...English: poem analysis Compare in detail two or three poems by different poets, discussing the structure and form of each work. Give some idea of the importance of the structure in evaluating the meaning and impact of the poems. In the poem Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare and Mending Wall by Robert Frost the structure and form of the poems show the significant role on evaluating and highlighting the meaning of time. The two poems are formed completely different in the way the techniques and structure were used but they convey the similar hidden meaning. As one of the characteristic of the usual Shakespearean Sonnets, Sonnet 18 formed as fourteen lines of iambic pentameter with a varied rhyme scheme. It contains 3 quatrains which state the problem leading to the couplet which expresses the theme of the sonnet and presents the solution. Unlike other Shakespearean sonnets, this sonnet is quite easier and understandable than other sonnets because the way he structured the sonnet is simple. At the first glance, the poem simply gives us the idea that how Shakespeare describes his lover by comparing ‘thee’ as summer’s day. Basically, the first quatrain shows the features of summer that followed by the first line of the poem “shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” After this line, the poet stated the features of summer until line 7. 7th line explains how the summer’s day beauty will fade away by the changing of time and the 8th line stated that thee’s eternal summer day...
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...Poems contain many different types of contents and can take many different forms. The content and form can influence our perception of what art is or what can be considered as art. Two poems that capture the concept of content and form and how it influences what we see as art are: “The Red Wheelbarrow” by William Carlos Williams and “l(a” by E.E. Cummings. Williams’s poem really captures the essence of how simple the content can be but at the same time, captures the essence of how meaningful simple content can be. Simple content, written by Williams, refers to content that is about quotidian things or objects in our everyday lives. In the case of this poem, the quotidian object is the wheelbarrow. This shows that anything can be art. In Cummings’s...
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...How to Analyze Poetry 1. Examine the situation in the poem: Does the poem tell a story? Is it a narrative poem? If so, what events occur? Does the poem express an emotion or describe a mood? Poetic voice: Who is the speaker? Is the poet speaking to the reader directly or is the poem told through a fictional "persona"? To whom is he speaking? Can you trust the speaker? Tone: What is the speaker's attitude toward the subject of the poem? What sort of tone of voice seems to be appropriate for reading the poem out loud? What words, images, or ideas give you a clue to the tone? 2. Examine the structure of the poem: Form: Look at the number of lines, their length, their arrangement on the page. How does the form relate to the content? Is it a traditional form (e.g. sonnet, limerick) or "free form"? Why do you think the poem chose that form for his poem? Movement: How does the poem develop? Are the images and ideas developed chronologically, by cause and effect, by free association? Does the poem circle back to where it started, or is the movement from one attitude to a different attitude (e.g. from despair to hope)? Syntax: How many sentences are in the poem? Are the sentences simple or complicated? Are the verbs in front of the nouns instead of in the usual "noun, verb" order? Why? Punctuation: What kind of punctuation is in the poem? Does the punctuation always coincide with the end of a poetic line? If so, this is called an end-stopped line. If there is no punctuation...
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...However, learning the elements and poetic tools used to build a poem will help to understand and analyze poems. Getting Started 1) Give yourself a lot of time to read the poem several times. Trying reading it out loud. 2) Have a copy of the poem that you can take notes on. As you read, write down every observation, question, or feeling you get from the poem as you read. Pay special attention to how the poem begins and ends. 3) Use your notes as entry points to begin your investigation and analysis of the poem. Ask yourself what elements in the poem lead you to the particular observation and how the poet achieves this effect. 4) Always keep in mind that the poet uses poetic devices to achieve a particular effect. Breaking up the poem into formal poetic components enhances your understanding of the poem’s overall theme, tone, and/or general purpose. In other words, use form to understand the content and create a thesis about the poem. Here are some elements and corresponding poetic devices you can focus on. Note: Many of these divisions are arbitrary. Poetic elements frequently overlap. For definitions of the underlined terms see the UWC Definitions of Poetic Devices handout. Content: How does the tone of the speaker and the context of the work change your understanding of the poem? 1) Speaker: Is the speaker the poet or a specific persona? How is the speaker involved in the poem? Is the speaker an omniscient narrator or casual observer? Does...
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...Maria Manunta Poetry Second Response Poetry is extremely difficult to decipher. It seems that every part of a poem has meaning, whether it is a space between two words or a shape that the stanzas create. Complex is a great word to describe E.E. Cummings. Some people may be able to understand him but others have extreme difficulty getting through a poem. Form is an important aspect in understanding meaning. Cummings two poems, “Buffalo Bill’s” and “next of course god America I,” share very different forms which can help determine what is easier to decipher; whether it is a poem with words all over the page or a poem more constraint and formal. In the poem, “Buffalo Bills,” Cummings is telling a story. If a reader did not know the background of the poem, it would be extremely difficult to truly understand what he is talking about. He is describing a cowboy which makes the poems form acceptable. The words form an image of what could look like a horse’s head. The word “watersmooth” in the fourth line is what could describe the poem. It flows smoothly, almost like a waterfall and forms images in the readers mind. Cummings uses imagery to connect with the audience: “Who used to ride a watersmooth-silver stallion and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat”(Lines 3-6). He is describing Buffalo Bill with action words that are tangible to the audience. A picture is painted of a man on his horse, riding in the wind, not afraid of anything. Cummings states, “He...
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...I compare thee to a summer’s day Shakespeare’s use of diction, design, form and tone affect the manner in which the reader and the hearer perceive the poem and understand the argument put forward by the poet which states that comparing his beloved’s beauty to a summer’s day is not a correct comparison. Shakespeare’s choice of words and imagery provides the reader with extensive ground to diverge between two genres of poetry. It is unclear whether sonnet 18 is a love poem or it is in fact a poem about poetry, the poem is expansive in its meaning. The sonnet is structured in an argumentative form whereby the first quatrain introduces and idea, the second quatrain discusses the idea and the final quatrain expresses the poet’s views on what true beauty entails. The use of punctuation in the poem affects how the argument moves form one quatrain to the other. The tone of the poem shifts as the argument progresses. Sonnet 18 is extensive in its meaning; it may be easy to conclude that the poem is the poet’s declaration of love to his beloved. But it could also be argued that the poet’s intention for writing the sonnet may be to express that his poem will live on as long as men have eyes to see it. If the poem is defined as a love poem then the intended effect of the poem to the hearer would be to emphasize that her beauty is eternal unlike a...
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...can have different meanings depending on the reader. I will be analyzing the poem,“I’m ceded - I’ve stopped being Their’s -” by Emily Dickinson. Dickinson’s poem demonstrates the speaker growing through life by the form, theme, and word choices. Maturing is shown within the poem by the words “I’m ceded” at the beginning of the poem then, the words “I choose” at the ending. The form and punctuation Dickinson embraced in the poem also shows the speaker growing through life. Dickinson’s poem shows the speaker growing, gaining pride, and identity with precise word choices. An Archive full of Dickinson’s works shows the exact writing of the poem. I noticed revisions were being made to the paper when looking at the original poem. The poet...
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...loosely defined, often with subgroups. The most general genres in literature are (in loose chronological order) epic, tragedy,[1] comedy, and creative nonfiction.[citation needed] They can all be in the form of prose or poetry. Additionally, a genre such as satire, allegory or pastoral might appear in any of the above, not only as a subgenre (see below), but as a mixture of genres. Finally, they are defined by the general cultural movement of the historical period in which they were composed. Genre should not be confused with age categories, by which literature may be classified as either adult, young-adult, or children's. They also must not be confused with format, such as graphic novel or picture book. GenresEdit For more details on this topic, see List of literary genres. Just as in painting, there are different types: the landscape, the still life, the portrait; there are different types of literary works. These types tend to share specific characteristics. Genres describe those works which share specific conventions.[2] Genres are often divided into subgenres. Literature, is divided into the classic three forms of Ancient Greece, poetry, drama, and prose. Poetry may then be subdivided into the genres of lyric, epic, and dramatic. The lyric includes all the shorter forms of poetry, e.g., song, ode, ballad, elegy, sonnet.[2] Dramatic poetry might include comedy, tragedy, melodrama, and mixtures like tragicomedy. The standard division of drama into tragedy and comedy...
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...speak of endings and changes. “Nothing Gold Can Stay” describes a sunrise and the beauty of it and how that beauty fades as the sun continues to rise. In “I Used to Live Here Once” the main character is remembering her childhood home and in the story visits the home and describes the changes. I choose these pieces because they are both about endings and change and use symbolism to describe the changes. These pieces both show the change in a very detailed way even though one is a poem and the other a story. In comparison they may not look the same but when you read the words in both you can imagine what is being seen and feel that you can see it fade, as nothing lasts forever. In the poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay” I found it is full of symbolism. "Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold, Her early leaf's a flower, But only so an hour, Then leaf subsides to leaf, So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day, Nothing gold can stay.” (as cited in Clugston, 2010) In the poem the first line states “Natures first green is gold” the symbolism I find in this line is green refers to new life or birth, often times you hear of someone young being considered green. This is a reference to being new. When the sun first comes up everything looks gold. Gold to me a reference to the colors created by the rising sun and refers to what we all cherish. Gold has always been something people seek to own, its considered a treasure. So in saying “Natures first green is gold”...
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...Written by Roger McGough, “At Lunch Time – A story of Love” is a poem that encourages its addressees to seize the moment and to enjoy life while they can. This ethical value, according to Russian Formalist, is not more important as its aesthetical value of the poem. Unlike the classical approaches to literary criticism that focus both on the aesthetical and ethical dimensions of a literary text, Formalists consider that a literary work is recognized through its form rather than its meaning. Accordingly, the literary devices of a text are indispensible to bring the meaning to the surface and to shed light on the literariness of a text. Following a Formalist stance, this essay will tackle some major artistic devices, which are irony and graphological deviation, and how they defamiliarize a literary text. The striking feature about this poem is the heavily presence of situational irony. This can be seen, for instance, in the speaker’s behavior. He seizes the opportunity of making love to a completely stranger woman in a bus. Ironically, the woman’s refusal of the speaker’s repulsiveness is simply because “it was too early in the morning and too soon after breakfast”. But after that “she joined the exercise”. Situational irony does not only draw readers’ attention to the humorist representation of love making, but also draws his attention to the artfulness of the poem making it unfamiliar from texts such as a newspaper article. This literary device also reflects a message transmitted...
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...who you really are.” - E.E. Cummings. E.E Cummings wrote his poems his way and he didn’t let anyone tell him how to write his poems. E.E Cummings wrote many poems throughout his life and many of his poems have been recognized and praised for his different style of writing and writing about ideas that were not acceptable to write back when he was alive. E.E Cummings’ domination of different forms of writing poems, different ideas of society, freedom with rhythms, and vernacular naturalness of his rhetoric, has made him one the greatest American authors. Edward Estlin Cummings was born on October 14, 1894 in Cambridge Massachusetts to Edward and Rebecca Cummings. E.E. Cummings father was a professor at Harvard University he was later known as the minister of Old South Church in Boston, Massachusetts (World Biography, Par 1). That was one of the ways E.E. Cummings was able to attend to Harvard University because they knew his father. Another person who helped was his mother; Cummings’ mother introduced him into writing and writing poems as well (World Biography, Par1). Cummings was introduce into writing at a young age and he learned that he loved to write poems. He grew up with philosophers such as William James and Josiah Royce which they later helped him with writing his poems. (World Biography, Par 1). E.E. Cummings received many awards for his accomplishments in poetry and in the style he wrote the poems in. In 1911 E.E. Cummings is accepted into Harvard University...
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.... ] Breaking the Book Known as Q Readers, in fact, never confront abstract, idealized texts detached from any materiality. ey hold in their hands or perceive objects and forms whose structures and modalities govern their reading or hearing, and consequently the possible comprehension of the text read or heard. —Roger Chartier O let my books be then the eloquence . . . —“23” Shake-speares Sonnets I COLEMAN HUTCHISON is a PhD candidate in the Department of English at Northwestern University. He is completing a dissertation entitled “Revision, Reunion, and the American Civil War Text.” N THE FIRST SENTENCE OF HER ART OF SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS, Helen Vendler tells a little white lie: “I have reprinted both the 1609 quarto Sonnets and a modernized version of my own” (xiii). e crux of this declaration is “reprinted.” Vendler does indeed print a version of the 1609 quarto—or “Q,” as it is referred to bibliographically; one could even say that she “reprints” the type of the quarto. Vendler does not, however, “reprint” the 1609 quarto Sonnets. Like nearly every modern editor before her, Vendler presents the poems as discrete units on a page, eliding and ignoring the page breaks that so o en—and, I will argue, so meaningfully—interrupt the poems. In “reprinting” these poems, Vendler uses a de cut-and-paste method to rearrange, re-member, and reconstitute the type of the 1609 quarto into uninterrupted material units, into what we would visually recognize as “sonnets.” e...
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...metrical form' or 'a composition forming rhythmic lines'. In short, a poem is something that follows a particular flow of rhythm and meter. Compared to prose, where there is no such restriction, and the content of the piece flows according to story, a poem may or may not have a story, but definitely has a structured method of writing. Elements of Poetry There are several elements which make up a good poem. Although it is not mandatory for a poet to use all these elements or devices, they form an important aspect of poetry. So what are the elements of a poem? In brief, they are described below. Rhythm: This is the music made by the statements of the poem, which includes the syllables in the lines. The best method of understanding this is to read the poem aloud, and understand the stressed and unstressed syllables. Listen for the sounds and the music made when we hear the lines spoken aloud. How do the words resonate with each other? How do the words flow when they are linked with one another? Does sound right? Do the words fit with each other? These are the things you consider while studying the rhythm of the poem. Meter: This is the basic structural make-up of the poem. Do the syllables match with each other? Every line in the poem must adhere to this structure. A poem is made up of blocks of lines, which convey a single strand of thought. Within those blocks, a structure of syllables which follow the rhythm has to be included. This is the meter or the metrical form of poetry...
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...20, 2013 Visual Form of “The Emperor of Ice Cream” by Wallace Stevens When it comes to the visual appearance in relation to poetic interpretation and meaning, one cannot ignore the free form in which poet Wallace Stevens constructed his poem titled “The Emperor of Ice Cream”. In a poem created to argue against the constant value placed on mere appearance, the not so rigid form perfectly exemplifies the authors view on the subject. While he used this almost airy method to imply that the true beauty of poetry lies in the freedom of expression the poet has, he does not completely ignore the idea of structure. When reading the poem it is clear that the poet designed it to get the reader to re-examine their own reliance on appearance. In an almost playful style Stevens wrote the poem as a rebellion against the strict poetic from. Although in some instances he does acknowledge the importance of an overall form, his main purpose is to refrain it, and work against this concept by applying his free form. By utilizing the free form ,Steven allowed each idea to flow into the next with ease. It allowed to poem to appear casual, and almost conversational. Aside from the couplets, nothing in the poem adheres to the complex, rigid, and almost box-like form applied by other poets. As stated before, Stevens did not completely throw-away the essential form suggested by others. In an seemingly ironic way, he delivered his most important...
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...period. The Modern time period is from the years 1910-1930, and reflects change from the Victorian period. A poem that is representative of the Modern time period is After Apple Picking by Robert Frost. After Apple Picking is about a man who picks apples for a living. One day he looks through a piece of glass and visualizes the world in front of him. He has had a long day and begins to doze off. He wonders what he will be dreaming about once he goes to sleep. He daydreams about apples being processed in the factories and also wonders whether he will go to bed until the morning or go to bed forever. The man wonders whether it will be a “long sleep, as I describe it coming on, / Or just some human sleep” (Frost 41-42). When the speaker discusses going to sleep forever he is not referring to death, as some people may think. He is really just debating whether the apple harvest will be over for the season or how many potential days are left in the season. It also demonstrates that the man in the poem has a very tiring job that requires much work. The poem is very relevant of the Modern Period of Poetry as it incorporates many of the characteristics of this time period. After Apple Picking is reflective of a Modern American Lyric poem through its form and structure, its use of poetic devices, and its examination of preeminent thoughts of human existence. A major concept of form that is shown in After Apple...
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