My Papa's Waltz The poem My Papa's Waltz is about the relationship between an abusive father and his child, who is the narrator and the point of perspective. The little boy is trying to hold onto his father literally in the poem, but the poe Continue Reading...
Robert Frost and Edwin Arlington Robinson capture the loneliness and isolation that can come from life in the modern world. In Acquainted with the Night, the speaker toys with self-obliteration, drawn to the darkness. He hides his fears and sadness, Continue Reading...
Poetry and Art of William Bake Infant Sorrow Guide and Exposition of Illustration Used Infant Sorrow was one of the poems written by William Blake. It talks of a child being born into a world they aren't familiar with. The poem captures the experi Continue Reading...
In "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain," Hughes speaks greatly about jazz, noting that the blacks in Harlem are not afraid to be the way that they are, unlike the middle-class blacks who Hughes accuses of constantly trying to act like they are Continue Reading...
Jones The Hidden Self: The poetry of Matthew Arnold and Walt Whitman Helen Vendler wrote that a work of poetry "offers a personal sense of the world" (Vendler, 287). Of all the themes of poetry, the personal quest for a sense of "true self," and a Continue Reading...
AUDRE: I still say I'm the only one who even comes close to understanding the struggle Obama has gone through, even though he is a man ALLEN: And heterosexual ADRIENNE: And alive WILLIAM: Let's just take a step back and look at this objectively. Continue Reading...
However, towards the end of the poem, readers were given a glimpse of hope from the Voice, whose awakening from the sleep -- that is, desire to die -- had been interrupted, and his reflections on his disillusionment were once again converted to hope Continue Reading...
Such evidence as there is can be taken up at a later time. But of one thing we can be sure. If Virginia was the prototype of Eleonora she was not the model for Morella or Berenice or Ligeia."(Quinn, 255) These feelings can also be inferred from Poe Continue Reading...
Pablo Neruda The poet Pablo Neruda was a favorite poet for many and his works continue to be popular today. Neruda is best known for two things: his original use of imagery and his use of nature in his poems. It is these two qualities, combined with Continue Reading...
representation of Death and the impermanence in the short story "A Father's Story" by Andre Dubus, and the poem "Because I could not stop for Death" by Emily Dickinson. These two works were chosen because both speak of Death and impermanence, yet th Continue Reading...
To combat the power of their oppressive circumstances, many would sing to chase away the blue. This tradition is captured in the " Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor" (22). The song is about oppression and an attempt to be happy regardl Continue Reading...
Ark Twain and Paul Laurence Dunbar, Race and the Politics of Memory It is a confirmed fact that even the most rudimentary foundations of racial equality within the United States, as it specifically applies to African-Americans and to Caucasians, did Continue Reading...
" Communing with nature is the ultimate Dionysian act; the poet's subsequent writing of the communion is the Apollonian gesture that tempers this Dionysian indulgence. What each of these three poems has in common is the fact that they are based arou Continue Reading...
Reason and science were replacing the imaginative and poetic view of life. The Romantic poets opposed the increasingly mechanical and scientific world and one of the ways that they expressed their opposition can be seen in the adoration of nature. Continue Reading...
Emily Dickenson This is a thoughtful post about Emily Dickenson's personal life, adding depth and understanding to her poetry. You mention difficult themes such as death in a sensitive way, drawing attention to the way such hardships and suffering m Continue Reading...
The story "The Bridle," for instance, tells about what could have turned out to be a family tragedy. However, written by Carver it becomes much stronger and more positive. After going bankrupt in agriculture, a family moves with its few belongings Continue Reading...
.. They are neither man nor woman- They are neither brute nor human- They are Ghouls..." Graham's (2003) analysis of "Bells" show that Poe intentionally creates different categories of bells in order to illustrate the various emotional states indivi Continue Reading...
T.S. Eliot, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, & Ezra Pound "Preludes" by T.S. Eliot adopts a slant rhyme pattern to convey the state of his thoughts as he writes the poem. The poem basically illustrates the Voice/Poet's thoughts about the seemingly busy, y Continue Reading...
Theodore Roethke In the American poet Theodore Roethke's poems "My Papa's Waltz," "Cuttings (Later)," and "Cuttings," ordinary aspects of the domestic environment, like a young child being taught to dance by his father or the routine pruning and cu Continue Reading...
At the end of the poem the line "and dreaming with strange whale eyes wide open in the waters of the beginning and the end" gives us a clue to the answer to this question. These whales with eyes wide open see reality. The meaning is that in our evo Continue Reading...
Through letters, she expressed her feelings to her husband and grandchildren, just as I use letters to express my feelings to other people. She uses poems to warn her child and gives life instructions to her child. Discuss the readings, what I thin Continue Reading...
Robert Hayden, one of the most important black poets of the 20th Century, was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1913 and grew up in extreme poverty in a racially mixed neighborhood. His parents divorced when he was a child and he was raised by their neigh Continue Reading...
The choice cannot be repudiated or duplicated, but one makes the choice without foreknowledge, almost as if blindly. After making the selection, the traveler in Frost's poem says, "Yet knowing how way leads on to way/I doubted if I should ever come Continue Reading...
I take an oath of loyalty to the table / coated with white Formica, a cup full of pens, the ashtray / I dreamed that the State had passed out of existence / and with our children / we'd settled down in the three volumes of the / dictionary."(Shabtai Continue Reading...
T.S. Eliot and Amy Lowell The poetic styles of T.S. Eliot and Amy Lowell are so dissimilar, that it comes as something of a shock to realize how much the two poets had in common. Each came from a prominent Boston family, and was related to a Preside Continue Reading...
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight The Unattainable Chivalric Code Some Thoughts on Chivalry The chivalric code is a paradigm that is both poorly understood and was even more poorly applied, not because the code was not clearly written down and able Continue Reading...
In comparison, he feels weak and inferior. These emotions are driven by fear of God and while fear is never good, it can be constructive in regard to building character. Donne's language is significant because it emphasizes the mood and tone of the Continue Reading...
However, because I was drawn to these characters, I wanted them to live lives that were happy fulfilled, and filled with joy, not conflict. Of course, if that were the case, they would have no stories to tell. What would I do differently? I'm not s Continue Reading...
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 r Continue Reading...
Victorian literature was remarkably concerned with the idea of childhood, but to a large degree we must understand the Victorian concept of childhood and youth as being, in some way, a revisionary response to the early nineteenth century Romantic con Continue Reading...
Her list includes the following: culture / Nature reason / Nature male/female mind/body ( Nature) master/slave reason/matter (physicality) rationality/animality ( Nature) human / Nature (non-human) civilised/primitive ( Nature) production/re Continue Reading...
At twenty I tried to die And get back, back, back to you. I thought even the bones will do. (51-60) These lines allow us to see the poet dealing with her anger and the final thought is equally powerful when the poet tells her father, " Daddy, da Continue Reading...
All breathing human passion far above, That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd, burning forehead, and a parching tongue. A lines 28-30) The final lines of the Ode encapsulate the tension and conflict of the poem in a vision of art as the o Continue Reading...
Poetic Style in Pablo Neruda "twenty love poems" Pablo Neruda's Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair was inspired by an unhappy love affair, which accounts for the poems expressing young, passionate, unhappy love perhaps better than any book of p Continue Reading...
John Dryden was one of the most important literary figures in the 17th century because he excelled in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Dryden was a master of many literary techniques, most particularly the extended metaphor. His poem "Absalom and Ach Continue Reading...
The man and his son are so demonstrably complex in this story, even if their survival motives are simple and clear. Particularly, even as they endure a world of cannibalism and tribalism, the two struggle mightily to maintain a sense of moral turpit Continue Reading...
Post and Other Thoughts I also believe Knight's poetry is an early expression of the uneven surface of the ethnic world he lived in. The heartfelt loss and anguish of "Feeling Fucked Up" are universal emotions experienced by many at the loss of lov Continue Reading...
ages a woman addressing God in an intimate fashion would be a very radical notion: in Haught's poem the woman addresses God as if she is His friend, and some people might consider that transgressive of theological norms, depending upon their particu Continue Reading...
John Ashbery is widely regarded as America's greatest living poet: his collected earlier work is currently published in a Library of America edition, an honor that has been accorded to no other American poet of his generation. Ashbery's career spans Continue Reading...
