienna there's ten pretty women
There's a shoulder where Death comes to cry
There's a lobby with nine hundred windows
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There's a tree where the doves go to die
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There's a piece that was torn from the morning
And it hangs in the Gallery of Frost
Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay
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Do doves die in a tree? Doubtful. In Leonard Cohen’s hands the place that should serve as a resting, nesting and safe place becomes the place for death. Another way to present contrasting elements.
After the expression of the sadness of death as it craves innocence and the aforementioned awakening of self-consciousness, we find doves (the birds of peace) going to die.
This rather bleak line brings us to the hard reality of life, that peace is only fleetingly, if ever, truly available once we’ve awoken from innocence.
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Leonard Cohen
|
Take This Waltz
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We is gathahed hyeah, my brothahs,
In dis howlin' wildaness,
Fu' to speak some words of comfo't
To each othah in distress.
An' we chooses fu' ouah subjic'
Dis - we'll 'splain it by an' by;
'An' de Lawd said, ' Moses, Moses,'
An' de man said, 'Hyeah am I.''
Now ole Pher'oh, down in Egypt,
Was de wuss man evah bo'n,
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An' he had de Hebrew chillun
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Down dah wukin' in his co'n;
'T well de Lawd got tiahed o' his foolin',
An' sez he: 'I'll let him know -
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In the poem, he is using African American Vernacular English to say children.
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Paul Laurence Dunbar
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An Ante-Bellum Sermon
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We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.
Why should the world be over-wise
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.
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We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
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To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
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This line expresses internal turmoil felt among the speaker and the oppressed group. It is expressed through the juxtaposition of “smile” and “cries”. However, what is also important here is the possession that is established. The speaker possesses the smiles and cries, but there is no ownership claimed over Christ.
If we interpret this poem as African Americans being those wearing the mask, the omission of “our” before Christ is important because this Christ is the same Christ those who are inflicting this turmoil (white society) acknowledge. He establishes a commonality between the oppressor and oppressed, establishing his humanity.
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Paul Laurence Dunbar
|
We Wear the Mask
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Fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal.
Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers,
Hands cupped around their mouths.
"Absolutely," they shout
To Duns Scotus and James Baldwin.
"Yes." "Bull's-eye." "My man!"
Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation points
Rain down along the sidelines.
And if you have managed to graduate from college
Without ever having written "Man vs. Nature"
In a margin, perhaps now
Is the time to take one step forward.
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We have all seized the white perimeter as our own
And reached for a pen if only to show
We did not just laze in an armchair turning pages;
We pressed a thought into the wayside,
Planted an impression along the verge.
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Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria
Jotted along the borders of the Gospels
Brief asides about the pains of copying,
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In this stanza, the poet includes a community of active readers in his ode to marginalia. These are active readers who engage the works under study with their own thoughts–just like the communities of Rap Genius and Poetry Genius! You are right now experiencing Marginalia 2.0 !
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Billy Collins
|
Marginalia
|
In that ripe nude with head
reared
Into a realm of swords, her purple shadow
Bursting on the winter of the world
From whiteness that cries defiance to the snow.
A boy runs with a dog before the sun, straddling
Spontaneities that form their independent orbits,
Their own perennials of light
In the valley where you live
(called Brandywine).
I have seen the apples there that toss you secrets,-
Beloved apples of seasonable madness
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That feed your inquiries with aerial wine.
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Put them again beside a pitcher with a knife.
And poise them full and ready for explosion-
The apples, Bill, the apples!
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Apples can be made into wine too!
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Hart Crane
|
Sunday Morning Apples
|
I want to make this a special tribute
To a family that contradicts the concepts
Heard the rules, but wouldn't accept
And womenfolk raised me
And I was full-grown before I knew
I came from a broken home
|
Sent to live with my grandma down south
|
When my uncles was leaving
And my grandfather had just left for heaven
They said and as every-ologist would certainly note
|
He was sent to Jackson, Tennessee. He thought of this town as home, rather than the harsh and cold city of New York that he later lived at.
Jackson was 70 miles east of Memphis. It had been a center for cotton production (and thus slavery). The town enacted laws that restricted voting rights for blacks. Perhaps this influenced lyrical/political agenda.
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Gil Scott-Heron
|
On Coming From a Broken Home Pt. 1
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I know what the caged bird feels!
I know why the caged bird beats his wing
Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;
For he must fly back to his perch and cling
When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;
And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars
And they pulse again with a keener sting —
I know why he beats his wing!
I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,—
When he beats his bars and he would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
|
But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core,
|
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings —
I know why the caged bird sings!
|
The idea that song is a prayer and message misunderstood by many allows the speaker to link the caged bird singing to enslaved people producing spirituals or the blues .
|
Paul Laurence Dunbar
|
Sympathy
|
Their heaped-up basket teased me like a jeer;
Sweet-voiced they sang beneath the sunset sky,
Their mother's home was near.
Plump Gertrude passed me with her basket full,
A stronger hand than hers helped it along;
A voice talked with her through the shadows cool
More sweet to me than song.
Ah, Willie, Willie, was my love less worth
Than apples with their green leaves piled above?
I counted rosiest apples on the earth
Of far less worth than love.
So once it was with me you stooped to talk
|
Laughing and listening in this very lane:
|
To think that by this way we used to walk
We shall not walk again!
I let my neighbors pass me, ones and twos
|
Rossetti’s use of strong, musical alliteration here helps illustrate the speaker’s memory of the former harmony of her relationship with Willie.
|
Christina Rossetti
|
An Apple Gathering
|
Awake.
Shake dreams from your hair
my pretty child, my sweet one.
Choose the day and choose the sign of your day
the day's divinity
First thing you see.
A vast radiant beach and cooled jeweled moon
Couples naked race down by its quiet side
And we laugh like soft, mad children
Smug in the wooly cotton brains of infancy
The music and voices are all around us.
|
Choose they croon the Ancient Ones
|
the time has come again
choose now, they croon
beneath the moon
|
The Ancient Ones, in this particular case may refer to the Indian culture, and the Shaman figure. They tell you to “choose” as a reference to experiment, to choose freedom over limitation.
|
Jim Morrison
|
The Ghost Song
|
I asked her to hold me, I said, "Lady, unfold me,"
But she scorned me and she told me
I was dead and I could never return
Well, I argued all night like so many have before
Saying, "Whatever you give me, I seem to need so much more."
Then she pointed at me where I kneeled on her floor
She said, "Don't try to use me or slyly refuse me
Just win me or lose me
It is this that the darkness is for."
I cried, "Oh, Lady Midnight, I fear that you grow old
The stars eat your body and the wind makes you cold."
"If we cry now," she said, "it will just be ignored."
|
So I walked through the morning, sweet early morning
|
I could hear my lady calling
"You've won me, you've won me, my Lord
You've won me, you've won me, my Lord
|
Instead of continued moaning and lamenting the narrator now turns to the “sweet early morning”, a symbol for recreation, a new beginning. To let loose of the Lady was the paradox solution: He has won her because he was ready to give her up.
|
Leonard Cohen
|
Lady Midnight
|
My prime of youth is but a frost of cares,
My feast of joy is but a dish of pain,
My crop of corn is but a field of tares,
And all my good is but vain hope of gain.
The day is gone and I yet I saw no sun,
|
And now I live, and now my life is done.
|
The spring is past, and yet it hath not sprung,
The fruit is dead, and yet the leaves are green,
My youth is gone, and yet I am but young,
|
Time is now blurred. His life and his death are conflated; he sees himself dead and alive at the same time. Note also the rhythmic pace of this line, with ‘live’ followed by the echoing ‘life’.
|
Chidiock Tichborne
|
Tichbornes Elegy
|
Here, where the world is quiet;
Here, where all trouble seems
Dead winds' and spent waves' riot
In doubtful dreams of dreams;
I watch the green field growing
For reaping folk and sowing,
For harvest-time and mowing,
|
A sleepy world of streams.
|
I am tired of tears and laughter,
And men that laugh and weep;
Of what may come hereafter
|
If the ‘Here’ of the first line does in fact designate the Greek underworld, then the ‘streams’ are its famed five rivers: Lethe, Cocytus, Styx, Acheron, and Phlegethon.
These were familiar to the Victorians, or at least those of them who couldn’t read the classics, chiefly through Dante or translations of Dante.
|
Algernon Charles Swinburne
|
The Garden Of Proserpine
|
Others abide our question. Thou art free.
|
We ask and ask: Thou smilest and art still,
|
Out-topping knowledge. For the loftiest hill
That to the stars uncrowns his majesty,
Planting his stedfast footsteps in the sea,
|
While people search for answers about Shakespeare, who he was, and the meanings behind his works, his knowledge is at rest with him.
|
Matthew Arnold
|
Shakespeare
|
When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy
And the dimpling stream runs laughing by
When the air does laugh with our merry wit
And the green hill laughs with the noise of it
|
When the meadows laugh with lively green
|
And the grasshopper laughs in the merry scene
When Mary and Susan and Emily
With their sweet round mouths sing "Ha, ha he!"
|
The second stanza continues the patern of the first. Note Blake’s use of soft alliterative ‘l’s. All the senses are appealed to throughout the poem. In this line the colour 'green’ is described as ‘lively’ — an example of synaesthesia , in which movement and colour are descriptively merged.
|
William Blake
|
Laughing Song
|
There I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroider'd all with leaves of myrtle;
A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair linèd slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold;
A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs;
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love.
|
Thy silver dishes for thy meat
As precious as the gods do eat,
Shall on an ivory table be
|
Prepared each day for thee and me.
The shepherd swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May-morning:
|
Just as the meter in this poem is a bit too perfect, so too is the imagery– even if this is an idealized rural setting, this stuff is totally out of place. Ivory tables? Give me a break.
|
Christopher Marlowe
|
The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
|
Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
|
There is no happiness like mine.
|
I have been eating poetry.
The librarian does not believe what she sees.
Her eyes are sad
|
this person is very excited that he is “eating poetry.”
|
Mark Strand
|
Eating Poetry
|
once a Harvard all-American fullback,
(if such were possible!)
still hoarding the build of a boy in his twenties,
as he soaks, a ramrod
with a muscle of a seal
in his long tub,
vaguely urinous from the Victorian plumbing.
A kingly granite profile in a crimson gold-cap,
worn all day, all night,
he thinks only of his figure,
of slimming on sherbert and ginger ale--
more cut off from words than a seal.
|
This is the way day breaks in Bowditch Hall at McLean's;
|
the hooded night lights bring out "Bobbie,"
Porcellian '29,
a replica of Louis XVI
|
Virginia Woolf was impressed Lowell’s forthrightness in describing life in the asylum :
I’ve been very excited by what I feel is the new breakthrough that came with, say, Robert Lowell’s Life Studies, this intense breakthrough into very serious, very personal, emotional experience which I feel has been partly taboo. Robert Lowell’s poems about his experience in a mental hospital, for example, interested me very much.
|
Robert Lowell
|
Waking In The Blue
|
Of architecture Gothic, all around
The well-known ballads flit, of Grubstreet fame!
The casement, broke, gives breath celestial
To the long dying-speech; or gently fans
The love-enflaming sonnet. All around
Small scraps of paper lie, torn vestiges
Of an unquiet fancy. Here a page
Of flights poetic; — there a dedication;—
A list of Dramatis Personae, bold,
Of heroes yet unborn, and lofty dames
Of perishable compound, light as fair,
But sentenc'd to oblivion!
|
On a shelf—
(Yclept a mantle-piece), a phial stands,
Half-fill'd with potent spirits! — spirits strong,
Which sometimes haunt the poet's restless brain,
And fill his mind with fancies whimsical.
|
Poor Poet! happy art thou, thus remov'd
From pride and folly! — for in thy domain
Thou canst command thy subjects; — fill thy lines—
|
The “phial… Half-fill’d with potent spirits” refers to opium, a drug that became quite common during the 19th century. Opium, the juice of the poppy plant, was generally used as a pain reliever and was often times mixed with differing quantities of alcohol, forming an anodyne typically prescribed as laudanum.
Opium was highly addictive and is referenced by many poets for its enhancement of creative states. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in particular, was known for his struggles with the drug. In his poem “ Kubla Khan ,” Coleridge writes of an opium-inspired dream. This poem was shown to Robinson in 1800, prior to its publication. The two poets were acquainted, and letters written both to Robinson directly and to those close to her show Coleridge’s concern for Robinson’s works, as well as for her well-being. It is highly likely that the two poets discussed the power of opium on the imagination.
Byrne, Paula. Perdita: The Literary, Theatrical, Scandalous Life of Mary Robinson . Random House Publishing Group, 2007.
|
Mary Robinson
|
The Poets Garrett 1800
|
The door it opened slowly
My father he came in, I was nine years old
And he stood so tall above me
Blue eyes they were shining
And his voice was very cold
Said, "I've had a vision
And you know I'm strong and holy
I must do what I've been told."
So he started up the mountain
I was running, he was walking
And his ax was made of gold
Well, the trees they got much smaller
|
The lake a lady's mirror
|
We stopped to drink some wine
Then he threw the bottle over
Broke a minute later
|
In “Suzanne” it is said that Suzanne holds a mirror up to the speaker’s face – to show him his real face, his real personality. The ‘'Story of Isaac’‘ is the rare occasion of a womanless song in Cohen’s oeuvre but here, symbolized in the lake, the Lady, the archetypical woman, the mother, is present, holding up the mirror to the man’s face to show him the meaninglessness of the deed he is about to commit.
|
Leonard Cohen
|
Story of Isaac
|
She had thought the studio would keep itself;
no dust upon the furniture of love.
|
Half heresy, to wish the taps less vocal,
|
the panes relieved of grime. A plate of pears,
a piano with a Persian shawl, a cat
stalking the picturesque amusing mouse
|
Though taps is primarily used here as a reference to faucets, it’s also a term for a song played on a drum or bugle, used to signal lights-out at dusk . It’s also sometimes played at funerals. This gloomy and somewhat mournful connotation adds to the overall idea that this romance is not living up to her expectations.
|
Adrienne Rich
|
Living in Sin
|
I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
|
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.
|
The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
|
The jar “made” or forced the once careless, “slovenly” wilderness to surround its site. Prior to man’s intrusion, the wild part of Tennessee was unconcerned. However, after the placement of the artificial construction (the jar) upon the hill, the land’s role became encompassing it. Once again, Stevens puts man’s creation at the center of the scene, giving it the greater importance.
Where the first two lines held iambic tetrameter, the third breaks such structure, utilizing consecutive polysyllabic words, therein emphasizing “the slovenly wilderness / Surround that hill.” The form of the poem is thus used to reiterate its content.
|
Wallace Stevens
|
Anecdote of the Jar
|
I am sixteen; I've never tasted a Bloody Mary.
‘Tell your father to bring a luxury,' says she.
‘Grapes have no imagination, they're just green.
Tell him: stop the neighbours coming.'
I clear her cupboard in Ward 10B, Stobhill Hospital.
I leave, bags full, Lucozade, grapes, oranges,
sad chrysanthemums under my arms,
weighted down. I turn round, wave with her flowers.
My mother, on her high hospital bed, waves back.
Her face is light and radiant, dandelion hours.
Her sheets billow and whirl. She is beautiful.
Next to her the empty table is divine.
|
I carry the orange nostalgia home singing an old song.
| null |
The last line is ambiguous and open to interpretation. Is the ‘old song’ something she recalls her mother singing to her, like the Lucozade that she carries home, belonging to the past? Removing it could be exactly what her mother needed to make her well.
We can ask if the poet Is happy that her mother is well, or if she is relieved that her mother is at peace and died while still humorous and feisty. It is for the reader to decide.
|
Jackie Kay
|
Lucozade
|
From the warm chair
To the wind's welter
Flee, if storm's your shelter.
But no, you needs must part,
Fling him his release--
On whose ungenerous heart
Alone you are at peace.
IV
Not dead of wounds, not borne
Home to the village on a litter of branches, torn
By splendid claws and the talk all night of the villagers,
But stung to death by gnats
|
Lies Love.
|
What swamp I sweated through for all these years
Is at length plain to me.
V
|
This line slightly drifts us away from the theme of Death and decay, and into Heartbreak. Or perhaps this WHOLE POEM is illustrating heartbreak.
|
Edna St. Vincent Millay
|
Not So Far as the Forest
|
I that so long
Was nothing from eternity,
Did little think such joys as ear or tongue
To celebrate or see:
Such sounds to hear, such hands to feel, such feet,
Beneath the skies on such a ground to meet.
New burnished joys,
Which yellow gold and pearls excel!
Such sacred treasures are the limbs in boys,
In which a soul doth dwell;
Their organizèd joints and azure veins
More wealth include than all the world contains.
|
From dust I rise,
And out of nothing now awake;
These brighter regions which salute mine eyes,
A gift from God I take.
|
The earth, the seas, the light, the day, the skies,
The sun and stars are mine if those I prize.
Long time before
|
As soon as he dies and is buried his body decays dust. However, because of his Christian faith his reward is to rise again and his soul goes to heaven and his eyes will be “saluted” (greeted) with the glorious sight of the “brighter regions” (that is, “heaven”). This eternal reward, this salvation, is a “gift” from God freely given for Traherne’s speaker to take.
|
Thomas Traherne
|
The Salutation
|
I'm being swallered by a Boa Constrictor
A Boa Constrictor, a Boa Constrictor
I'm being swallered by a Boa Constrictor
|
And I don't - like snakes - one bit!
|
Oh no, he swallered my toe.
Oh gee, he swallered my knee.
Oh fiddle, he swallered my middle.
|
Neither does Indiana Jones! Our primal fear of these legless reptiles is one biologically ingrained in us from the days of cavemen thousands of years ago (perhaps, then, it is not surprising that “coldblooded” – another adjective which applies to these slithering creatures – can be used to refer to something that is heartless or evil)
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Shel Silverstein
|
The Boa Constrictor
|
null |
I been t'inkin' 'bout de preachah; whut he said de othah night,
‘Bout hit bein' people's dooty, fu' to keep dey faces bright;
How one ought to live so pleasant dat ouah tempah never riles,
Meetin' evahbody roun' us wid ouah very nicest smiles.
|
Dat 's all right, I ain't a-sputin' not a t'ing dat soun's lak fac',
But you don't ketch folks a-grinnin' wid a misery in de back;
An' you don't fin' dem a-smilin' w'en dey 's hongry ez kin be,
|
Here Dunbar describes the epic of reciprocity “Do onto other as you would have them do onto you”. A tenet of Christianity that is often attributed to Karmic justice . Within this tenet, one is a product of the positive/negative energy that they put into the world, which in time comes back upon them.
|
Paul Laurence Dunbar
|
Philosophy
|
null |
From low to high doth dissolution climb,
|
And sink from high to low, along a scale
Of awful notes, whose concord shall not fail;
A musical but melancholy chime,
|
The phrase “low to high” can have multiple meanings. “Low to high” can be speaking of social standing; generally the more wealthy are less likely to perish. The phase can also depict the motion of the sun in the day–it rises, then sets.
Dissolution: end, decomposition, or death. For dissolution to “climb” gives this line an ominous quality and builds suspense.
|
William Wordsworth
|
Mutability
|
NUTTING.
——————————— It seems a day,
(I speak of one from many singled out)
One of those heavenly days which cannot die,
When forth I sallied from our Cottage-door*,
And with a wallet o'er my shoulder slung,
A nutting crook in hand, I turned my steps
Towards the distant woods, a Figure quaint,
|
Tricked out in proud disguise of Beggar's weeds
Put on for the occasion, by advice
And exhortation of my frugal Dame.
Motley accoutrement! of power to smile
|
*The house at which I was boarded during the time I was at School.
At thorns, and brakes, and brambles, and, in truth,
More ragged than need was. Among the woods,
|
he was urged/persuaded by his dame to go into the woods, he was wearing path worked attire, most likely old and worn looking. He is wearing this raggedy clothing as a disguise and again due to the suggestions of his dame.
|
William Wordsworth
|
Nutting 1805 Lyrical Ballads
|
Panoramas are not what they used to be.
Claude has been dead a long time
And apostrophes are forbidden on the funicular.
Marx has ruined Nature,
For the moment.
For myself, I live by leaves,
So that corridors of clouds,
Corridors of cloudy thoughts,
Seem pretty much one:
|
I don't know what.
|
But in Claude how near one was
(In a world that is resting on pillars,
That was seen through arches)
|
Each stanza ends with a line that is vague, short, and rhythmically flat. This structural choice seems to mimic the act (and perhaps disappointment) of changing one’s focus from a sweeping panorama to a particular detail of the landscape’s flora. A botanist must make this choice and stick to it.
|
Wallace Stevens
|
Botanist on Alp No. 1
|
The sea here used to look
As if many convicts had built it,
Standing deep in their ankle chains,
Ankle-deep in the water, to smite
The land and break it down to salt.
|
I was in this bog as a child
When they were all working all day
To drive the pilings down.
|
I thought I saw the still sun
Strike the side of a hammer in flight
And from it a sea bird be born
|
The speaker is reflecting back at the time this bridge was being built.
|
James Dickey
|
At Darien Bridge
|
To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love,
|
All pray in their distress,
|
And to these virtues of delight
Return their thankfulness.
For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love,
|
Prayer is presented as a process that brings emotional reward. Blake asserts that God is in all of us.
|
William Blake
|
The Divine Image Songs of Innocence
|
When on life's ocean first I spread my sail,
I then implored a mild auspicious gale;
And from the slippery strand I took my flight,
And sought the peaceful haven of delight.
Tyrannic storms arose upon my soul,
And dreadful did their mad'ning thunders roll;
The pensive muse was shaken from her sphere,
And hope, it vanished in the clouds of fear.
|
At length a golden sun broke through the gloom,
|
And from his smiles arose a sweet perfume--
A calm ensued, and birds began to sing,
And lo! the sacred muse resumed her wing.
|
Here, Horton seems to speak of the hope of becoming a free man that he felt returning to him when he heard that some people were trying to get him emancipated in 1828. These people may have included Caroline Hentz, who sent a letter with two of his poems to her local newspaper, the Lancaster Gazette.
|
George Moses Horton
|
On Hearing of a Gentleman to Purchase the Poets Freedom
|
null |
And, the last day being come, Man stood alone
Ere sunrise on the world's dismantled verge,
|
Awaiting how from everywhere should urge
The Coming of the Lord. And, behold, none
Did come,—but indistinct from every realm
|
The end of the world is approaching; right before this final hour, the last man has nowhere to turn for aid but to the heavens.
The theme and imagery of this poem draw heavily on the biblical Book of Revelation, a.k.a. Apocalypse.
|
Trumbull Stickney
|
And the Last Day Being Come Man Stood Alone
|
null |
The two executioners stalk along over the knolls,
|
Bearing two axes with heavy heads shining and wide,
And a long limp two-handled saw toothed for cutting great boles,
And so they approach the proud tree that bears the death-mark on its side.
|
The two ax-men (executioners through the eyes of trees, if trees had eyes) walk toward the tree that has no more days left to live, crossing over knolls (knolls are small, rounded hills).
|
Thomas Hardy
|
Throwing a Tree
|
And another pleasant Surrey bower
Another Maiden like herself,
Translucent, lovely, shining clear
Threefold each in the other clos'd
O, what a pleasant trembling fear!
O, what a smile! a threefold smile
Fill'd me, that like a flame I burn'd
I bent to kiss the lovely Maid
And found a threefold kiss return'd
I strove to seize the inmost form
With ardor fierce and hands of flame
But burst the Crystal Cabinet
|
And like a weeping Babe became
|
A weeping Babe upon the wild
And weeping Woman pale reclin'd
And in the outward air again
|
The speaker descends to a second infancy after acting upon his desires.
|
William Blake
|
The Crystal Cabinet
|
I am sometimes asked if I have any words of advice for young people.
Well, here are a few simple admonitions for young and old, man and beast.
Never interfere in a boy and girl fight.
Beware of whores who say they don't want money. The hell they don't.
What they mean is that they want more money; much more, these are the most expensive whores what can be got.
If you're doing business with a religious son of a bitch, get it in writing; his word isn't worth shit, not with the good Lord telling him how to fuck you on the deal.
If, after having been exposed to someone's presence, you feel as if you've lost a quart of plasma, avoid that presence. You need it like you need pernicious anemia.
We don't like to hear the word "vampire" around here; we're trying to improve our public image. Building a kindly, avuncular, benevolent image; "interdependence" is the keyword -- "enlightened interdependence".
Life in all its rich variety, take a little, leave a little. However, by the inexorable logistics of the vampiric process they always take more than they leave -- and why, indeed, should they take any?
Avoid fuck-ups. Fools, I call them. You all know the type -- no matter how good it sounds, everything they have anything to do with turns into a disaster. Trouble for themselves and everyone connected with them.
A fool is bad news, and it rubs off -- don't let it rub off on you.
Do not proffer sympathy to the mentally ill; it is a bottomless pit. Tell them firmly, "I am not paid to listen to this drivel -- you are a terminal fool!" Otherwise, they make you as crazy as they are.
|
Above all, avoid confirmed criminals. They are a special malignant strain of fool.
| null |
Ironic, as Burroughs had a criminal record consisting of at least one case of homicide as a result of playing a drunken game of William Tell.
|
William S. Burroughs
|
Advice for Young People
|
O hushed October morning mild
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
To-morrow's wind, if it be wild
Should waste them all
The crows above the forest call;
To-morrow they may form and go
O hushed October morning mild
Begin the hours of this day slow
Make the day seem to us less brief
Hearts not averse to being beguiled
|
Beguile us in the way you know;
|
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away;
|
Frost is asking to be tricked into an illusion, because it is more pleasing than reality.
|
Robert Frost
|
October
|
XXVII
“IS my team ploughing,
That I was used to drive
And hear the harness jingle
When I was man alive?”
Ay, the horses trample,
The harness jingles now;
No change though you lie under
The land you used to plough.
“Is football playing
Along the river shore,
With lads to chase the leather,
|
Now I stand up no more?”
|
Ay, the ball is flying,
The lads play heart and soul;
The goal stands up, the keeper
|
Notice how “stand up no more” in the last line of the third stanza contrasts with the repeated “stand up” of both the goal and the goalkeeper, indicating the game is still on without him.
|
A. E. Housman
|
Is My Team Ploughing
|
We had goldfish and they circled around and around
In the bowl on the table near the heavy drapes
Covering the picture window and
|
My mother, always smiling, wanting us all
To be happy, told me, “be happy Henry!”
And she was right: it's better to be happy if you
Can
|
But my father continued to beat her and me several times a week
While
Raging inside his 6-foot-two frame because he couldn't
|
Knowing the dreary conditions, the mother pleaded with the narrator to smile, to try to convince himself he was happy and that things were okay, since the acknowledgement of their reality would only make things seem worse and more desperate. He knew that happiness was ideal, but hadn’t yet learned how to fake it as efficiently as she did.
|
Charles Bukowski
|
A smile to remember
|
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly
Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.
Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.
Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,
Even the paving.
|
Our hammers, our rams,
|
Earless and eyeless,
Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
|
The mushrooms are getting stronger: the “soft fists” from four lines ago have become hammers and rams.
This links back to the quietly growing mushrooms of the first stanza with fists mutating into battering rams. ps
|
Sylvia Plath
|
Mushrooms
|
I died for Beauty — but was scarce
Adjusted in the Tomb
When One who died
for Truth, was lain
In an adjoining room
He questioned softly "Why I failed"?
"For Beauty", I replied
"And I — for Truth — Themself are One
We Brethren, are", He said
And so, as Kinsmen, met a Night
We talked between the Rooms
|
Until the Moss had reached our lips
|
And covered up — our names
|
This is where the shift from idealisation to reality takes place. The moss has been slowly growing over their bodies, and now it has reached their lips, inhibiting their speech – the only semblance of life they had left.
The two individuals cannot control the inevitable growth of the moss, and they are shut silent, devoid of communication with one another.
Dickinson comes to the conclusion that eventually death will engulf everything, and, just like the growth of the moss, it is unavoidable.
|
Emily Dickinson
|
I died for Beauty — but was scarce
|
null |
Yes, I remember Adlestrop ---
|
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.
|
The poem begins as if in the middle of a conversation, a device known as in medias res , which is Latin for ‘in the middle of things. This serves as a hook to draw the reader in. The first line ends with an ellipsis , forming a break or caesura that suggests the poet has paused to think.
|
Edward Thomas
|
Adlestrop
|
And what remains to us of thee?
And dull and dead our Thames would be,
For here the winds are chill and cold,
O goat-foot God of Arcady!
Then keep the tomb of Helice,
Thine olive-woods, thy vine-clad wold,
And what remains to us of thee?
Though many an unsung elegy
Sleeps in the reeds our rivers hold,
O goat-foot Glod of Arcady!
Ah, what remains to us of thee?
II
|
AH, leave the hills of Arcady,
|
Thy satyrs and their wanton play,
This modern world hath need of thee.
No nymph or Faun indeed have we,
|
Arcadia has a long and storied tradition in poetry as well as mythology. A real place in Greece, it has long been considered the perfect place: a pastoral paradise. Arcadia is rural, as opposed to cosmopolitan Athens, for example. A classic usage of Arcadia to represent a paradise is The Arcadian Shepherds, a painting which depicts a tomb and is also called Et in Arcadia Ego, which may be translated to “Even in Arcadia, there am I”. Many have interpreted this to mean that death exists even in the most perfect of places.
In this portion of the poem, the speaker exhorts Pan, the goat-footed God to leave Arcadia and come to the modern world. Pan is needed not in the mythic world or the perfect world, the poem argues but in modernity.
|
Oscar Wilde
|
Pan: A Double Villanelle
|
I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm
Your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm
Yes, many loved before us, I know that we are not new
In city and in forest they smiled like me and you
But now it's come to distances and both of us must try
Your eyes are soft with sorrow
Hey, that's no way to say goodbye
I'm not looking for another as I wander in my time
Walk me to the corner, our steps will always rhyme
|
You know my love goes with you as your love stays with me
|
It's just the way it changes, like the shoreline and the sea
But let's not talk of love or chains and things we can't untie
Your eyes are soft with sorrow
|
Even though there is a distance between them, they carry the other in their hearts. The ‘your love goes/stays’-part refers to knowing the other carries you in his/her heart.
|
Leonard Cohen
|
Hey Thats No Way to Say Goodbye
|
Your Momma took to shouting
Your Poppa's gone to war,
Your sister's in the streets
Your brother's in the bar.
The thirteens. Right On.
Your cousin's taking smack
Your Uncle's in the joint,
Your buddy's in the gutter
|
Shooting for his point
|
The thirteens. Right on.
And you, you make me sorry
You out here by yourself,
|
This could have two different meanings. In the metaphorical sense, he could mean the person is trying to get what they want/need in life but can’t obtain. In the actual sense, this could mean he is killing people to make his point in his life.
|
Maya Angelou
|
The Thirteens Black
|
null |
Hold fast to dreams,
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
|
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams,
For when dreams go
|
If you don’t passionately follow your dreams, aspirations, and beliefs, then how are you ever supposed to get your life off the ground?
The word “dreams” was central to Langston Hughes' poetry: in all their many “variations” (deferred, broken, maintained, achieved), they crop up constantly throughout his work. See for example:
“Dream Variations”
“Harlem”
“Dream Boogie”
His emphasis influenced, among others, Martin Luther King, Jr., whose “I Have a Dream” speech and other oratory further elaborates the “deeply rooted” connection between the African-American dream of equality and the American dream as a whole.
|
Langston Hughes
|
Dreams
|
null |
Rise up, rise up,
|
And, as the trumpet blowing
Chases the dreams of men,
As the dawn glowing
|
The repeated imperative opens the poem. It has biblical overtones; a call to arms that extends back into history. The repetition adds to its urgency.
There are any number of commands of this nature in the Bible. An example may be Judges 5:12 , with the command “Awake, awake, Deborah. Awake”. In this case it was a call to a female prophet and warrier to free her people. During the First World War the call was to rise up against a perceived threat of German expansionism.
|
Edward Thomas
|
The Trumpet
|
I remember thinking: alive or dead, a rat was a god-forsaken thing,
But at least, in May, that even a rat should be alive.
The week's work here is as good as done. There is just one bough
On the roped bole, in the fine grey rain,
Green and high
And lonely against the sky.
(Down now!—)
And but for that,
If an old dead rat
Did once, for a moment, unmake the Spring, I might never have thought of him again.
It is not for a moment the Spring is unmade to-day;
These were great trees, it was in them from root to stem:
|
When the men with the ‘Whoops' and the ‘Whoas' have carted the whole of the whispering loveliness away
|
Half the Spring, for me, will have gone with them.
It is going now, and my heart has been struck with the hearts of the planes;
Half my life it has beat with these, in the sun, in the rains,
|
The men’s intrusive exclamations are repeated., contrasting with the beautiful lyrical description of the trees as ‘whispering loveliness’.. Note the sibilant alliterative ’s’s that create a sense of calm.
|
Charlotte Mew
|
The Trees Are Down
|
List of Essentials
1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house
4. Be in love with yr life
5. Something that you feel will find its own form
6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow
|
8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
|
9. The unspeakable visions of the individual
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest
|
Write everything you think about, even if it’s crazy and insane, because insanity makes brilliant prose.
Fellow Beat writer Gary Snyder explains:
I am firstmost a poet, doomed to be shamelessly silly, undignified… & considering (in the words of Rimbaud ) the disorder of my own mind sacred.
Read and annotate Gary Snyder here !
|
Jack Kerouac
|
Belief Technique For Modern Prose
|
null |
My son has birds in his head.
|
I know them now. I catch
the pitch of their calls. Their shrill
cacophonies, their chitterings, their coos.
|
This opening line is abrupt, monosyllabic and emphatic. The reader may assume it’s a metaphor , and attests to an obsession. Those readers familiar with the Daedalus and Icarus myth will immediately grasp the meaning; the recognition by the father of the significance of birds and the foreshadowing of the future disaster.
|
Alastair Reid
|
Daedalus
|
And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
|
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
|
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.
And death shall have no dominion.
|
Constellations disappear beneath the horizon as the world turns. But they will be back, just like Mr. Sun.
|
Dylan Thomas
|
And Death Shall Have No Dominion
|
for Elizabeth Bishop
Bix to Buxtehude to Boulez.
The little white dog on the Victor label
Listens long and hard as he is able.
It's all in a day's work, whatever plays.
From judgment, it would seem, he has refrained.
He even listens earnestly to Bloch,
Then builds a church upon our acid rock.
He's man's—no—he's the Leiermann's best friend,
Or would be if hearing and listening were the same.
Does he hear? I fancy he rather smells
Those lemon-gold arpeggios in Ravel's
|
“Les jets d'eau du palais de ceux qui s'aiment.”
|
He ponders the Schumann Concerto's tall willow hit
By lightning, and stays put. When he surmises
Through one of Bach's eternal boxwood mazes
|
French for “the fountains at the palace of those who are in love.”
|
James Merrill
|
The Victor Dog
|
House rent to pay.
Gin on Saturday,
Church on Sunday.
My God!
Babies and gin and church
And women and Sunday
All mixed with dimes and
Dollars and clean spittoons
And house rent to pay.
Hey, boy!
A bright bowl of brass is beautiful to the Lord.
Bright polished brass like the cymbals
|
Of King David's dancers,
|
Like the wine cups of Solomon.
Hey, boy!
A clean spittoon on the altar of the Lord.
|
This allusion references passionate worship with dancing and clashing cymbals. The dancers of King David were particularly jovial.
Church was important not only to Hughes, but also many slaves immediately following emancipation (as well as before).
|
Langston Hughes
|
Brass Spittoons
|
O well for him who lives at ease
With garnered gold in wide domain,
Nor heeds the splashing of the rain,
The crashing down of forest trees.
O well for him who ne'er hath known
The travail of the hungry years,
A father grey with grief and tears,
A mother weeping all alone.
But well for him whose foot hath trod
The weary road of toil and strife,
Yet from the sorrows of his life
|
Builds ladders to be nearer God.
| null |
A reference to the famous Jacob’s Ladder from Genesis 28:11-12 in the Bible. In this chapter, Jacob dreams of the staircase to heaven:
Genesis 28:11: And he lighted upon a certain place, and tarried there all night, because the sun was set; and he took of the stones of that place, and put them for his pillows, and lay down in that place to sleep.
Genesis 28:12: And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it."
Jacob’s ladder is commonly referenced both in music and in film as well .
|
Oscar Wilde
|
Tristitiae
|
You know it is interminable
And of vast, unimaginable dimensions.
"That's because His insomnia is permanent,"
You've read some mystic say.
Is it the point of His schoolboy's compass
That pricks your heart?
Somewhere perhaps the lovers lie
Under the dark cypress trees,
Trembling with happiness,
But here there's only your beard of many days
And a night moth shivering
Under your hand pressed against your chest.
|
Oldest child, Prometheus
|
Of some cold, cold fire you can't even name
For which you're serving slow time
With that night moth's terror for company.
|
Prometheus, the brother of Epimetheus, is a Titan and hero in Greek mythology. He is said to have created man out of clay and is known for his disobedience to Zeus and other gods on Olympus.
|
Charles Simic
|
The Oldest Child
|
His mother goes. The mother comes & goes.
Chen Lung's too came, came and crampt & then
that dragoner's mother was gone.
It seem we don't have no good bed to lie on,
forever. While he drawing his first breath,
while skinning his knees,
while he was so beastly with love for Charlotte Coquet
he skated up & down in front of her house
wishing he could, sir, die,
while being bullied & he dreamt he could fly--
during irregular verbs--them world-sought bodies
safe in the Arctic lay:
|
Strindberg rocked in his niche, the great Andrée
by muscled Fraenkel under what's of the tent,
|
torn like then limbs, by bears
over fierce decades, harmless. Up in pairs
go we not, but we have a good bed.
|
Refers to S. A. Andrée, Nils Strindberg, and Knut Frænkel, the three Swedish explorers who perished in the Arctic Balloon Expedition of 1897, a failed attempt to reach the North Pole by hot air balloon.
In name-checking these lost explorers whose fame increased once they were found three decades after death, Berryman may be playing with the idea that he is a poetic adventurer who will become more famous once he’s gone.
|
John Berryman
|
Dream Song 11
|
In secret place where once I stood
Close by the Banks of Lacrim flood,
I heard two sisters reason on
Things that are past and things to come.
One Flesh was call'd, who had her eye
On worldly wealth and vanity;
The other Spirit, who did rear
Her thoughts unto a higher sphere.
"Sister," quoth Flesh, "what liv'st thou on
Nothing but Meditation?
Doth Contemplation feed thee so
Regardlessly to let earth go?
|
Can Speculation satisfy
Notion without Reality?
|
Dost dream of things beyond the Moon
And dost thou hope to dwell there soon?
Hast treasures there laid up in store
|
The Flesh is questioning the Spirit’s faith throughout the poem, but, in these two lines, the Flesh does so by implying that the Spirit’s faith is unfounded and nonsensical. This is done in two ways:
1) The Flesh uses “Speculation” in reference to faith, which indicates that the Spirit’s beliefs have no merit.
2) “Notion without Reality” furthers this implication by stating directly that reality is not present in the Spirit’s faith. It also implies that what the Spirit believes in is not real or realistic.
Bradstreet’s use of layered rhetoric (questioning and implying) represents not only a deep questioning of faith; it also indicates a desire by the Flesh to draw or tempt the Spirit away from its faith. This places the Flesh in the role of tempter, putting it in opposition with the Spirit, which accounts for the Spirit later referencing the Flesh as a rival.
|
Anne Bradstreet
|
Flesh and the Spirit The
|
The hills step off into whiteness.
People or stars
Regard me sadly, I disappoint them.
The train leaves a line of breath.
O slow
Horse the color of rust,
Hooves, dolorous bells--
All morning the
Morning has been blackening,
|
A flower left out.
|
My bones hold a stillness, the far
Fields melt my heart.
They threaten
|
A representative of death: the memory of life passed.
Also, it is one flower ‘left out’, for example, of a bouquet. This could be a metaphor for Sylvia Plath herself, one person removed from life and beauty as represented by the flowers.
Alternatively, left out possibly refers to being left out in the open air after picking, causing it to wilt.
|
Sylvia Plath
|
Sheep in Fog
|
The chisel work of an enormous Glacier
That braced his feet against the Arctic Pole.
You must not mind a certain coolness from him
Still said to haunt this side of Panther Mountain.
Nor need you mind the serial ordeal
Of being watched from forty cellar holes
As if by eye pairs out of forty firkins.
As for the woods' excitement over you
That sends light rustle rushes to their leaves,
Charge that to upstart inexperience.
Where were they all not twenty years ago?
They think too much of having shaded out
|
A few old pecker-fretted apple trees.
|
Make yourself up a cheering song of how
Someone's road home from work this once was,
Who may be just ahead of you on foot
|
This is a funny sounding line: it’s describing the trees as being damaged by Woodpeckers. The trees, in the big scheme, are minor players, though trees give off a sense of self-importance.
|
Robert Frost
|
Directive
|
Nentis Nan, he's my man,
I go do im each chanz I gan.
|
He sicks me down an creans my teed
|
Wid mabel syrub, tick an' sweed,
An ten he filks my cavakies
Wid choclut cangy-- I tink he's
|
He sits me down and cleans my teeth
|
Shel Silverstein
|
Dentist Dan
|
null |
Is this the end? is there no end but this?
|
Yea, none beside:
No other end for pride
And foulness and besottedness.
|
The poem begins with two short sentences that ask rhetorical questions that set the tone. The importance of what is happening is emphasised by repetition. The two questions are the same, but syntactically different, and the effect is cleverly rhythmic.
Note that the opening questions are answered in the next three lines, a device known as hypophora .
|
Christina Rossetti
|
Standing afar off for the fear of her torment
|
We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess – in the Ring –
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –
We passed the Setting Sun –
Or rather – He passed us –
The Dews drew quivering and chill –
For only Gossamer, my Gown –
My Tippet – only Tulle –
We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground –
The Roof was scarcely visible –
The Cornice – in the Ground –
|
Since then – 'tis Centuries – and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses' Heads
Were toward Eternity –
| null |
This last stanza is so important to the entire poem. It helps the readers to understand that the speaker is not experiencing death at this very moment but instead is recalling the day death came for her. It has been so long but yet that day is so fresh and vivid in the speaker’s mind. It shows how important that this day may have been to the speaker. She remembers so many little details of this day even though it has been centuries.
|
Emily Dickinson
|
Because I Could Not Stop for Death
|
null |
TELL me not, Sweet, I am unkind,
That from the nunnery
Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind
To war and arms I fly.
|
True, a new mistress now I chase,
The first foe in the field;
And with a stronger faith embrace
|
The speaker, we can assume also the poet, doesn’t want the woman to think he’s unkind because, as a soldier, he’s must leave her to fight. .
The ‘nunnery’ of her breast implies chastity — an idea drawn from medieval romance poetry, where the woman was always a pure, distant, adored person, whose personality was never truly known. Here, Locasta’s deeper feelings or response are also not revealed.
‘Quiet mind’ can mean ‘peace-loving’ or a calm temperament; an ironic contrast to the speaker’s compulsion to fight.
The reference to her ‘chaste breast’ has been seen as ambiguous, suggesting that the poet, for all his respect and gentleness, has erotic feelings.
In some versions of this poem ‘Sweet’ is bracketed, suggesting that he has to interrupt his thoughts to emphasise his love.
|
Richard Lovelace
|
To Lucasta Going to the Wars
|
Clear on my snow-screen vision of the abnormal
And hesitated in the all-way disintegration
And stared at me. And for some lasting seconds
I could think the deer were waiting for me
To remember the password and sign
That the curtain had blown aside for a moment
And there where the trees were no longer trees, nor the road a road
The deer had come for me.
Then they ducked through the hedge, and upright they rode their legs
Away downhill over a snow-lonely field
Towards tree dark - finally
Seeming to eddy and glide and fly away up
|
Into the boil of big flakes.
|
The snow took them and soon their nearby hoofprints as well
Revising its dawn inspiration
Back to the ordinary
|
The ‘boil of big flakes’ is another unexpected description —the juxtaposition of ‘boil’ and snowflakes is apt in the depiction of turbulence, but a contradiction. Snow doesn’t usually boil.
|
Ted Hughes
|
Roe-Deer
|
On stolchy paths
Over glunch clouds,
Where infrequent shepherds,
Sloomy of face,
Snudge of spirit,
Snoachy of speech,
With scaddle dogs
Tend a few scrawny
Cag-mag sheep.
Fetched into conscience
By a hoasting fit,
He lies darkling,
|
Senex morosus,
|
Too ebb of verve
Even to monster
Social trifles,
|
“Grumpy old man”.
The use of Latin, perhaps a caricature of scientific/taxonomic Latin (cf. Homo sapiens ), marks the protagonist of the poem’s emergence back into the bookish world of high culture. As he goes from action to passivity (ironic, since he is active in sleep, passive in life), he moves away from the earthy tongue of the agricultural peasantry and takes up the patrician parlance of the aristocracy—if we see the language in terms of the Mediaeval landscape that it conjures.
|
W. H. Auden
|
A Bad Night
|
Fill my ears with silver
Stick my legs in plaster
Tell me lies about Vietnam.
I smell something burning, hope it's just my brains.
They're only dropping peppermints and daisy-chains
So stuff my nose with garlic
Coat my eyes with butter
Fill my ears with silver
Stick my legs in plaster
Tell me lies about Vietnam.
Where were you at the time of the crime?
Down by the Cenotaph drinking slime
|
So chain my tongue with whisky
|
Stuff my nose with garlic
Coat my eyes with butter
Fill my ears with silver
|
Because the speaker deliberately wants to avoid his involvement, strong alcohol will make him drunk and help to stop him voicing his deeper thoughts.
|
Adrian Mitchell
|
To Whom It May Concern
|
Thy gentlest of all gentle names dost take!
How many memories of what radiant hours
At sight of thee and thine at once awake!
How many scenes of what departed bliss!
How many thoughts of what entombéd hopes!
How many visions of a maiden that is
No more—no more upon thy verdant slopes!
No more!—alas, that magical sad sound
Transforming all! Thy charms shall please no
more—
Thy memory no more! Accurséd ground
Henceforth I hold thy flower-enameled shore,
|
O hyacinthine isle! O purple Zante!
|
"Isola d'oro! Fior di Levante!"
|
Here Poe refers the the purple hyacinthine flower. This flower was said to be named after a Greek boy named Hyakinthos. This boy was said to be loved by two Greek gods: Apollo (god of the sun) and Zephyr (god of the wind). One day when Apollo was teaching the boy how to throw a discus, Zephyr got jealous and blew the discus back towards Hyakinthos, subsequently killing him with a blow to the head. Apollo named the flower that grew from Hyakinthos’s blood after the boy. These flowers are said to represent consistency.
|
Edgar Allan Poe
|
Sonnet—To Zante
|
The rock-like mud unfroze a little and rills
Ran and sparkled down each side of the road
Under the catkins wagging in the hedge.
|
But earth would have her sleep out, spite of the sun;
|
Nor did I value that thin gilding beam
More than a pretty February thing
Till I came down to the old Manor Farm,
|
This brief line sums up the essence of the poem. The two balanced clauses state the opposing forces; the weak sun isn’t sufficient to end the winter.
|
Edward Thomas
|
The Manor Farm
|
The fountains are dry and the roses over.
Incense of death. Your day approaches.
The pears fatten like little Buddhas.
A blue mist is dragging the lake.
|
You move through the era of fishes,
|
The smug centuries of the big—
Head, toe and finger
Come clear of the shadow. History
|
An ‘era of fishes’ could possibly be an allusion to how Sylvia views the cycle of fertility and childbirth.
|
Sylvia Plath
|
The Manor Garden
|
null |
What happens to a dream deferred?
|
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
|
Hughes is questioning what becomes of a dream that is delayed, tossed aside, or thwarted by external forces.
Though the poem is not explicitly political and deals with desires and aspirations in general, it ties in with Hughes' broader exploration of the African-American dream and the American dream as a whole. Blacks in America had few opportunities to pursue their dreams during the era when Hughes wrote this poem.
Today, the opening line of “Harlem” is so well-known that it has become cultural shorthand for African-American social mobility and the quest for opportunity. It may well have helped inspire the central metaphor of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech.
Check out how Talib Kweli alludes to it in his song “Everything Man”:
Also check out Killer Mike’s allusion in “Anywhere But Here” :
|
Langston Hughes
|
Harlem What happens to a dream deferred?
|
Panoramas are not what they used to be.
Claude has been dead a long time
|
And apostrophes are forbidden on the funicular.
|
Marx has ruined Nature,
For the moment.
For myself, I live by leaves,
|
Although a funicular might be a convenient way to travel up a mountain, it fundamentally separates the traveler from the natural world.
On the funicular, nature is not wild and expansive – it is closely framed by man. Riders cannot abandon themselves to the exhilaration of the hike, they maintain the formalities and rules of society. The language police appears to be in Stevens' car, banning all contractions.
|
Wallace Stevens
|
Botanist on Alp No. 1
|
Huffy Henryhid the day,
unappeasable Henry sulked.
I see his point,—a trying to put things over.
It was the thought that they thought
they could do it made Henry wicked & away.
But he should have come out and talked.
|
All the world like a woolen lover
once did seem on Henry's side.
|
Then came a departure.
Thereafter nothing fell out as it might or ought.
I don't see how Henry, pried
|
This is another shift in tone. The first stanza starts with a traditional tone and ends with an informal/talky tone. This stanza opens up with a traditional tone again. Although Berryman is switching between tones frequently, it has a slight pattern.
John Berryman and the Art of The Dream Songs Dona Hickey
|
John Berryman
|
Dream Song 1
|
And the faint perfume from its chalice steals —
I know what the caged bird feels!
I know why the caged bird beats his wing
Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;
For he must fly back to his perch and cling
When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;
And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars
And they pulse again with a keener sting —
I know why he beats his wing!
I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,—
When he beats his bars and he would be free;
|
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
|
But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings —
I know why the caged bird sings!
|
This line is the turning point of the final stanza, which marks the beginning of a mounting tension created by variations on the mid-stanza rhythm. This line more or less fits that rhythm, but cues the change with its truncated appearance.
In terms of meaning, this line distinguishes the bird’s song from its perch within the cage. The initial appearance of birdsong in this poem came from the free “first bird,” from the first stanza. His song isn’t dwelt on, because its motivation is obvious. In the second stanza, the bird’s perch functions as a tragic approximation of life outside the cage, its use the indulgence of denial. Dunbar wants to be clear here that the song is different.
|
Paul Laurence Dunbar
|
Sympathy
|
It is like a Roman mob,
Small, taken one by one, but my god, together!
I lay my ear to furious Latin.
I am not a Caesar.
I have simply ordered a box of maniacs.
They can be sent back.
They can die, I need feed them nothing, I am the owner.
I wonder how hungry they are.
I wonder if they would forget me
If I just undid the locks and stood back and turned into a tree.
There is the laburnum, its blond colonnades,
And the petticoats of the cherry.
|
They might ignore me immediately
|
In my moon suit and funeral veil.
I am no source of honey
So why should they turn on me?
|
This suggests Plath’s insecurity. There is the contradiction of wanting to remain unharmed and yet knowing that to release the bees puts her at risk.
|
Sylvia Plath
|
The Arrival of the Bee Box
|
Celine going broke as a doctor of medicine
the impossibility of being human
Villon expelled from Paris for being a thief
Faulkner drunk in the gutters of his town
the impossibility of being human
Burroughs killing his wife with a gun
Mailer stabbing his
the impossibility of being human
Maupassant going mad in a rowboat
Dostoyevsky lined up against a wall to be shot
Crane off the back of a boat into the propeller
the impossibility
|
Sylvia with her head in the oven like a baked potato
|
Harry Crosby leaping into that Black Sun
Lorca murdered in the road by Spanish troops
the impossibility
|
Sylvia Plath committed suicide by sticking her head inside an oven with the gas turned on.
|
Charles Bukowski
|
Beasts Bounding Through Time
|
null |
I'm a riddle in nine syllables,
|
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
|
Plath (or the speaker of her poem)* starts off by explaining her method or approach to the poem. She’s a riddle, therefore, she’s poking fun at herself for some reason. Not only is she a riddle, but this poem is carefully structured to require ingenuity in ascertaining its answer.
Note the number 9. There are 9 lines and 9 syllables in each line (even the title “Metaphors” has 9 letters!). Clearly, Plath wants us to pay attention to this number…but why? Since we can discern [RIDDLE SPOILER] that the speaker is pregnant, the number relates to the 9 months of pregnancy. The original title was “Metaphors: A Riddle for Expectant Mothers”.
*The poet isn’t the same as the speaker of a poem; like novelists, many poets take radical departures from themselves in the first-person “I"s they create. Ezra Pound, for example, wrote an entire collection called Personae (masks). On the other hand, Plath, along with her cohorts in the Confessional generation of poets, became famous for blurring the lines between her personal life and her public art. "Metaphors” was written in 1960, the same year as the birth of her first child, so she may well have had herself in mind as she wrote this riddle.
|
Sylvia Plath
|
Metaphors
|
"Cross"
My old man's a white old man
And my old mother's black.
If ever I cursed my white old man
I take my curses back.
If ever I cursed my black old mother
And wished she were in hell,
I'm sorry for that evil wish
|
And now I wish her well.
|
My old man died in a fine big house.
My ma died in a shack.
I wonder where I'm going to die,
|
Again, we see the three foot iambic line emphatically end the stanza, sort of grounding the slight deviation and trochaic substitution found early in the poem. With the end of the second quatrain, the poem appears to be wrapping itself up, almost comfortable, as the speaker seems to repent for his past anger, and arrive at a form of acceptance. But this idea is complicated with the introduction of death in the final quatrain.
|
Langston Hughes
|
Cross
|
And the machinery for change
And it's here they got the spiritual thirst
It's here the family's broken
And it's here the lonely say
That the heart has got to open
In a fundamental way
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A
It's coming from the women and the men
Oh baby, we'll be making love again
We'll be going down so deep
The river's going to weep
And the mountain's going to shout Amen!
|
It's coming like the tidal flood
|
Beneath the lunar sway
Imperial, mysterious
In amorous array
|
Perhaps a reference to the Biblical flood in the Book of Genesis, in which God decides to flood the earth as a reversal and recreation of the world.
This follows the line in which the river weeps, a reversal, and also an image of tears becoming a flooding force: the many come together to produce a powerful change.
|
Leonard Cohen
|
Democracy
|
And she is all of solid fire
And gems and gold, that none his hand
Dares stretch to touch her baby form,
Or wrap her in his swaddling-band.
But she comes to the man she loves,
If young or old, or rich or poor;
They soon drive out the Agèd Host,
A beggar at another's door.
He wanders weeping far away,
Until some other take him in;
Oft blind and age-bent, sore distrest,
Until he can a Maiden win.
|
And to allay his freezing age,
|
The poor man takes her in his arms;
The cottage fades before his sight,
The garden and its lovely charms.
|
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word allay means to lay down or to set aside. The man that this line is referring to in the poem is using the cycle to grow young again. Old men use young girls and old women use young boys in this poem to become young again. It’s a vicious cycle that is more vividly described in lines 12-14 when the first old woman is using the first young boy to become young again. He takes the young girl in his arms and the cycle continues.
|
William Blake
|
The Mental Traveller
|
An' a Zulu impi dished us up in style:
But all we ever got from such as they
Was pop to what the Fuzzy made us swaller;
We 'eld our bloomin' own, the papers say,
But man for man the Fuzzy knocked us 'oller.
Then 'ere's to you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, an' the missis and the kid;
Our orders was to break you, an' of course we went an' did.
We sloshed you with Martinis, an' it wasn't 'ardly fair;
But for all the odds agin' you, Fuzzy-Wuz, you broke the square.
'E 'asn't got no papers of 'is own,
'E 'asn't got no medals nor rewards,
So we must certify the skill 'e's shown
|
In usin' of 'is long two-'anded swords:
|
When 'e's 'oppin' in an' out among the bush
With 'is coffin-'eaded shield an' shovel-spear,
An 'appy day with Fuzzy on the rush
|
A Beja warrior with his traditional sword.
|
Rudyard Kipling
|
Fuzzy-Wuzzy
|
Come, sportive Fancy! come with me, and trace
The Poet's attic home! the lofty seat
Of th' heav'n-tutor'd Nine! the airy throne
Of bold Imagination, rapture fraught,
Above the herds of mortals. All around
A solemn stillness seems to guard the scene,
Nursing the brood of thought; — a thriving brood,
In the rich mazes of the cultur'd brain.
|
Upon thy altar, a old worm-eat board,—
The pannel of a broken door, or lid
Of a strong coffer, plac'd on three-legg'd stool,
|
Stand quires of paper, white and beautiful!
Paper, by destiny ordain'd to be
Scrawl'd e'er and blotted; dash'd, and scratch'd, and torn,
|
A garret (a habitable attic or small living space at the top of a house) was the least prestigious position in a building, due to the amount of stairs to reach it and its cramped and poor conditions. It has long been synonymous with the struggling artist or poet, who would often live in the cheapest – and poorest – accomodation whilst trying to gain recognition. This poet is so poor, they do not even possess a desk. Seventeen-year-old poet Thomas Chatterton committed suicide in his garrret room in 1770 and his death became a symbol of struggling and neglected genius during the Romantic Period.
(Carl Spitzweg, The poor poet (Der arme Poet) , 1839, Neue Pinakothek: Munich)
|
Mary Robinson
|
The Poets Garrett 1800
|
Their lone waters, lone and dead, —
Their sad waters, sad and chilly
With the snows of the lolling lily, —
By the mountains — near the river
Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever, —
By the grey woods, — by the swamp
Where the toad and the newt encamp —
By the dismal tarns and pools
Where dwell the Ghouls, —
By each spot the most unholy —
In each nook most melancholy —
There the traveller meets aghast
|
Sheeted Memories of the Past —
|
Shrouded forms that start and sigh
As they pass the wanderer by —
White —robed forms of friends long given,
|
“Sheeted Memories” makes us think of memories that were covered/hidden, but suddenly unveiled. But also, “sheeted” makes us think of ghosts and ghouls.
|
Edgar Allan Poe
|
Dream-Land
|
Drinking water from the chained cup
That the children filled with gravel
In the fountain basin where I sailed my ship
Slept at night in a dog kennel
But nobody chained him up.
Like the park birds he came early
Like the water he sat down
And Mister they called Hey Mister
The truant boys from the town
Running when he had heard them clearly
On out of sound
Past lake and rockery
|
Laughing when he shook his paper
|
Hunchbacked in mockery
Through the loud zoo of the willow groves
Dodging the park keeper
|
The boys laugh when the hunchback ‘shook his paper’. The action of shaking could be anger, but his small protest is ineffectual.
|
Dylan Thomas
|
The Hunchback in the Park
|
null |
Your skin like dawn
Mine like musk
|
One paints the beginning
Of a certain end.
The other, the end of a
|
Dawn to Musk
The poem consists of a metaphor between skin and sky.
Maya Angelou compares white skin to “dawn.”
Implicitly, through the use of “musk,” she compares darker skin to “dusk.”
The synesthesia of “musk” – relating smell to color – adds connotations of funk .
|
Maya Angelou
|
Passing Time
|
I remember rooms that have had their part
In the steady slowing down of the heart.
The room in Paris, the room at Geneva,
The little damp room with the seaweed smell,
And that ceaseless maddening sound of the tide—
Rooms where for good or for ill—things died.
But there is the room where we (two) lie dead,
|
Though every morning we seem to wake and might just as well seem to sleep again
|
As we shall somewhere in the other quieter, dustier bed
Out there in the sun—in the rain.
|
This is the longest and most significant line of the poem … and a mystery. They ‘seem’ to wake and ‘seem’ to sleep. So they are not dead after all, but just appear so. There is a sense that the speaker is looking forward to death, The present may have lost meaning.
The long line could imitate the tedium of this sleeping and waking. It interrupts the gentle rhythm, the progress forward of the preceding lines.
|
Charlotte Mew
|
Rooms
|
I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever you see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful---
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
|
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
|
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
|
Candlelight and moonlight are both romanticized light sources, soft and flattering.
The speaker is suggesting that the candles and the moon do not provide true light, therefore the mirror distorts the image reflecting back. They are personified as “liars” because they do not allow the truthful image to be shown.
|
Sylvia Plath
|
Mirror
|
Some thoughts traveled from distant places
Are not born within our borders
|
And must pass through heightened security fortified by age old tradition
|
The norms of societal culture
The misgivings of prejudice and misplaced judgement
In order to arrive peacefully in our minds
|
Nationalism , sometimes misconstrued as patriotism , serves as the primary barrier to peace & liberty in modern times. George Orwell defined it by 3 characteristics: obsession , instability , and indifference to reality
Although ancient cultures seemed to have experienced a good amount of friendly cultural exchange , nationalism is not a new phenomena. Even as early 1563, French essayist Michael de Montaigne wrote about his experience meeting 3 indigenous Brazilians:
We all call barbarous anything that is contrary to our own habits. Indeed we seem to have no other criterion of truth and reason than the type and kind of opinions and customs current in the land where we live. There we always see the perfect religion, the perfect political system, the perfect and most accomplished way of doing everything.
|
Saul Williams
|
FCK THE BELIEFS
|
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