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I wish she'd read my book & write to me From O wherever ah how far she is After all, I get letters from anybody From hers, I'd tear to the 'phone It's not now near at all the end of winter I have to fly off East to sing a poem Admirers, some, will surge up afterward I'll keep an eye out for her My tough Songs well in Tokyo & Paris Fall under scrutiny. My publishers Very friendly in New York & London Forward me elephant cheques

Time magazine yesterday slavered Saul's ass

They pecked at mine last year. We're going strong! Photographs all over! She muttered something in my ear I've forgotten as we danced

Nobel and Pulitzer prize-winning writer, Saul Bellow–one of the few American critics who praised Love and Fame –was a close friend of John Berryman Here’s the Time piece mentioned. “Slavered” means slobbered over.

John Berryman

Her It

1545 The Bible is an antique Volume Written by faded men At the suggestion of Holy Spectres Subjects—Bethlehem Eden—the ancient Homestead Satan—the Brigadier

Judas—the Great Defaulter

David—the Troubadour Sin—a distinguished Precipice Others must resist

Referring to Judas who betrayed Jesus in the bible and was on of Jesus' disciples. He was great for his failure, and was close to Jesus before he betrayed Him.

Emily Dickinson

The Bible Is An Antique Volume

hound dogs belling in bladed air. And fear starts a-murbling, Never make it, we'll never make it. Hush that now, and she's turned upon us, levelled pistol glinting in the moonlight: Dead folks can't jaybird-talk, she says; you keep on going now or die, she says. Wanted Harriet Tubman alias The General alias Moses Stealer of Slaves In league with Garrison Alcott Emerson Garrett Douglass Thoreau John Brown Armed and known to be Dangerous

Wanted Reward Dead or Alive

Tell me, Ezekiel, oh tell me do you see mailed Jehovah coming to deliver me? Hoot-owl calling in the ghosted air,

Slave owners viewed people like Tubman as a nemesis and threat to their profits, for she was essentially stealing what they viewed as their property .

Robert Hayden

Runagate Runagate

Aunt Jennifer's tigers prance across a screen, Bright topaz denizens of a world of green. They do not fear the men beneath the tree; They pace in sleek chivalric certainty.

Aunt Jennifer's fingers fluttering through her wool

Find even the ivory needle hard to pull. The massive weight of Uncle's wedding band Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer's hand.

The fluttering of Aunt Jennifer’s hands seems to be a sign of nervousness, perhaps her nervous discontent with herself.

Adrienne Rich

Aunt Jennifers Tigers

For his civility We passed the school where children played Their lessons scarcely done We passed the fields of gazing grain We passed the setting sun We paused before a house that seemed A swelling of the ground The roof was scarcely visible The cornice but a mound Since then 't is centuries; but each Feels shorter than the day I first surmised the horses' heads

Were toward eternity

Indicative of the afterlife. Dickinson had strong personal opinions on matters such as death and the afterlife. She did not believe in the stereotypical heaven but also believed that whatever the afterlife was no one could fathom it before they passed. (see This World is not Conclusion )

Emily Dickinson

The Chariot

I know I am but summer to your heart, And not the full four seasons of the year; And you must welcome from another part Such noble moods as are not mine, my dear. No gracious weight of golden fruits to sell Have I, nor any wise and wintry thing; And I have loved you all too long and well To carry still the high sweet breast of Spring. Wherefore I say: O love, as summer goes, I must be gone, steal forth with silent drums, That you may hail anew the bird and rose When I come back to you, as summer comes.

Else will you seek, at some not distant time, Even your summer in another clime.

Clime = climate/region. The speaker is essentially saying that her “summer” lover will move on soon.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

I know I am but summer to your heart Sonnet XXVII

Some of the oaken voices, from the roots Of many a thorny shire tell you notes, Some let me make you of the water's speeches. Behind a pot of ferns the wagging clock Tells me the hour's word, the neural meaning Flies on the shafted disk, declaims the morning And tells the windy weather in the cock. Some let me make you of the meadow's signs; The signal grass that tells me all I know Breaks with the wormy winter through the eye. Some let me tell you of the raven's sins. Especially when the October wind

(Some let me make you of autumnal spells,

The spider-tongued, and the loud hill of Wales) With fists of turnips punishes the land, Some let me make you of the heartless words.

The echoic ‘some let me make you…’ quite literally interrupts the drift of the poem, making recitation messy & comprehension (by the audience) nearly impossible. This mystification, this deliberate obfuscation of sense, may well be the point, if there is one. Autumn is the traditional witching season. The poet-turned-occultist & scholar of comparative myth, Robert Graves, mentions in his The White Goddess that the fall season marks the coming death of the year, and that holidays like Halloween are holdovers of pagan harvest festivals , where death was celebrated with strange rituals & spirits were seen to return to their mortal concerns.

Dylan Thomas

Especially when the October wind

And I'll dance with you in Vienna I'll be wearing a river's disguise The hyacinth wild on my shoulder My mouth on the dew of your thighs And I'll bury my soul in a scrapbook With the photographs there, and the moss And I'll yield to the flood of your beauty My cheap violin and my cross And you'll carry me down on your dancing To the pools that you lift on your wrist Oh my love, Oh my love Take this waltz, take this waltz

It's yours now. It's all that there is

{Instrumental} (Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay)

Maybe because of the death that foreshadows along the lyrics, or through mere surrender to the passing of time (“burying my soul in the scrapbook”), in this final line Cohen passes on the weight of the emotions he has poured out into the loved one, and entrusts it to them (“It´s yours now”) while expounding on how crucial those are for life (“It´s all that there is”).

Leonard Cohen

Take This Waltz

Alack, it was I who leaped at the sun To give it my loving friends to keep! Naught man could do, have I left undone: And you see my harvest, what I reap This very day, now a year is run. IV. There's nobody on the house-tops now— Just a palsied few at the windows set; For the best of the sight is, all allow, At the Shambles' Gate—or, better yet, By the very scaffold's foot, I trow. V.

I go in the rain, and, more than needs,

A rope cuts both my wrists behind; And I think, by the feel, my forehead bleeds, For they fling, whoever has a mind,

The rain is an example of pathetic fallacy , where the weather reflects human drama and fate.

Robert Browning

The Patriot

At the earliest ending of winter, In March, a scrawny cry from outside Seemed like a sound in his mind.

He knew that he heard it,

A bird's cry, at daylight or before, In the early March wind. The sun was rising at six,

If he heard it, then it wasn’t just a sound in his mind, it was real, physical and outside of him.

Wallace Stevens

Not Ideas About the Thing but the Thing Itself

A still—Volcano—Life— That flickered in the night— When it was dark enough to do Without erasing sight— A quiet—Earthquake Style— Too subtle to suspect By natures this side Naples— The North cannot detect

The Solemn—Torrid—Symbol—

The lips that never lie— Whose hissing Corals part—and shut— And Cities—ooze away—

This is the final line of the pattern of oxymora . In this line, “Solemn” (formal/dignified) is juxtaposed with “Torrid” (hot/dry, difficult, or showing strong emotion). Again, we are given another description of Dickinson’s inner self, both dignified and chaotic. *Definitions paraphrased from Merriam-Webster

Emily Dickinson

A still—Volcano—Life 601

Wind blow cold In the wood faraway under me. Pale rain over the dwindling harbour And over the sea wet church the size of a snail With its horns through mist and the castle Brown as owls But all the gardens Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud. There could I marvel My birthday Away but the weather turned around.

It turned away from the blithe country

And down the other air and the blue altered sky Streamed again a wonder of summer With apples

The description ‘blithe’ is unexpected. This is more a reflection of the poet’s mood than the countryside, a sense of birthday exhilaration. Again the countryside is given human attributes in the adjective ‘blithe, meaning 'unconcerned’ or ‘unworried’.

Dylan Thomas

Poem in October

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. 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. 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. If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also. For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill? Seek him always with hours to live. For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness.

And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.

As you’re undoubtedly aware if you have any intimate, long-lasting friendships, it’s typically the micro-moments of fun that leave the longest and happiest impressions

Kahlil Gibran

On Friendship

The highway is full of big cars going nowhere fast

And folks is smoking anything that'll burn

Some people wrap their lives around a cocktail glass And you sit wondering where you're going to turn.

People are not only smoking drugs to get past these troubled times where no one is moving forward in life, but they have run out of money feeding that habit and now will smoke anything that will burn, similar to how some crack users will do soap.

Maya Angelou

Come And Be My Baby

Niggas on a chain gang used to do that (Huh!) way back Don't drop the beat on me Don't drop the beat no Ah I am not the son of sha-klak klak I am before that I am before I am before before before death is eternity after death is eternity There is no death there's only eternity And I be riding on the wings of eternity like CLA CLA CLA SHA KLACK KLACK GET ME THE FUCK OFF THIS TRACK

As if the heart beat wasn't enough

They got us using drum machines now Drums live in machines Tryin' to make our drums humdrums

Williams seems to be criticizing the superficiality created by the translation of Hip Hop as emotional expression — an artistic response to the restrictive urban conditions of lower-class American youth — into a component of the modern culture industry.

Saul Williams

Twice the First Time

I love to rise in a summer morn When the birds sing on every tree

The distant huntsman winds his horn

And the sky-lark sings with me O! what sweet company But to go to school in a summer morn

The child hears countryside activities that he can’t take part in; the sounds are therefore ‘distant’. The ‘huntsman’ is a threat to the bird, but it continues to sing, oblivious to its possible fate. This may be akin to the fate of the schoolboy who is identified with the bird.

William Blake

The Schoolboy

Where the yew trees blow like hydras, The tree of life and the tree of life Unloosing their moons, month after month, to no purpose. The blood flood is the flood of love, The absolute sacrifice. It means: no more idols but me, Me and you. So, in their sulfur loveliness, in their smiles These mannequins lean tonight In Munich, morgue between Paris and Rome, Naked and bald in their furs, Orange lollies on silver sticks,

Intolerable, without minds.

The snow drops its pieces of darkness, Nobody's about. In the hotels Hands will be opening doors and setting

Plath ends this section with a final damning conclusion as to what the mannequins in both their plastic and human forms amount to.

Sylvia Plath

The Munich Mannequins

One is a creeper who's sleepy in his shell Two is a hopper and he hops very well Three is a flopper and his flippers flap Four is a jumper with a jump-in lap Five is a drinker with a dip-in nose

Six is a flapper with flippers on his toes

Seven is a tapper with a tripper in his beak Eight is a nutter with a nut sack in his cheek Nine is a hanger with a banger in his head

A puffin. Puffins spend most of their lives out at sea, floating or swimming, but they can also fly at speeds of up to 54 miles an hour.

John Ciardi

Guess

When I was young my teachers were the old. I gave up fire for form till I was cold. I suffered like a metal being cast. I went to school to age to learn the past.

Now when I am old my teachers are the young.

What can't be molded must be cracked and sprung. I strain at lessons fit to start a suture. I got to school to youth to learn the future.

An old Frost and his “teachers”:

Robert Frost

What Fifty Said

[Saul Williams] Nah I wasn't raised at gunpoint, and I've read too many books To distract me from the mirror, when unhappy with my looks And I ain't got proper diction for the makings of a thug Though I grew up in the ghetto, and my niggas all sold drugs And though that may validate me for a spot on MTV Or get me all the airplay that my bank account would need

I was hoping to invest in, a lesson that I learned

When I thought this fool would jump me, just because it was my turn I went to an open space cause I knew he wouldn't do it If somebody there could see him, or somebody else might prove it

A play on words signifying the shift in the song’s subject from materialism to wisdom. Instead of “investing” in the traditional sense (which involves money), Saul would rather dedicate himself to investing in (and practicing) the lasting and important things he has learned.

Saul Williams

Talk to Strangers

We have to dread from man or beast. How should we like it were stars to burn With a passion for us we could not return? If equal affection cannot be, Let the more loving one be me. Admirer as I think I am Of stars that do not give a damn, I cannot, now I see them, say I missed one terribly all day. Were all stars to disappear or die, I should learn to look at an empty sky And feel its total dark sublime,

Though this might take me a little time.

One part bitter, one part wry. Just as it takes time for your eyes to adjust to darkness, the speaker could learn to live without his love – with a little time.

W. H. Auden

The More Loving One

Not a cage but an organ: if he thought about it, he'd go insane. Yes, if he thought about it philosophically, he was a bubble of bad air in a closed system.

He sleeps on his feet

until the bosses enter from the paths of Research and Administration- the same white classmates

This line can be interpreted literally, but more accurately as a figure of speech to express the countless hours he spends in the elevator, restlessly.

Rita Dove

Elevator Man 1949

That strange flower, the sun,

Is just what you say. Have it your way. The world is ugly,

The sun is a recurring symbol of power and generativity in Wallace Stevens' poetry. It also stands for the center of reality itself, to which the poet is always deviating from and returning through the work of imagination. Here he calls it a “flower,” but elsewhere in his poetry he tries to see it for exactly what it is–to do the poetic equivalent of staring at it without going blind: Trace the gold sun about the whitened sky Without evasion by a single metaphor. (“Credences of Summer”)

Wallace Stevens

Gubbinal

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 12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you 13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition 14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time 15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog 16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye 17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself 18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea 19. Accept loss forever

20. Believe in the holy contour of life

21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind 22. Don't think of words when you stop but to see picture better 23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning

In a literal sense, life itself can’t have a contour, meaning that Kerouac personifies life by describing its contour, or outline, as holy.

Jack Kerouac

Belief Technique For Modern Prose

I. Runs falls rises stumbles on from darkness into darkness and the darkness thicketed with shapes of terror and the hunters pursuing and the hounds pursuing and the night cold and the night long and the river to cross and the jack-muh-lanterns beckoning beckoning and blackness ahead and when shall I reach that somewhere morning and keep on going and never turn back and keep on going

Runagate Runagate

Runagate Runagate Many thousands rise and go

The repeat of the phrase highlights the urgency of the notion of “runaway,” and the term becomes a command – runaway, runaway, runaway.

Robert Hayden

Runagate Runagate

Just for a handful of silver he left us, Just for a riband to stick in his coat— Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us, Lost all the others she lets us devote; They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver, So much was theirs who so little allowed; How all our copper had gone for his service!

Rags—were they purple, his heart had been proud!

We that had loved him so, followed him, honoured him, Lived in his mild and magnificent eye, Learned his great language, caught his clear accents,

The purple rags signify the aspirations of the leader. Struggling artists may wear metaphorically “ragged” clothing, but for Wordsworth clothes were purple , the colour of royalty. It is known that Wordsworth had a sizeable ego. His talent was admirable but his opinion of himself huge; hence his “heart had been proud”. Browning and his contemporaries were aware of his failings.

Robert Browning

The Lost Leader

the little cough somewhere, an odour, a chime. And there is another thing he has in mind like a grave Sienese face a thousand years would fail to blur the still profiled reproach of. Ghastly, with open eyes, he attends, blind. All the bells say: too late. This is not for tears; thinking. But never did Henry, as he thought he did, end anyone and hacks her body up and hide the pieces, where they may be found. He knows: he went over everyone, & nobody's missing. Often he reckons, in the dawn, them up.

Nobody is ever missing.

While this is on the one hand a chilling end to a stanza that speaks of methodical murder (Henry feels as guilty as a murderer, even though he isn’t one), if it is read as a positive statement, this can also be understood to say that there is always a “nobody” who is missing from the present scene, and this underscores the importance of understanding Henry’s dream-speech as that of an unrecognized person on the fringes of society. Alternatively, or in addition, the line suggests that all the people in Henry’s life remain a part of his psyche: he can never forget them, if only because he feels so guilty toward them.

John Berryman

Dream Song 29

To cool my thirst My oldest daughter is Nefertiti The tears from my birth pains Created the Nile I am a beautiful woman I gazed on the forest and burned Out the Sahara desert With a packet of goat's meat And a change of clothes I crossed it in two hours I am a gazelle so swift So swift you can't catch me

For a birthday present when he was three I gave my son Hannibal an elephant He gave me Rome for mother's day

My strength flows ever on My son Noah built New/Ark and I stood proudly at the helm

Referring to Carthaginian general Hannibal Barca’s invasion of Italy during the second Punic War. Carthage was famous in the ancient world for the use of elephants in its military. The speaker is positioning his/herself within a larger historical and social context about the history of the world in the attempts to give black people more credibility to being major forces in the development of the ancient and modern world.

Nikki Giovanni

Ego-Tripping there may be a reason

'They gone far Toolsie! In the darkness of dancehall Sita shaking she hip and Negro shaking back, Loud noise, lipstick and loose brassieres,

How these children got no shame, and hard-ears.

The girl fretting whenever I mention marriage: Poonai's son is nice quite boy and got job on shopfloor, But coolie not for her no more,

“hard-ears” is referring to a child’s stubbornness. The children in this text “got no shame” in the way they conduct themselves. They dance provocatively and dress like adults.

David Dabydeen

Days End

When Reason seemed the most to assert her rights, When most intent on making of herself A prime Enchantress—to assist the work Which then was going forward in her name! Not favoured spots alone, but the whole earth, The beauty wore of promise, that which sets (As at some moment might not be unfelt Among the bowers of paradise itself ) The budding rose above the rose full blown. What temper at the prospect did not wake To happiness unthought of? The inert Were roused, and lively natures rapt away!

They who had fed their childhood upon dreams,

The playfellows of fancy, who had made All powers of swiftness, subtilty, and strength Their ministers,—who in lordly wise had stirred

At this point in the poem, Wordsworth is showing us the point of view of many of the revolutionaries years after the start of the war, most likely in the time known as the “reign of terror”. This line is signifying the acceptance of failure; what was originally intended to be a political uprising to install a new constitution quickly devolved into a bloody slaughter. Ironically enough, life seemed better under a monarch than under the new National assembly that had been established after the beheading of Louis XVI. The revolutionaries who had dreamed of a France with more political power under a constitution that would prevent them from being taken advantage of by the first and second estates can only see this idea now as a dream.

William Wordsworth

The French Revolution as It Appeared to Enthusiasts at Its Commencement

Time will say nothing but I told you so, Time only knows the price we have to pay; If I could tell you I would let you know. If we should weep when clowns put on their show,

If we should stumble when musicians play,

Time will say nothing but I told you so. There are no fortunes to be told, although, Because I love you more than I can say,

Not only is our childhood (the Clowns) taken away from us by Time, we also become physically weak, and stumble in happy environments too.

W. H. Auden

If I Could Tell You

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world. Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.

A famous and quotable line. The adjectiving “darkling” is unusual and rarely used, but has more emphasis and dynamism than “dark”, closer in meaning to darkening, as if the “plain” is growing more sinister as time goes on.

Matthew Arnold

Dover Beach

To let me sing If it be your will If there is a choice Let the rivers fill Let the hills rejoice Let your mercy spill On all these burning hearts in hell If it be your will To make us well And draw us near And bind us tight All your children here

In their rags of light

In our rags of light All dressed to kill And end this night

Jewish and Christian authors in Late Antiquity share a common tradition in regard of Adam being dressed in “garments of light”. While according to Christian texts Adam wears this vestment before the fall, Jewish writers have him receive it after the fall. Source

Leonard Cohen

If It Be Your Will

To where the charity children play. I want a good time today. They do some wonderful things. They have some wonderful fun. My mother sneers, but I say it's fine How they don't have to go in at quarter to nine. My mother, she tells me that Johnnie Mae Will grow up to be a bad woman. That George'll be taken to Jail soon or late (On account of last winter he sold our back gate). But I say it's fine. Honest, I do. And I'd like to be a bad woman, too,

And wear the brave stockings of night-black lace And strut down the streets with paint on my face.

Presumably the “strut,” black stockings, and “paint” indicate that Johnnie Mae is a young prostitute. The speaker thinks living that life wouldn’t be so bad, as she’s had a sheltered life and would like to experience the other side. Brooks dresses the “bad woman”; she gives her a dress code based on the dress code prescribed by the front yard. Brooks also gives the dress code an adjective “brave.” This is reminiscent of 3rd wave feminism, which was an intense push to appropriate words like “bitch” and stereotypes like the “bad woman” in an attempt to defy the patriarchal system.

Gwendolyn Brooks

A Song in the Front Yard

The locket of a smile, turned overnight Into the hospital of his mangled last Agony and hours; see bundled in it His mightier-than-a-man dead bulk and weight: And on this one place which keeps him alive (In his Sunday best) see fall war's worst Thinkable flash and rending, onto his smile Forty years rotting into soil. That man's not more alive whom you confront And shake by the hand, see hale, hear speak loud, Than any of these six celluloid smiles are, Nor prehistoric or, fabulous beast more dead;

No thought so vivid as their smoking-blood:

To regard this photograph might well dement, Such contradictory permanent horrors here Smile from the single exposure and shoulder out

The “smoking blood” is gothic reminder of the wounds that killed the men — an example of Hughes’s vivid and inventive imagery.

Ted Hughes

Six Young Men

Aunt Jennifer's tigers prance across a screen, Bright topaz denizens of a world of green.

They do not fear the men beneath the tree;

They pace in sleek chivalric certainty. Aunt Jennifer's fingers fluttering through her wool Find even the ivory needle hard to pull.

The use of the word “men” here, instead of something more gender-ambiguous like “hunters” or plainly “people,” is no accident. This poem is about women’s oppression at the hands of the patriarchy. The fact that Aunt Jennifer’s tigers are unafraid of the men stalking them is significant because they represent the boldness that Aunt Jennifer (and women in general in 1951, when the poem was written) wishes she could express.

Adrienne Rich

Aunt Jennifers Tigers

Fat and red, a placenta Paralysing the kicking lovers. Cobra light Squeezing the breath from blood bells Of the fuscia. I could draw no breath, Dead and moneyless, Overexposed, like an X-ray. Who do you think you are? A Communion wafer? Blubbery Mary? I shall take no bite of your body, Bottle in which I live, Ghastly Vatican.

I am sick to death of hot salt.

Green as eunuchs, your wishes Hiss at my sins. Off, off, eely tentacle!

The reference to ‘salt’ is difficult to interpret. ‘Hot salt’ could be a reference to grief and pain, as tears are both hot and salty. We may also think of ‘salt of the earth’ and to ‘rub salt into a wound’. Salt is also essential to life. Therefore there is a contradiction. Is Plath’s mother essential to her? People who are fundamentally honest and reliable are sometimes described as ‘salt of the earth’. So is this Plath’s concession that her mother is a decent person, essential to her daughter, and yet at the same time she exacerbates Plath’s unhappiness? And why should the salt be ‘hot’? Maybe this is to add yet more pain to the wound. Another possibility is the superstition around salt. There is a gothic tradition that it can ward off evil and frighten demons. We may sometimes throw a pinch of salt over the left shoulder to counter the devil. Is Plath associating her mother with evil and she therefore throws salt at her to keep her away? This would make sense of ‘hot’, in that the salt may be touched by the fires of hell. (Thanks to student LS for this paragraph of analysis).

Sylvia Plath

Medusa

Aunt Jennifer's tigers prance across a screen, Bright topaz denizens of a world of green. They do not fear the men beneath the tree; They pace in sleek chivalric certainty. Aunt Jennifer's fingers fluttering through her wool Find even the ivory needle hard to pull. The massive weight of Uncle's wedding band Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer's hand. When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by.

The tigers in the panel that she made

Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid.

Rich connects Aunt Jennifer’s creation and creativity to a certain freedom and immortality; her tigers are a made thing that required hours of work in a craft, needlepoint, normally associated with women. In contrast, Rich is working in poetry at a time (1951) when there were far fewer women than men in the field. Her creation, this poem, is a lot like needlepoint in that it took hours to create (it is in rhyming iambic pentameter, an elaborate pattern, or “weave”), expresses a kind of freedom, and gives her immortality too. (Rich passed away in 2012.)

Adrienne Rich

Aunt Jennifers Tigers

I dream a world where man No other man will scorn, Where love will bless the earth And peace its paths adorn I dream a world where all

Will know sweet freedom's way,

Where greed no longer saps the soul Nor avarice blights our day. A world I dream where black or white,

In a world filled with inequalities, not everyone knows how it feels to live freely. Some people may even be oblivious to how unfree they really are. In Hughes’s dream, the degrees of freedom will be the same for everyone.

Langston Hughes

I Dream a World

Oh why is heaven built so far, Oh why is earth set so remote? I cannot reach the nearest star That hangs afloat.

I would not care to reach the moon,

One round monotonous of change; Yet even she repeats her tune Beyond my range.

This line emphasises the mood of indifference. The poet seems depressed and without energy. The monosyllabic string sounds plodding and weary, and suggests a mind too numb to think of more lively language.

Christina Rossetti

De Profundis

A still—Volcano—Life— That flickered in the night— When it was dark enough to do Without erasing sight— A quiet—Earthquake Style— Too subtle to suspect By natures this side Naples—

The North cannot detect

The Solemn—Torrid—Symbol— The lips that never lie— Whose hissing Corals part—and shut—

This is obscure, but it could be attributing characteristics of the “North” that are opposite to the explosive nature of the speaker — cool and unemotional. The “North” is the outside, conventional world.

Emily Dickinson

A still—Volcano—Life 601

It is the pain, it is the pain endures. Your chemic beauty burned my muscles through. Poise of my hands reminded me of yours. What later purge from this deep toxin cures? What kindness now could the old salve renew? It is the pain, it is the pain endures. The infection slept (custom or changes inures)

And when pain's secondary phase was due

Poise of my hands reminded me of yours. How safe I felt, whom memory assures, Rich that your grace safely by heart I knew.

Pain has its own routine, its own phases. There are changes from one phase to another (hence why there’s a distinction between phases), but pain has its own predictable, rote, predictable course to run. It’s inevitable to draw the comparison with the poem’s form – rigid, predictable, patterned, consistent, repetitive. Yet it is all about change. The villanelle captures the essence of pain in that it displays a paradox of coexisting change and constancy.

William Empson

Villanelle It is the pain...

The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending , we lay waste our powers: Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not.—Great God! I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

I’d rather kick it old school and have beliefs that are mistaken, but focus on what’s important. Would that really be a mistake? The poet may also be pointing to the power of the imagination: actual experience on the “pleasant lea” can inspire the imagination to see and hear amazing things–Proteus and Triton–and bring the viewer closer to truth (less forlorn). Cool irony–Proteus and Triton may be outdated, but by exercising the imagination they lead to new inspiration and truth.

William Wordsworth

The world is too much with us...

"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.

Zeus punished Prometheus for stealing the fire was never-ending. He chained him to the Caucasus Mountains, where Prometheus was constantly attacked by a vulture or eagle who ate his liver. Each day his liver was restored, so the punishment never ceased. While Zeus intended for Prometheus to be on the Mountain forever, he was eventually rescued and freed by Hercules.

Charles Simic

The Oldest Child

Because I could not stop for Death He kindly stopped for me The carriage held but just ourselves And Immortality We slowly drove, he knew no haste And I had put away My labor, and my leisure too For his civility

We passed the school where children played

Their lessons scarcely done We passed the fields of gazing grain We passed the setting sun

This version, which is believed to be the edited version (as Dickinson’s small amount of published poetry often was back in the day). Upon comparing this version dubbed: ‘The Chariot’ and the original version of ‘712’ it is easily apparent that ‘712’ has a more macabre tone. This version is said to have been edited to assume a more lighthearted tone; replacing the more brutal active verb ‘strove’ and the allusion to the black death (‘at recess in the ring’) with happier images of children playing.

Emily Dickinson

The Chariot

Make me, O Lord, thy Spining Wheele compleate. Thy Holy Worde my Distaff make for mee. Make mine Affections thy Swift Flyers neate And make my Soule thy holy Spoole to bee. My Conversation make to be thy Reele And reele the yarn thereon spun of thy Wheele. Make me thy Loome then, knit therein this Twine: And make thy Holy Spirit, Lord, winde quills: Then weave the Web thyselfe. The yarn is fine. Thine Ordinances make my Fulling Mills.

Then dy the same in Heavenly Colours Choice,

All pinkt with Varnisht Flowers of Paradise. Then cloath therewith mine Understanding, Will, Affections, Judgment, Conscience, Memory

“Dy” (dye) follows the metaphor of “Heavenly Colours,” suggesting that the speaker’s garment is dyed with colors signifying heavenly blessing. There may be a subtle play on “die,” i.e. a wish that he will die in Heaven’s favor.

Edward Taylor

Huswifery

If I were tickled by the hatching hair, The winging bone that sprouted in the heels, The itch of man upon the baby's thigh, I would not fear the gallows nor the axe Nor the crossed sticks of war. Shall it be male or female? say the fingers That chalk the walls with green girls and their men. I would not fear the muscling-in of love If I were tickled by the urchin hungers Rehearsing heat upon a raw-edged nerve. I would not fear the devil in the loin Nor the outspoken grave.

If I were tickled by the lovers' rub

That wipes away not crow's-foot nor the lock Of sick old manhood on the fallen jaws, Time and the crabs and the sweethearting crib

A paraphrase of this stanza (sorry, Cleanth Brooks ): The tickle of love might not be able to reverse the ageing process, but if I felt it, I wouldn’t fear time. Cf. Woody Allen: However, when you make love with a truly great woman, one that deserves the utmost respect in this world and one that makes you feel truly powerful, that fear of death completely disappears.

Dylan Thomas

If I Were Tickled by the Rub of Love

And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea And torn from Black Africa's strand I came To build a "homeland of the free." The free? Who said the free? Not me? Surely not me? The millions on relief today? The millions shot down when we strike? The millions who have nothing for our pay? For all the dreams we've dreamed And all the songs we've sung And all the hopes we've held And all the flags we've hung

The millions who have nothing for our pay--

Except the dream that's almost dead today O, let America be America again-- The land that never has been yet--

When this poem originally came out in the late 1930’s, the Great Depression had been going on for about eight years already. People were out of work, the U.S. dollar was not worth as much as before, and one of the worst droughts ever hit the plains; causing the “dust bowls”, which destroyed farming and crops. This great depression didn’t end until America joined the war in 1941, which stimulated their economy.

Langston Hughes

Let America Be America Again

There is a war between the rich and poor A war between the man and the woman

There is a war between the ones who say there is a war

And the ones who say that there isn't Why don't you come on back to the war, that's right, get in it Why don't you come on back to the war, it's just beginning

One of Karl Marx’s most famous statements is that “All history is the history of class struggles”. The exploitation of the poor by the rich should be read as a war. Feminists ( such as bell hooks ) would later say we should also take into consideration the exploitation of women by men – perhaps that should also be read as a war. After paralleling these images of conflict among social groups, the author goes meta and states that the ideological controversies – theories about whether these (and other) relationships should or shouldn’t be described as wars – can also be interpreted as a war.

Leonard Cohen

There Is a War

And then he flew as far as eye could see, And then on tremulous wing came back to me. I thought of questions that have no reply, And would have turned to toss the grass to dry; But he turned first, and led my eye to look At a tall tuft of flowers beside a brook, A leaping tongue of bloom the scythe had spared Beside a reedy brook the scythe had bared. I left my place to know them by their name, Finding them butterfly weed when I came. The mower in the dew had loved them thus, By leaving them to flourish, not for us,

Nor yet to draw one thought of ours to him. But from sheer morning gladness at the brim.

The butterfly and I had lit upon, Nevertheless, a message from the dawn, That made me hear the wakening birds around,

The mower only thought of nature’s beauty – not of impressing others. He too is lonely, and works alone. However, the joy of morning, the possibilities of the new day intoxicate him and awaken his conscious love of life. This love is described as full, spilling over the walls of his heart like too much jam in a jar. He is not trying to console himself by seeking human attention. He is happy to simply be a part of nature. The narrator finds a connection to the mower through their shared solitude and isolation and their mutual recognition of the tuft of flowers.

Robert Frost

The Tuft of Flowers

I've stayed in the front yard all my life. I want a peek at the back Where it's rough and untended and hungry weed grows. A girl gets sick of a rose. I want to go in the back yard now And maybe down the alley,

To where the charity children play.

I want a good time today. They do some wonderful things. They have some wonderful fun.

Children who are poorer than her. Her term “charity children” is both euphemistic and condescending; Brooks loved to satirize this combination (see also “The Lovers of the Poor”).

Gwendolyn Brooks

A Song in the Front Yard

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 Stands up to keep the goal.

“Is my girl happy,

That I thought hard to leave, And has she tired of weeping As she lies down at eve?”

Again the dead man speaks, asking his friend, the second speaker, whether his girl’s grief over his death has diminished or whether she still weeps at night.

A. E. Housman

Is My Team Ploughing

And the slime in hotel spittoons: Part of my life. Hey, boy! A nickel, A dime, A dollar, Two dollars a day. Hey, boy! A nickel, A dime, A dollar, Two dollars a day

Buy shoes for the baby. House rent to pay.

Gin on Saturday, Church on Sunday. My God!

These lines emphasize the discrepancy between the pay the boy receives and his daily living expenses. We get the sense that the boy has to support a child and pay for things such as rent with relatively little pay at his job. This is particularly interesting if the boy is actually a child instead of a grown man, but we are never completely sure which is the case. These types of topics are not a surprise since “Money was a nagging concern for Hughes throughout his life.”

Langston Hughes

Brass Spittoons

The Grass so little has to do A Sphere of simple Green With only Butterflies to brood And Bees to entertain And stir all day to pretty Tunes The Breezes fetch along And hold the Sunshine in its lap And bow to everything And thread the Dews, all night, like Pearls

And make itself so fine

A Duchess were too common For such a noticing And even when it dies – to pass

Vanity alert!

Emily Dickinson

The Grass

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain, And Mourners to and fro Kept treading − treading − till it seemed That Sense was breaking through − And when they all were seated, A Service, like a Drum − Kept beating − beating − till I thought My Mind was going numb − And then I heard them lift a Box And creak across my Soul

With those same Boots of Lead, again, Then Space − began to toll,

As all the Heavens were a Bell, And Being, but an Ear, And I, and Silence, some strange Race

Dickinson continues to describe the feeling of grief and how this extreme, heavy weight is placed upon and dragging one down when mourning. Despite the box being lifted, “creak[s]” suggest that it is being scraped or dragged, and the “Boots of Lead,” (which call to mind a funeral march), refer to having to carry this weight of grief. This weight causes the “Space” or separation between parts of oneself.

Emily Dickinson

280

It was too much, Nearly broke me down. I said, Madam, Can it be You trying to make a Pack-horse out of me? She opened her mouth. She cried, Oh, no! You know, Alberta, I love you so! I said, Madam, That may be true--

But I'll be dogged If I love you!

In the older days, African American women would work for whites tending to all house duties as stated above. Some of these homeowners and their workers acquired friendships, but only as far as that person’s front porch. Relationships between workers and servants were sometimes tense.

Langston Hughes

Madam and Her Madam

I know the pangs which thou didst feel, When Slavery crushed thee with its heel, With thy dear blood all gory. Sad days were those-ah, sad indeed! But through the land the fruitful seed Of better times was growing. The plant of freedom upward sprung, And spread its leaves so fresh and young- Its blossoms now are blowing. On every hand in this fair land, Proud Ethiope's swarthy children stand Beside their fairer neighbor;

The forests flee before their stroke, Their hammers ring, their forges smoke,- They stir in honest labour.

They tread the fields where honour calls; Their voices sound through senate halls In majesty and power.

Obstacles move as they make their way forward. They work hard and earn honest livings.

Paul Laurence Dunbar

Ode To Ethiopia

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees Is my destroyer. And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose My youth is bent by the same wintry fever. The force that drives the water through the rocks Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams Turns mine to wax. And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks. The hand that whirls the water in the pool Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind

Hauls my shroud sail.

And I am dumb to tell the hanging man How of my clay is made the hangman's lime. The lips of time leech to the fountain head;

“Shroud” has two meanings: there is the type that holds a sail in place during a storm, then there is the type used to wrap a dead body. Therefore, this phrase is much optimistic as pessimistic–just like Time.

Dylan Thomas

The Force That through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower

Ay, in the grove of the temple and in the shadow of the citadel I have seen the freest among you wear their freedom as a yoke and a handcuff. And my heart bled within me; for you can only be free when even the desire of seeking freedom becomes a harness to you, and when you cease to speak of freedom as a goal and a fulfillment. You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care nor your nights without a want and a grief, But rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked and unbound. And how shall you rise beyond your days and nights unless you break the chains which you at the dawn of your understanding have fastened around your noon hour? In truth that which you call freedom is the strongest of these chains, though its links glitter in the sun and dazzle your eyes. And what is it but fragments of your own self you would discard that you may become free? If it is an unjust law you would abolish, that law was written with your own hand upon your own forehead. You cannot erase it by burning your law books nor by washing the foreheads of your judges, though you pour the sea upon them. And if it is a despot you would dethrone, see first that his throne erected within you is destroyed. For how can a tyrant rule the free and the proud, but for a tyranny in their own freedom and a shame in their own pride? And if it is a care you would cast off, that care has been chosen by you rather than imposed upon you.

And if it is a fear you would dispel, the seat of that fear is in your heart and not in the hand of the feared.

Verily all things move within your being in constant half embrace, the desired and the dreaded, the repugnant and the cherished, the pursued and that which you would escape. These things move within you as lights and shadows in pairs that cling. And when the shadow fades and is no more, the light that lingers becomes a shadow to another light.

Again reference Kahlil Gibran makes a reference that the change starts in us.- “the seat of that fear is in your heart and not in the hand of the feared”

Kahlil Gibran

On Freedom

The mower in the dew had loved them thus, By leaving them to flourish, not for us, Nor yet to draw one thought of ours to him. But from sheer morning gladness at the brim. The butterfly and I had lit upon, Nevertheless, a message from the dawn, That made me hear the wakening birds around, And hear his long scythe whispering to the ground, And feel a spirit kindred to my own; So that henceforth I worked no more alone; But glad with him, I worked as with his aid, And weary, sought at noon with him the shade;

And dreaming, as it were, held brotherly speech With one whose thought I had not hoped to reach.

Men work together,' I told him from the heart, Whether they work together or apart.'

In the shade of a tree, the narrator falls asleep, referencing the christian dream allegories of medieval literature as well as the image of a knight errant resting beneath a tree, and Arthurian mythology. The “brotherly speech” in this sense takes on a tone of spiritual work; once again exploring the necessity of language in our sense of humanity. The narrator’s dreams are now able to connect him with this mission of life, suggesting that his conscious discoveries of the mower’s soul, death’s generosity and nature’s beauty have empowered him with a spiritual language that can “reach” the thoughts of the mower, who variously represents the human, the natural and the divine. In his drowsy state of rest – he ‘chats’ to the mower – a brotherhood of shared interest and work – quite a different tone from the lone tone of the start.

Robert Frost

The Tuft of Flowers

By the Rio Grande They dance no sarabande On level banks like lawns above the glassy, lolling tide; Nor sing they forlorn madrigals Whose sad note stirs the sleeping gales Till they wake among the trees and shake the boughs, And fright the nightingales; But they dance in the city, down the public squares, On the marble pavers with each colour laid in shares, At the open church doors loud with light within. At the bell's huge tolling, By the river music, gurgling, thin

Through the soft Brazilian air.

The Comendador and Alguacil are there On horseback, hid with feathers, loud and shrill Blowing orders on their trumpets like a bird's sharp bill

There is no river in Brazil named Rio Grande, so we must assume that Sitwell is referring to a large river that flows through the country.

Sacheverell Sitwell

The Rio Grande

If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,

Or being hated, don't give way to hating,

And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise: If you can dream - and not make dreams your master; If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;

In a sense, this line advises against fighting fire with fire. You should allow people to dislike you if they want to; that’s their own prerogative. But hatred isn’t a thing that you should have within yourself.

Rudyard Kipling

If

Spun into a river, the river crossed. The bees argue, in their black ball, A flying hedgehog, all prickles. The man with gray hands stands under the honeycomb Of their dream, the hived station Where trains, faithful to their steel arcs, Leave and arrive, and there is no end to the country. Pom! Pom! They fall Dismembered, to a tod of ivy. So much for the charioteers, the outriders, the Grand Army! A red tatter, Napoleon! The last badge of victory.

The swarm is knocked into a cocked straw hat.

Elba, Elba, bleb on the sea! The white busts of marshals, admirals, generals Worming themselves into niches.

‘Cocked hats were worn at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries; the Napoleonic era. They had rather jaunty upturned brims and this one is 'straw’ — something flimsy. The expression to be ‘knocked into a cocked hat’ means to be beaten severely as Napoleon was. The ‘swarm’ here is the Grand Army rather than the bees.

Sylvia Plath

The Swarm

My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky. So was it when my life began; So is it now I am a man; So be it when I grow old, Or let me die! The Child is father of the Man;

And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety.

Wordsworth uses the term “natural piety” to imply either a devotion to nature, or the existence of a divine nature in natural forms. He wishes to always have a devotion to nature every day he exhibits it. Be and Piety could also be a slant rhyme in this poem.

William Wordsworth

My Heart Leaps Up

Driver drive faster and make a good run Down the Springfield Line under the shining sun. Fly like an aeroplane, don't pull up short Till you brake for Grand Central Station, New York. For there in the middle of the waiting-hall Should be standing the one that I love best of all. If he's not there to meet me when I get to town I'll stand on the side-walk with tears rolling down. For he is the one that I love to look on, The acme of kindness and perfection. He presses my hand and he says he loves me, Which I find an admirable peculiarity.

The woods are bright green on both sides of the line, The trees have their loves though they're different from mine.

But the poor fat old banker in the sun-parlour car Has no one to love him except his cigar. If I were the Head of the Church or the State,

In the picture painted, we are staring down a train track and it splits the landscape in two. It is a symmetry of luscious greenery, wealth, and abundance; the trees are bright, plenteous, and full of love. This plays off of the saying “The grass is greener on the other side.” The narrator doesn’t see it that way, but rather sees only the love in existence, in all of its infinite shades of green; even going so far as to acknowledge the love inherent in vegetation.

W. H. Auden

Calypso

They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do.

They fill you with the faults they had

And add some extra, just for you. But they were fucked up in their turn By fools in old-style hats and coats,

1) Physical traits; a baby will carry similar features as his or her parents. 2) By raising a child, the parents instill a set of values and standards.

Philip Larkin

This Be The Verse x

cockles flame open. 'How long on the chicken?' The chef stands at the door performing final checks, an author, copy-editing the text, while out front, a father and son take their place. He's young, fragile, pale, hair neatly parted as a book open at the centre page. His father takes a water his son, a flute of champagne, one stream of bubbles threading its core, delicate and finely strung as their conversation.

So, what's the story here?

No one can know for sure, except that there will be one. A young chef, got his first job?

In another brief, one-lined stanza, Sheers asks the question the reader is also asking.

Owen Sheers

Service

Byways and bygone And lone nights long Sun rays and sea waves And star and stone

Manless and friendless

No cave my home This is my torture My long nights, lone

The traveller left, and had no friends or anything to start off with. As mentioned earlier in the poem, the traveller already travels alone, so it is revealed he is always lonely.

Maya Angelou

The Traveller

Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I've tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great

And would suffice.

When someone’s words have an “icy” tone, they are cold, unfeeling, and usually meant to be harmful. In contrast with fire, which is about self-gain, ice is more about bringing another person down. People are almost equally set on making sure that their enemies do not rise above them as they are about taking the most for themselves. The words “desire” and “hate” seem to portray humanity’s strife as a kind of lovers' quarrel writ large. (Frost’s own self-written epitaph is “I Had A Lovers' Quarrel With The World”). Frost is honest enough to disclose that within himself lie enough of depravity so that he can “know” about desire and hate. He does not pretend that these maladies belong only to others or the worst among us.

Robert Frost

Fire and Ice

Driver drive faster and make a good run Down the Springfield Line under the shining sun.

Fly like an aeroplane, don't pull up short Till you brake for Grand Central Station, New York.

For there in the middle of the waiting-hall Should be standing the one that I love best of all. If he's not there to meet me when I get to town

The rhythm of the lines is deliberately designed to mimic the motion of a train, and in this couplet we see how apt this is – the speaker is on a train heading into Grand Central Station. The first line in each couplet is in the form of dactylic tetrameter , which is a fancy way of saying the lines follow the rhythm of DUM-da-da-DUM-da-da (one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed). Auden chose this style because it so closely recalls the instantly recognisable sound of an old style locomotive: Grand Central Station itself is a very appropriate setting for a love poem. It is generally regarded as one of the most beautiful train stations in the world.

W. H. Auden

Calypso

I THE DARK In a worldless timeless lightless great emptiness Four-faced Brahma broods.

Of a sudden sea of joy surges through his heart -- The ur-god opens his eyes. Speech from four mouths Speeds from each quarter. Through infinite dark, Through limitless sky, Like a growing sea-storm, Like hope never sated, His Word starts to move.

Stirred by joy his breathing quickens, His eight eyes quiver with flame. His fire-matted hair sweeps the horizon,

The whole poem is a reference to the Hindu cycle of the universe. One cycle of creation, preservation and destruction is called one yuga cycle . In the beginning of each yuga cycle, Brhama creates the universe.

Rabindranath Tagore

Brahmā Vişņu Śiva

Baby don't ignore me We were smokers, we were friends Forget that tired story Of betrayal and revenge I see the ghost of culture With numbers on his wrist Salutes some new conclusion That all of us have missed I cried for you this morning And I'll cry for you again But I'm not in charge of sorrow So please don't ask me when

There may be wine and roses

And magnums of champagne But we'll never No we'll never ever be that drunk again

A phrase from the 1896 poem “Vitae Summa Brevis” by Ernest Dowson: They are not long, the days of wine and roses: Out of a misty dream Our path emerges for a while, then closes Within a dream. “Days of Wine and Roses” also was the title of a 1962 film that tells the story of an alcoholic couple.

Leonard Cohen

A Street

It was me with serpentine hair and a timeless stare That with immortal glare turned mortal fear into stone time capsules They still exist as the walking dead, as I do The original sufferhead, symbol of life and matriarchy Severed head Medusa, I am I am that nigga I am that nigga! I am that nigga!! I am a negro! Yes negro, negro from _necro_ meaning death I overcame it so they named me after it And I be spitting at death from behind And putting "Kick Me" signs on it's back

Because I am not the son of Sha-Clack-Clack

I am before that, I am before I am before before Before death is eternity, after death is eternity

“Sha-Clack-Clack” refers to the sound a whip makes, as referenced later on in the poem. African Americans were often whipped as punishment while facing enslavement in the 18th and 19th century. While he may be an African American, he is not a slave, nor is he willing to be treated as one.

Saul Williams

Sha-Clack-Clack

It's a scientific fact that anyone entering the distance will grow smaller. Eventually becoming so small he might only be found with a telescope, or, for more intimacy, with a microscope....

But there's a vanishing point, where anyone having penetrated the distance must disappear entirely without hope of his ever returning, leaving only a memory of his ever having been.

But then there is fiction, so that one is never really sure if it was someone who vanished into the end of seeing, or someone made of paper and ink....

A trope for death? Edson himself died on April 29, 2014 at the age of 79. RIP.

Russell Edson

Of Memory and Distance

Where we made the fire In the summer time Of branch and briar On the hill to the sea, I slowly climb Through winter mire, And scan and trace The forsaken place

Quite readily.

Now a cold wind blows, And the grass is grey, But the spot still shows

This is perhaps unexpected. The poet seems to be accepting and embracing his sadness and loss, rather than rebelling against whatever sad fate has dealt him.

Thomas Hardy

Where the picnic was

A little black thing in the snow Crying "weep! weep!" in notes of woe! "Where are thy father and mother? Say!" "They are both gone up to the church to pray "Because I was happy upon the heath And smiled among the winter's snow

They clothed me in the clothes of death

And taught me to sing the notes of woe "And because I am happy and dance and sing They think they have done me no injury

Being a chimney sweeper in London during this time was very dangerous. There were no child labour laws and no laws to regulate working conditions. Because of this the children were sent into chimneys from dawn till dusk to clean out chimneys. This caused them to be almost permanently covered in soot which is the “clothes of death” referred to in this line. The children would often fall to their deaths or develop fatal illnesses such as lung cancer from the soot they breathed in during the day.

William Blake

The Chimney Sweeper Songs of Experience

Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art! Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes. Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart, Vulture, whose wings are dull realities? How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise, Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies, Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?

Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car,

And driven the Hamadryad from the wood To seek a shelter in some happier star? The gentle Naiad from her fountain flood?

Here, Poe uses a powerful image: Diana, the Roman goddess of the hunt and major icon in the arts since the Renaissance, being “dragged … from her car.” Her iconic depiction in the arts is deromanticized by the unrelenting “dull realities” that, in this poem, characterize science and scientific discovery.

Edgar Allan Poe

Sonnet—To Science

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. 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.

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. If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also. For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill?

Essentially, love with any purpose beyond greater comprehension of itself is not love at all, and inherently selfish (and thus nothing good will come of it)

Kahlil Gibran

On Friendship

Where is the hire for which my life was hired? Oh vanity of vanities, desire! Longing and love, pangs of a perished pleasure, Longing and love, a disenkindled fire, And memory a bottomless gulf of mire, And love a fount of tears outrunning measure; Oh vanity of vanities, desire! Now from my heart, love's deathbed, trickles, trickles, Drop by drop slowly, drop by drop of fire, The dross of life, of love, of spent desire; Alas, my rose of life gone all to prickles,-- Oh vanity of vanities, desire!

Oh vanity of vanities, desire;

Stunting my hope which might have strained up higher, Turning my garden plot to barren mire; Oh death-struck love, oh disenkindled fire,

The use of the refrain indicates that these thoughts are going around in the narrator’s head and that she cannot escape from them. Her thoughts are cyclical. No matter how much she thinks about it, nothing changes. She is in the same situation at the start and end of the poem.

Christina Rossetti

Soeur Louise De La Misericorde

I wouldn't thank you for a Valentine.

I won't wake up early wondering if the postman's been. Should 10 red-padded satin hearts arrive with sticky sickly saccharine Sentiments in very vulgar verses I wouldn't wonder if you meant them.

The opening line is repeated at the end of the stanza and at the end of stanzas two and three. An amended version of it concludes the poem. The effect is to emphasise the speaker’s seemingly unequivocal point of view. She immediately sets up the tone; that of cynicism.

Liz Lochhead

I Wouldnt Thank You For A Valentine

I heard a Fly buzz – when I died – The Stillness in the Room Was like the Stillness in the Air – Between the Heaves of Storm –

The Eyes around – had wrung them dry – And Breaths were gathering firm For that last Onset – when the King Be witnessed – in the Room –

I willed my Keepsakes – Signed away What portions of me be Assignable – and then it was

The first two lines illuminate for the modern reader the nineteenth century American Puritan rituals surrounding death. Family and friends weep and grieve, but then compose themselves for the moment of passing; hnece “Breaths were gathering firm”. There would be a priest at the bedside, who would say a prayer for God to take the soul of the dying. This appears to be an almost tangible process, with God — or “King”— believed to be physically present in the room. The nouns “Eyes” and “Breaths” signify weeping and uneasy breathing, an example of synecdoche . The prolifieration of dashes creates a choppy, uneven rhythm that may suggest the fear and awe of those watching the speaker’s final moments.

Emily Dickinson

I heard a Fly buzz 465

‘Good-morning; good-morning!' the General said

When we met him last week on our way to the line. Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of 'em dead, And we're cursing his staff for incompetent swine.

The General is introduced as a jovial character, one who is naively perky in the midst of WWI trenches. His cheery greeting suggest he is oblivious to the future suffering of the men and blind to his own inadequacy.

Siegfried Sassoon

The General

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 To where it bent in the undergrowth. Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day!

But on second thought, maybe the paths were used equally. This contradicts the initial impulse; on the surface the second path was less followed, but if you looked closely, plenty of people had chosen to follow it. So many people have forged new paths before. This contradiction is a purposeful part of Frost’s style wherein he uses ambiguity to leave it to the readers to determine (or maybe NOT clearly determine) the meaning. This sets up the opening of the fourth stanza.

Robert Frost

The Road Not Taken

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. Jackets doffed they swing axes and chop away just above ground, And the chips fly about and lie white on the moss and fallen leaves; Till a broad deep gash in the bark is hewn all the way round, And one of them tries to hook upward a rope, which at last he achieves. The saw then begins, till the top of the tall giant shivers: The shivers are seen to grow greater with each cut than before:

They edge out the saw, tug the rope; but the tree only quivers,

And kneeling and sawing again, they step back to try pulling once more. Then, lastly, the living mast sways, further sways: with a shout Job and Ike rush aside. Readied the end of its long staying powers

They stop using the saw, and try to pull the rope that was attached earlier, but the tree only jolts a little bit, before returning to its previous location. The personification of the tree as quivering serves the purpose of portraying it as an innocent victim in this situation that is fighting for survival. Quivering can be interpreted as the tree trembling out of fear or as it fights against the forces of the lumberjacks.

Thomas Hardy

Throwing a Tree

They would just look at me. I was posing something that they didn't want to enter their minds. Now in industry, there are vast layoffs (steel mills dead, technical changes in other factors of the work place). They are layed off by the hundreds of thousands and their faces are stunned: "I put in 35 years..." "It ain't right..." "I don't know what to do..." They never pay the slaves enough so they can get free, just enough so they can stay alive and come back to work. I could see all this. Why couldn't they? I figured the park bench was just as good or being a barfly was just as good. Why not get there first before they put me there? Why wait? I just wrote in disgust against it all, it was a relief to get the shit out of my system. And now that I'm here, a so-called professional writer, after giving the first 50 years away, I've found out that there are other disgusts beyond the system. I remember once, working as a packer in this lighting fixture company, one of the packers suddenly said: "I'll never be free!" One of the bosses was walking by (his name was Morrie) and he let out this delicious cackle of a laugh, enjoying the fact that this fellow was trapped for life. So, the luck I finally had in getting out of those places, no matter how long it took, has given me a kind of joy, the jolly joy of the miracle. I now write from an old mind and an old body, long beyond the time when most men would ever think of continuing such a thing, but since I started so late I owe it to myself to continue, and when the words begin to falter and I must be helped up stairways and I can no longer tell a bluebird from a paperclip, I still feel that something in me is going to remember (no matter how far I'm gone) how I've come through the murder and the mess and the moil, to at least a generous way to die. To not to have entirely wasted one's life seems to be a worthy accomplishment, if only for myself. yr boy,

Hank

Bukowski’s full name was Henry Charles Bukowski.

Charles Bukowski

Letter to John Martin 1986

Escape Shadows, shadows, Hug me round So that I shall not be found

By sorrow:

She pursues me Everywhere, I can't lose her

This enjambment ends the sing-song-y rhythm that the poem opens with. Because it is enjambed and because it is set off with a colon (or, in some publications, a semi-colon) it has special emphasis placed on it. It also stands out in that it is not a part of the rhyme scheme of the first three lines or of the last four lines; it is completely on its own within the stanza. “Sorrow” also breaks the pattern of one-syllable words it is preceded by. Sorrow is personified and becomes the villain here; it is what the narrator is hiding from. Usually, though, sorrow is an emotion brought about by an action or event, so what could have caused the sorrow here? Given the context of the publication, sorrow could perhaps stem from a dissatisfaction with African American circumstances in the U.S. These circumstances could relate to lynching, which Johnson argues against in her works.

Georgia Douglas Johnson

Escape

The moment when, after many years of hard work and a long voyage

you stand in the centre of your room, house, half-acre, square mile, island, country, knowing at last how you got there,

There is no introductory preamble. The second person narrator launches the poem as if admonishing the reader. This is a hook to capture the reader’s interest, a device known as in media res , meaning ‘in the middle of things’. The poet is referring to humanity’s striving for constant ‘improvement’ and love of exploration and adventure. Note that the poem begins with a subordinate clause, building tension as the reader proceeds to the main clause at the end of the stanza, a device known as anastrophe .

Margaret Atwood

The Moment

Helen, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicean barks of yore That gently, o'er a perfum'd sea, The weary, way-worn wanderer bore To his own native shore. On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the glory that was Greece And the grandeur that was Rome Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche How statue-like I see thee stand!

The agate lamp within thy hand

Ah! Psyche from the regions which Are Holy Land!

Again tying to the theme of ancient Greece, agate is a valuable type of quartz used by ancient Greeks. They are a symbol of Gaia, the Greek Earth Mother; and Nyx, the night goddess. Agates also symbolize healing, courage, and strength; tying in to the worn adventurer metaphor from the previous stanza.

Edgar Allan Poe

To Helen

Is a jazz rhythm, Honey. The gods are laughing at us. The broken heart of love, The weary, weary heart of pain,- Overtones, Undertones, To the rumble of street cars, To the swish of rain. Lenox Avenue, Honey. Midnight,

And the gods are laughing at us.

Who are these repeated gods?

Langston Hughes

Lenox Avenue: Midnight

That can united rise To smash the old dead dogmas of the past-- To kill the lies of color That keep the rich enthroned And drive us to the time-clock and the plow Helpless, stupid, scattered, and alone--as now-- Race against race, Because one is black, Another white of face. Let us new lessons learn, All workers, New life-ways make,

One union form:

Until the future burns out Every past mistake Let us together, say:

Allusion to the original union, severed during the Civil War, and could be potentially reunited. He may be referencing “union” not only to foster discussion about labor unions, but to reference the union of the United States, that remains divided due to racial tensions.

Langston Hughes

Open Letter to the South

The moment when, after many years of hard work and a long voyage you stand in the centre of your room, house, half-acre, square mile, island, country, knowing at last how you got there, and say, I own this, is the same moment when the trees unloose their soft arms from around you, the birds take back their language, the cliffs fissure and collapse, the air moves back from you like a wave and you can't breathe.

No, they whisper. You own nothing. You were a visitor, time after time

climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming. We never belonged to you. You never found us.

At this point nature finds its own personified voice, linking cleverly back to the line “and the birds take back their language”. Nature is taking revenge by breaking our illusion of power over the world and its resources. We have become an allegorical ‘visitor’, representing Humankind, a race which thinks it is in control but in reality only lives to see a fraction of earth’s lifetime.

Margaret Atwood

The Moment

Spring over the ground, Like a hunting-hound! For this is Thanksgiving Day. Over the river, and through the wood, And straight through the barn-yard gate. We seem to go Extremely slow,— It is so hard to wait! Over the river and through the wood— Now grandmother's cap I spy! Hurrah for the fun! Is the pudding done?

Hurrah for the pumpkin-pie!

No explanation required.

Lydia Maria Child

A Boys Thanksgiving Day Over the river and through the wood

Call the roller of big cigars, The muscular one, and bid him whip In kitchen cups concupiscent curds. Let the wenches dawdle in such dress As they are used to wear, and let the boys Bring flowers in last month's newspapers. Let be be finale of seem.

The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal, Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet On which she embroidered fantails once,

Possibly a reference to a remark in Hamlet 4.3 about the finality and the corporality of death: HAMLET. … Your Worm is your only emperor for diet: we fat all Creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for Maggots: your fat king and your lean beggar is but Variable service, two dishes, but to one table: That’s the end. This line (and its twin at the end)–which reads like a (skewed) bit from a children’s rhyme–is a seeming non sequitur that lifts the reader unexpectedly out of the darker tones of the poem, creating ambiguity and tension even as it reads like a definitive statement.

Wallace Stevens

The Emperor of Ice Cream

his mother dances with him. She puts on the record, 'Red Roses for a Blue Lady' and throws him across the room. Mind you, she never laid a hand on him. He gets red roses in different places, the head, that time he was as sleepy as a river, the back, that time he was a broken scarecrow, the arm like a diamond had bitten it, the leg, twisted like a licorice stick, all the dance they did together,

Blue Lady and Tommy.

You fell, she said, just remember you fell. I fell, is all he told the doctors in the big hospital. A nice lady came

There is irony is the seeming sweetness of the relationship. The “Blue Lady” of the song is sad because of a “silly quarrel”, whhereas this Blue Lady is deeply disturbed. Furthermore, the noun “lady” suggests gentility, which is far from reality. Blue is the colour of depression, so we might speculate that the abuse she metes out to Tommy is the result of mental illness.

Anne Sexton

Red Roses

Queen Victoria My father and all his tobacco loved you I love you too in all your forms The slim and lovely virgin floating among German beer The mean governess of the huge pink maps

The solitary mourner of a prince

Queen Victoria I am cold and rainy I am dirty as a glass roof in a train station

Queen Victoria’s husband Albert died in 1861 at the age of only 42 years, after 22 years of marriage. Victoria wore black for the rest of her life (which was to last 40 years).

Leonard Cohen

Queen Victoria

I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed. Inaction, no falsifying dream Between my hooked head and hooked feet: Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat. The convenience of the high trees! The air's buoyancy and the sun's ray Are of advantage to me; And the earth's face upward for my inspection.

My feet are locked upon the rough bark.

It took the whole of Creation To produce my foot, my each feather: Now I hold Creation in my foot

The hawk is an immovable force of nature, its feet ‘locked’. It is unrivalled in power and cunning. The words are clipped and monosyllabic , with hard consonants. Also, ‘locked’ and ‘bark’ are half-rhyming to give the line unity. The effect is rather of an old-fashioned school-master barking out a lesson.

Ted Hughes

Hawk Roosting

A Route of Evanescence With a revolving Wheel-- A Resonance of Emerald--

A Rush of Cochineal--

And every Blossom on the Bush Adjusts its tumbled Head-- The mail from Tunis, probably,

Just like the Emerald from the previous line , another descriptive and detailed image appears. Cochineal is both an insect, a dye, and a shade of colour:

Emily Dickinson

A Route of Evanescence

You want to hear it? well: Only, my secret's mine, and I won't tell. Or, after all, perhaps there's none: Suppose there is no secret after all, But only just my fun. Today's a nipping day, a biting day; In which one wants a shawl, A veil, a cloak, and other wraps: I cannot ope to everyone who taps, And let the draughts come whistling thro' my hall; Come bounding and surrounding me, Come buffeting, astounding me,

Nipping and clipping thro' my wraps and all.

I wear my mask for warmth: who ever shows His nose to Russian snows To be pecked at by every wind that blows?

This line has several interpretation, but continues the extended metaphor . This plays back to all the previous lines about letting the draught in. She had two forms to represent protection: the house and the warm clothing. Nipping and clipping are penetrating and invasive by small stages. The suitor might have emotionally entered into the heart. Sidenote: If this refers to a woman, specifically Rossetti, it could be seen as sexual penetration.

Christina Rossetti

Winter: My Secret

I cannot tell you how it was;

But this I know: it came to pass Upon a bright and breezy day When May was young; ah, pleasant May!

This is a key line, repeated almost exactly in line nine, but with the significant change of ‘how’ to ‘what’. This is a device known as anaphora , The opening ‘I cannot tell’ is ambiguous. Does this mean the speaker is not allowed to tell, or that she lacks the ability or understanding to tell?

Christina Rossetti

May

Advances in a godlike wreath Of its own wrath. Chilled by such fragile reeling A hundred blows of a boot-heel Shall not quell, the dreamer wakes and hungers. Percussive pulses, drum or gong, Build in his skull their loud entrancement, Volutions of a Hindu dance. His hands move clumsily in the first conventional Gestures of assent. He is willing to undergo the volition and fervor Of many fleshlike arms, observe These in their holiness of indirection

Destroy, adore, evolve, reject—

Till on glass rigid with his own seizure At length the sucking jewels freeze.

Here is yet another reference to Shiva’s dance of death and rebirth – evolution following destruction. It alludes to the dynamic and chaotic turbulence of the universe, in which the human soul is tossed, as if in an epileptic seizure (referenced in the next line).

James Merrill

The Octopus