Wallace Stevens is one of the major American poets of the twentieth century, a prominent representative of modernism, who won numerous awards including the Pulitzer Prize. His poetry is often characterized as being philosophical, whimsical, enigmatic, and full of gaudy and memorable imagery. One of the most renowned poems by...
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Frost employs a moral reasoning appeal when he writes, “Before I built a wall I'd ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offence” (Frost). Moral reasoning is all about appeals to the moral questions of what one ought...
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Poetry has long featured mythical and magical creatures. From childhood children are taught nursery rhymes that feature fantastical beasts, witches, fairies, and giants. Yet as people age, their ability to believe in or hold dear those fantastical persons gives way to realism, cynicism, or even a kind of malice. John...
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In John Donne’s poems, “The Ecstasy,” “The Flea” and “The Good-Morrow” we see a similar theme about how unity makes love stronger. “The Good-Morrow” talks about mixing two people, putting two halves together, to strengthen a relationship. Similarly, when we examine “The Flea,” Donne uses the theme of mixing two...
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Introduction The White Man’s Burden is a poem by Rudyard Kipling that was published in 1899. The significance of the White Man’s Burden poem was to address the shift of the United States from isolationism (a foreign policy in which countries keep to themselves) to imperialism (a policy whereby countries...
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In the poem “Shooting Stars” Carol Ann Duffy utilizes many literary devices to evoke not only the imagery of this tragic history but also to arouse an emotional response. She uses evocative language to create the connections between the title and the contents of the poem. There are explicit relationships...
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This paper seeks to compare the poem 'The soul selects her own society ' by Emily Dickson and 'Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wally Street' by Hermann Melville.' Both of these texts are classic works of American literature and both contain discourses on individuality, friendship and the role of...
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Two well-known poets are Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Both were poets and major figures in the English Romantic movement of the early 19th Century. However, while they had similarities, they also had marked contrasts to each other. This includes how they were viewed as individuals. Lord Byron was...
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Pull Dunbar's poem, "We Wear the Mask," describes the façade that African-Americans have had to adopt in the presence of white people because long ago and even perhaps today, it could be risky for them to disclose how they actually felt about things that they were experiencing. In the days...
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There are certain subjects that work to move different people in similar ways, serving as the muse for the creation of other works, as in the case of 'An Ancient Gesture' by Edna St. Vincent Millay and 'Penelope' by Dorothy Parker. In each of these poems, the women writers indicate...
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Sarah Halls titled work, 'She Murdered Mortal He' leaves the reader with a sense of ambiguity. This young author has won and has been nominated for many awards for her short writings. She clearly illustrates how the power of fiction can inflict certainty and uncertainty. The point in question; did...
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Introduction The poems in the collection by Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken and Other Poems, utilize language that is simple, clear and colloquial, yet contain deeper meanings and significance. Louis Untermeyer, in his introduction to The Road Not Taken: A Selection of Robert Frost's Poems, said, 'His central subject...
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'Holy Sonnet XIV: Batter my heart, three-person'd God' 1. Donne's 'three-person'd God' references the Holy Trinity, i.e., the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost of Christian orthodoxy. The paradox in the first few lines is the juxtaposition between the violent imagery, i.e., 'batter,' 'knock,' 'break,' 'blow,' 'burn,' etc., and the...
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Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown,” while stilted as it is strange, is not a story most readers would anticipate was written by an author who had created the classic Last of the Mohicans. The work is dark, filled with elements that can only be described in terms of paranoia and...
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The poem is remarkably sad as it deals with death and how people are perceived after passing. The poem is about ways that death uncovers true attitude of people towards a particular person that is no more in our world. Death and how people are remembered is the underlying theme...
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“Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town” is a poem by E.E. Cummings, an American poet active during the first half of the twentieth century. The poem seems to take the stance that no one really matters, as we are all tiny insignificant people in tiny insignificant towns, just going...
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Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, “The Purloined Letter” (1844), ends by revealing who stole the compromising letter from the unnamed female and thus provides a resolution to the immediate mystery of the letter. In, “The Man of the Crowd” (1840), the ending is far more obscure because of the narrative’s...
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In Emily Dickinson's poem, "I'm Nobody! Who Are You?" the famous writer muses on the joys of being anonymous, unknown, and private, as opposed to a public persona who must be surrounded by crowds and noise at all times. Dickinson herself was unknown during her lifetime, and was an unpublished...
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In The Ballad of the Landlord, Langston Hughes makes a tone of frustration and anger appear in his words. Even though the poem’s rhythm is like a nursery rhyme, there is the underlying anger that comes through in his language. Why is this tenant angry? Because he has been mistreated...
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David Shapiro’s poem, ironically entitled “Poem,” is a complex piece that resists attempts at classification. “Poem” is written in open, free verse form, with no regular meter or rhyme. Spatially, “Poem” contains twenty lines in a lessening and descending order. With ten lines, the first stanza is the longest, followed...
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William Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 18” has one of the most famous and compelling opening lines in all of poetry. “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” The question remains, who was he talking to and what was he trying to say about her, or him. Shakespeare published this sonnet along...
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We live in a society where celebrities are idolized for their wealth and fame. We assume that because they are rich, they must be happy. We envy their fancy cars, elaborate wardrobes, palace-like mansions, and carefree social lives. Most of us, if given the opportunity, would put ourselves in their...
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Title and meaning Whenever the author mentions death in the title, any poem holds extraordinary effect. Seamus Heaney tricks us with the image of death while nobody actually dies in the poem. While the image bears figurative meaning only, still it hooks our imagination right from the start. The naturalist...
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The poem “Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes is written in the form of an address of loving and caring mother to her child, with a warning about the hardships and turbulences of life. She relates how difficult and unforgiving life has been to her but she always went on...
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Sappho, like her contemporaries, wrote about the degradations of time on a person’s health and appearance, the wealth of gold versus the wealth of virtue, and the joys and tribulations of love. She does, however, share one concern that her contemporaries do not. In the poetry of Sappho, she uses...
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