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She is as in a field a silken tent

At midday when the sunny summer breeze Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent, So that in guys it gently sways at ease,

This begins the conceit , which is a form of elaborate comparison, here expressed as a simile . It is the only explicit mention of “she” in the whole poem. The syntax of the line is unexpected and archaic, with the “silken tent” placed for emphasis at the end, an example of anastrophe . The style is taut and spare, no words are wasted. All words, with one exception, are monosyllables, and the line flows smoothly. The metrical rhythm is iambic pentameter , that is five metrical feet or iambs where a iamb is one unstressed followed by one stressed syllable. Note that this begins the single sentence that makes up the whole of the sonnet.

Robert Frost

The Silken Tent

For Susan O'Neill Roe

What a thrill ---- My thumb instead of an onion. The top quite gone

Susan O'Neill Roe was one of the people who helped Plath following her divorce.

Sylvia Plath

Cut

Once a fair and stately palace — Radiant palace — reared its head In the monarch Thought's dominion — It stood there! Never seraph spread a pinion Over fabric half so fair! Banners yellow, glorious, golden On its roof did float and flow (This — all this — was in the olden Time long ago,) And every gentle air that dallied In that sweet day

Along the ramparts plumed and pallid

A winged odor went away Wanderers in that happy valley Through two luminous windows, saw

First, pallid means deficient in color, or lacking sparkle or liveliness. This line in the poem is stating that the palace is not very appealing to the eye in the way most palaces are. The place is very original and not highly dramatic like most places.

Edgar Allan Poe

The Haunted Palace

If my darling were once to decide Not to stop at my eyes,

But to jump, like Alice, with floating skirt into my head,

She would find no table and chairs, No mahogany claw-footed sideboards, No undisturbed embers;

In the story Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, Alice finds a rabbit hole big enough for her to fit in she then jumps into it blindly not knowing what she will encounter. The romantic reference to the “floating skirt” suggests freedom and gentle feminity. This contrasts ironically with the oppressive narrowness of the poet’s head. Within this space “my darling” will find cynicism and a negative view of society.

Philip Larkin

If My Darling

High-tone boys meks high-tone men. Once dey was a ole black bah, Used to live 'roun' hyeah some whah In a cave. He was so big He could ca'y off a pig Lak you picks a chicken up, Er yo' leetles' bit o' pup. An' he had two gread big eyes, Jes' erbout a saucer's size. Why, dey looked lak balls o' fiah Jumpin' 'roun' erpon a wiah W'en dat bah was mad; an' laws!

But you ought to seen his paws!

Did I see 'em? How you 'spec I 's a-gwine to ricollec' Dis hyeah ya'n I 's try'n' to spin

You will be attacked viciously

Paul Laurence Dunbar

A Cabin Tale

Huffy Henryhid the day, unappeasable Henry sulked. I see his point,—a trying to put things over.

It was the thought that they thought they could do it made Henry wicked & away.

But he should have come out and talked. All the world like a woolen lover once did seem on Henry's side.

Many, and no doubt some of them heartier than Henry, have been made both wicked & away at the thought of do-gooders and doers, generally.

John Berryman

Dream Song 1

I have done it again. One year in every ten I manage it-- A sort of walking miracle, my skin Bright as a Nazi lampshade,

My right foot

A paperweight, My face a featureless, fine Jew linen.

This echoes Plath’s poem, ‘'Daddy’' , in which she writes: “… you do not do Any more, black shoe In which I have lived like a foot For thirty years … The implication in both poems is of plodding ‘deadness’, like a lump that impedes her. Her foot is powerless. Ironically, in this case it is her ‘right’ foot that is an inanimate and heavy, when it should be the one that leads and propels her forward. Reference to feet again, as with ‘Daddy’, is possibly a reference to her father, who lost a foot due to untreated gangrene. This also links in with ‘Nazi lampshade’ and ‘Jew linen’. Plath’s father was, according to Plath, a Nazi, and Plath sympathised and identified with the Jewish people, hence her confusion about her identity and lack of sense of belonging. (Note that biographical research about Plath’s father’s Nazi sympathies have disputed this.)

Sylvia Plath

Lady Lazarus

Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed. Beyond this place of wrath and tears

He doesn’t whine when life gets tough! In “the fell clutch of circumstance”, the word “fell” is being used as an adjective meaning “cruel.” The hard, percussive consonants emphasise the harshness of his fate. When Henley was 19 one his legs had to be amputated below the knee. Immediately after the amputation was completed, doctors informed him that the other leg would also need to be amputated. While ultimately he was able to keep his other leg, it required more surgery. While he was recovering in the infirmary, he wrote this poem.

William Ernest Henley

Invictus

Aux taureaux Dieu cornes donne Et sabots durs aux chevaux...

Why are not women fair, All, as Andromache— Having, each one, most praisable

French for “God gives horns to the bulls and hooves to the horses”. In the context of the poem, it seems to refer to the physical appearance– or beauty– of women.

Wallace Stevens

Peter Parasol

For Mac Adams, Artist

His palette is light, in all its shades and the holes it makes.

Mac Adams was born in 1943 and is a British artist. He is noted for his work with projected shadows.

Owen Sheers

Shadow Man

A smell of dead limes quickens in the nose The leprosy of empire. ‘Farewell, green fields, Farewell, ye happy groves!' Marble like Greece, like Faulkner's South in stone, Deciduous beauty prospered and is gone, But where the lawn breaks in a rash of trees A spade below dead leaves will ring the bone Of some dead animal or human thing Fallen from evil days, from evil times. It seems that the original crops were limes Grown in that silt that clogs the river's skirt;The imperious rakes are gone, their bright girls gone,

The river flows, obliterating hurt.

I climbed a wall with the grille ironwork Of exiled craftsmen protecting that great house From guilt, perhaps, but not from the worm's rent

The river is filled with pain and awful memories. Painful to even look at. Although it may seem like a peaceful river flowing, the river has seen dark times. A river should be peaceful. The writer uses imagery when he speaks about the river. However, this river is not peaceful to him, Walcott wonders if there are dead bodies in this river, bodies of slaves…

Derek Walcott

Ruins of a Great House

But I would rather be horizontal. I am not a tree with my root in the soil Sucking up minerals and motherly love So that each March I may gleam into leaf, Nor am I the beauty of a garden bed Attracting my share of Ahs and spectacularly painted, Unknowing I must soon unpetal. Compared with me, a tree is immortal And a flower-head not tall, but more startling, And I want the one's longevity and the other's daring.

Tonight, in the infinitesimal light of the stars, The trees and the flowers have been strewing their cool odors.

I walk among them, but none of them are noticing. Sometimes I think that when I am sleeping I must most perfectly resemble them --

The trees and the flowers are unleashing their essence under the glow of the stars

Sylvia Plath

I Am Vertical

I placed a jar in Tennessee, And round it was, upon a hill. It made the slovenly wilderness Surround that hill. The wilderness rose up to it, And sprawled around, no longer wild. The jar was round upon the ground

And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion every where. The jar was gray and bare. It did not give of bird or bush,

There is confusion in the air at this point of the poem. There is no clear dominating force between man and nature because their connection, the port, rises above all that can be seen, like air.

Wallace Stevens

Anecdote of the Jar

My daughter's heavier. Light leaves are flying.

Everywhere in enormous numbers turkeys will be dying

and other birds, all their wings. They never greatly flew. Did they wish to? I should know. Off away somewhere once I knew

Signifies that this poem takes place in November because of the relation to Thanksgiving. Berryman wrote the poem on November 25 (Thanksgiving day), 1965.

John Berryman

Dream Song 385

Then take care of her children When I got through. Wash, iron, and scrub, Walk the dog around-- 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

The mistress of the house is trying to convince Alberta that she loves her. However, it’s far more likely that she just loves all the work that Alberta does.

Langston Hughes

Madam and Her Madam

Tremors of your network cause kings to disappear. Your open mouth in anger makes nations bow in fear. Your bombs can change the seasons, obliterate the spring. What more do you long for?

Why are you suffering?

You control the human lives in Rome and Timbuktu. Lonely nomads wandering

Why must people suffer in a world where they should be able to be free and live out their dreams and potential to their fullest abilities and expectations?

Maya Angelou

These Yet to be United States

I'm a riddle in nine syllables, An elephant, a ponderous house, A melon strolling on two tendrils. O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers! This loaf's big with its yeasty rising. Money's new-minted in this fat purse.

I'm a means, a stage, a cow in calf.

I've eaten a bag of green apples, Boarded the train there's no getting off.

The speaker feels that she is a “means” for someone else (ie. a means to an end— the end being the baby’s life). She is also an everyday means of sustenance for the baby. Her body is not her own; it has been repurposed as a staging ground, expectantly awaiting the performance, or birth. The word of course also suggests a stage of life. The idiom “in calf” means to be pregnant. Probably a stretch to say it’s also a punny mock of her swollen ankles.

Sylvia Plath

Metaphors

The battle rent a cobweb diamond-strung And cut a flower beside a ground bird's nest Before it stained a single human breast.

The stricken flower bent double and so hung.

And still the bird revisited her young. A butterfly its fall had dispossessed A moment sought in air his flower of rest,

The flower was struck by the passing bullet and drooped. That it “bent double” mimics the reflex of humans in pain, effectively personifying the flower. The sense of the vulnerability of nature is reinforced.The adjective “stricken” also has connotations of grief and shock; humans are said to be stricken if they receive an emotional blow.

Robert Frost

Range-finding

I taste a liquor never brewed -- From Tankards scooped in Pearl -- Not all the Vats upon the Rhine Yield such an Alcohol! Inebriate of Air -- am I -- And Debauchee of Dew -- Reeling -- thro endless summer days -- From inns of Molten Blue -- When "Landlords" turn the drunken Bee Out of the Foxglove's door -- When Butterflies -- renounce their "drams" --

I shall but drink the more!

Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats -- And Saints -- to windows run -- To see the little Tippler

But the speaker will continue to drink because what she’s drinking — the beauty of the world —intoxicates her earthly rather than spiritual being. Dickinson neatly ends the stanza with another exclamation mark to suggest that she will never be sated. The preponderance of alliterative “d"s throughout the stanza adds to the humour. This poem would work well read aloud in performance.

Emily Dickinson

I taste a liquor never brewed

The heart of a woman goes forth with the dawn,

As a lone bird, soft winging, so restlessly on, Afar o'er life's turrets and vales does it roam In the wake of those echoes the heart calls home

The entire first stanza of the poem feels hopeful. The image of “dawn” creates a sense of possibility. After the first two syllables, this first line sets up a relatively regular tri-meter rhythmic pattern, with stresses on the second, fifth, eighth, and eleventh syllables.

Georgia Douglas Johnson

The Heart of a Woman

I am packing the sick cats. O vase of acid, It is love you are full of. You know who you hate. He is hugging his ball and chain down by the gate That opens to the sea Where it drives in, white and black, Then spews it back. Every day you fill him with soul-stuff, like a pitcher. You are so exhausted. Your voice my ear-ring, Flapping and sucking, blood-loving bat. That is that. That is that.

You peer from the door,

Sad hag. "Every woman's a whore. I can't communicate." I see your cute decor

The woman doesn’t have words to say goodbye either, but manages only to ‘peer’ — no hint of a smile or good wishes. Plath’s final, self-explanatory insult is ‘Sad hag’. It couldn’t be more venomous.

Sylvia Plath

Lesbos

I sat all morning in the college sick bay Counting bells knelling classes to a close. At two o'clock our neighbours drove me home. In the porch I met my father crying - He had always taken funerals in his stride - And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow. The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram When I came in, and I was embarrassed By old men standing up to shake my hand And tell me they were "sorry for my trouble."

Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,

Away at school, as my mother held my hand In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs. At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived

With large Irish families — Heaney was the eldest of nine children — the ages of the children are often confusing to outsiders. Note that ‘whispers informed’ is a misplaced epithet, (also known as hypallage ) — it is those people doing the whispering that provide the information, not the inanimate whispers themselves. By using this form, Heaney achieves the ironic conciseness that marks out this poem.

Seamus Heaney

Mid-Term Break

When on life's ocean first I spread my sail,

I then implored a mild auspicious gale; And from the slippery strand I took my flight, And sought the peaceful haven of delight.

Horton begins an extended metaphor in which he is a sailboat and life is an ocean, etc. He yearns for favorable winds of success but suffers the tyranny of slavery His poetry was a means of idependence. He hoped to set sail on his own terms to purchase his freedom and save enough to return to Liberia. Though he didn’t earn enough for either goal, “brought attention to him as a poet and as another example of the Negro’s genius” (Farrison). Farrison, W. Edward. “George Moses Horton: Poet for Freedom.” CLA Journal 14.3 (Mar. 1971): 227-241. Rpt. in Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism. Ed. Juliet Byington and Suzanne Dewsbury. Vol. 87. Detroit: Gale Group, 2000. Literature Resource Center. Web. 2 Mar. 2015.

George Moses Horton

On Hearing of a Gentleman to Purchase the Poets Freedom

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; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breathe a word about your loss;

Metaphor – if you are willing to take risks and go all in The use of the word ‘heap’ suggests that all of your ‘winnings’ are not important, and that you should be ready to throw them away into a pile. It’s an informal word that shows the relative ‘un-importance’ of winning.

Rudyard Kipling

If

Fayre bosome fraught with vertues richest tresure, The neast of love, the lodging of delight: the bowre of blisse, the paradice of pleasure, the sacred harbour of that hevenly spright. How was I ravisht with your lovely sight, and my frayle thoughts too rashly led astray? Whiles diving deepe through amorous insight, on the sweet spoyle of beautie they did pray. And twixt her paps like early fruit in May, whose harvest seemd to hasten now apace: they loosely did theyr wanton winges display, and there to rest themselves did boldly place.

Sweet thoughts I envy your so happy rest, which oft I wisht, yet never was so blest.

With the rhyme of “rest” and “blest” the poet wonderfully conflates sexual and religious desires, without reducing one to the other, thanks to the internal form of meditation here on his thoughts (rather than sexual acts).

Edmund Spenser

Amoretti: Sonnet 76

Not for that city of the level sun

Its golden streets and glittering gates ablaze— The shadeless, sleepless city of white days White nights, or nights and days that are as one—

This looks very similar to heaven.

Charlotte Mew

Not for that City

Success is counted sweetest By those who ne'er succeed

To comprehend a nectar Requires sorest need Not one of all the purple Host

The opening stanza is divided into two. The central idea is stated immediately, with no preamble. That is, those who don’t succeed appreciate the idea of success the most. Those who do succeed become desensitized to it. The sad irony is that those who lack success desire it most. Alliterative “s” dominate the first stanza, a gentle silbilant sound that suggests whispering rather than hissing.

Emily Dickinson

Success is counted Sweetest

Said screwed-up lovely 23 A final sense of being right out in the cold Unkissed (—My psychiatrist can lick your psychiatrist.) Women get under Things All these old criminals sooner or later Have had it. I've been reading old journals Gottwald & Co., out of business now Thick chests quit. Double agent, Joe She holds her breath like a seal And is whiter & smoother Rilke was a jerk

I admit his griefs & music

& titled spelled all-disappointed ladies A threshold worse than the circles Where the vile settle & lurk

From the same letter: “I don’t deny his sensitivity and his marvellous melody… . But it is necessary to get down into the arena and kick around. Yeats was prepared to do this, and so I respect him more and even forgive the vulgar posturing.”

John Berryman

Dream Song 3 A Stimulant for an Old Beast

I placed a jar in Tennessee,

And round it was, upon a hill. It made the slovenly wilderness Surround that hill.

Stevens uses this line as a bookend, to provide organization and structure amidst an otherwise oblique writing style. “Tennessee” is repeated at the poem’s close, suggesting the unending relationship between man and nature. Note that “I” speaks on behalf of humankind–not just Stevens. Also, don’t forget the other meaning of the word “jar"—something sudden and unpleasant. When the driver of a car slams the brakes, you could call it "jarring.” We wonder if this jar is going to…jar anything in the poem to come. Maybe upset the natural order of things?

Wallace Stevens

Anecdote of the Jar

Have mercy, Thou my God; mercy, my God;

For I can hardly bear life day by day: Be I here or there I fret myself away: Lo for Thy staff I have but felt Thy rod

The poem begins with a plea from Rossetti, an address to God, for “mercy”. The imperative is unmistakable, and the poet’s distress is emphasised by the repetition of two key words, “mercy” and “God”. The line is devided into short, choppy phrases that express her emotions.

Christina Rossetti

Out Of The Deep

I will be the gladdest thing Under the sun!

I will touch a hundred flowers And not pick one.

I will look at cliffs and clouds With quiet eyes, Watch the wind bow down the grass,

Perhaps a more significant line than it seems, considering Millay’s notoriously fickle romantic life .

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Afternoon on a Hill

A very little boy stood upon a heap of gravel for the honor of Rum Alley. He was throwing stones at howling urchins from Devil's Row who were circling madly about the heap and pelting at him His infantile countenance was livid with fury. His small body was writhing in the delivery of great, crimson oaths "Run, Jimmie, run! Dey'll get yehs," screamed a retreating Rum Alley child "Naw," responded Jimmie with a valiant roar, "dese micks can't make me run." Howls of renewed wrath went up from Devil's Row throats. Tattered gamins on the right made a furious assault on the gravel heap. On their small, convulsed faces there shone the grins of true assassins. As they charged, they threw stones and cursed in shrill chorus

The little champion of Rum Alley stumbled precipitately down the other side. His coat had been torn to shreds in a scuffle, and his hat was gone. He had bruises on twenty parts of his body, and blood was dripping from a cut in his head. His wan features wore a look of a tiny, insane demon

On the ground, children from Devil's Row closed in on their antagonist. He crooked his left arm defensively about his head and fought with cursing fury. The little boys ran to and fro, dodging, hurling stones and swearing in barbaric trebles From a window of an apartment house that upreared its form from amid squat, ignorant stables, there leaned a curious woman. Some laborers, unloading a scow at a dock at the river, paused for a moment and regarded the fight. The engineer of a passive tugboat hung lazily to a railing and watched. Over on the Island, a worm of yellow convicts came from the shadow of a grey ominous building and crawled slowly along the river's bank A stone had smashed into Jimmie's mouth. Blood was bubbling over his chin and down upon his ragged shirt. Tears made furrows on his dirt-stained cheeks. His thin legs had begun to tremble and turn weak, causing his small body to reel. His roaring curses of the first part of the fight had changed to a blasphemous chatter

Crane contrasts the youth and violence in this passage through his description of the children and the goriness of the fight. Crane refers to Jimmie as a “little champion” before describing the gruesome injuries he suffers from. The line “his wan features wore a look of a tiny, insane demon” contrast the evil and vicious behavior inside a small youth body. The children of the tenements are forced to mature early in order to defend and protect themselves from the problems inside the tenements.

Stephen Crane

The Honor of Rum Alley I

That he ne seyde it was a noble storie, And worthy for to drawen to memorie; And namely the gentils everichon. Oure Hooste lough, and swoor, "So moot I gon, This gooth aright; unbokeled is the male, Lat se now who shal telle another tale, For trewely the game is wel bigonne. Now telleth on, sir Monk, if that ye konne Somwhat to quite with the Knyghtes tale." The Millere that for dronken was al pale, So that unnethe upon his hors he sat, He nolde avalen neither hood ne hat,

Ne abyde no man for his curteisie,

But in Pilates voys he gan to crie, And swoor, "By armes and by blood and bones, I kan a noble tale for the nones,

With this one line, the audience can already learn how Chaucer and the people of the tale think of low-status people: no-mannered persons. During Chaucer’s time, people truly believed that people of high status symbolized courtesy, gentility, and respectability, and that low-status people were crude and bawdy.

Geoffrey Chaucer

The Canterbury Tales: The Millers Prologue in Middle English

I looked in my heart while the wild swans went over. And what did I see I had not seen before?

Only a question less or a question more;

Nothing to match the flight of wild birds flying. Tiresome heart, forever living and dying, House without air, I leave you and lock your door.

The poet uses the repetition of ‘question’ to give it emphasis. The modifier ‘only’ is ironic; the question is the crucial aspect of the poem. The line is rhythmic, juxtaposing the antithetic ‘less’ and ‘more’, perhaps to mimic the beating of swans' wings.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Wild Swans

Then Almitra spoke again and said, And what of Marriage, master? And he answered saying: You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore. You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days. Aye, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God. But let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another, but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,

Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together yet not too near together:

The strings of a lute are actually in groups of two called courses . They are two separate strings yet strum together to form their singular sound. Metaphorically, this line acknowledges both the strings as two people having individuality and togetherness for the sounds of marriage, and music of love.

Kahlil Gibran

On Marriage

Equality, and I will be free. Equality, and I will be free. You announce my ways are wanton, That I fly from man to man, But if I'm just a shadow to you, Could you ever understand? We have lived a painful history, We know the shameful past, But I keep on marching forward, And you keep on coming last. Equality, and I will be free. Equality, and I will be free.

Take the blinders from your vision,

Take the padding from your ears, And confess you've heard me crying, And admit you've seen my tears.

The speaker begs for the person to regret and change their one sided viewpoint in the subject matter. The speaker begs for change in hopes they can go down a better moral belief path to enrich their life.

Maya Angelou

Equality

To fling my arms wide In some place of the sun, To whirl and to dance Till the white day is done.

Then rest at cool evening Beneath a tall tree While night comes on gently,

Dark like me-- That is my dream! To fling my arms wide

These lines continue his dream of freedom, where after a long day he can find a comfortable spot to rest and relax, while the night takes over. This first stanza portrays his idealized dream. He simply wants to be free to live his days, and enjoy his nights, free from any sort of persecution of his color or status.

Langston Hughes

Dream Variations

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.

Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain. And could you keep your heart in wonder at the

In life, we must grow, be it physically, spiritually, emotionally, intellectually. But sometimes, this growth is painful. For example, in physical growth, we endure growing pains as our bones stretch and harden into their adult forms. Likewise, in intellectual and spiritual growth, we must discard old understandings and beliefs as we come to more fully comprehend new ones. This can be painful, but it’s necessary in order to grow. Gibran likens the pain to the breaking of a shell; as our understanding grows, it breaks the shell. Note that when a hatchling grows , that’s when it has to break the shell it’s in, or die. This line, by the way, is much better than the cliché “Pain is weakness leaving the body.” Feel free to quote it in your next workout class.

Kahlil Gibran

On Pain

I never said I loved you, John:

Why will you tease me, day by day, And wax a weariness to think upon With always "do" and "pray"?

The speaker begins abruptly with a clear statement from which she doesn’t deviate throughout. Her emphatic rejection establishes the character of the young woman; assertive and uncompromising. Rossetti’s use of language is interesting; there is a forceful removal of the “male voice”. Rossetti allows only her own voice to be the sound of the poem, reinforcing this sense of female empowerment.

Christina Rossetti

No thank you John

O hushed October morning mild Thy leaves have ripened to the fall; To-morrow's wind, if it be wild Should waste them all The crows above the forest call; To-morrow they may form and go O hushed October morning mild Begin the hours of this day slow Make the day seem to us less brief

Hearts not averse to being beguiled

Beguile us in the way you know; Release one leaf at break of day; At noon release another leaf;

People have no issue with time passing as long as it is during the gorgeous and enchanting time of October. For me, the word beguile conjures words of naivety and deceit, so Frost could possibly be speaking to people letting the month pass them by without soaking them up. Frost has created a beautiful fantasy of the month October and he never wants it to end, nor should he, look at those leaves!

Robert Frost

October

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 My Words, and Actions, that their shine may fill

My wayes with glory and thee glorify.

Then mine apparell shall display before yee That I am Cloathd in Holy robes for glory.

Taylor wants God and his faith to be integrated into his very being as a person, such that God’s grace will influence his everyday actions and larger purpose. He views such a state as glorious. Compare the Jesuit motto Ad maiorem Dei gloriam : “For the greater glory of God.”

Edward Taylor

Huswifery

I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself.

A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.

D. H. Lawrence’s poetry is characterized by terse, punchy lines like this one. Here the poem is interested in what separates man from beast, human from non-human. As it turns out, self-pity is one of those things that only humans can muster. It comes with a very negative connotation, as if to say that this exclusively human trait makes us inferior. The enjambment after “wild thing” allows the reader to conjure up an image for this vague term. The reader has a brief chance to take away the ambiguity from the text and project upon it a subjective image of the wild thing. Since the act of reading slightly changes the meaning of the poem, it becomes more personal; the reader is more invested, more introspective, really putting the “self” in “self-pity.”

D. H. Lawrence

Self-Pity

By white night-gowns. None are green, Or purple with green rings, Or green with yellow rings, or yellow with blue rings. None of them are strange, With socks of lace And beaded ceintures. People are not going To dream of baboons and periwinkles. Only, here and there, an old sailor, Drunk and asleep in his boots,

Catches tigers In red weather.

The sailor is having some synesthesia-mixed perceptions during his drunk dreaming…or else he is just dreaming of tiger hunting at sunrise or sunset. Stevens may have in mind the old saying, “Red sky at night, sailors' delight; red sky at morning, sailors take warning.” Since it’s 10 o'clock at night, the suggestion would be that the sailor (the only imaginative figure in the poem) is delighting in his dream. These lines may also be a subtle callback to the famous “burning” tiger of the William Blake poem.

Wallace Stevens

Disillusionment of Ten O Clock

There sandy seems the golden sky And golden seems the sandy plain. No habitation meets the eye Unless in the horizon rim,

Some halfway up the limestone wall, That spot of black is not a stain Or shadow, but a cavern hole,

Where someone used to climb and crawl To rest from his besetting fears. I see the callus on his soul

Frost is pointing out that signs of a past life are there. His tone suggests that people overlook the clear signs of the past. It suggests a disdain for a society to be discarded as if it was never anything. He points out that even though this piece of land seems empty and unused that at one time this was not the case. At one time, this land was the livelihood of a thriving people, a people that once mattered, even if they don’t now.

Robert Frost

A Cliff Dwelling

The light came through the window Straight from the sun above And so inside my little room There plunged the rays of love In streams of light I clearly saw The dust you seldom see Out of which the nameless makes A name for one like me

I'll try to say a little more

Love went on and on Until it reached an open door Then love itself, love itself was gone

The tense changes to present so the speaker now addresses the listener directly and tells him that he will try to elaborate.

Leonard Cohen

Love Itself

Let not young souls be smothered out before They do quaint deeds and fully flaunt their pride. It is the world's one crime its babes grow dull, Its poor are ox-like, limp and leaden-eyed.

Not that they starve; but starve so dreamlessly,

Not that they sow, but that they seldom reap, Not that they serve, but have no gods to serve, Not that they die, but that they die like sheep.

While it’s unfortunate to be starving, it’s far worse that many starve without any greater cause, purpose, or dream of transcending that condition. It’s starving without aspiration, merely acceptance.

Vachel Lindsay

The Leaden Eyed

Bits of the grass I pulled I posted off To one going into chemotherapy And one who had come through. I didn't want To leave the place or link up with the others. It was mid-day, mid-May, pre-tourist sunlight In the precincts of the god, The very site of the temple of Asclepius. I wanted nothing more than to lie down Under hogweed, under seeded grass And to be visited in the very eye of the day By Hygeia, his daughter, her name still clarifying The haven of light she was, the undarkening door.

IV

The room I came from and the rest of us all came from Stays pure reality where I stand alone, Standing the passage of time, and she's asleep

Section 4 represents a return to the speaker’s childhood as he recalls the intimate details of his memories, as in Section 1— the room, the doctor, the wedding sheets, his mother’s familiar Irish phrase. Some of his adult language remains in the eloquence and flow of this section, but he comes full circle back to his childhood sense of wonder at the birth.

Seamus Heaney

Out of the Bag

And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs Before the children green and golden Follow him out of grace, Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand, In the moon that is always rising, Nor that riding to sleep I should hear him fly with the high fields And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land. Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means, Time held me green and dying

Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

This whole poem personifies and creates metaphors from trees, land animals, and farms. However, it ends in a simile of the sea, the total opposite of land. Perhaps it is because all of the good times that has happened on the land, that now drowning seems like what is going on in his mind. Either way, Thomas made it purposely not fit in to this poem.

Dylan Thomas

Fern Hill

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,

And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze. Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life, I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.

This five-line poem is all about the change in agency . “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” begins with a first-person speaker: “I fell into the State” (meaning the military).

Randall Jarrell

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

as if it's just fallen from a table, cups her fetlock and bends, a romantic lead dropping to the lips of his lover. Then the close work begins: cutting moon-sliver clippings, excavating the arrow head of her frog, filing at the sole and branding on a shoe in an apparition of smoke, three nails gritted between his teeth, a seamstress pinning the dress of the bride. Placing his tools in their beds, he gives her a slap and watches her leave, awkward in her new shoes, walking on strange ground.

The sound of his steel, biting at her heels.

The poem ends with the farrier’s ‘superiority’ and power expressed in the aggressive ‘biting at her heels’, a metaphor sometimes used to mean nasty little jibes or attacks. It is as if the farrier needs, finally, to assert his dominance. Note that the two clauses relating to ‘sound’ and ‘biting’ are a mix of senses, an example of synaesthesia . The farrier asserts himself in two different but combined ways.

Owen Sheers

The Farrier

And do I smile, such cordial light Upon the Valley glow It is as a Vesuvian face Had let its pleasure through And when at Night—Our good Day done I guard My Master's Head 'Tis better than the Eider-Duck's Deep Pillow—to have shared To foe of His—I'm deadly foe None stir the second time On whom I lay a Yellow Eye Or an emphatic Thumb

Though I than He—may longer live

He longer must—than I For I have but the power to kill Without—the power to die

The final stanza is mystifying in that it reverses much of what has gone before, a trajectory that doesn’t reach a desination. The speaker/gun seems to long for the death that will eventually come to the “Owner”, but will never get because it is not human. This line suggest that the speaker of the poem is immortal or of a higher power and not human

Emily Dickinson

My Life had stood—a Loaded Gun

We stood by a pond that winter day, And the sun was white, as though chidden of God, And a few leaves lay on the starving sod; – They had fallen from an ash, and were gray. Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove Over tedious riddles of years ago; And some words played between us to and fro On which lost the more by our love. The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing Alive enough to have strength to die; And a grin of bitterness swept thereby

Like an ominous bird a-wing….

Since then, keen lessons that love deceives, And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me Your face, and the God curst sun, and a tree,

The ancient Romans studied the flight of birds to predict the will of the gods. This was known as augury, and the priest in charge of this practice was an augur . The construction ‘a-wing’ is archaic and more concise than the modern ‘on the wing’. It is also a device, [ epenthesis to enable the line to fit the meter. The stanza is notable for its contradictions; alive and dead; smile and bitterness; a flying bird, usually thought of as positive, here is ‘ominous’. The word, ‘ominous’, is derived from the Latin ‘omen’ or ‘ominosus’. The speaker senses that the woman is conveying or signifying something sinister. “An ominous bird a-wing”, however, has connotations of death-symbolising birds such as the raven, appropriately as the poem is about the death of the relationship.

Thomas Hardy

Neutral Tones

A smile because the nights are short! And every morning brings such pleasure Of sweet love-making, harmless sport: Love that makes and finds its treasure; Love, treasure without measure.

A sigh because the days are long!

Long, long these days that pass in sighing, A burden saddens every song: While time lags which should be flying,

The first line of the second stanza echoes the first, including the exclamation mark, but is of course inverted. The “smile” is now a “sigh”, and “short” days are now “long”. These binary opposites are the essence of the poem.

Christina Rossetti

A Smile And A Sigh

Hello Mr. Pini: I rec. your letter from Springfield via Penguin. Today. All right. I am available for a poetry reading but don't know if you have the stakes. It would take round-trip air (which I imagine would be a great deal from L.A. to Florida), plus $200. Somebody to meet me at the airport and take me back there. Also if I arrive a day early, someplace to stay that night, and if there's a party after the reading (one of those beer-drinking talking things) then a place to stay that night. I don't know about your funds. Auden gets 2,000 a reading, Ginsberg 1,000 so you see I'm cheap. A real whore. And maybe not too famous a whore? Anyhow, that's it. If you can swing it, the sooner the better. Miller Williams of the U. of Arkansas says there is a standing offer of $300 for me to read there, so I could stop off there on the way if I can hook you for plane fare it would make the trip worthwhile. I promise not to be overly intoxicated at the reading. I quit my job at age 50, I'm 51 now and have been more or less on the literary hustle. That's why I talk money like a pool sharp. It's all survival; forgive me. Anyhow, let me know what you think, yes or no…whatever. I enclose an advertisement for myself…my first novel….wrote it in 20 nights. If you're interested you can also get my latest book of poems, THE DAYS RUN AWAY LIKE WILD HORSES OVER THE HILLS, same press, same address, $4. I don't have any extra copies of either. I'm working on my 2nd. novel now, THE POET, but I'm taking my time. They say it's 101 degrees today. Fine then, I'm drinking coffee and rolling cigarettes and looking out at the hot baked street and a lady just walked by wiggling it in tight white pants, and we are not dead yet. hang in,

Charles Bukowski 5124 DeLongpre Ave. Los Angeles, Calif. 90027

NO-I-6385

Bukowski’s famous bungalow in East-Hollywood, where he did some of his best work, and which appears in several of his books. The bungalow was bought privately and supposed to be destroyed to free the land for construction back in 2007. But a movement arrised attempting to preserve it, and the Los Angeles’s Cultural Heritage Commission ended up declaring it a Cultural Monument, thus saving it as a landmark for fans to visit.

Charles Bukowski

Terms for Poetry Reading 1971 Letter

Twas but a fly perhaps you'll say, That's born in April, dies in May; That does but just learn to display His wings one minute, And in the next is vanish'd quite. A bird devours it in his flight — Or come a cold blast in the night, There's no breath in it. The bird but seeks his proper food — And Providence, whose power endu'd That fly with life, when it thinks good, May justly take it.

But you have no excuses for't — A life by Nature made so short, Less reason is that you for sport Should shorter make it.

A fly a little thing you rate — But, Robert do not estimate A creature's pain by small or great;

There is no excuse to kill a fly because it only survives for a short period of time. It’s selfish to kill the fly because the only reason you are killing that fly is because it annoy’d you or you’re doing it for fun and games.

Charles Lamb

Thoughtless Cruelty

Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years Finds and shall find me unafraid. It matters not how strait the gate,

Beyond the earthly suffering that he experiences lies no other menace but death which, by comparison, is not such a great horror after all. “Shade” refers to the gloom of the underworld, if one takes this in the Greek sense, or more likely the Christian idea of hell. It can also refer literally to a ghost. However, “the horror of the shade” (preceded by “but,” as in “merely”) is probably not meant to suggest a hell or terrifying afterlife. Rather, it suggests that yes, this world is a hard place, and there is nothing comforting in the afterlife; the idleness of eternal rest is hardly a gift or something to look forward to.

William Ernest Henley

Invictus

SILENT, the Lord of the world

Eyes from the heavenly height, Girt by his far-shining train, Us, who with banners unfurl'd

“SILENT” draws attention both in being the first (and only fully capitalized) word, and by its atypical assignment to “the Lord of the world.” Silence can point to absence, and indeed God at this point has not yet decided to interfere with the mortals' battle. It can also hint at melancholy or contemplation–again not commonly attributed to God in Christian traditions–which the “Turmoil of death and of birth” (l. 9) may be giving rise to. Victor Mikhailovich Vasnetsov, Savaoph, God the Father, 1885-96 . Tretyakov Gallery.

Matthew Arnold

Men of Genius

From the 'Skirrid Hill' collection The water torture of your heels emptying before me down that Paris street, evacuated as the channels of our hearts. That will be one memory. The swing of the tassels on your skirt each step filling out the curve of your hip; your wet lashes, the loss of everything we'd learnt.

That will be another.

Then later – holding each other on the hotel bed, like a pair of sunken voyagers who had thought themselves done for,

The second line of the refrain, concise and self-explanatory.

Owen Sheers

Valentine

Your Momma took to shouting

Your Poppa's gone to war,

Your sister's in the streets Your brother's in the bar. The thirteens. Right On.

This line has the possibility of two meanings as used in the context. The father could literally be in the middle of a war in a different country or the father could also be in a war in the household, the reason why the Mother is screaming.

Maya Angelou

The Thirteens Black

Somewhere or other there must surely be The face not seen, the voice not heard, The heart that not yet--never yet--ah me! Made answer to my word.

Somewhere or other, may be near or far;

Past land and sea, clean out of sight; Beyond the wandering moon, beyond the star That tracks her night by night.

The opening line of each stanza is repeated with slight variations, a device known as anaphora . This emphasises the message of the poem; the speaker’s yearning for love. Note that the second and third stanzas are almost identical apart from the reversal of ‘near or far’ to ‘far or near’. If spoken aloud this line has a rhythmic sonority that draws the reader in.

Christina Rossetti

Somewhere or Other

One Sister have I in our house -

And one a hedge away There's only one recorded But both belong to me

Dickinson is referring to her sister Lavinia, as opposed to her sister-in-law Susan Gilbert, mentioned in the next line. The “house” is the Dickinson Homestead or Dickinson House in Amherst, Massachusetts, now part of the Emily Dickinson Museum. Whatever you call it, Emily didn’t leave it much.

Emily Dickinson

One Sister have I in our house 14

This strange thing must have crept Right out of hell. It resembles a bird's foot Worn around the cannibal's neck.

As you hold it in your hand, As you stab with it into a piece of meat,

It is possible to imagine the rest of the bird: Its head which like your fist Is large, bald, beakless, and blind.

What you usually do with a fork. That looks so good.

Charles Simic

Fork

The sea here used to look As if many convicts had built it, Standing deep in their ankle chains, Ankle-deep in the water, to smite The land and break it down to salt.

I was in this bog as a child When they were all working all day To drive the pilings down.

In this first image of man vs. nature, the speaker sets up how humans are essentially slaves to society and are almost seen as prisoners when performing the mundane and futile task of taming the land (nature) in order to build something artificial on top of it.

James Dickey

At Darien Bridge

Apparently with no surprise, To any happy Flower, The Frost beheads it at its play, In accidental power.

The blond assassin passes on.

The sun proceeds unmoved, To measure off another day, For an approving God.

The Frost is now being called an “assassin”, reinforcing the idea that it is a metaphor for Death. It may be described as “blonde” to describe the sunlight that will melt it away in the next line.

Emily Dickinson

Apparently with no Surprise

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

Maya has some wordplay with the fact that on a highway there are no fast cars. This is a metaphor that she uses to explain how people’s lives are moving by fast, but they are going “nowhere” or not being productive. May also be criticism of the 9-5 working world which are the majority of cars on the highway and whose jobs may not be as important as they believe.

Maya Angelou

Come And Be My Baby

There, Robert, you have kill'd that fly — , And should you thousand ages try The life you've taken to supply, You could not do it. You surely must have been devoid Of thought and sense, to have destroy'd A thing which no way you annoy'd — You'll one day rue it. Twas but a fly perhaps you'll say, That's born in April, dies in May; That does but just learn to display His wings one minute,

And in the next is vanish'd quite. A bird devours it in his flight — Or come a cold blast in the night, There's no breath in it. The bird but seeks his proper food — And Providence, whose power endu'd That fly with life, when it thinks good, May justly take it.

But you have no excuses for't — A life by Nature made so short, Less reason is that you for sport

The fly is allowed to die by natural causes such as a “bird” or a “cold blast in the night” because at that moment the fly is thinking good and is not frightened.

Charles Lamb

Thoughtless Cruelty

My hand on your head when you go" And the night came on It was very calm I wanted the night to go on and on But she said, "Go back, go back to the world" We were fightin' in Egypt When they signed this agreement That nobody else had to die There was this terrible sound My father went down With a terrible wound in his side He said, "Try to go on

Take my books, take my gun

Remember, my son, how they lied" And the night comes on It's very calm

Of course, everybody who has read Leonard’s biography knows that his father left him books and a gun. He said once that gun was only safety in his life; and it also was taken away. A thief stole it from his mother’s house in Montreal the night before she died. That is the very gun to which Joni Mitchell refers to in her song Rainy Night House about Leonard. It was a rainy night We took a taxi to your mother’s home She went to Florida and left you With your father’s gun, alone ( Source )

Leonard Cohen

Night Comes On

I heard a thousand blended notes, While in a grove I sate reclined, In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts Bring sad thoughts to the mind. To her fair works did Nature link The human soul that through me ran; And much it grieved my heart to think What man has made of man. Through primrose tufts, in that green bower, The periwinkle trailed its wreaths; And 'tis my faith that every flower Enjoys the air it breathes.

The birds around me hopped and played,

Their thoughts I cannot measure:— But the least motion which they made It seemed a thrill of pleasure.

The birds are antropomorphised , that is behave like humans. Note the rhythm of this line, which imitates the movement of the birds. The speaker imputes human characteristics to the birds; the likelihood is that they were seeking food.

William Wordsworth

Lines Written in Early Spring

When I am dead, my dearest,

Sing no sad songs for me;

Plant thou no roses at my head, Nor shady cypress tree: Be the green grass above me

The narrator rejects the showy, sentimental funerals that became popular during the Victorian era. The alliterative ’s’s, monosyllables and elongated vowels slow the pace of this line, as if mimicking the sad singing referred to.

Christina Rossetti

Song When I am dead my dearest

All the lazy dykes

Cross-armed at the Palms

Then legs astride their bikes Indigo burns on their arms One sweet day

The Palms was the last remaining lesbian bar in West Hollywood before it finally shut its doors at the end of L.A. Pride weekend in 2013.

Morrissey

All the Lazy Dykes

AH, leave the hills of Arcady, Thy satyrs and their wanton play, This modern world hath need of thee. No nymph or Faun indeed have we, For Faun and nymph are old and grey, Ah, leave the hills of Arcady! This is the land where liberty Lit grave-browed Milton on his way, This modern world hath need of thee! A land of ancient chivalry Where gentle Sidney saw the day, Ah, leave the hills of Arcady!

This fierce sea-lion of the sea,

This England lacks some stronger lay, This modern world hath need of thee! Then blow some trumpet loud and free,

In the Middle Age, Lions were kept in the Tower of London. These were Barbary lions. As a symbol, “the Lion” was affixed as a nickname to those with a reputation with bravery. The most famous example is Richard I, AKA Richard the Lionheart. Lions have been a symbol in England for a long time. Wilde wrote this poem during the height of the English empire, when England was the unrivaled power over the oceans. Without a challenge to their sea power, they were like a lion with control over the sea. This is why it is perhaps necessary to write not just sea-lion" but “sea-lion of the sea”.

Oscar Wilde

Pan: A Double Villanelle

The happiest day—the happiest hour

My sear'd and blighted heart hath known, The highest hope of pride and power,

The beginning of a description of the speaker’s mania creeping up during a bout of depression: “My sear’d and blighted heart.”

Edgar Allan Poe

The Happiest Day

Many suggestions And documents written Many directions For the end that was given They gave us Pieces of silver and pieces of gold Tell me, Who'll pay reparations on my soul? Many fine speeches (oh yeah) From the White House desk (uh huh) Written on the cue cards That were never really there

Yes, but the heat and the summer were there And the freezing winter's cold Now tell me, Who'll pay reparations on my soul?

Many suggestions And documents written Many directions

Despite Amerika’s attempts to clear it’s guilty conscience, the pain of slavery and racial oppression is alive in the consciousnesses of oppressed people in Amerika.

Gil Scott-Heron

Wholl Pay Reparations on My Soul?

I want her pure as power I want her skin slightly musty with petticoats Will you wash the easy bidet out of her head? Queen Victoria I'm not much nourished by modern love Will you come into my life With your sorrow and your black carriages And your perfect memories? Queen Victoria The Twentieth Century belongs to you and me Let us be two severe giants not less lonely for our partnership Who discolour test tubes in the halls of science

Who turn up unwelcome at every World's Fair

Heavy with proverb and correction Confusing the star-dazed tourists With our incomparable sense of loss

In 1851 the first World’s Fair was opened in London. The Queen herself visited the so-called Great Exhibition three times.

Leonard Cohen

Queen Victoria

If you were here I'd kneel for you A thousand kisses deep The autumn moved across your skin Got something in my eye A light that doesn't need to live And doesn't need to die A riddle in the book of love Obscure and obsolete To witness tear and time and blood A thousand kisses deep And I'm still working with the wine Still dancing cheek to cheek

The band is playing Auld Lang Syne

But the heart will not retreat I ran with Dez, I sang with Ray I never had their sweep

“Auld Lang Syne” is a Scottish poem by Robert Burns in 1788, set to a traditional folk song. In the English-speaking world, it’s traditionally sung to say goodbye to the old year when midnight strikes on New Year’s Eve.

Leonard Cohen

A Thousand Kisses Deep - Recitation w/ N.L. Live in London

Among the glaciers and the rocks The hermit's carnal ecstasy. Certainty, fidelity On the stroke of midnight pass Like vibrations of a bell, And fashionable madmen raise Their pedantic boring cry: Every farthing of the cost, All the dreaded cards foretell, Shall be paid, but from this night Not a whisper, not a thought, Not a kiss nor look be lost.

Beauty, midnight, vision dies:

Let the winds of dawn that blow Softly round your dreaming head Such a day of welcome show

“Beauty,” “vision,” and “midnight” are also key words in each of the preceeding stanzas. That all of them die points to the ‘ephemeral’ nature of love. All things must pass.

W. H. Auden

Lullaby