...Beowulf: The Mother Poem Beowulf is an important work of the Anglo-Saxon culture. In the poem it depicts Beowulf as a famous hero, full of endless courage and infinite strength. Through his vigorous journeys, he encounters many treacherous obstacles and monsters, but never feels distress. As leader of the Geats, he shows superb leadership skills, taking pride in both his and his peoples’ name. Nonetheless, he boasts about his achievements and heroic battles that he has encountered. The author’s style differs from that of any other due to the unique kennings being used throughout the poem. The tone interchanges throughout the entire work; gives countless numbers of kennings, and has graphic imagery. Beowulf, the “mother poem” of England, explains the import values of diction, tone, imagery, and style, it also informs us about the Geat culture and characteristics of honor, kinship, and courage....
Words: 822 - Pages: 4
...welcoming arms in the western world, in her poem, “The New Colossus”. However, America as a country only partly lived up to the words in Lazarus's poem because they provided jobs and helped the immigrants adjust to the language and culture in America, but they did not allow for all races to come to America. America lived up to these words by taking in as many immigrants as possible despite their status. Lazarus stated,”Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”. Living up to these words, Americans created settlement houses to help the less fortunate immigrants adjust to life in a new country by helping them learn and the understand the language and culture of America. The U.S. also helped immigrants adjust to life in America by providing a large number of jobs that required little to no skill. Hence, Americans lived up to the words in Lazarus’s poem because they not only helped the poor learn the culture and language of Americans, but they also...
Words: 423 - Pages: 2
...his poetry so they decided to go together on it. In 1967 he married Edith Anne Crunk who was “Annie” in several of his poems, afterward. Wright wrote many books and poems before he passed away on March 25, 1980 due to chronic sore throat, which revealed the diagnoses as cancer to the tongue. In James Wright’s poem, “Beginning,” Wright describes seeing a woman laying back on a tree, looking up and only seeing the darkness of the sky....
Words: 461 - Pages: 2
...What does the mirror stands for in “Beware: Do Not Read This Poem” by Ishmael Reed. Ishmael Reed is known for his satirical works challenging American political culture, and highlighting political and cultural oppression. In Beware: Do Not Read This Poem Reed protests against cultural dominance. Culture is a part of people, and language and art are parts of culture. And in this poem Reed talks about how people are made by cultures and lost to other cultures. However, Reed’s rightness of cultural protest is not of concern here, rather, the symbolic presentation of the mirror is under scrutiny here; and it can be said that the mirror represents art, literature and strikingly the poem itself. The poem starts with how an old woman becomes obsessed with mirrors, and grows isolated from the community, and how she abandons her old life and finds a new life among her mirrors, by disappearing herself within it. By this old woman’s story poet recalls the enchanting effects of literature and art on a reader. Poet rejects the idea of art and literature as a simple mirror reflecting life, and rather, claims it as a living experience. One finds reflection of his own life in literature, like the mirror, and gets lost in his imagination. At times, literature creates a whole new world, a world where things are very different, sometimes surreal, yet a reader finds reality in it, as it is really happening; and as he moves deeper into the story, the imagination becomes so strong that he begins...
Words: 528 - Pages: 3
...immortals from the Odyssey, would – despite supposedly in some sense improve the poem – essentially weaken the poem and the story as a whole. Whilst the removal of the gods would provide Odysseus to act of his own accord, and allow the audience to see how Odysseus can cope without the interruption of the gods. Nevertheless, without immortals in the Odyssey, the poem would ultimately lack a crucially exciting fact of narrative and would look very different as a story of a man trying to achieve his nostos, after the Trojan War. Ultimately, it must be acknowledged that without the immortal gods, the Odyssey would most likely not exist as the Trojan War would not have happened. The Trojan War began due to Paris’ decision to give the golden apple ‘for the most beautiful’ to Aphrodite (instead of Athene or Hera) as she offered him Helen as his wife. At the wedding of Menelaus and Helen, Paris made love to Helen and they left to sail to Troy, thus initiating the Trojan War. It is because of the Trojan War that the Odyssey is taking place. Odysseus only underwent the travel and trials of the Odyssey in order to make his way home from the Trojan War to Ithaca. This essentially means that without the immortal gods, the Odyssey would not even exist, and the story of Odysseus would be very different to the one told by Homer in the Odyssey. Another key way in which the removal of the gods would weaken the poems integrity is that a crucially exciting, entertaining element of the ancient tale...
Words: 1181 - Pages: 5
...yourself about every poem: 1. Read the poem aloud, slowly and thoughtfully. 2. Re-read the poem. Underline aspects of the poem that stand out upon reading. 3. How many lines and stanzas make up the poem? What is the structure? Is the poem rhymed, blank, or free verse? Explain your answer. 4. Literal - paraphrase the poem, line by line. Explicate each line for meaning. 5. Figurative – what are the deeper meanings of the poem revealed through the poet’s use of figurative language (metaphor, simile, personification, metonymy, synecdoche, irony, etc.) List and label two examples of figurative language. 6. What are important aspects of imagery and the effects of these in the poem? 7. List and label any sound devices – what are examples of and the effect of: alliteration, assonance, consonance, onomatopoeia, repetition. 8. Does the poem shift or change in terms of tone, language, focus, setting, imagery? 9. Title – how is the title significant or how does it tie in with the poem? 10. Theme – Explain, using detail the poem’s message to the reader about its subject? What ideas and messages are being imparted or implied through the poem? 11. What is your personal reaction to the poem? Essential Questions to ask yourself about every poem: 1. Read the poem aloud, slowly and thoughtfully. 2. Re-read the poem. Underline aspects of the poem that stand out upon reading. 3. How many lines and stanzas make up the poem? What is the structure...
Words: 407 - Pages: 2
...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...
Words: 1002 - Pages: 5
...HOW TO ANALYZE A POEM 1. TO BEGIN Read the poem all the way through at least twice. Read it aloud. Listen to it. Poetry is related to music, so the sound is important. You listen to your favourite CDs many times; the principle is the same. It takes time to fully appreciate and understand a work of art. Make a note of your first impressions or immediate responses, both positive and negative. You may change your mind about the poem later, but these first ideas are worth recording. 2. LITERAL MEANING AND THEME Before you can understand the poem as a whole, you have to start with an understanding of the individual words. Get a good dictionary. Look up, and write down, the meanings of: • • • words you don’t know words you “sort of know” any important words, even if you do know them. Maybe they have more than one meaning (ex. “bar”), or maybe they can function as different parts of speech (ex. “bar” can be a noun or a verb). If the poem was written a long time ago, maybe the history of the word matters, or maybe the meaning of the word has changed over the years (“jet” did not mean an airplane in the 16th century). An etymological dictionary like the Oxford English Dictionary can help you find out more about the history of a particular word. Use an encyclopaedia or the Internet to look up people and places mentioned in the poem. These allusions may be a key to the poet’s attitudes and ideas. As you pay attention to the literal meanings of the words of the poem, you may see some patterns...
Words: 1778 - Pages: 8
...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...
Words: 547 - Pages: 3
...pages 1-24 Whose poem is this? Who is telling this story? What does “anonymous” mean? Use only the context; do not go to the dictionary. Read the following four poems from the back of this book: The Red Wheelbarrow Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening The Tiger dog Which poem do you like the best? Why? On page 20, our narrator complains that he doesn’t know who the YOU is in the pasture poem (you need to read it now—it’s right after “dog”). Who do you think is the YOU in the poem? Why? On pages 23 and 24, our narrator is puzzling over what makes a poem. He wonders if it’s just typing something in poem form. What do you think? What makes a poem a poem? LOVE THAT DOG #2 pages 25-41 On page 25, we have a line that is an echo from one of the poems we just read. What is the line? The same line shows up again, in capital letters, on page 29. Why do you think this author keeps using that line? Read the poem “Street Music.” What is the music of your street? What sounds do you hear on your street? Once again, the author uses a line from one of the poems in the book. It’s on page 34. What is the line? Why do you think the author used it here? Extra Credit: Write a “Street Music” poem about your own street right here: Read “Apple.” Write your own shape poem in the space below. You may write about anything you like. Use the back if you don’t have room here. Why do you think that Jack has not wanted his name on his poems? Next, Jack gives...
Words: 471 - Pages: 2
...wrote were poems. Emily was a very isolated individual. She rarely ever got out or had any contact with anybody outside of her home. Along with writing her poems she wrote letters to the people that she did have contact with. In the letters that she would write there would be poems somewhere within them. Emily wrote a total of 1,775 poems in her lifetime. Even though she wrote these poems she never let it be known that she had the capability to write poems with such elegance. All of the poems that she would write she kept hidden somewhere in her room. She would hide the poems in places like her window, under her bed, in corners of the room, and lots of other places. After Emily’s death the truth would be told about her secret talent. Emily’s sister, Lavinia Dickinson found around 900 of the poems Emily had hidden in her room. Her sister decided that the poems were good enough to be published. She went to a friend of the family where she would get help in editing and publishing the poems. Lavinia’s friend, Mabel Loomis Todd and a friend of hers, Thomas Wentworth Higginson began to put a lot of Said 2 effort of getting the poems published. In the year 1890 they accomplished in getting 115 of Emily’s poems published. After their first success of publishing the poems they began to get more involved with Emily’s poems. Along with publishing the poems Mabel and Thomas began practicing the revision of the poems. When Emily wrote the poems some of...
Words: 1445 - Pages: 6
...Russell). The poem “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost, published 1916, depicts the narrator at a fork in the road, having a bit of a difficult time trying to choose which road to take. In the end he takes the one “less traveled by”. The essay will have points mainly about the hidden meaning behind the allegorical poem. Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken” is an allegorical poem, and has extended metaphor throughout the story. The poem is shown to be allegorical, and is misunderstood by readers all the time, as they don’t understand the actual meaning behind the poem. In actuality, neither of the roads in the poem are less traveled by. The narrator proves this when he says “And both that morning equally lay / In leaves no step had trodden black” (Lines 11-12). Meaning that...
Words: 825 - Pages: 4
...Natasha Trethewey’s book of poems, Native Guard, Trethewey integrates her personal challenges and experiences with those in history. In section one particularly, Natasha Trethewey communicates her thoughts and feelings towards the loss of a loved one, disappointment, and abusement. In one of the first section poems, “What is Evidence”, Trethewey creates this image of domestic abuse and the daunting effects that it can cause...
Words: 1235 - Pages: 5
...electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers. These materials may contain links for third party websites. We have no control over, and are not responsible for, the contents of such third party websites. Please use care when accessing them. Designed by Mike Brain Graphic Design Ltd Typeset by E Clicks Enterprise, Malaysia Cover design by Clare Webber Cover photo by Jenny Palmer The author and publishers are grateful for permission to reprint the following copyright material: Bloodaxe Books for the poem ‘Dreaming black boy’ by James Berry from Hot Earth Cold Earth, published by Bloodaxe Books, 1995. Reproduced with permission of Bloodaxe Books; University of Pittsburgh Press for the poem ‘Epitaph’ from Uncle Time by Dennis Scott, copyright © 1973. Reprinted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press; Michelle Saywack and Dr Keith Carter for the poem ‘This is the dark time, my love’ by...
Words: 3558 - Pages: 15
...Poetic Devices and Practical Criticism on Robert Frost’s “Fire and Ice” Poetic devices are the most important part of poetry writing. A good poet will always use poetic devices to make the reader involved in the lyrics of his/her poem. And when a poet does this, the reader starts feeling and thinking in the same manner as the poet thinks and feels. This is what Robert Frost does to a reader when he writes a poem. One of his all time favorite poem is Fire and Ice. Frost portrays a huge connotation to his readers through this poem (Kuiper 23). By means of poetic devices, he divulges what will eventually bring this world to an end. Frost provides the readers with two paths i.e. fire and ice which will eventually end to this world. Fire and Ice is a poem that itself does not need a lot of explanation regarding the meanings of phrases or words, owing to Frost’s focus on making the poem clear and comprehensible by all. In spite of the cleanness of the use of language, the poem brings with it very profound thematic thoughts. Basically, Frost is giving comments upon two of the shadowy characteristics of human beings: the capability to be consumed by envy and lust and the capability to hate (Mishra 103). From these two, he points the greater of two harms i.e. to desire. In putting desire to the leading position with respect to the world destruction, Frost is giving a strong statement in relation to jealousy and greed, saying that more than anything else, even hatred,...
Words: 2230 - Pages: 9
