Global Poetry

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GLOBAL POETRY
COURSE CODE: ELL201
Rozi Khan
A/Professor of English
Digitally signed by Rozi Khan
Rozi
DN: cn=Rozi Khan gn=Rozi
Khan c=US United States
l=US United States ou=HED
e=rozikhan782@hotmail.com
Reason: I am the author of
this document
Khan Location:
Date: 2019-08-22
21:14+05:00
Rozi Khan AP of English Email: rozikhan782@hotmail.com

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Course Description
This course covers the body of contemporary poetry, its techniques, thematic concerns, and theoretical
viewpoints. By focusing on salient aspects of contemporary poetics this course aims to accomplish among
students a habit of alternative interpretations of contemporary intercontinental cultural and political ethos
under transition. Because literary modernism brushes shoulders with colonial, postcolonial, transnational,
and cosmopolitan discourses therefore this course aims to identify an emergent, contemporaneous and
eclectic poetic aesthetics. Ezra Pound’s call to Make it New remains a trusted creed of experimentation
which lately has found its global adherents from Caribbean, Africa, South Asia, Ireland, and in other
regions.
Course Objective
The main objectives of this course are to:
● Employ diverse methods of literary criticism such as historical, biographical, and gender criticism, and
to do close reading of some of the foundational modern poets but at the same time to identify a poetic
constellation comprising extensively wide-ranging voices of poetry.
● Glimpse the production of poetic discourse in places and regions where poetry in major Europe languages
is no more a mere imitative exercise and the local and indigenous poets have added their voice of alterity.

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Course Contents
Selected Readings (subject to eliminations)
1. Ezra Pound: A Girl, In the Station of a Metro
2. Robert Frost: Home Burial, A Late Walk
3. W.H. Auden: In Memory of W. B. Yeats
4. W.B. Yeats: Leda and Swan, Easter 1916
5. Marianne Moore: Marriage
6. e e cummings: Let’s Live Suddenly Without Thinking
7. Adrienne Rich: Living in Sin
8. Anne Sexton: After Auschwitz
9. John Ashbery: Some Trees
10. Rita Dove
11. Martha Collins
12. Langston Hughes
13. Charles Bukowski: Poetry Reading, Goading the Muse
14. Hart Crane: To Brooklyn Bridge
15. Ruth Padel
16. Carol and Duffy
17. Seamus Heaney: North (1976) selections
18. Paul Muldoon: Meeting the British
19. Ted Hughes: Horses
20. Philip Larkin: Going Going
21. Dylan Thomas
22. Nissim Ezekiel
23. Imtiaz Dharker: Purdah 1, Terrorist at My table
24. Moniza Alvi: At the Time of Partition (selections)
25. Agha Shahid Ali: Call Me Ishmael (selections)
26. Pablo Neruda
27. Octavio Paz
28. Taufiq Rafat
29. Faiz Ahmed Faiz
30. John Ashbery: Some Trees, Just Walking Around
31. Don Paterson: The Dead, Poetry
32. Carol Duffy: Ship, Havisham
33. Derek Walcott: A Far Cry from Africa, Love after Love
34. Paul Muldoon: The Frog, Hedgehog
35. Simon Armitage: I am very bothered
36. Sujata Bhatt: A different History
37. Moniza Alvi: At the Time of Partition (selections)
38. Mahmood Dervish: If I were Another

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1. Ezra Pound: Biography and Poems Study Guide

Ezra Pound's contribution to poetry is marked by his promotion of Imagism, a movement centered
on clarity, economic language, and rhythm. Pound started this movement after studying Japanese
forms of poetry like waka verse and haiku. These forms have strict conventions and are typically
very frugal with words. According to Imagism, poets should write "in fear of abstractions."
Imagism was based on three principles, compiled by Pound, Richard Aldington, and Hilda
Doolittle:
1. Direct treatment of the "thing," whether subjective or objective.
2. To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation.
3. Regarding rhythm: to compose in the sequence of a musical phrase, not in the sequence of a
metronome.
Though Ezra Pound had work published in a few small American publications, the poet started to
make an impact on the literary scene only after moving to Europe. In July 1908, he published his
first book of poetry called A Lume Spento (With Tapers Spent). Pound contributed to literary
magazines such as Poetry, The New Freewoman, The Egoist, and BLAST while he was living in
London and Paris, and helped other contemporary poets like T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, James Joyce,
and Ernest Hemingway shape their work.
Some of Ezra Pound's most famous works include Ripostes, Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, and The
Cantos. Ripostes, a collection of 25 of Pound's poems, was published by Swift and Co. in London
in February of 1912. Eight of these poems had appeared in magazines before this collection was
published, and one was a repeat from his first book of poetry, A Lume Spento. Ripoestes marks the
beginning of Pound's adoption of the Imagist style, and appropriately, it is the first time Pound
uses the word "Imagiste."
Critics and scholars regard Hugh Selwyn Mauberley as a major turning point in Pound's career,
and he completed it shortly before he left England. The Cantos is a long, 120-section poem that
Pound was never able to finish. It contains his opinions on government, economics, and culture,
and includes Chinese characters and other non-English quotations. The section of The Cantos that
Pound wrote at the end of World War II in occupied Italy is called the The Pisan Cantos, and it
won the first Bollingen Prize in 1948.
Pound's work has received mixed reviews, mainly because of the nature of his writing style. Critics
identify Pound's strong lyricism and modernity, and also recognize that his Imagism was a reaction
against abstraction in writing. Pound drew inspiration from the clarity of Chinese and Japanese
verse as well as Greek classics in order to combat the increasing generalities in poetry. His legacy
lives on because of the profound impact Imagism has had on modern poetry, and also because he
nurtured many other poets' careers as the editor of numerous literary publications. In addition to
the aforementioned writers, Pound also worked with Marianne Moore, Jacob Epstein, e. e.
cummings, and George Oppen. However, Pound's work never gained a wide audience, and Pound
himself recognized his own shortcomings as a writer because of his adherence to certain
ideological fallacies.

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In a Station of the Metro (1913)

Ezra Pound - 1885-1972
The apparition of these faces in a crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
(((((****)))))
Summary
In this quick poem, Pound describes watching faces appear in a metro station. It is unclear whether
he is writing from the vantage point of a passenger on the train itself or on the platform. The setting
is Paris, France, and as he describes these faces as a "crowd," meaning the station is quite busy.
He compares these faces to "petals on a wet, black bough," suggesting that on the dark subway
platform, the people look like flower petals stuck on a tree branch after a rainy night.
Analysis
The brevity of this poem can be intimidating to analyze; after all, how much can a poet possibly
convey in merely two lines? However, the shortness of this poem fits with its topic; when reading,
the words flash by quickly, just as a subway speeds away from the platform in an instant. The
doors open quickly, revealing a sea of faces, and then close again - the faces are gone after a
fleeting glance. This poem's length and quick pace matches the constant motion of a train as it
speeds by.
Though short, this poem is very sensory in nature; it allows the reader to imagine a scene while
reading the lines. Through Pound's economical description of these faces as "petals on a wet, black
bough," he is able to invoke a transient tone.
This poem is also a clear example of the Imagist style. Victorian poets would frequently use an
abundance of flowery adjectives and lengthy descriptions in their poems. Yet Pound employs a
Modernist approach to "In a Station of the Metro," using only a few descriptive words (and no
verbs among them) to successfully get his point across.
Pound uses the word "apparition," which is a ghostly, otherworldly figure, something ephemeral
that fades in and out of view. By using this word, Pound reveals surprise at seeing this sea of faces
as the subway doors open, which, for a brief moment, fills him with a sense of awe and
astonishment. Also, the impermanence of the image gives the poem a melancholy tone, as if Pound
is contemplating the fragility of life.
Pound connects images of petals and boughs to a mass of humanity - linking a man-made
metropolitan scene with the cycles of nature. Pound's use of living metaphors adds to the fleeting
tone of this poem. Flowers and trees, like human beings on a metro, are constantly moving,
growing, and changing. This short glimpse through the metro doors is the only time that group of
people will be as they are in that instant. Similarly, no two petals will ever look exactly the same,
as rains come and go, winters freeze, and new buds bloom.

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A Girl
Ezra Pound-1885-1972
The tree has entered my hands,
The sap has ascended my arms,
The tree has grown in my breast -
Downward,
The branches grow out of me, like arms.
Tree you are,

Moss you are,
You are violets with wind above them.
A child - so high - you are,
And all this is folly to the world.
(((((****)))))
Summary:
Ezra Pound likely based this poem on the myth of Apollo, the Sun God, and Daphne, a nymph.
The traditional myth is that Apollo insulted Eros (or Cupid, his Roman name), saying he was not
worthy of his warlike bow and arrow. In response, Eros angrily shot Apollo with an arrow to
induce his love, and then shot the nymph Daphne with an arrow to make her feel hatred. Apollo
fell head over heels for Daphne and continuously followed her, while she loathed him (and all
men), desperate to shake his pursuit. Finally, Eros intervened to help Apollo catch Daphne, but
she begged her father, Peneus, to change her form. He agreed, and thus Daphne transformed into
a tree. "A Girl" details her transformation. In the poem, Apollo accepts Daphne as she is, but
laments her foolish choice to transform into a tree in the last two lines: "A child—so high—you
are/and this is folly to the world."
Analysis
Ezra Pound chose to employ split narration in this poem. The first five-line stanza reads as if
Daphne is narrating. She closely details her transformation, describing the feeling of the tree
entering her hands and growing in her breast. However, Pound wrote the second half of the poem
from the perspective of a third-person onlooker, likely Apollo.
While this poem has a strong basis in mythology, and Pound clearly wrote it with this particular
story in mind, there are more contemporary interpretations, as well. The first narrator could be an
older child detailing her figurative transformation into a tree, letting her imagination run wild. The
second stanza could be from the perspective of an adult who understands her need to escape into
reverie, assuring the girl that even if the world finds her imagined transformation to be "folly," she
shouldn't let that dampen her creative instincts.
The free verse form of this poem is extremely effective, particularly since it's so short. The lack of
rigid structure makes it easier to picture this poem as a conversation between the two different
narrators. The free verse also adds to the whimsical, childish sense of the interpretation of the

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poem that does not center around mythology; a child's imagination is not constrained by any sort
of structure, so neither is this poem.
Though critics and scholars continue to argue over whether the true interpretation of this poem lies
in mythology or is a lesson on childhood imagination, it is possible that Pound had both meanings
in mind. Pound was probably using the well-known myth of Apollo and Daphne to relay a wider
message about the way society looks at imagination and creativity.

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2. Robert Frost: Biography and Poems Study Guide

As a poet, Robert Frost was greatly influenced by the emotions and events of everyday life. Within
a seemingly banal event from a normal day—watching the ice weigh down the branches of a birch
tree, mending the stones of a wall, mowing a field of hay—Frost discerned a deeper meaning, a
metaphysical expression of a larger theme such as love, hate, or conflict.
Frost is perhaps most famous for being a pastoral poet in terms of the subject of everyday life.
Many of his most famous poems (such as “Mending Wall” and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy
Evening”) are inspired by the natural world, particularly his time spent as a poultry farmer in New
Hampshire. Ironically, until his adulthood in New England, Frost was primarily a “city boy” who
spent nearly all of his time in an urban environment. It is possibly because of his late introduction
to the rural side of New England that Frost became so intrigued by the natural world.
After the publication of his Collected Poems in 1930, Frost clarified his interest in the pastoral
world as a subject for his poetry, writing: “Poetry is more often of the country than the city…Poetry
is very, very rural – rustic. It might be taken as a symbol of man, taking its rise from individuality
and seclusion – written first for the person that writes and then going out into its social appeal and
use.” Yet Frost does not limit himself to expressing the pastoral only in terms of beauty and peace,
as in a traditional sense. Instead, he also chooses to emphasize the harsh conflicts of the natural
world: the clash between urban and rural lifestyles, the unfettered emotions and struggles inherent
in rural life, even the sense of loss and simultaneous growth that accompanies the changing of the
seasons.
Frost’s poetry is also significant because of the amount of autobiographical material that it
contains. Frost was not a happy man; he suffered from serious bouts of depression and anxiety
throughout his life and was never convinced that his poetry was truly worthwhile (as evidenced by
his obsessive desire to receive a Nobel Prize). He suffered through the untimely deaths of his
father, mother, and sister, as well as four of his six children and his beloved wife, all of which
contributed to the melancholic mentality that appears in much of Frost’s work.
The raw emotion and sense of loss that pervades Frost’s poetry is particularly clear because of his
straightforward verse style. Although he worked within some traditional poetic forms (usually
iambic meter), he was also flexible and changed the requirements of the form if it conflicted with
the expression of a particular line. Yet, even as he was willing to utilize the basic conventions of
some poetic forms, Frost refused to sacrifice the clarity of his poetry. With that in mind, he was
particularly interested in what he called “the sound of sense,” a poetic belief system in which the
sound of the poetry (rhythm, rhyme, syllables) is as important to the overall work as the actual
words. Therefore, in poems such as “Mowing” and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,”
Frost’s use of particular words and rhythmic structure creates an aural sense of the mood and
subject of the piece even as the words outline the narrative.
Frost’s use of “the sound of sense” is most successful because of the general clarity and even
colloquial nature of his poetry. At one point in his life, he asserted, “All poetry is a reproduction
of the tones of actual speech.” Although this quotation is perhaps a generalization of Frost’s poetic
style, it does speak to the accessibility and simplicity that has made Frost’s poetry so appealing to
so many readers for decades. Because of the clarity of the sounds in his work, both in terms of the
narrative and in terms of “the sound of sense,” the readers are able to comprehend the basic

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emotion of a poem almost instantly and then explore the deeper, more metaphysical meanings
behind each simple line.
During his beginnings as a poet, Frost was often criticized for using such a colloquial tone in his
poetry. When his first poem was published in The Independent in 1894, the acceptance was
accompanied by a copy of Lanier’s “Science of English Verse,” a not so subtle suggestion that
Frost needed to work on mastering a more traditional tone and meter. Even after his success as a
poetic was assured, Frost was still censured by some for writing seemingly simplistic poetry, works
that were not reminiscent of high art.
Yet even though Frost’s poetry is simple and clear, Richard Wilbur points out that it is not written
in the colloquial language of an uneducated farm boy, but rather in “a beautifully refined and
charged colloquial language.” In other words, Frost’s ability to express such a depth of feeling in
each of his poems through the medium of colloquial speech reveals a far greater grasp of the human
language than many of his critics would admit. It is because of the clarity of his poetry that his
poems are beloved and studied in high schools throughout the United States, and it is also because
of this clarity that Frost is able to explore topics of emotion, struggle, and conflict that would be
incomprehensible in any other form.
Home Burial
ROBERT FROST- 1874-1963
He saw her from the bottom of the stairs
Before she saw him. She was starting down,
Looking back over her shoulder at some fear.
She took a doubtful step and then undid it
To raise herself and look again. He spoke
Advancing toward her: ‘What is it you see
From up there always—for I want to know.’
She turned and sank upon her skirts at that,
And her face changed from terrified to dull.
He said to gain time: ‘What is it you see,’
Mounting until she cowered under him.
‘I will find out now—you must tell me, dear.’
She, in her place, refused him any help
With the least stiffening of her neck and silence.
She let him look, sure that he wouldn’t see,
Blind creature; and awhile he didn’t see.
But at last he murmured, ‘Oh,’ and again, ‘Oh.’
‘What is it—what?’ she said.

‘Just that I see.’
‘You don’t,’ she challenged. ‘Tell me what it is.’

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‘The wonder is I didn’t see at once.

I never noticed it from here before.
I must be wonted to it—that’s the reason.
The little graveyard where my people are!
So small the window frames the whole of it.
Not so much larger than a bedroom, is it?
There are three stones of slate and one of marble,
Broad-shouldered little slabs there in the sunlight
On the sidehill. We haven’t to mind those.
But I understand: it is not the stones,
But the child’s mound—’
‘Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t,’ she cried.
She withdrew shrinking from beneath his arm

That rested on the banister, and slid downstairs;
And turned on him with such a daunting look,
He said twice over before he knew himself:
‘Can’t a man speak of his own child he’s lost?’
‘Not you! Oh, where’s my hat? Oh, I don’t need it!

I must get out of here. I must get air.
I don’t know rightly whether any man can.’
‘Amy! Don’t go to someone else this time.

Listen to me. I won’t come down the stairs.’
He sat and fixed his chin between his fists.
‘There’s something I should like to ask you, dear.’
‘You don’t know how to ask it.’
‘Help me, then.’
Her fingers moved the latch for all reply.
‘My words are nearly always an offense.

I don’t know how to speak of anything
So as to please you. But I might be taught
I should suppose. I can’t say I see how.
A man must partly give up being a man
With women-folk. We could have some arrangement
By which I’d bind myself to keep hands off

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Anything special you’re a-mind to name.

Though I don’t like such things ’twixt those that love.
Two that don’t love can’t live together without them.
But two that do can’t live together with them.’
She moved the latch a little. ‘Don’t—don’t go.
Don’t carry it to someone else this time.
Tell me about it if it’s something human.
Let me into your grief. I’m not so much
Unlike other folks as your standing there
Apart would make me out. Give me my chance.
I do think, though, you overdo it a little.
What was it brought you up to think it the thing
To take your mother-loss of a first child
So inconsolably—in the face of love.
You’d think his memory might be satisfied—’
‘There you go sneering now!’
‘I’m not, I’m not!

You make me angry. I’ll come down to you.
God, what a woman! And it’s come to this,
A man can’t speak of his own child that’s dead.’
‘You can’t because you don't know how to speak.

If you had any feelings, you that dug
With your own hand—how could you? —his little grave;
I saw you from that very window there,
Making the gravel leap and leap in air,
Leap up, like that, like that, and land so lightly
And roll back down the mound beside the hole.
I thought, Who is that man? I didn’t know you.
And I crept down the stairs and up the stairs
To look again, and still your spade kept lifting.
Then you came in. I heard your rumbling voice
Out in the kitchen, and I don’t know why,
But I went near to see with my own eyes.
You could sit there with the stains on your shoes
Of the fresh earth from your own baby’s grave
And talk about your everyday concerns.
You had stood the spade up against the wall
Outside there in the entry, for I saw it.’
‘I shall laugh the worst laugh I ever laughed.

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I’m cursed. God, if I don’t believe I’m cursed.’
‘I can repeat the very words you were saying:

“Three foggy mornings and one rainy day
Will rot the best birch fence a man can build.”
Think of it, talk like that at such a time!
What had how long it takes a birch to rot
To do with what was in the darkened parlor?
You couldn’t care! The nearest friends can go
With anyone to death, comes so far short
They might as well not try to go at all.
No, from the time when one is sick to death,
One is alone, and he dies more alone.
Friends make pretense of following to the grave,
But before one is in it, their minds are turned
And making the best of their way back to life
And living people, and things they understand.
But the world’s evil. I won’t have grief so
If I can change it. Oh, I won’t, I won’t!’
‘There, you have said it all and you feel better.

You won’t go now. You’re crying. Close the door.
The heart’s gone out of it: why keep it up.
Amy! There’s someone coming down the road!’
‘You—oh, you think the talk is all. I must go—

Somewhere out of this house. How can I make you—’
‘If—you—do!’ She was opening the door wider.

‘Where do you mean to go? First tell me that.
I’ll follow and bring you back by force. I will! —’
(((((****)))))
Summary
In this narrative poem, Frost describes a tense conversation between a rural husband and wife
whose child has recently died. As the poem opens, the wife is standing at the top of a staircase
looking at her child’s grave through the window. Her husband, at the bottom of the stairs, does not
understand what she is looking at or why she has suddenly become so distressed. The wife resents
her husband’s obliviousness and attempts to leave the house. The husband begs her to stay and
talk to him about her grief; he does not understand why she is angry with him for manifesting his
grief in a different way. Inconsolable, the wife lashes out at him, convinced of his apathy toward
their dead child. The husband mildly accepts her anger, but the rift between them remains. She
leaves the house as he angrily threatens to drag her back by force.

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Analysis
In terms of form, this poem is a dramatic or pastoral lyric poem, using free-form dialogue rather
than strict rhythmic schemes. Frost generally uses five stressed syllables in each line and divides
stanzas in terms of lines of speech.
The poem describes two tragedies: first, the death of a young child, and second, the death of a
marriage. As such, the title “Home Burial,” can be read as a tragic double entendre. Although the
death of the child is the catalyst of the couple’s problems, the larger conflict that destroys the
marriage is the couple’s inability to communicate with one another. Both characters feel grief at
the loss of the child, but neither is able to understand the way that their partner chooses to express
their sorrow.
The setting of the poem – a staircase with a door at the bottom and a window at the top –
automatically sets up the relationship between the characters. The wife stands at the top of the
stairs, directly in front of the window overlooking the graveyard, while the husband stands at the
bottom of the stairs, looking up at her. While the couple shares the tragedy of their child’s death,
they are in conflicting positions in terms of dealing with their grief.
With her position closest to the window, the wife is clearly still struggling with her grief over the
loss of her baby. Incapable of moving on at this point in her life, the wife defines her identity in
terms of the loss and would rather grieve for the rest of her life than grieve as a sort of pretense.
The husband has dealt with his sorrow more successfully, as evidenced by his position at the
bottom of the staircase, close to the door and the outside world. As a farmer, the husband is more
accepting of the natural cycle of life and death in general, but also chooses to grieve in a more
physical manner: by digging the grave for his child. Ironically, the husband’s expression of his
grief is completely misunderstood by the wife; she views his behavior as a sign of his callous
apathy.
Ultimately, each character is isolated from the other at opposite ends of the staircase. In order for
the marriage to succeed, each character must travel an equal distance up or down the staircase in
order to meet the other. The husband attempts to empathize with his wife, moving up the staircase
toward her and essentially moving backward in his own journey towards acceptance of his child’s
death. Even so, the wife is unable to empathize with her husband and only moves down the
staircase after he has already left his position at the foot.
When the wife moves down the staircase, she assumes the upper hand in the power struggle
between the two by ensuring that her husband cannot move between her and the door and stop her
from leaving. Without the physical capacity to keep her from leaving, the husband must attempt
to convince her to stay through communication - something that, as the poem demonstrates, has
been largely unsuccessful throughout their marriage.
A Late Walk
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ROBERT FROST- 1874-1963

When I go up through the mowing field,
The headless aftermath,
Smooth-laid like thatch with the heavy dew,
Half closes the garden path.
And when I come to the garden ground,

The whir of sober birds
Up from the tangle of withered weeds
Is sadder than any words
A tree beside the wall stands bare,

But a leaf that lingered brown,
Disturbed, I doubt not, by my thought,
Comes softly rattling down.
I end not far from my going forth

By picking the faded blue
Of the last remaining aster flower
To carry again to you.
(((((****)))))
Summary
In this poem, Frost uses autumn as a symbol for impending death. It appears that someone close to
him is nearing the end of his or her life, and this imminent death is cause for Frost to reflect on his
own mortality.
In addition to the abcb rhyming scheme, Frost incorporates alliteration, which works nicely. The
phrases “garden ground,” “withered weeds,” “leaf that lingered,” and “disturbed, I doubt not” instill a
somber musicality to the poem that evokes a feeling of inner reflection.
I have often walked alone in the fall, smelling the dead leaves and listening to the wind rustling the
bare branches of trees. At these times, I am very aware of the fragility of life, along with the promise of
spring and rebirth.
It is the promise of rebirth that offers a ray of hope in this otherwise sad poem. Frost uses the aster
flower as a symbol for spring and rebirth. Death is just part of the cycle of life, but the cycle continues
and from death comes new growth.
Analysis
The first verse establishes a rhyming structure — abcb — and helps to create a sense of setting for
the reader. The narrator of the poem is walking through a garden field. Although it is not expressly
stated, the imagery of the poem suggests that the time of year is in autumn; “mowing” can refer to
using a lawnmower, but it also refers to the fallen tips of grass blades that we now associate with
using a lawnmower. “The headless aftermath” helps to confirm this; we can imagine a field that

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has been freshly harvested, the last grains taken from the field before winter comes to wither it all
away. The path is half-blocked, the narrator notes, in an increasingly imagery-based style that
completes the autumn image.
Even the birds are acting sober, the narrator notes, as he walks into the garden. He describes
“tangles” of “withered weeds,” creating a remorseful image of a garden that once was beautiful,
but is now twisted and cracked, brown and yellow, and falling apart. The sobriety of birds —
noting that sobriety can refer to being “not drunk” or it can refer to being solemn or sad, as is
undoubtedly its intended use here — serves to show the narrator that they are not the only one who
is appreciating the fall of summer. Even the birds sound sad as they sing, and why wouldn’t they?
Most birds avoid cold climates, and migrate vast distances to escape the coming cold. The
birdsong, combined with the view of tangled, withered weeds, is too sad to be accurately described,
so our narrator continues in silence.
In a wintry world filled with leafless trees, the narrator spots a single tree in the garden, right at
the edge, entirely bare, save for a single brown leaf. And they get to watch as this leaf falls, as
though the pull of the narrator’s thoughts was enough for it to at last fall, conforming with the rest
of the garden. The third line — “disturbed, I doubt not, by my thought” — is an interesting one. It
makes a point of how heavy the narrator’s thoughts feel. Many would be familiar with this idea —
sometimes it seems as though solemn thoughts weigh down heavily on the human consciousness,
and this particular thought, the one that is the engine for the poem, is strong enough that the narrator
is certain that its force alone is what sent the last leaf falling from the tree.
Not far from where they began, the narrator finds one more sign of life; a faded blue daisy (as an
“aster” is part of that family of plant), a final sign of beauty, the last flower that can be picked and
kept as a treasure to be given to an anonymous individual — a lover, perhaps? A friend? The poem
doesn’t say, but it almost doesn’t need to. The sense of capturing the final essence of beauty before
the world turns cold and dark is a powerful enough image — the blue flower is the brightest of
colours amidst a poem filled with browns and withering, and the arrival of colour in the poem, just
like the arrival of colour in the narrator’s journey, comes only at the very end.

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3. W. H. Auden: Biography and Poems Study Guide

W. H. Auden is considered one of the finest English or American poets and one of the best poets
of the 20th century. He is an exemplar of modernism along with T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, but
his later poetry differs vastly from his earlier work; critics often speak of early, middle, and late
stages in his career. He is renowned for being wildly inventive and diverse in his array of forms
and styles. Many of his poems, such as “In Praise of Limestone” and the poems in The Orators,
are abstruse and highly intellectual, while others are renowned for their use of accessible language
and relatable themes.
At Oxford in the late 1920s, Auden read the work of Eliot and was influenced greatly by the elder
poet. His first book of poetry, Poems, was printed privately in 1928 by Stephen Spender, a friend
of his in the “Oxford Group,” a coterie of poets. Auden’s earliest verse also was influenced by
Thomas Hardy and Wilfred Owens. These poems, as the Poetry Foundation explains, are
“fragmentary and terse, relying on concrete images and colloquial concerns to convey Auden’s
political and psychological concerns.”
In the 1930s his poems reflected his travels as well as his immersion in the work of Karl Marx and
Sigmund Freud. Journey to War, written with Christopher Isherwood, a frequent collaborator,
featured short sonnets and a verse commentary. The famous “Spain,” dealing with the Spanish
Civil War, is from this period.
Auden’s fame grew for his bold and lyrical treatment of contemporary issues of humanity in the
face of totalitarianism. At the end of the decade he moved to the United States. His first book of
poems written in America was Another Time (1940). This volume includes some of his best-
loved works, such as “Musee Des Beaux Arts,” “September 1st, 1939,” and “In Memory of W. B.
Yeats.”
Subsequent volumes, including The Double Man (1941) and The Sea and the
Mirror (1945), solidified his sterling reputation. He won the Pulitzer Prize for The Age of
Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue (1948). This volume used Old English alliterative style but dealt
with contemporary themes. The next volume, Nones (1951), contained the famous “In Praise of
Limestone.” His poems during this time used contemporary-sounding language and slang, while
they continued to engage with large themes and ideas. The Shield of Achilles, featuring the
fantastic poem of the same name, won the National Book Award in poetry in 1956.
In his later years Auden wrote City Without Walls, and Many Other Poems (1969), Epistle
to a Godson, and Other Poems (1972), and the posthumous Thank You, Fog: Last
Poems (1974). While at the time of their publication they received mixed reviews that averred a
lessening of talent in the great poet, these collections have since been perceived in more favorable
terms.
Auden won the National Medal for literature in 1967, with the award explaining that Auden’s
poetry “has illuminated our lives and times with grace, wit and vitality. His work, branded by the
moral and ideological fires of our age, breathes with eloquence, perception and intellectual power.”
After his death in 1973, Joseph Brodsky wrote that his was “the greatest mind of the twentieth
century.”

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In Memory of W. B. Yeats
W. H. AUDEN - 1907-1973
I
He disappeared in the dead of winter:
The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,
And snow disfigured the public statues;
The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.
Far from his illness

The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests,
The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays;
By mourning tongues
The death of the poet was kept from his poems.
But for him it was his last afternoon as himself,

An afternoon of nurses and rumours;
The provinces of his body revolted,
The squares of his mind were empty,
Silence invaded the suburbs,
The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers.
Now he is scattered among a hundred cities

And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections,
To find his happiness in another kind of wood
And be punished under a foreign code of conscience.
The words of a dead man
Are modified in the guts of the living.
But in the importance and noise of to-morrow

When the brokers are roaring like beasts on the floor of the bourse,
And the poor have the sufferings to which they are fairly accustomed
And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom
A few thousand will think of this day
As one thinks of a day when one did something slightly unusual.
What instruments we have agree

The day of his death was a dark cold day.

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II
You were silly like us; your gift survived it all:
The parish of rich women, physical decay,
Yourself. Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.
Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still,
For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper, flows on south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth.
III
Earth, receive an honoured guest:
William Yeats is laid to rest.
Let the Irish vessel lie
Emptied of its poetry.
In the nightmare of the dark
All the dogs of Europe bark,
And the living nations wait,
Each sequestered in its hate;
Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.
Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice;
With the farming of a verse

Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress;
In the deserts of the heart

Let the healing fountain start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.
(((((****)))))

19
Summary
William Butler Yeats died in winter: the brooks were frozen, airports were all but empty, and
statues were covered in snow. The thermometer and other instruments told us the day he died “was
a dark cold day.”
While nature followed its course elsewhere, mourners kept his poems alive without letting the
poet’s death interfere. Yet, for Yeats himself, mind and body failed, leaving no one to appreciate
his life but his admirers. He lives through his poetry, scattered among cities and unfamiliar readers
and critics, who modify his life and poetry through their own understandings. While the rest of
civilization moves on, “a few thousand” will remember the day of his death as special.
In the second section of the poem, Yeats is called “silly like us.” It was “Mad Ireland” that caused
Yeats the suffering he turned into poetry. Poetry survives and gives voice to survival in a space of
isolation.
In the third, final section of the poem, the poet asks the Earth to receive Yeats as “an honoured
guest.” The body, “emptied of its poetry,” lies there. Meanwhile, “the dogs of Europe bark” and
humans continue their “intellectual disgrace.” But the poet is to “follow right / To the bottom of
the night,” despite the dark side of humanity somehow persuading others to rejoice in existence.
Despite “human unsuccess,” the poet can sing out through the “curse” and “distress.” Thus one’s
poetry is a “healing fountain” that, although life is a “prison,” can “teach the free man how to
praise” life anyway.
Analysis
Along with his piece on the death of Sigmund Freud, Auden's tribute to the poet William Butler
Yeats is a most memorable elegy on the death of a public figure. Written in 1940, it commemorates
the death of the poet in 1939, a critical year for Auden personally as well as for the world at large.
This was the year he moved to New York and the year the world catapulted itself into the Second
World War.
Yeats was born in Ireland 1856 and embraced poetry very early in his life. He never abandoned
the traditional verse format of English poetry but embraced some of the tenets of modernism,
especially the modernism practiced by Ezra Pound. He was politically active, mystical, and often
deeply pessimistic, but his work also evinces intense lyrical beauty and fervent exaltation in
Nature. He is easily considered one of the most important poets of the 20th century, and Auden
recognized it at the time.
The poem is organized into three sections and is a commentary on the nature of a great poet’s art
and its role during a time of great calamity—as well as the ordinary time of life’s struggles.
The first, mournful section describes the coldness of death, repeating that “The day of his death
was a dark cold day.” The environment reflects the coldness of death: rivers are too frozen to run;
hardly anyone travels by air; statues of public figures are desecrated by snow. These conditions
symbolize the loss of activity and energy in Yeats’ death.

20
At the same time, far away, wolves run and “the peasant river” flows outside of the rest of
civilization (“untempted by the fashionable quays”), keeping the poetry alive. The implication is
that the poems live even though the man may be dead. The difficulty with this situation, however,
is that the man can no longer speak for himself; “he became his admirers.” His poems, like ashes,
are “scattered” everywhere and are misinterpreted (“unfamiliar affections” are brought into the
poems). The ugly fact of bad digestion modifies the poems as “The words of a dead man / Are
modified in the guts of the living.”
Furthermore, as in “Funeral Blues” and “Musée des Beaux Arts,” the events of the average day go
on—a trader yells on the floor, the poor suffer—for most people, the day goes unmarked. It takes
a special soul to mark the importance of the day of the death of a great poet, and only “a few
thousand” have such a soul. As scholar James Persoon writes, “These two elements—the poet's
death as national and natural crisis and the poet’s death as almost completely insignificant—
describe a tension within which Auden explores the life of the work after the death of the author.”
Thus, in addition to the thermometer telling us so, the speaker of the poem tells us that it is a “dark
cold day” with respect to the popular reception of Yeats’ poetry.
In the second section the speaker briefly reflects on the generative power behind Yeats’ poetry. It
was “Mad Ireland” that “hurt” him and inspired his poetry as a form of survival. For Yeats, “silly”
like other poets or, more broadly, like other Irishmen or humans, poetry was a “gift” that survived
everything other than itself—even Yeats’ own physical degeneration, the misinterpretations of
“rich women,” and Yeats’ own failings. Poetry itself, from this perspective, survives in the midst
of everything, not causing anything, but flowing out from isolated safety (perhaps the Freudian
subconscious) and providing voice (metaphorically a “mouth”) to that deep level of raw and
unassailable humanity.
The third and final part brings the reader back into more familiar territory, with six stanzas of
AABB verse, every line in seven-syllable trochaic verse (three long-short feet followed by a
seventh stressed syllable).
The body of Yeats (“the Irish vessel”) rests in the ground, the warring nations fight
(metaphorically, the “dogs of Europe bark”), people misinterpret his work (“intellectual
disgraces”), yet somehow, his poetry retains a place somewhere. The true poet, like Yeats himself,
will “follow right / To the bottom of the night” (to the primordial humanity expressed in Yeats’
poetry), to that fundamental human freedom where an “unconstraining voice” can “persuade us to
rejoice” in our existence.
True enough, the human “curse” (evoking the Fall of Man in Genesis) remains; death awaits. This
is all too true in a time of war. But the poet can turn the curse into a “vineyard” where sweet poetic
drink can form. On the one hand there are “deserts of the heart” and human distress, yet on the
other hand, with this wine a “healing fountain” can release a man from “the prison of his [mortal]
days.” A poet like Yeats, despite everything, can “teach the free man how to praise” that
fundamental spark of existence that survives in one’s poetry.

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4. W. B. Yeats: Biography and Poems Study Guide

William Butler Yeats was born in County Dublin on June 13, 1865. Due to the demands of his
career as an artist, Yeats' father moved the family to London when Yeats was still young, but he
spent summers in County Sligo, in Western Ireland. When Yeats was fifteen, his family moved
back to Dublin, where he attended the Metropolitan School of Art.
Yeats' first work was published in the Dublin University Review in 1885. What is generally
considered to be his first mature work, The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Works, came out in
1893. After The Wanderings of Oisin, which was based on an ancient Irish saga, Yeats never
attempted another long poem and confined himself to the lyric form.
Yeats grew interested in the occult at an early age. He visited a famous theosophist, Madame
Blatavsky, and joined a Theosophy Society. Theosophy holds that all beliefs are a part of a larger
spiritual system, and all hold some measure of the truth. Yeats attended many séances, beginning
in 1886.
Madame Blavatsky later asked Yeats to become a member of the inner circle of London’s
Theosophical Society as part of its Esoteric Section. However, Yeats was more interested in
magical experiments and astrology, and was eventually expelled from the Theosophists. He later
joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a cult that also included famous figures such as
Aleister Crowley and Bram Stoker. His involvement in this cult may have led to his interest in
theatre, as the cult often performed rituals using props. His mystical interests, many of which
coalesced during his time in this cult, included a newfound belief in the magic of poetry and words
themselves, which he believed can transport the reader to higher planes of understanding, much
like a magic spell.
In 1889, Yeats met the love of his life, an Irish revolutionary named Maude Gonne (1866-1953).
Unfortunately, Maude did not return his ardor, and after refusing his marriage proposals three
times, she married Major John MacBridge in 1903. Collections of poetry from this time include
The Rose (1893) and The Wind Among the Reeds (1899).
Yeats' early poetry drew on ancient Irish epics as well as the contemporary nationalist movement
that was gaining force in Ireland. In the Ireland of 1880s and 1890s, the two were sometimes
inseparable. Many members of the Gaelic League, formed to prevent the disappearance of the Irish
language and rehabilitate its classics, were also members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, a
precursor organization to the Irish Republican Army (IRA).
Yeats was fascinated by folktales, and, under the tutelage of George Russell and Thomas Hyde,
he published Fairy and Folktales of the Irish Peasantry in 1888. In 1897, Yeats met Lady Gregory,
another member of what was termed the Gaelic Revival, and she convinced him to start writing
drama with Irish subject matter. Together with George Moore and Edward Martyn, the two set up

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The Abbey Theatre, Ireland's national theater, in Dublin in 1904. Yeats's Cathleen ni Houlihan, a
nationalist play personifying Ireland as a woman, was performed on the opening night.
In 1917, Yeats bought Thoor Ballylee, a Norman stone tower in County Sligo, near Coole Park.
He spent the following summer with Maude Gonne's family, and proposed to her daughter, Iseult,
but was turned down. The same year, he married Georgie Hyde-Lee. His wife shared his interest
in the occult and claimed a gift of "automatic writing," in which her hand was directed by a divine
force. Together, the two produced The Vision, a notebook of spiritual thoughts, in 1933.
As well as writing poetry and plays and continuing to serve on the artistic board of the Abbey
Theatre, Yeats became a member of the Seanad, the Irish senate, from 1922-25. He served on the
committees that helped to create coinage for the new state. He left in disgust when the
governmental organization was split in the aftermath of the Irish Civil War (1923-24).
Yeats remained political as he grew older, though much of his status as the key poet of the Irish
Revolution of the early 20th century is based on myth. Having described his political sensibilities
as "a continual quarrel and a continual apology," Yeats did identify as an Irish nationalist, hoping
for the unification of war-torn Ireland—but he also hated conflict, and he published his
revolutionary poem, Easter 1916, near the end of the Irish Revolution. 1919 found Yeats
considering moving away to Japan or Italy to escape the guerrilla warfare that was tearing apart
his country.
As Yeats grew older, he developed a friendship with Ezra Pound, a poet who drew him away from
his mystical, lyrical style into something drier and sparer. Arguably his most famous collection,
The Tower (1928) contains political poems as well as a more modernist return to mythological
topics like "Leda and the Swan." Yeats became increasingly political in his old age, publishing a
collection called Michael Robartes and the Dancer in 1921, which includes his famous "Easter,
1916" in which he describes the birth of modern Irish nationalism with the famous phrase, "a
terrible beauty is born." The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933) contains poems that focus on
Yeats' own estate at Coole Park—the winding stair being the stair at Thoor Ballylee. His later
poems, especially "Under Ben Bulben," express his desire to be buried there. After his death, he
was buried in Sligo, and he rests under the epitaph "Cast a cold eye on life, on death; horsemen,
pass by!"
His poetry has been seminal in the modernist literary tradition and has transformed the way poetry
itself is understood. For instances, compositions such as The Second coming and A Prayer for My
Daughter have become some of the most prominent of the 20th century works.
Of these poems, Leda and The Swan remains one of his most read works. This poem is essentially
a retelling of a Greek story in which Leda is raped by Zeus, who takes the shape of a swan. Yeats's
composition is a traditional sonnet in iambic pentameter.

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Leda and the Swan

W. B. Yeats - 1865-1939
A sudden blow: the great wings beating still

Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.
How can those terrified vague fingers push

The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?
A shudder in the loins engenders there

The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?
(((((****)))))
Summary
In this poem, W.B. Yeats narrates the story of Leda when she was raped by the god Zeus in the
form of a swan. The first stanza opens with Zeus, in swan form, attacking and subduing Leda so
he can mate with her. The second stanza focuses on the actual act of their mating and the violence
of it, and the third and final stanza focuses on the act of Leda getting pregnant.
Yeats suggests that through mating with a god, Leda is able to have a vision of the future and sees
the horrible fate that will befall Clytemnestra, the daughter she has just conceived with Zeus before
he "indifferently" lets her go.
Analysis
'Leda and the Swan’ was composed by William Butler Yeats in the form of a traditional sonnet. It
is about the rape of a “staggering girl” Leda by God Zeus, in the form of a swan and poem expresses
the consequences of it using sexually explicit images. It is important to note that the idea of ‘rape’
that comes through the poetry is because it is written from Leda’s perspective.
This poem is written in iambic pentameter consisting of an octave and a sestet. The octave narrates
how Zeus metamorphoses into a big swan and with a “sudden blow” rapes Leda. The poor girl
could not retaliate being “caught in his bill” while the God “holds her helpless breast upon his
breast”. The poem is permeated with allusions of mystical ideas about the universe and the Greek
mythology, linking Helen of Troy and Leda.

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Yeats's speaker then wonders whether Leda could defy the “feathered glory from her loosening
thighs”. By using a number of bold, visual images and asking a number of rhetorical questions,
the poet wishes to convey that human beings do bow down in front of the affairs of nature or fate
just like the hapless girl, Leda surrendered and allowed Zeus to rape her.
The single event has been used to understand the larger politics of Yeats’s times. Yeats had his
heart set on conveying that a new era is going to start; the era of violence and destruction. This
could be a reference to Irish struggle for independence and how Yeats perceived history using the
theory of gyres. The interference of the divine in human affairs is not shown in glorious terms as
it is the seed of destruction that Leda conceived. With the assault of Leda, Helen of Troy would
be born and lead the entire Greek Civilization to demolition epitomized by “the broken tower” and
“burning roof and tower” of the city. Leda “being mastered by the brute blood of the air” would
turn the tables on the entire civilization as by the virtue of her experience with Zeus, she has
acquired a knowledge too difficult to carry with oneself. Yeats brings out a baffling question
referring to the conception of the destructive civilization. Probably she enriched herself with the
power that Zeus practiced over her and the knowledge of the consequences of this act while Zeus
becomes powerless having “indifferent beak”. Hence, the sestet is devoted to some moral and
philosophical issues humankind needs to contemplate, thus making the poem universal.
Easter, 1916
W. B. YEATS - 1865-1939
I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
That woman's days were spent

In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.

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What voice more sweet than hers

When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our wingèd horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
Hearts with one purpose alone

Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road,
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of all.
Too long a sacrifice

Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.

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What is it but nightfall?

No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse—
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
(((((****)))))
Summary
Easter 1916 is a reflection on the events surrounding the Easter Rising, an armed insurrection
which began in Dublin, Ireland on Easter Monday, April 24, 1916. A small number of labor leaders
and political revolutionaries occupied government buildings and factories, proclaiming a new
independent Irish Republic. At this time in history, Ireland was under British rule. After the Rising,
the leaders were executed by firing squad. William Butler Yeats wrote about their deaths in the
poem “Sixteen Dead Men.”
The poem opens with Yeats remembering the rebels as he passed them on the street. Before the
Rising, they were just ordinary people who worked in shops and offices. He remembers his
childhood friend Constance Markievicz, who is “that woman”; the Irish language teacher Padraic
Pearse, who “kept a school” called St. Enda’s; the poet Thomas McDonagh “helper and friend” to
Pearse; and even Yeats’s own rival in love John MacBride, “a drunken, vainglorious lout.” After
reflecting on the rebels’ constancy of purpose, as if their hearts were “enchanted to a stone,” the
poet wonders whether the rebellion was worth it. The poem ends on a note of ambivalence and
futility, reflecting Yeats’s own reluctance to engage in political debate. The poem is divided into
four stanzas, symbolizing the month of April, the fourth month. It is known for its famous refrain,
“All changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born.”
Analysis
The first stanza describes Dublin, where the revolutionaries lived and worked. Dublin is known
for its “eighteenth-century houses,” rows of connected and identical four-story brick homes, each
doorway made distinctive by “fan light” windows. Yeats himself lived in one such house, at 82
Merrion Square.
In this stanza not much happens other than remembering how he and the rebels exchanged
pleasantries on the street or talked at the “club.” The club was a traditional gentleman’s social
meeting place open to members only. It was part of a fashionable English upper-class tradition and

27
the revolutionaries were not members. Yeats admits that he belittled the earnest rebels to his
companions at the club.
One should also take note of the language Yeats chose to use in these lines. His writing is
commonly associated with flowery language, and very traditionally poetic sounding verses. This
is not the case here. The lines are simplified, just as his speech is to these revolutionaries. There
are certain phrases, such as” mocking tale or a gibe” which also speak to the poet’s tone towards
the subjects. These words in particular are intentionally strange and are meant to make a reader
questions why they are being used. It is clear Yeats, or at least his speaker, has a difficult and
complicated relationship with the Rising and those who participated.
Toward the end of the stanza, Yeats introduces the subtle, but powerful, metaphor of “motley.”
To wear motley is to wear different colors combined. The people of Dublin could be said to be a
“motley” group in 1916: they were Catholic and Protestant, Irish in spirit but English in terms of
citizenship, poor and rich. Here Yeats is making use of metonymy, or the creation of a
relationship between an object and something closely related to it. In this case Yeats beliefs
about the clothes and their silly, multicoloured designs, are transferred to the lives of those
wearing them.
The River Liffey divides Dublin; many of the rebels worked on the poorer north side of the city.
Court jesters also traditionally wore motley, and Yeats is likely also referring to the tradition of
the “stage Irishman,” a comic figure in English plays, usually portrayed as being drunk. The poet
thought the rebels were like these ridiculous jesters and once mocked their dreams. This one
word encapsulates the social, political, and cultural situation of Dublin in 1916.
The stanza ends with the refrain that will mark all the stanzas of the poem, the oxymoron: “a
terrible beauty is born.” Terrible and beauty are opposite sentiments and speak to the concept of
the “sublime” in which horror and beauty can exist simultaneously. It is usually experienced from
afar. This could be said for Yeats’ perspective on the Rising. The Easter Rising was terrible
because of its violence and loss of life, but the beauty was in the dream of independence, a “winged
horse” of romantic imagination.
In the second stanza, Yeats begins to name the rebels by their social roles. Their names will be
listed directly in the fourth and final stanza of the poem. The people Yeats mentions in the text are
actual historical figures. He remembers that Constance Markievicz, one of the leaders of the Easter
Uprising. She is known to have designed the Citizen Army uniform. He states that she was sweeter
before arguing for Irish independence. This is seen through a second instance of metonymy in
which her “shrill” voice is compared to her femininity. She used to ride horses and hunt rabbits,
but then she got involved via her husband, in the Rising.
Yeats also speaks on Padraic Pearse, a poet and another leader of the Uprising. He mentions this
man as riding “our winged horse.” This is a reference to the Pegasus, which represented poets in
Greek mythology. The “other” who Yeats mentions next is Thomas McDonagh. He was also a
poet but was executed before he could write anything lasting. Yeats hoped this young man would
become a great name in literature.

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Next Yeats moves on to John MacBride. He is described as a “drunken vainglorious lout,” or hick.
MacBride was married to Maud Gonne; a woman Yeats was deeply in love with throughout his
life. John MacBride was accused of physically abusing her. Although Yeats clearly hates this
person, he states that he must add him into the narrative as he too died fighting.
The “causal comedy” may refer to the idea of Dublin being a stage, as in the famous line from As
You Like It by William Shakespeare, “all the world’s a stage; and all the men and women merely
players.” In the 19th century, domestic comedies were plays about ordinary middle-class life and
family concerns. Yeats and MacBride had been fighting for the love of the beautiful actress and
revolutionary Maud Gonne, whom Yeats adored, but who MacBride married.
In the final stanza of the poem, Yeats asks the significant question about the Rising and the
subsequent executions: “Was it needless death after all?” Was it all worth it? Did the rebels feel
so much love for their country that they were willing to sacrifice their lives? And what good is
Ireland if the dreamers are dead? The immediate political issue that arises is that England was on
the verge of granting Ireland status as an independent—or “free”—state, which would allow it to
have its own parliament. The granting of independence had been set aside during World War I
because the English required Irish support of the war.
In the second stanza, Yeats introduced the idea “the song.” In stanza four he developed the idea
more fully. In Irish political ballad tradition, naming the names of martyrs was important. Yeats
follows the tradition by listing Padraic Pearse, Thomas McDonagh, and John MacBride. He also
includes James Connolly at this point, the labor leader.
Green is the traditional color associated with Ireland, the Emerald Isle. It is also the color of the
original Irish flag. At the end of the poem, Yeats reconciles himself to the fact that “wherever
green is worn,” people will remember the sacrifices of the rebels of 1916.

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5. Marianne Moore: Biography and Poems Study Guide

Marianne Moore was one of the 20th century’s most accomplished and innovative modernist poets,
renowned for the precision and exquisiteness of her imagery. Along with her modernist peers T.S.
Eliot, Ezra Pound, E.E. Cummings, and William Carlos Williams, she helped to reinvent the form
of the genre in a manner that showcased her singular aesthetic vision. Her verses, especially the
early ones, are at once difficult, sharp, and lucid; critic William Logan described her as “a
metaphysical poet gone rogue.” She was interested in anything and everything, and her
observation, particularly of nature, was almost microscopic. Her friend and fellow poet Elizabeth
Bishop called her “The World’s Greatest Living Observer,” and Moore labeled herself a “literalist
of the imagination.”
Moore was born in 1887 in Kirkwood, Missouri and grew up in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. She never
knew her father, who was hospitalized in Massachusetts after a nervous breakdown. She and her
mother lived with her maternal grandfather until he died in 1894. Mrs. Moore eventually moved
her daughter and son to Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, where Moore matriculated at Bryn Mawr
college in 1905 and earned a B.A. in 1909. At this time, she began to write poetry and submit
pieces to the college’s literary magazines. After graduating she began taking secretarial classes at
Carlisle Commercial College and taught at Carlisle Indian School. In 1911 Moore and her mother
traveled abroad to England, Scotland, and France; they visited numerous art museums. In 1915
Moore began seriously writing poems.
Moore and her mother moved to the artsy, bohemian enclave of Greenwich Village, New York
City in 1918, where Moore worked at the New York Public Library. She befriended many of the
modernist poets, and it was one of them (H.D., Hilda Doolittle) who took Moore’s works to
London in 1921 and published them in the collection Poems, without her permission.
Moore released her own collection of poems, many of which had been in the 1921 version; this
was the famed Observations of 1924, and it contains many of her most famous works, including
“The Octopus.” The volume won the Dial’s award for achievement in poetry.
From 1925 to 1929 Moore edited the famed literary magazine The Dial. She did not write much
poetry during this time, but returned to it after the magazine folded. In 1935 she published Selected
Poems, in 1936 The Pangolin and Other Verse, and in 1941 What Are Years. In 1951 she published
her much-lauded Collected Poems, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book
Award. Some critics had an issue with this collection because she shortened her famous poem
“Poetry” to only three lines, and substantially revised other works as well, but it nevertheless
achieved great fame.
Moore and her mother lived in Brooklyn for a time. Her mother died in 1947 and Moore returned
to Manhattan in 1966. Her poetic work from the 1960s is generally considered by critics to be
inferior to her earlier work.
In her later years, Moore wrote a great deal of prose, including essays and reviews. She was a huge
fan of baseball and not only wrote poems about the sport but attended many games in her signature
tricorn hat and cape. She also wrote the liner notes for Muhammad Ali’s record I am the Greatest

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and was asked by Ford Motor Company to suggest names for a new series of cars (although they
chose not to use any of them).
Moore was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for creative writing (1945), the Poetry Society of
America’s Gold Medal for Distinguished Development, the Bollingen Prize (1953), the National
Medal for Literature (1968), and an honorary doctorate from Harvard University and five other
universities. Moore died in 1972 in New York City after a series of strokes. She was 84 years old.
“Marriage” is unequivocally one of Moore’s most challenging and compelling works, often
anthologized and studied. It came out just a year after the other High Modernist achievements of
T.S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland” and James Joyce’s Ulysses. Its difficulty is due in part to to the
sheer amount of quotations and citations, many of which are not easily grasped without
assistance. It is also her longest work.
Perhaps the most fascinating fact about “Marriage” is that Moore was writing on a subject of
which she had no personal experience; she never married and never observed the marriage of her
own parents. The poem is said to be a manifestation of her feelings about the hasty and loveless
February 1921 marriage of her friends Bryher and Robert McAlmon, but other scholars have
claimed that it was a rebuke to Scofield Thayer, Moore’s friend and editor who proposed to her
in April 1921.
The poem was published as a small series of pamphlets in Monroe Wheeler’s Manikin Press. In
January of 1923, Wheeler had asked Moore to write something for him, and she composed the
poem over a four-month period (though she’d been compiling sources for a good amount of time
prior). The poem came out in September of 1923 in a limited run of 200; Moore later included it
in her collection Observations (1924). Moore wrote her brother that she hoped the poem would
offend people. In an interview with Grace Schulman, she commented that her poem is “just an
anthology of words that I didn’t want to lose, that I liked very much, and I put them together as
plausibly as I could. So, people daren’t derive a whole philosophy of life from that.”
Moore’s contemporaries lauded the poem. William Carlos Williams noted its many allusions,
calling it “an anthology of transit,” and admired its “rapidity of movement.”
Marriage to fulfill a private obligation:

I wonder what Adam and Eve
think of it by this time,
Marianne Moore- 1887-1972
this firegilt steel
This institution, alive with goldenness;
perhaps one should say enterprise how bright it shows --
out of respect for which "of circular traditions and impostures,
one says one need not change one's mind committing many spoils,"
about a thing one has believed in, requiring all one's criminal ingenuity
requiring public promises to avoid!
of one's intention Psychology which explains everything

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explains nothing it's distressing -- the O thou

and we are still in doubt. to whom, from whom,
Eve: beautiful woman -- without whom nothing -- Adam;
I have seen her "something feline,
when she was so handsome something colubrine" -- how true!
she gave me a start, a crouching mythological monster
able to write simultaneously in that Persian miniature of emerald mines,
in three languages -- raw silk -- ivory white, snow white,
English, German and French oyster white and six others --
and talk in the meantime; that paddock full of leopards and giraffes --
equally positive in demanding a commotion long lemon-yellow bodies
and in stipulating quiet: sown with trapezoids of blue.
"I should like to be alone;" Alive with words,
to which the visitor replies, vibrating like a cymbal
"I should like to be alone; touched before it has been struck,
why not be alone together?" he has prophesied correctly --
Below the incandescent stars the industrious waterfall,
below the incandescent fruit, "the speedy stream
the strange experience of beauty; which violently bears all before it,
its existence is too much; at one time silent as the air
it tears one to pieces and now as powerful as the wind."
and each fresh wave of consciousness "Treading chasms
is poison. on the uncertain footing of a spear,"
"See her, see her in this common world," forgetting that there is in woman
the central flaw a quality of mind
in that first crystal-fine experiment, which is an instinctive manifestation
this amalgamation which can never be more is unsafe,
than an interesting possibility, he goes on speaking
describing it in a formal, customary strain
as "that strange paradise of "past states," the present state,
unlike flesh, gold, or stately buildings, seals, promises,
the choicest piece of my life: the evil one suffered,
the heart rising the good one enjoys,
in its estate of peace hell, heaven,
as a boat rises everything convenient
with the rising of the water;" to promote one's joy."
constrained in speaking of the serpent -- There is in him a state of mind
that shed snakeskin in the history of by force of which,
politeness perceiving what it was not
not to be returned to again -- intended that he should,
that invaluable accident "he experiences a solemn joy
exonerating Adam. in seeing that he has become an idol."
And he has beauty also; Plagued by the nightingale

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in the new leaves, that "for love

with its silence -- that will gaze an eagle blind,
not its silence but its silences, that is like a Hercules
he says of it: climbing the trees
"It clothes me with a shirt of fire." in the garden of the Hesperides,
"He dares not clap his hands from forty-five to seventy
to make it go on is the best age,"
lest it should fly off; commending it
if he does nothing, it will sleep; as a fine art, as an experiment,
if he cries out, it will not understand." a duty or as merely recreation.
Unnerved by the nightingale One must not call him ruffian
and dazzled by the apple, nor friction a calamity --
impelled by "the illusion of a fire the fight to be affectionate:
effectual to extinguish fire," "no truth can be fully known
compared with which until it has been tried
the shining of the earth by the tooth of disputation."
is but deformity -- a fire The blue panther with black eyes,
"as high as deep as bright as broad the basalt panther with blue eyes,
as long as life itself," entirely graceful --
he stumbles over marriage, one must give them the path --
"a very trivial object indeed" the black obsidian Diana
to have destroyed the attitude who "darkeneth her countenance
in which he stood -- as a bear doth,
the ease of the philosopher causing her husband to sigh,"
unfathered by a woman. the spiked hand
Unhelpful Hymen! that has an affection for one
"a kind of overgrown cupid" and proves it to the bone,
reduced to insignificance impatient to assure you
by the mechanical advertising that impatience is the mark of independence
parading as involuntary comment, not of bondage.
by that experiment of Adam's "Married people often look that way" --
with ways out but no way in -- "seldom and cold, up and down,
the ritual of marriage, mixed and malarial
augmenting all its lavishness; with a good day and bad."
its fiddle-head ferns, "When do we feed?"
lotus flowers, opuntias, white dromedaries, We occidentals are so unemotional,
its hippopotamus -- we quarrel as we feed;
nose and mouth combined one's self is quite lost,
in one magnificent hopper, the irony preserved
"the crested screamer -- in "the Ahasuerus tête à tête banquet"
that huge bird almost a lizard," with its "good monster, lead the way,"
its snake and the potent apple. with little laughter
He tells us and munificence of humor

33
in that quixotic atmosphere of frankness He says, "You know so many fools

in which "Four o'clock does not exist who are not artists."
but at five o'clock The fact forgot
the ladies in their imperious humility that "some have merely rights
are ready to receive you"; while some have obligations,"
in which experience attests he loves himself so much,
that men have power he can permit himself
and sometimes one is made to feel it. no rival in that love.
He says, "what monarch would not blush She loves herself so much,
to have a wife she cannot see herself enough --
with hair like a shaving-brush? a statuette of ivory on ivory,
The fact of woman the logical last touch
is not `the sound of the flute to an expansive splendor
but every poison.'" earned as wages for work done:
She says, "`Men are monopolists one is not rich but poor
of stars, garters, buttons when one can always seem so right.
and other shining baubles' -- What can one do for them --
unfit to be the guardians these savages
of another person's happiness." condemned to disaffect
He says, "These mummies all those who are not visionaries
must be handled carefully -- alert to undertake the silly task
`the crumbs from a lion's meal, of making people noble?
a couple of shins and the bit of an ear'; This model of petrine fidelity
turn to the letter M who "leaves her peaceful husband
and you will find only because she has seen enough of him" --
that à wife is a coffin,' that orator reminding you,
that severe object "I am yours to command."
with the pleasing geometry "Everything to do with love is mystery;
stipulating space and not people, it is more than a day's work
refusing to be buried to investigate this science."
and uniquely disappointing, One sees that it is rare --
revengefully wrought in the attitude that striking grasp of opposites
of an adoring child opposed each to the other, not to unity,
to a distinguished parent." which in cycloid inclusiveness
She says, "This butterfly, has dwarfed the demonstration
this waterfly, this nomad of Columbus with the egg --
that has `proposed a triumph of simplicity --
to settle on my hand for life.' -- that charitive Euroclydon
What can one do with it? of frightening disinterestedness
There must have been more time which the world hates,
in Shakespeare's day admitting:
to sit and watch a play.
You know so many artists are fools." "I am such a cow,

34
if I had a sorrow, of an archaic Daniel Webster

I should feel it a long time; persists to their simplicity of temper
I am not one of those as the essence of the matter:
who have a great sorrow
in the morning `Liberty and union
and a great joy at noon;" now and forever;'
which says: "I have encountered it
among those unpretentious the book on the writing-table;
protegés of wisdom, the hand in the breast-pocket."
where seeming to parade
(((((****)))))
as the debater and the Roman,
the statesmanship
Summary
Moore begins by wondering what Adam and Eve would think about the institution—rather, the
“enterprise”—of marriage. It is essentially a public promise to perform a private obligation,
symbolized by a bright, round ring and concerned with adherence to its rules. Psychology cannot
help us figure any of this out.
Eve is a beautiful, seemingly quite modern woman, who writes in three languages (French,
German, and English) and can talk while doing so. She demands both commotion and quiet. A
visitor, most likely Adam, suggests to her that while he knows she likes to be alone, they ought to
be “alone together.”
The stars and fruit radiate a destructive beauty; growing consciousness of this beauty is like a
"poison." As Eve contemplates marriage—the first ever—her heart rises in “its estate of peace / as
a boat rises /with the rising of the water.” As for the Fall, this “invaluable accident” is not just
Eve’s fault; yet Adam is exonerated.
Adam is beautiful too, but he is “distressing.” He is like a “crouching mythological monster” and
is full of formal words. He talks on and on of evil and good, hell and heaven, history, and more;
he is pleased that he is now an idol. However, the silences of the nightingale bother him, and the
allure of the shiny apple is more powerful than the “deformity” of the Earth itself.
Hymen, the god of marriage, is unhelpful; he is more like an “overgrown cupid” and has rendered
marriage lavish and full of ways out but not in. He mentions Hercules grasping for the Hesperides
apples and calls marriage a “fine art,” an “experiment,” a “duty,” and even “recreation.” One must
make way for it, aware that the spiked hand will show affection even if it has to cut to the bone.
Marriage wants us to see impatience as part of independence, not bondage.
A few observations on married people: they look a certain way, they are up and down, their days
good and bad. As Occidentals, Moore writes, we lose our selves and are unemotional. It is also our
experience that men in particular have power and “sometimes one is made to feel it.”

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A dialogue between “He” and “She” (most likely Adam and Eve) commences. He says he is proud
to have a wife whose hair is like a shaving brush, and that the essence of a woman is poison. She
says men love to collect shiny things but should not be guardians of another’s happiness. He says
to handle mummies carefully and that a wife can be a “coffin,” because she refuses to be buried
and is disappointing in the way an adoring child is to their remarkable parent. She says that she
wonders what to do with the butterfly that landed on her hand and plans to settle there for life.
There must have been more time for plays in Shakespeare's time; many artists are fools. He says
that there are a lot of fools who are not artists.
He loves himself so much that he cannot allow himself to love anyone else that much because they
would get in the way. She too loves herself, and to the extent that she cannot truly see herself. She
is just a “logical touch” to his collection, a payment for work well done.
What, then, Moore asks, should be done for these people who attempt to convince others to enter
into this “silly task / of making people noble?” There is the wife who leaves her husband because
she has seen enough of his face, and an “orator” telling someone to command him. Love is a
mystery and takes great effort to investigate. A good marriage is rare; mostly they are made up of
opposites “opposed each to the other, not to unity,” stuck in a situation of “cycloid inclusiveness.”
This situation is worse than Columbus smashing the egg or the wind of Euroclydon.
A speaker is quoted as saying that their sorrows last all day, and they are not one of the people
who has a sorrow in the morning and joy in the afternoon.
The “archaic” statesman Daniel Webster said, “‘Liberty and union / now and forever.’” The Book
is on the writing table and the hand is in the breast pocket.
Analysis
A difficult but immensely fascinating poem, “Marriage” demands a lengthy and thorough
discussion of the many allusions and quotes Moore used in order to form her work. We will move
in a linear fashion through the poem and identify these sources along with the larger themes and
possible meanings.
The first twenty lines consist of Moore’s introduction to the subject of her poem—marriage, and
why there needs to be a public promise for a private obligation. She refers to the institution as an
“enterprise,” which makes it sound like a business, something utilitarian and anonymous rather
than passionate and personal. “Institution,” though, is not without its own problematic
connotations. As critic David Bergman notes, because marriage is an institution “it escapes critical
scrutiny. Institutions become articles of social faith…’the world’...gives itself blindly to wedlock.
Even when the world recognizes that matrimony is painful and destructive, it takes pride in its
heroic sacrifice.” Moore then references the earliest couple in (Christian) history, Adam and Eve,
wondering what they’d think of marriage; later in the poem, their Fall in the Garden of Eden will
be mirrored by the demise of their marriage.
Francis Bacon is Moore’s first quote; his lines of “circular traditions and impostures, / committing
many spoils,” which in his own day were about knowledge, are now used to expatiate on the idea
of the wedding ring as a symbol of the commitment between man and woman. Harold Bloom

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wonders if this allusion implies a “secular ethos” and evokes the “impostures” of courtship and
rituals. The science of psychology (is this a dig at Freud?) fails to explain why people act the way
they do in matters of love and marriage, though it is upheld as an authority on human behavior.
Lines 21-60 describe Eve. Eve is an alluring, independent, complex woman who writes three
languages while speaking at the same time; she likes both commotion and quiet and seems
reluctantly to give in to Adam, when asks to “be alone together.” Moore then segues into an
evocation of the Garden, and the growing passion between Adam and Eve in some of the poem’s
loveliest lines -” Below the incandescent stars / below the incandescent fruit, / the strange
experience of beauty.” Eve thinks about marriage, the “first crystal-fine experiment,” and is
initially excited. However, the serpent soon entices her and she eats from the Tree of Good and
Evil, sealing the couple’s fate. Importantly, Moore does not let Adam off the hook although history
has.
Lines 61-129 turn to Adam, who is also beautiful but in a “distressing” way. Many critics have
commented on Moore’s more cynical and dismissive account of her masculine subject. Indeed, he
is described by Moore as a “crouching mythological monster” and, quoting Philip Littell’s review
of George Santayana in which Littell expressed his discomfort with and near-distaste for the poet,
as “something feline, / something colubrine.” Critic Elisabeth Joyce sees these words as a “sort of
denigration of male power” because “feline” is usually used for women. Adam is unnerved by the
silences of the nightingale, a reference to Edward Thomas’s Feminine Influence on the Poets in
which Thomas describes King James I’s poem “The Kingis Quair.” The poem concerns love at
first sight, but here the lines seem to express Adam’s frustrations that Eve, his bird, will not sing.
As for Adam, he loves to speak and does so at length (the lines about “past states, the present state”
here reference the American Puritanical writer Richard Baxter); he also enjoys the fact that he has
become an “idol.” He is clearly self-absorbed and is delusional that marriage, essentially flawed,
can solve problems— “the illusion of a fire / effectual to extinguish fire.” Finally, Moore quotes
William Godwin, an avowed foe of the institution (though married to Mary Wollstonecraft), stating
that marriage is “a very trivial object indeed.” Due to his self-absorption, Adam ultimately
“stumbles over marriage.”
In lines 130-193, Moore picks up her analysis of the inherent problems with marriage. She
lambasts the Greek god of marriage, Hymen, calling him a “kind of overgrown cupid / reduced to
insignificance / by the mechanical advertising parading as involuntary comment.” She refers to
marriage as nothing more than a ritual. Following this she includes a few lines from Anthony
Trollope’s Barchester Towers regarding Hercules climbing the trees for the apple of Hesperides.
She slightly alters them to elide Trollope’s cynicism and make passion seem absurd, and its
concomitant of marriage as simply “a fine art, as an experiment, / a duty or as merely recreation.”
The word choices of “friction,” “calamity,” and “tooth of disputation” also suggest unceasing
conflict and a dearth of emotional intimacy; while the marriage ceremony is depicted as full of
lovely flora and fauna, marriage itself is not.
Moore then returns to woman, here embodied by Diana, virgin goddess of the hunt. She was
sometimes identified with Hecate, the goddess of the darkness of the lower world, and was
occasionally said to have been honored by a cult of votaries dressed as bears. The lines of “black

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obsidian Diana / who ‘darkeneth her countenance / as a bear doth’” refer to this myth, but, to
complicate the lines, actually come from the apocryphal book of Ecclesiasticus in which the writer,
Jesus son of Sirach, labeled women’s wickedness as the highest of evil. Critic Darlene Williams
Erickson suggests that in this reference Moore “wishes to remind the reader that some cultures
have found women innately vile. This intersection of voices seems to be suggesting that one should
not be surprised to find that some women will always be impatient with such characterization and
the bondage it allows; some have a flair for independence.” This set of lines ends with an excerpt
from the painter C. Bertram Hartmann commenting on the vicissitudes of the lives of married
people as well as a biblical reference to King Ahasuerus. Ahasuerus was the husband of Esther
and dragged his feet on punishing the evil Haman, thus leaving the punishment to Esther. The
lines: “ladies in their imperious humility / are ready to receive you,” written by Comtesse de
Noailles, shift the scene to the life of a contemporary married woman. The sense is of a contentious
social scene but also an attempt to counteract the very verbal power of men.
Lines 194-230 contain one of the most famous sections of the poem -the dialogue between Adam
and Eve, identified as “He” and “She.” Adam begins, quoting Mary Francis Nearing’s parody The
Rape of the Lock in lines about how men feel pride in having a beautiful wife and quoting A.
Mitram Rihbany’s The Syrian Christ, a work in which the author speaks about the need for a silent
wife. Eve interjects and calls men “monopolists” and depicts the disparity of social power between
the genders. Adam retorts by calling women “mummies,” which Bloom says shows woman as “an
embalmed figure, already dead, the leftovers presumably of a sexual conquest, or another form of
consumption of identity via the male predator.” Moore takes lines from Ezra Pound—”a wife is a
coffin”—and intimates how women become like disappointing children to their husbands. The
acrimony continues with Eve’s musing about what is to be done with this marriage, using lines
from Charles Reade’s novel Christie Johnstone that suggest men are delicate, useless, and
narcissistic as butterflies. Adam gets one final retort in, and the dialogue ceases. Joyce discusses
this dialogue in her article on the poem, referencing other scholars’ comments on the dialectical
relationship between the work and the world as well as how that fits within the aesthetic context
of the collage (the poem’s form, which we will discuss momentarily). She continues, “The
quotations create a reverberation between the intent and context, the original words and the new
meaning they acquire by being placed in radically different surroundings. In this way Moore is
able to ‘subvert’ tradition, both formally and institutionally...In fact, her use of this technique
constitutes an adaptation of the Socratic method of refuting all sides of an argument. Dialogue
allows Moore to remove herself from the context of the poem so that the critique of marriage
implicit in the poem does not reflect on the poet.”
The bitter dialogue ends and in the remainder of the poem Moore returns to her ruminations. She
uses Edmund Burke’s words “some merely have rights / while some have obligations,” which
referred to Europeans’ superiority and obligations to preside over its colonies, in order to suggest
how men, preside over their wives. Both Adam and Eve, though, are filled with self-love and have
little to give the other. Moore expresses her disgust and frustrations with these “savages” urging
others to undertake this “silly task” with its false message of ennoblement. Marriage makes people
bored of each other; true partnerships are almost impossible to achieve because, in the words of
F.C. Tilney’s translation of the Original Fables of La Fontaine, “Everything to do with love is

38
mystery.” She refers to the story of Christopher Columbus who when asked to make an egg stand
on end broke it instead; this, along with the allusion to Euroclydon, the wind that destroyed Paul’s
boat but saved the lives of the men, “[illustrates] the necessity of sacrifice if the marriage is to
succeed” (Bloom).
The lines regarding sorrow do not have a specific derivation, but may perhaps be influenced by
Psalms 30:5, which read “For his anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime; weeping
may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning” (New International Version). They
suggest the pain marriage causes and how it cannot be easily alleviated.
The very last lines of the poem deal with Daniel Webster, who famously said “Liberty and union
/ now and forever.” In her notes Moore described how she was skating in Central Park and came
across a statue of Daniel Webster on which was etched his well-known words. She takes out part
of them, though— “Liberty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable”—to make the phrase
seem essentially impossible as a marriage of opposites. Furthermore, as critics Lynne Keller and
Christanna Miller note, in his oratory supporting a compromise between North and South in 1850,
Webster was advocating for liberty for all except slaves. He seems to be another arrogant,
hypocritical male figure who loves to speak but tramples over those whom he considers lesser
beings. The Euroclydon, that entity of “frightening disinterestedness,” speaks these last words,
which bring the poem to an ambiguous, if not negative, end. Critic Taffy Martin comments, “One
can claim to be attempting liberty and union, but the combination is a farce. A book on a writing
table may block as many thoughts as it inspires, and if the capitalization in ‘Book’ signifies the
Bible, a book Marianne Moore certainly knew well, the passive image is even more damaging. A
hand in the breast pocket cannot offer to shake another nor can it signal any other traditional pledge
of disarmament. The posture is unequivocally closed and defensive. The institution has been
dismissed. The issue is closed.” William Carlos Williams’s assessment of the poem rings true: “Of
marriage there is no solution in the poem and no attempt at solution.”
There are a few final things to note before concluding this analysis. The first is the oft-discussed
collage technique Moore used in this poem. Not only was she aware of T.S. Eliot’s famed
“Wasteland,” also a poem using collage, she was familiar with the work of modernist Cubist and
Dada artists. She cut out six articles about the 1913 Armory Show and pasted them in her
scrapbook, prefiguring her collage poem of a decade later. “Marriage” is in free verse, full of
allusions assembled without a center; it is an amalgam of speakers, subjects, types of texts, and
tones. As critic Elizabeth Phillips writes, “the collage becomes appropriately witty for the subject
of marriage, its tensions, disharmonies, and irreconcilables.” Bloom agrees, saying Moore
ultimately chose the form “because it is the most public of forms, creating the cacophony one hears
about marriage, its form ranging from the self-absorbed modern man, to the petty bickering of
Adam and Eve, to the Biblical commentary.” Other critics have noted its almost choral texture,
while still others have discussed how the collage technique allows Moore to get away from the
poet-as-authority-figure, a goal of modernist poetry. Joyce notes, “By resorting to college, with its
rejection of traditional mimetic art forms, Moore was able to register her criticisms of the social
institution without risking direct confrontation with cultural standards.”

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The second is the almost unabashedly feminist perspective. Moore acknowledges that the man and
woman are both self-absorbed, but has the man, Adam, come across as more arrogant, tedious,
ignorant, and oppressive. Eve comes first in the poem, has impressive linguistic abilities of her
own, and has a harder fight ahead of her. Moore undercuts the man, subtly criticizing him. In
multiple instances she remarks how much he likes to talk but how bombastic and empty much of
that speech is. However, Moore is very aware that women seek out marriage (after all, this poem
may have been written to sort through her feelings about her friend Bryher Ellerman's loveless
marriage). She does not have much sympathy for either men or women engaging in this
complicated and contentious institution.
Ultimately, what do we conclude about this beautifully incisive, provocative poem? As Erickson
writes, we need to be okay with the fact that perhaps the poem does not have any single moral
"lesson": “It is instead a conversation, a comprehensive dialectic based upon some of the greatest
myths, motifs, symbols, visions, and commentaries on the subject of marriage. It passes no
judgment, solves no problems. If, as Doris Lessing has said, people are ‘hungry for answers, not
hungry for ways of thinking toward problems,’ they will be disappointed. If they are willing to
search for truths in the interstices, in the intersections of loci, they will learn a great deal from
Moore's ‘little anthology of phrases [she] did not want to lose.’”

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6. E. E. Cummings: Biography and Poems Study Guide

Edward Estlin (E.E.) Cummings was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He attended the
Cambridge Latin High School, where he studied Latin and Greek. Cummings earned both his BA
and MA from Harvard, and his earliest poems were published in Eight Harvard Poets (1917). As
one of the most innovative poets of his time, Cummings experimented with poetic form and
language to create a distinct personal style. A typical Cummings poem is spare and precise,
employing a few key words eccentrically placed on the page. Some of these words were invented
by Cummings, often by combining two common words into a new synthesis. He also revised
grammatical and linguistic rules to suit his own purposes, using such words as “if,” “am,” and
“because” as nouns, for example, or assigning his own private meanings to words. Despite their
nontraditional form, Cummings’ poems came to be popular with many readers. “No one else,”
Randall Jarrell claimed, “has ever made avant-garde, experimental poems so attractive to the
general and the special reader.” By the time of his death in 1962 Cummings held a prominent
position in 20th-century poetry. John Logan in Modern American Poetry: Essays in Criticism
called him “one of the greatest lyric poets in our language.” Stanley Edgar Hyman wrote in
Standards: A Chronicle of Books for Our Time: “Cummings has written at least a dozen poems
that seem to me matchless. Three are among the great love poems of our time or any time.”
Malcolm Cowley admitted in the Yale Review that Cummings “suffers from comparison with
those [poets] who built on a larger scale—Eliot, Aiken, Crane, Auden among others—but still he
is unsurpassed in his special field, one of the masters.”
Cummings decided to become a poet when he was still a child. Between the ages of eight and
twenty-two, he wrote a poem a day, exploring many traditional poetic forms. By the time he was
in Harvard in 1916, modern poetry had caught his interest. He began to write avant-garde poems
in which conventional punctuation and syntax were ignored in favor of a dynamic use of language.
Cummings also experimented with poems as visual objects on the page. In April of 1917, with the
First World War raging in Europe and the United States just becoming involved, he volunteered
for the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Service in France. Ambulance work was a popular choice with
those who, like Cummings, considered themselves to be pacifists. He was soon stationed on the
French-German border with fellow American William Slater Brown, and the two young men
became fast friends. To relieve the boredom of their assignment, they inserted veiled and
provocative comments into their letters back home, trying to outwit and baffle the French censors.
They also befriended soldiers in nearby units. Such activities led in September of 1917 to their
being held on suspicion of treason and sent to an internment camp in Normandy for questioning.
Cummings and Brown were housed in a large, one-room holding area along with other suspicious
foreigners. Only outraged protests from his father finally secured Cummings’ release in December
of 1917; Brown was not released until April of the following year. In July 1918, Cummings was
drafted into the U.S. Army and spent some six months at a training camp in Massachusetts.
Upon leaving the army in January of 1919, Cummings resumed his affair with Elaine Thayer, the
wife of his friend Schofield Thayer. Thayer knew and approved of the relationship. In December
of 1919 Elaine gave birth to Cummings’ daughter, Nancy, and Thayer gave the child his name.
Cummings was not to marry Elaine until 1924, after she and Thayer divorced. He adopted Nancy

41
at this time; she was not to know that Cummings was her real father until 1948. This first marriage
did not last long. Two months after their wedding, Elaine left for Europe to settle her late sister’s
estate. She met another man during the Atlantic crossing and fell in love with him. She divorced
Cummings in 1925.
The early 1920s were an extremely productive time for Cummings. In 1922 he published his first
book, The Enormous Room, a fictionalized account of his French captivity. Critical reaction was
overwhelmingly positive, although Cummings’ account of his imprisonment was oddly cheerful
in tone and freewheeling in style. He depicted his internment camp stay as a period of inner growth.
As David E. Smith wrote in Twentieth Century Literature, The Enormous Room’s emphasis “is
upon what the initiate has learned from his journey. In this instance, the maimed hero can never
again regard the outer world (i.e., ‘civilization’) without irony. But the spiritual lesson he learned
from his sojourn with a community of brothers will be repeated in his subsequent writings both as
an ironical dismissal of the values of his contemporary world, and as a sensitive, almost mystical
celebration of the quality of Christian love.” John Dos Passos, in a review of the book for Dial,
claimed that “in a style infinitely swift and crisply flexible, an individual not ashamed of his loves
and hates, great or trivial, has expressed a bit of the underside of History with indelible vividness.”
Writing of the book in 1938, John Peale Bishop claimed in the Southern Review: “The Enormous
Room has the effect of making all but a very few comparable books that came out of the War look
shoddy and worn.”
Cummings’ first collection of poems, Tulips and Chimneys, appeared in 1923. His eccentric use
of grammar and punctuation are evident in the volume, though many of the poems are written in
conventional language. The original manuscript for Tulips and Chimneys was cut down by the
publisher. These deleted poems were published in 1925 as &, so titled because Cummings wanted
the original book to be titled Tulips & Chimneys but was overruled. Another collection quickly
followed: XLI Poems, also in 1925. In a review of XLI Poems for Nation, Mark Van Doren defined
Cummings as a poet with “a richly sensuous mind; his verse is distinguished by fluidity and weight;
he is equipped to range lustily and long among the major passions.” At the end of 1925 Dial
magazine chose Cummings for their annual award of $2,000, a sum equaling a full year’s income
for the writer. The following year a new collection, Is 5, was published, for which Cummings
wrote an introduction meant to explain his approach to poetry. In the introduction he argued
forcefully for poetry as a “process” rather than a “product.”
It was with these collections of the 1920s that Cummings established his reputation as an avant-
garde poet conducting daring experiments with language. Speaking of these language experiments,
M. L. Rosenthal wrote in The Modern Poets: A Critical Introduction: “The chief effect of
Cummings’ jugglery with syntax, grammar, and diction was to blow open otherwise trite and
bathetic motifs through a dynamic rediscovery of the energies sealed up in conventional usage....
He succeeded masterfully in splitting the atom of the cute commonplace.” “Cummings,” Richard
P. Blackmur wrote in The Double Agent: Essays in Craft and Elucidation, “has a fine talent for
using familiar, even almost dead words, in such a context as to make them suddenly impervious
to every ordinary sense; they become unable to speak, but with a great air of being bursting with
something very important and precise to say.” Bethany K. Dumas wrote in her E. E. Cummings:

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A Remembrance of Miracles that “more important than the specific devices used by Cummings is
the use to which he puts the devices. That is a complex matter; irregular spacing ... allows both
amplification and retardation. Further, spacing of key words allows puns which would otherwise
be impossible. Some devices, such as the use of lowercase letters at the beginnings of lines ... allow
a kind of distortion that often re-enforces that of the syntax.... All these devices have the effect of
jarring the reader, of forcing him to examine experience with fresh eyes.” S. I. Hayakawa also
remarked on this quality in Cummings’ poetry. “No modern poet to my knowledge,” Hayakawa
wrote in Poetry, “has such a clear, childlike perception as E. E. Cummings—a way of coming
smack against things with unaffected delight and wonder. This candor ... results in breath-takingly
clean vision.” Norman Friedman explained in his E. E. Cummings: The Growth of a Writer that
Cummings’ innovations “are best understood as various ways of stripping the film of familiarity
from language in order to strip the film of familiarity from the world. Transform the word, he
seems to have felt, and you are on the way to transforming the world.”
Other critics focused on the subjects of Cummings’ poetry. Though his poetic language was
uniquely his own, Cummings’ poems were unusual because they unabashedly focused on such
traditional and somewhat passé poetic themes as love, childhood, and flowers. What Cummings
did with such subjects, according to Stephen E. Whicher in Twelve American Poets, was, “by
verbal ingenuity, without the irony with which another modern poet would treat such a topic, create
a sophisticated modern facsimile of the ‘naive’ lyricism of Campion or Blake.” This resulted in
what Whicher termed “the renewal of the cliché.” Jenny Penberthy detected in Cummings a
“nineteenth-century romantic reverence for natural order over man-made order, for intuition and
imagination over routine-grounded perception. His exalted vision of life and love is served well
by his linguistic agility. He was an unabashed lyricist, a modern cavalier love poet. But alongside
his lyrical celebrations of nature, love, and the imagination are his satirical denouncements of
tawdry, defiling, flat-footed, urban and political life—open terrain for invective and verbal
inventiveness.”
This satirical aspect to Cummings’ work drew both praise and criticism. His attacks on the mass
mind, conventional patterns of thought, and society’s restrictions on free expression, were born of
his strong commitment to the individual. In the “nonlectures” he delivered at Harvard University
Cummings explained his position: “So far as I am concerned, poetry and every other art was, is,
and forever will be strictly and distinctly a question of individuality.” As Penberthy noted,
Cummings’ consistent attitude in all of his work was “condemning mankind while idealizing the
individual.” “Cummings’ lifelong belief,” Bernard Dekle stated in Profiles of Modern American
Authors, “was a simple faith in the miracle of man’s individuality. Much of his literary effort was
directed against what he considered the principal enemies of this individuality—mass thought,
group conformity, and commercialism.” For this reason, Cummings satirized what he called
“mostpeople,” that is, the herd mentality found in modern society. “At heart,” Logan explained,
“the quarrels of Cummings are a resistance to the small minds of every kind, political, scientific,
philosophical, and literary, who insist on limiting the real and the true to what they think they know
or can respond to. As a preventive to this kind of limitation, Cummings is directly opposed to
letting us rest in what we believe we know; and this is the key to the rhetorical function of his
famous language.”

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Cummings was also ranked among the best love poets of his time. “Love always was ... Cummings’
chief subject of interest,” Friedman wrote in his E. E. Cummings: The Art of His Poetry. “The
traditional lyric situation, representing the lover speaking of love to his lady, has been given in our
time a special flavor and emphasis by Cummings. Not only the lover and his lady, but love itself—
its quality, its value, its feel, its meaning—is a subject of continuing concern to our speaker.” Love
was, in Cummings’ poems, equated to such other concepts as joy and growth, a relationship which
“had its source,” wrote Robert E. Wegner in The Poetry and Prose of E. E. Cummings, “in
Cummings’ experience as a child; he grew up in an aura of love.... Love is the propelling force
behind a great body of his poetry.” Friedman noted that Cummings was “in the habit of associating
love, as a subject, with the landscape, the seasons, the times of day, and with time and death—as
poets have always done in the past.”
Cummings’ early love poems were frankly erotic and were meant to shock the Puritanical
sensibilities of the 1920s. Penberthy noted that the poet’s first wife, Elaine, inspired “scores of
Cummings’s best erotic poems.” But, as Wegner wrote, “In time he came to see love and the
dignity of the human being as inseparable.” Maurer also commented on this change in Cummings’
outlook; there was, Maurer wrote, a “fundamental change of attitude which manifested itself in his
growing reverence and dedication to lasting love.” Hyatt H. Waggoner, writing in American Poets
from the Puritans to the Present, noted that “the love poems are generally, after the 1920s, religious
in tone and implication, and the religious poems very often take off from the clue provided by a
pair of lovers, so that often the two subjects are hardly, if at all, separable.” Rushworth M. Kidder
also noted this development in the love poems, and he traced the evolution of Cummings’ thoughts
on the subject. Writing in his E. E. Cummings: An Introduction to the Poetry, Kidder reported that
in the early poems, love is depicted as “an echo of popularly romantic notions, and it grows in
early volumes to a sometimes-amorphous phenomenon seasoned by a not entirely unselfish lust.
By [his] last poems, however, it has come to be a purified and radiant idea, unentangled with flesh
and worlds, the agent of the highest transcendence. It is not far, as poem after poem has hinted,
from the Christian conception of love as God.” Waggoner concluded that Cummings “wrote some
of the finest celebrations of sexual love and of the religious experience of awe and natural piety
produced in our century, precisely at a time when it was most unfashionable to write such poems.”
In addition to his poetry, Cummings was also known for his play, Him, and for the travel diary,
Eimi. Him consisted of a sequence of skits drawing from burlesque, the circus, and the avant-
garde, and jumping quickly from tragedy to grotesque comedy. The male character is named Him;
the female character is Me. “The play begins,” Harold Clurman wrote in Nation, “as a series of
feverish images of a girl undergoing anaesthesia during an abortion. She is ‘me,’ who thinks of
her lover as ‘him.’” In the program to the play, staged at the Provincetown Playhouse, Cummings
provided a warning to the audience: “Relax and give the play a chance to strut its stuff—relax,
stop wondering what it’s all ‘about’—like many strange and familiar things, Life included, this
Play isn’t ‘about,’ it simply is. Don’t try to enjoy it, let it try to enjoy you. DON’T TRY TO
UNDERSTAND IT, LET IT TRY TO UNDERSTAND YOU.” Clurman believed that “the play’s
purest element is contained in duos of love. They are the most sensitive and touching in American
playwriting. Their intimacy and passion, conveyed in an odd exquisiteness of writing, are implied
rather than declared. We realize that no matter how much ‘him’ wishes to express his closeness to

44
‘me,’ he is frustrated not only by the fullness of his feeling but by his inability to credit his emotion
in a world as obscenely chaotic as the one in which he is lost.”
In 1931 Cummings traveled to the Soviet Union. Like many other writers and artists of the time,
he was hopeful that the communist revolution had created a better society. After a short time in
the country, however, it became clear to Cummings that the Soviet Union was a dictatorship in
which the individual was severely regimented by the state. His diary of the visit, in which he
bitterly attacked the Soviet regime for its dehumanizing policies, was published in 1933 as Eimi,
the Greek word for “I am.” In it, he described the Soviet Union as an “uncircus of noncreatures.”
Lenin’s tomb, in which the late dictator’s preserved body is on display, especially revolted
Cummings and inspired him to create the most impassioned writing in the book. “The style which
Cummings began in poetry,” Bishop wrote, “reaches its most complete development in the prose
of Eimi. Indeed, one might almost say that, without knowing it, Cummings had been acquiring a
certain skill over the years, in order that, when occasion arose, he might set down in words the full
horror of Lenin’s tomb.” In tracing the course of his 35-day trip through the Soviet Union,
Cummings made frequent allusion to Dante’s Inferno and its story of a descent into Hell, equating
the two journeys. It is only after crossing back into Europe at book’s end that “it is once more
possible for [Cummings] to assume the full responsibility of being a man...,” Bishop wrote. “Now
he knows there is but one freedom..., the freedom of the will, responsive and responsible, and that
from it all other freedoms take their course.” Kidder called Eimi “a report of the grim inhumanities
of the Soviet system, of repression, apathy, priggishness, kitsch, and enervating suspicion.” For
some time after publication of Eimi, Kidder reported, Cummings had a difficult time getting his
poetry published. The overwhelmingly left-wing publishers of the time refused to accept his work.
Cummings had to resort to self-publishing several volumes of his work during the later 1930s.
In 1952, Cummings was invited to give the Charles Eliot Norton lectures in poetry at Harvard
University. His lectures, later published as i: six nonlectures, were highly personal accounts of his
life and work, “autobiographical rambles,” as Penberthy described them. The first two lectures
reminisce about his childhood and parents; the third lecture tells of his schooldays at Harvard, his
years in New York, and his stay in Paris during the 1920s. The last three lectures present his own
ideas about writing. In his conclusion to the lecture series Cummings summed up his thoughts with
these words, quoting his own poetry where appropriate: “I am someone who proudly and humbly
affirms that love is the mystery-of-mysteries, and that nothing measurable matters ‘a very good
God damn’; that ‘an artist, a man, a failure’ is no mere whenfully accreting mechanism, but a
givingly eternal complexity—neither some soulless and heartless ultrapredatory infra-animal nor
any understandingly knowing and believing and thinking automaton, but a naturally and
miraculously whole human being—a feelingly illimitable individual; whose only happiness is to
transcend himself, whose every agony is to grow.”
Critics of Cummings’ work were divided into two camps as to the importance of his career. His
detractors called his failure to develop as a writer a major weakness; Cummings’ work changed
little from the 1920s to the 1950s. Others saw him as merely clever but with little lasting value
beyond a few technical innovations. Still others questioned the ideas in his poetry, or seeming lack
of them. George Stade in the New York Times Book Review claimed that “intellectually speaking,

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Cummings was a case of arrested development. He was a brilliant 20-year-old, but he remained
merely precocious to the end of his life. That may be one source of his appeal.” James G.
Southworth, writing in Some Modern American Poets, argued that Cummings “is too much out of
the stream of life for his work to have significance.” Southworth went on to say that “the reader
must not mistake Mr. Cummings for an intellectual poet.”
But Cummings’ supporters acclaimed his achievement. In a 1959 essay reprinted in his collection
Babel to Byzantium, James Dickey proclaimed: “I think that Cummings is a daringly original poet,
with more vitality and more sheer, uncompromising talent than any other living American writer.”
Although admitting that Cummings’ work was not faultless, Dickey stated that he felt “ashamed
and even a little guilty in picking out flaws” in the poems, a process he likened to calling attention
to “the aesthetic defects in a rose. It is better to say what must finally be said about Cummings:
that he has helped to give life to the language.” In similar terms, Rosenthal explained that
“Cummings’s great forte is the manipulation of traditional forms and attitudes in an original way.
In his best work he has the swift sureness of ear and idiom of a Catullus, and the same way of
bringing together a racy colloquialism and the richer tones of high poetic style.” Maurer believed
that Cummings’ best work exhibited “a new and delightful sense of linguistic invention, precise
and vigorous.” Penberthy concluded that “Cummings’s achievement deserves acclaim. He
established the poem as a visual object… he revealed, by his x-ray probings, the faceted
possibilities of the single word; and like such prose writers as Vladimir Nabokov and Tom
Stoppard, he promoted sheer playfulness with language. Despite a growing abundance of second-
rate imitations, his poems continue to amuse, delight, and provoke.
Let’s Live Suddenly Without Thinking

E.E. Cummings- 1894-1962
let’s live suddenly without thinking

under honest trees,
a stream
does. the brain of cleverly-crinkling
-water pursues the angry dream
of the shore. By midnight,
a moon
scratches the skin of the organised hills
an edged nothing begins to prune
let’s live like the light that kills
and let’s as silence,
because Whirl’s after all:
(after me)love, and after you.
I occasionally feel vague how

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vague I don’t know tenuous Now-

spears and The Then-arrows making do
our mouths something red, something tall
(((((****)))))
Summary and Analysis

The poem is about love that two people jumped into out of the blue without thinking too much
about it. “let's live suddenly without thinking”. It was a love which was based on honesty "under
honest trees", that comes impulsively (stream-think stream of consciousness), like a stream of
water. All the thoughts that came to the lovers seemed full of clarity and intelligence "brain of
cleverly-crinkling"
"Water pursues the angry dream of the shore" sounds like thoughts of cheating that one of the
lovers begins to feel when those crazy thoughts of infatuation begin to slow down.
"By midnight, a moon scratches the skin of the organised hills" This one could mean about
cheating with somebody in a place like a suburban community "organised" or talking about getting
physical contact with a woman's breasts "organised hills", I think an art exhibit ‘Sensations 1997
NYC” actualize it, where one artist depicted a woman as a map, her breasts-hills. "Scratches-
obviously passionate sex"
The next line.... I don't know...."let's live like the light that kills" live like the daylight.... which
gives life and yet kills illusions. You know how things come out into the light eventually? The
author is saying: bask in the light but remember that it can destroy the relationship, by highlighting
its problems; "and let's as silence, because Whirl's after all" enjoy the silence, symbiotic feeling
you get with another person (like in their arms), because when the break-up will come it will be
whirl-loud, crazy, unsettled, "(after me) love, and after you" so that whirl, all those loud, painful
thoughts are still spinning when the relationship is done "after" "I occasionally feel vague how
vague I don't know tenuous" I feel sad and confused, in what way? I feel fragile and weak now.
"Now-spears and The Then-arrows" meaning now-spears Now-pain, current pain that the exes
cause each other (like a spear that kills you and hurts), "then-arrows" refers to the pain the couple
caused each other before the breakup, that led up to the breakup.
"Making do our mouths something red, something tall"... What I gather by that is something red
is figuratively, blood. That sensation you get in your mouth like blood in your mouth before you
die a tragic death. As for something tall... not sure
In his poem “Lets Live Suddenly Without Thinking”, E. E. Cummings beautifully
illustrates the worn themes of love and life through refreshing abstract imagery and an
authentic poetic voice. The journey he takes the reader on is entirely personal; as he leads
us through his poem on a roller coaster of emotions, allowing the reader to feel instead
of think their way through the maze of his words. His artfully chosen metaphors urge us
to quiet the raging thoughts inside our heads that are programmed to over-calculate the
risks of living and loving, “because Whirl’s after all” will inevitably bring about chaos
and pain.

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As I read this poem for the first time, I had difficulty approaching it with the familiar
logic with which I have been taught to experience poetry. Following the advice of E. E.
Cummings, I then read the poem a second time, allowing myself to emotionally respond
to his words, fighting my desire to cling to logic. Once I had freed myself from the bonds
of thinking, I was able to understand what I believe Cummings was trying to express. I
understood this as I felt, instinctually, that Cummings had not written this poem for
society, or for the critics—he had written a powerful reminder for himself to live in the
light of the present moment without too deeply considering the impending shadow of
the future. Each word, and deliberate infringement of punctuation conventions felt
entirely personal and spontaneous, thereby conveying the complexity of true love as
Cummings experienced it.
Although writing, using emotions only to guide my hand is undoubtedly the purest and
most authentic way of personal expression, there is a risk of isolating myself. Not
everyone is able ignore the voices inside their head prompting them to analyze and
criticize everything they experience, and as such I am sure that many people would not
understand what I am trying to express. The genius of E. E. Cummings was that he simply
did not care that not everyone who read his work would understand it on the same
emotional level from which it was written. He did not overthink the inevitable fact that
people would overthink his work. He simply wrote. I am inspired to write for myself
more, without disguising my voice in any way for fear of judgment or isolation—I am
inspired to free myself and expand my mind in fractals reaching into the heart of the
Universe.

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7. Adrienne Rich: Biography and Poems Study Guide

During her life, poet and essayist Adrienne Rich was one of America’s foremost public
intellectuals. Widely read and hugely influential, Rich’s career spanned seven decades and has
hewed closely to the story of post-war American poetry itself. Her earliest work, including A
Change of World (1951) which won the prestigious Yale Younger Poets Award, was formally
exact and decorous, while her work of the late 1960s and 70s became increasingly radical in both
its free-verse form and feminist and political content. Rich’s metamorphosis was summed up
by Carol Muske-Dukes in the New York Times Book Review; Muske wrote that Rich began as a
“polite copyist of Yeats and Auden, wife and mother. She has progressed in life (and in her poems)
from young widow and disenchanted formalist, to spiritual and rhetorical convalescent, to feminist
leader...and doyenne of a newly-defined female literature.” Her poetry of the 1970s and 1980s
serve as central texts for the second-wave feminist movement. When she died in 2012, she was
one of the most respected American poets.
Beginning with Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law: Poems 1954-1962 (1963), Rich’s work has
explored issues of identity, sexuality, and politics; her formally ambitious poetics have reflected
her continued search for social justice, her role in the anti-war movement, and her radical
feminism. Using the cadences of everyday speech, enjambment, and irregular line and stanza
lengths, Rich’s open forms have sought to include ostensibly “non-poetic” language into poetry.
Best known for her politically-engaged verse from the tumultuous Vietnam War period, Rich’s
collection Diving into the Wreck: Poems 1971-1972 (1973) won the National Book Award. Rich
accepted it with fellow-nominees Audre Lorde and Alice Walker on behalf of all women. Rich’s
numerous essay collections, including A Human Eye: Essays on Art in Society (2009) also secured
her place as one of America’s preeminent feminist thinkers. In addition to the National Book
Award, Rich received many awards and commendations for her work, including the Ruth Lilly
Poetry Prize, the Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award, the Bollingen Prize, the Academy of
American Poets Fellowship, and a MacArthur “Genius” Award. She made headlines in 1997 when
she refused the National Medal of Arts for political reasons. “I could not accept such an award
from President Clinton or this White House,” she wrote in a letter published in the New York
Times, “because the very meaning of art as I understand it is incompatible with the cynical politics
of this administration.”
Adrienne Rich was born in 1929 in Baltimore, Maryland. Her father was a renowned pathologist
and professor at Johns Hopkins. Her mother was a former concert pianist. Rich’s upbringing was
dominated by the intellectual ambitions her father had for her, and Rich excelled at academics,
earning her degree from Radcliffe University. In 1953 she married Alfred Conrad, an economics
professor at Harvard. She had three children with him, but their relationship began to fray in the
1960s as Rich became politically aware—she later said that “the experience of motherhood was
eventually to radicalize me.” Rich’s work of the 1960s and 70s begins to show the signs of that
radicalization. Moving her family to New York in 1966, Rich’s collections from this period
include Necessities of Life (1966), Leaflets (1969), and The Will to Change (1971), all of which
feature looser lines and radical political content. David Zuger, in Poet and Critic, described the
changes in Rich’s work: “The twenty-year-old author of painstaking, decorous poems that are
eager to ‘maturely’ accept the world they are given becomes a ... poet of prophetic intensity and

49
‘visionary anger’ bitterly unable to feel at home in a world ‘that gives no room / to be what we
dreamt of being.’”
Conrad died in 1970 and six years later Rich moved in with her long-term partner Michelle Cliff.
That same year she published her controversial, influential collection of essays Of Woman Born:
Motherhood as Institution and Experience (1976). The volume, following on the heels of her
masterpiece Diving into the Wreck, ensured Rich’s place in the feminist pantheon. Rich was
criticized by some for her harsh depictions of men; however, the work she produced during this
period is often seen as her finest. In Ms. Erica Jong noted that “Rich is one of the few poets who
can deal with political issues in her poems without letting them degenerate into social realism.”
Focusing on the title poem, Jong also denies that Rich is anti-male. A portion of the poem reads:
“And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair / streams black, the merman in his armored body. /
We circle silently / about the wreck. / We dive into the hold. / I am she: I am he.” Jong commented,
“This stranger-poet-survivor carries ‘a book of myths’ in which her/his ‘names do not appear.’
These are the old myths ... that perpetuate the battle between the sexes. Implicit in Rich’s image
of the androgyne is the idea that we must write new myths, create new definitions of humanity
which will not glorify this angry chasm but heal it.”
Rich’s prose collections are widely acclaimed for their erudite, lucid, and poetic treatment of
politics, feminism, history, racism, and many other topics. On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected
Prose, 1966-1978 (1979), continues Rich’s feminist intellectual project and contains one of Rich’s
most celebrated essays, “When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision,” in which Rich clarifies
the need for female self-definition. Publishing a new collection every few years, in 2009 Rich
released A Human Eye: Essays on Art in Society. Rich again explored the intersection of poetry
and the political in essays and reviews. San Francisco Gate contributor Michael Roth noted that
in the book “Rich continues to refuse to separate the artistic from the political, and she articulates
in powerful ways how a truly radical political agenda can draw upon an aesthetic vision.”
Rich’s poetry has maintained its overtly political, feminist edge throughout the decades since the
Vietnam War and the social activism of the 1960s and 70s. In collections like Your Native Land,
Your Life (1986), Time’s Power: Poems, 1985-1988 (1988), and An Atlas of the Difficult World:
Poems, 1988-1991 (1991), Rich begins to address the Jewish heritage that she was forced to hide
during her early life. Throughout all three books, Rich uses personal experience, first-person
narratives, and rich and varied language. Rich’s later poetry engages the personal and political in
ambitious ways. Though Midnight Salvage, Poems, 1995-1998 (1999) is a quieter collection that
focuses on “the quest for personal happiness,” according to Rafael Campo who reviewed the
volume for the Progressive, it also circles “the problem of defining ‘happiness’—in an American
society that continues to exploit its most defenseless citizens, and in the face of a larger world
where contempt for human rights leads to nightmare.” Such an emphasis on the social conditions
of private lives has been a mainstay in Rich’s later work, which often explores the influence of
contemporary world events. The School among the Ruins: Poems, 2000-2004 (2004), which won
the National Book Critics Circle Award, attempts to capture the myriad events that have defined
the beginning of the 21st century. The predominantly short prose poems in The School Among the
Ruins are free verse meditations on “the displacement of exiles, the encroachment of modernity
on human dignity, and the effects of America’s war against terror on the stateside psyche,” wrote
Meghan O'Rourke in Artforum. Although O'Rourke felt the collection veered too much into

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“rhetoric,” other critics found the juxtaposition of cellphone and television dialogue stunningly
effective.
Rich’s 2007 collection Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth was her 24th; however, since the mid-
50s, Rich has conceived of her poetry as a long process, rather than a series of separate
books. Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth continues to use open forms, including notebook-like
fragments. The book as whole, noted Lee Sharkey in the Beloit Poetry Journal, is concerned with
“dissolution and disappearance…The Rich persona who for half a century has been engaged in a
continual process of undoing her own certainties owns up to how those certainties have blinded
her.” Layering images and utilizing a stripped-down line help contribute to “the new, still more
difficult perspective she has achieved,” Sharkey noted, though Rich “allows no point of resolution
in the poem beyond juxtaposed images of cultural, environmental, and personal dissolution.”
Through over 60 years of public introspection and examination of society and self, Adrienne Rich
has chronicled her journey in poetry and prose. “I began as an American optimist,” she commented
in Credo of a Passionate Skeptic, “albeit a critical one, formed by our racial legacy and by the
Vietnam War... I became an American Skeptic, not as to the long search for justice and dignity,
which is part of all human history, but in the light of my nation’s leading role in demoralizing and
destabilizing that search, here at home and around the world. Perhaps just such a passionate
skepticism, neither cynical nor nihilistic, is the ground for continuing.”
Living in Sin
Adrienne Rich- 1929-2012
She had thought the studio would keep itself;
no dust upon the furniture of love.
Half heresy, to wish the taps less vocal,
the panes relieved of grime. A plate of pears,
a piano with a Persian shawl, a cat
stalking the picturesque amusing mouse
had risen at his urging.
Not that at five each separate stair would writhe
under the milkman's tramp; that morning light
so coldly would delineate the scraps
of last night's cheese and three sepulchral bottles;
that on the kitchen shelf among the saucers
a pair of beetle-eyes would fix her own---
envoy from some village in the moldings . . .
Meanwhile, he, with a yawn,
sounded a dozen notes upon the keyboard,
declared it out of tune, shrugged at the mirror,
rubbed at his beard, went out for cigarettes;
while she, jeered by the minor demons,
pulled back the sheets and made the bed and found

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a towel to dust the table-top,

and let the coffee-pot boil over on the stove.
By evening she was back in love again,
though not so wholly but throughout the night
she woke sometimes to feel the daylight coming
like a relentless milkman up the stairs.
(((((****)))))
Summary
A studio described as a bit of a love shack, a woman, a man, and a mysterious milkman. What do
they mean? For answers, you'll need to read Adrienne Rich's "Living in Sin." Rich, who died in
2012, is one of the most famous American poets and has won virtually every poetry award that
exists. She is known for her passionate political voice and her support of feminist causes, both
within her poetry and in her life.
This poem, written in the 1950s and early in Rich's career as a poet, does not yet take the strong
feminist stance that some of her later poetry takes, which at times deals more directly with women's
rights and social and political issues that matter to women. But merely writing poetry about topics
that interest women was a recent development in her poetry and in poetry in general in the 1950s
when this poem came out. Specifically, the poem first appeared in the New Yorker magazine—
January 23,1954. Check it out!
In Rich's earliest poetry she made an effort to reflect earlier and more famous poets in her writing
style. The problem? All of these poets were men! "Living in Sin" begins to break away from this
model, though. It's about a disappointed woman in a dull relationship that doesn't live up to her
expectations or hopes, and it is written from the perspective of (shocker!) a woman.
But notice that the speaker of the poem is an omniscient (all-knowing) narrator, speaking about a
woman in the third person. At the time Rich wrote this poem, while she was beginning to break
away from a style that mimicked that of her male predecessors, she was still not comfortable
speaking in the voice of a woman, and instead spoke about women in the third person.
Still, by 1977 she had famously published a collection called Twenty-One Love Poems, in which
she unapologetically used the first-person voice to speak of a romantic relationship between two
women. And so, "Living in Sin" represents an important step in her journey to achieving her artistic
breakthrough.
The title lets us know that we're dealing with an unmarried couple living together. The poem
describes a big difference between the way the woman imagined her studio would look—
absolutely perfect and charming—and the way it actually looks: really run down and in need of a
serious cleaning! Meanwhile, the man in the relationship acts bored and goes off on a boring
errand. Later that night, the woman feels a bit better, but she's kept awake by the thought of what
tomorrow will bring.
Analysis

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Adrienne Rich’s poem Living In Sin is a free verse poem about a woman’s fairy tale dream of
marriage versus the reality of the sin of not loving each other. The subject of the poem is a woman
starting a life of hope and happiness in a perfect relationship only to learn the true reality of the
relationship. The speaker of the poem observes the woman’s life as sad and boring using the past
tense versus the present, and short run on lines that set the hopeless mood of the poem.
Imagery and colorful language are also used to describe the unhappy relationship throughout the
poem. Living In Sin shows a woman’s life without rhyme in four meaningful images and as the
tone changes she sees the relationship/marriage she expected and the relationship as it actually is.
To begin with the speaker uses run-on lines, past tense and tone to illustrate the first image. “She
had thought the studio would keep itself…” shows that in the beginning of the relationship she
pictured a fairy tale marriage like Cinderella.
There would be no chores, no dusting, everything would be a perfect marriage. The use of past
tense means she is thinking of what is not. The lines are also short and choppy making everything
sound hopeless. The next line, half heresy… the speaker comes back to the present tense of the
leaky faucet, noise and dirty windows. The mood then shifts again and she paints a pretty picture
of her home with fruit and happiness on the table, a piano with an expensive shawl, and a cat as a
nice pet. The short, choppy run on lines makes the woman’s life appear hopeless and tired of doing
this day after day.
The next image the speaker speaks about is the dinner from the night before. By using the past
tense again, Not that at five…. shows the image of a romantic dinner that never was. The poem
loses this imagery with the sound of the milkman waking her up as the cold morning dawns only
to ruin her fantasy dream of the frustration of cleaning up from the night before. The use of
language to describe last night’s cheese is a metaphor to show how sour their relationship really
is. The speaker also uses three sepulchral bottles, sepulchral meaning burial or tomb, as a metaphor
or image of the bottles lined up as dead soldiers from the night before of drinking and partying.
The woman feels as if she too has died inside and is living in a tomb. The bug, a pair of beetle-
eyes would fix her own–, is another example of an image of what the woman doesn’t expect from
life as she writhes under the milkman’s tramp…personifies her bending in pain.
Finally, the man in her life is introduced. Again, run on, choppy lines are used to describe him in
only four lines shows he is not in her life very often and she is frustrated and angry at him. He is
described as yawning which shows that he is ignoring her and just goes on with his on self-
absorbed life. He then plays the piano which is out of tune like their relationship is in need of help.
Next he shrugs at the mirror and leaves for a cigarette suggests he doesn’t care about her. Then the
reality, using past to present, as the woman realizes by the minor demons, her inner thoughts of
the fantasy versus the reality of the house work he left behind for her to do.
The woman goes back to making the house look perfect on the outside to keep up the idea of a
fairy tale life that she once thought she might have. The image of the coffee-pot boils over on the
stove shows that even though she is going on like nothing is wrong, inside she is boiling.
Comparative imagery is used to show life then and now in the pears are now last night’s cheese,
the cat is now a beetle-eye bug, a piano with a Persian shawl is now an out of tune keyboard, and

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no dust upon the furniture of love is now a dusty table-top. The illusion of a fantasy and now the
reality of her life.
The final image ends with by evening she was back in love again, shows the fantasy versus the
reality of waking to feel the daylight coming when she can start all over again. Like a relentless
milkman up the stairs, she has to wake up and do the same thing day after day like the milkman
waking up and starting all over again to deliver the milk. The woman goes back to her job that life
will get better and someday will have a fairy tale ending, but until then she has to live in her tomb
of a relationship, hence, living in sin of not being happy with what she has.
Adrienne Rich’s poem does an interesting job of describing the miserable life of a woman looking
for love. She uses colorful language and imagery to show the dark, unhappy life of this woman.
There is a lot of emotion and feelings throughout the poem. The words like, grime, writhe, coldly,
sepulchral, beetle-eyes, jeered, and demons all give a feeling of the sadness that this woman feels
every day. The poem is easy to read and feel the loneliness this woman has in four, choppy run on
images. In conclusion, Living in Sin paints a picture of a woman finally realizing that her marriage
is not a fairy tale ending. Through imagery, run on lines, and tone the sin is in the guilt from not
living in the present and not being in love with her husband, who’s not in love. This was an
interesting poem on the sin of not loving each other and accepting each other for who they are.

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8. Anne Sexton: Biography and Poems Study Guide

Anne Sexton was born on November 09, 1928 in Newton, Massachusetts and raised in Weston.
The daughter of a successful businessman, Sexton’s childhood was materially comfortable but not
happy. Her relationships with her parents were difficult, perhaps even abusive. Sexton’s closest
confidante was her maiden great-aunt. She attended boarding school and after graduation enrolled
in Garland Junior College for one year. Sexton later described Garland as a “finishing” school. At
age 19, she married Alfred “Kayo” Sexton II. While Kayo was serving in Korea, Anne became a
fashion model. In 1953, she gave birth to her first child and in 1955, her second. Sexton suffered
from post-partum depression, and after the birth of her first daughter she suffered her first
breakdown and was admitted to a neuropsychiatric hospital. Other institutionalizations followed.
Sexton struggled with depression for the remainder of her life. She committed suicide died on
October 4, 1974 at age 46.
In treatment, her therapist encouraged her to write and in 1957 Sexton joined writing groups in
Boston that eventually led her to friendships and relationships with the poets Maxine Kumin,
Robert Lowell, George Starbuck, and Sylvia Plath. As Sexton told Beatrice Berg, her writing
began, in fact, as therapy: “My analyst told me to write between our sessions about what I was
feeling and thinking and dreaming.” Her analyst, impressed by her work, encouraged her to keep
writing, and then, she told Berg, she saw (on television) “I. A. Richards [a poet and literary critic]
describing the form of a sonnet and I thought maybe I could do that. Oh, I was turned on. I wrote
two or three a day for about a year.” Eventually, Sexton’s poems about her psychiatric struggles
were gathered in her first book, To Bedlam and Part Way Back (1960), which recounts, as James
Dickey wrote, the experiences “of madness and near-madness, of the pathetic, well-meaning,
necessarily tentative and perilous attempts at cure, and of the patient’s slow coming back into the
human associations and responsibilities which the old, previous self still demands.”
Sexton’s work is usually grouped with other Confessional poets such as Plath, Lowell, John
Berryman, and W. D. Snodgrass. In an interview with Patricia Marx, Sexton discussed Snodgrass’s
influence: “If anything influenced me it was W. D. Snodgrass’ Heart’s Needle.... It so changed
me, and undoubtedly it must have influenced my poetry. At the same time everyone said, ‘You
can’t write this way. It’s too personal; it’s confessional; you can’t write this, Anne,’ and everyone
was discouraging me. But then I saw Snodgrass doing what I was doing, and it kind of gave me
permission.” Sexton’s books after To Bedlam and Part Way Back included All my Pretty
Ones (1962), Live or Die (1966), which won the Pulitzer Prize, Love Poems (1969), the
play Mercy Street (1969). Transformations (1972), a series of retellings of Grimm’s fairy tales is
often described as her least overtly “confessional” and most feminist work. Sexton’s last published
collection was The Death Notebooks (1974); posthumously published volumes included The
Awful Rowing toward God (1975), 45 Mercy Street (1976), and Words for Dr. Y: Uncollected
Poems with Three Stories (1978).
Sexton’s work was enormously popular during her lifetime and she was the recipient of numerous
honors and awards, including the Frost Fellowship to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the
Radcliffe Institute Fellowship, the Levinson Prize, the American Academy of Arts and Letters
traveling fellowship, the Shelley Memorial Prize, and an invitation to give the Morris Gray reading
at Harvard. She also received a Guggenheim Fellowship, grants from the Ford Foundation,
honorary degrees, and held professorships at Colgate University and Boston University. Despite

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her many achievements, critical discussions of her work tended to focus on the apparently
autobiographical elements of her verse. Dickey’s admonishment of Sexton’s second book was
somewhat typical: “Miss Sexton’s work seems to me very little more than a kind of terribly serious
and determinedly outspoken soap-opera.” Yet Sexton’s canniness about the power of fiction, the
uses of fact and imagination, and the poem—or poet—as essentially performance mean that no
simple equations between poet and poem, life and art, can be drawn. In an early essay on
both Bedlam and Pretty Ones, Beverly Fields argued that Sexton’s poetry is mostly misread. She
contended that the poems are not as autobiographical as they seem, that they are poems, not
memoirs, and she went on to analyze many of them in depth in order to show the recurrent
symbolic themes and poetic techniques that she felt make Sexton’s work impressive. Recent
scholars such as Gillian White have focused on Sexton’s manipulation of voice and audience to
suggest her work bears more, or different, scrutiny than it has previously received.
One of Sexton’s earliest champions, Erica Jong, reviewing The Death Notebooks assessed
Sexton’s poetic significance and contended that her artistry was seriously overlooked: “She is an
important poet not only because of her courage in dealing with previously forbidden subjects, but
because she can make the language sing. Of what does [her] artistry consist? Not just of her skill
in writing traditional poems… But by artistry, I mean something more subtle than the ability to
write formal poems. I mean the artist’s sense of where her inspiration lies… There are many poets
of great talent who never take that talent anywhere… They write poems which any number of
people might have written. When Anne Sexton is at the top of her form, she writes a poem which
no one else could have written.”
After Auschwitz
Anne Sexton- 1928-1974
Anger,
as black as a hook,
overtakes me.
Each day,
each Nazi
took, at 8: 00 A.M., a baby
and sauteed him for breakfast
in his frying pan.
And death looks on with a casual eye

and picks at the dirt under his fingernail.
Man is evil,
I say aloud.
Man is a flower
that should be burnt,
I say aloud.

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Man is a bird full of mud,

I say aloud.
And death looks on with a casual eye

and scratches his anus.
Man with his small pink toes,

with his miraculous fingers
is not a temple
but an outhouse,
I say aloud.
Let man never again raise his teacup.
Let man never again write a book.
Let man never again put on his shoe.
Let man never again raise his eyes,
on a soft July night.
Never. Never. Never. Never. Never.
I say those things aloud.
I beg the Lord not to hear.

(((((****)))))
Summary
After Auschwitz is a six-stanza poem. The number of lines is, 8, 2, 8, 2, 12, 1 and there is no rhyme
scheme. The poem is a reaction piece, written from a speaker that is filled with anger over the
atrocities committed by the Nazi’s, and more specifically man, during the holocaust. She speaks
about her anger, and how it fills her daily; that death does not care about what’s happening, and
does not take those who real deserve it. She spends the rest of the poem passing judgement on
these men, deciding that they should no longer be worshiped like “temples” or have any agency in
their own lives, all in attempt to stop something like this from happening again. The speaker ends
the poem by hoping that God has not heard all she has said allowed, perhaps fearing she is
becoming like the men she condemns.
Analysis
The first stanza of this poem is eight lines long. The first line is a single word, “anger.” This will
be the overall feeling of this piece; each line and stanza is imbued with anger. The speaker is
describing how everyday when she wakes anger consumes her, it is “black as a hook.” It is cold
and dark and violent.
Where this anger comes from is described in the second half of this stanza. She remembers the
Nazis and their treatment of those deemed lesser. She gives a hyperbolic statement in which she
describes how every day, every Nazi, took, at 8:00 A.M., a baby and sautéed him for breakfast.

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While this might be an exaggerated description of the cruelty of the Nazi regime, it is not far off.
It is used as an attention-grabbing statement right at the beginning of the poem. Sexton picked this
example as what would be the most likely to anger a reader and allow them to feel what she is
feeling, whether they normally think about the Nazis or not.
The second stanza is short, only two lines of the same thing. The way these two lines are framed
will be repeated once more in this piece. They act as a kind of refrain, a reminder of “death” and
his place in this story.
Death is described as looking on at the scene, “with a casual eye.” The deaths he is observing of
innocent life do not bother him. He takes no action to stop the Nazis in their child murder. He
shows his disregard by picking…at the dirt under his fingernails.
This fourth stanza of “After Auschwitz” is a repetition of the second stanza. Once again death
described as looking on at the scene, “with a casual eye.” He does not regard what the Nazis are
doing as anything to be outraged at or get excited about. He goes about his life normally and,
“scratches his anus.” An act emphasized to show his substantial lack of care about what he is
observing. An act even more casual and undisturbed then picking at fingernails.
The fifth is the longest stanza of the poem at twelve lines. The speaker uses this section of the
poem to further demean the image of man and stomp on the most innocent parts of man’s body
and actions.
She begins by speaking of man’s “small pink toes” and “miraculous fingers.” She is bringing
attention to the parts of a man’s body that separate him from his closest non-human animal
relatives. But these parts of the body are not a temple, she says, but an outhouse.
Once more she makes sure to emphasis that she is speaking aloud. Letting the world know her
opinion. One should not worship man for his ability and beauty but condemn him, her comparison
of him to an outhouse demeans him.
The next four lines are decrees she makes regarding what men should no longer be allowed to do.
The first, Let man never again raise his teacup.
He shall no longer live in luxury of dine with fine china. His world of pleasure and good fortune,
she says, should end.
The speaker continues on to say that man should no longer be allowed to write books. Their
thoughts, and ideas should no longer be made public (unlike her own). She believes that without
books to spread their thoughts, groups like the Nazis would no longer form. Dangerous ideas would
have no place to root.
Her third demand, Let man never again put on his shoe.

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He should no longer have agency, be able, or allowed to dress himself. This strips him of his ability
to go anywhere he wants without assistance or permission. His life is no longer his own to
determine.
The fourth demand the speaker makes is that he should never again be able or allowed to “raise
his eyes.” He will command no respect; he will not be able to look anyone else in the eye. With
this downcast look he will be subservient.
All of these things he will not be able to do, “on a soft July night.” Or presumably any night, all in
the hope of keeping the holocaust, and events similar that have occurred or will occur, from ever
happening again.
The eleventh line of this stanza emphasizes this point, the speaker repeats the word “Never” five
times. Solidifying her opinion and the judgement she has passed.
This stanza ends with the repetition of the phrase, I say those things aloud.
The final line of this poem stands alone. After the strength of her demands throughout this piece,
and the way she emphasized the fact that she is speaking aloud, the last line comes as a surprise.
She is begging the Lord not to hear her. She has said all of these things aloud but is ashamed of
them. Perhaps she is feeling as if she’s coming to similar to the men she is condemning. She
determines their lives as they determined the lives of others in sweeping generalizations.
After Auschwitz is a poem that was written by Anne Sexton on January 1973. This poem was then
included in a volume entitled "The Awful Rowing Towards God". It was published in 1975, a year
after her death. After Auschwitz tells about the anger of the poet about what happened during
Nazi's regime. In the poem, the speaker talks about her feelings after seeing what happened in the
Auschwitz concentration camp, a concentration and extermination camps built and operated by the
Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II. It was the largest of
the Nazi concentration camps. The speaker writes about what humans are able to do to other
humans, specially what the Nazis are able to do to whoever they saw as enemy, and how horrible
this tragedy happened at that time.
Poem by Anne Sexton, After Auschwitz, tells about the cruelty of Nazis that involved with the
holocaust in World War II (1939-1945). It happened in Auschwitz, an infamous complex of
concentration and death camps run by Nazi Germany during World War II. The complex was
located in southern Poland, outside the town of Oswiecim (which the Germans called Auschwitz),
on the Wisla (Vistula) River about 50 km (30 mi) southwest of Krakow. The complex covered the
largest of the Nazi death and concentration camps, and its name has become forever associated
with genocide. While the poem takes a setting of the time during this genocide tragedy happened.
[...] The poem generally has an angry tone. But in the end, it turns to be calmer and sad. Firstly is
started with the first word? anger', and the repetition of say aloud' gives sense that the poet wants
people to listen her disappointment. She also emphasizes some words by only giving one or two

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words at most for each line. Sexton uses symbolism to show her anger. As in line 9+10 and 19+20?
death' represents people who know and see all these bad behaviors and choose not to do anything.
The use of word and shows that particular line is addressed to Nazis. The use of word in the fifth
stanza, on a soft July night, indicates the time of tragedy happen that claims many victims. Some
poetic devices in this poem are simile, personification, metaphor, paradox and repetition. In the
first stanza shows the simile, Anger, as black as a hook, Next, the personification in the poem is,
And death looks on with a casual eye and picks at the dirt under his fingernail. Also, in the fourth
stanza, And death looks on with a casual eye and scratches his anus. The metaphor in this poem is
in the third stanza, Man is evil, I say aloud. Man is a flower that should be burnt, I say aloud. Man
is a bird full of mud, I say aloud. In the third stanza, Man is a flower that should be burnt, it
signifies as paradox since it shows the contradiction of a flower that commonly shows as symbol
of beauty but in this line, it is being devastated by burning it.
While the poem takes a setting of the time during this genocide tragedy happened. From the first
stanza, the poet explores the pain and tragedy involved with the Holocaust while generalizing the
destruction caused by the Nazis in World War II, this stanza describe how cruel Nazi is, it is
expressed by the use of the sentence like? Each day, each Nazi took, at 08:00 A.M., a baby and
sautéed him for breakfast in his frying pan. Moving to the second stanza, Sexton changes her topic
to another human who act indifferently from Nazi.

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9. John Ashbery: Biography and Poems Study Guide

John Ashbery was recognized as one of the greatest 20th-century American poets. He won nearly
every major American award for poetry, including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award,
the Yale Younger Poets Prize, the Bollingen Prize, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Griffin
International Award, and a MacArthur “Genius” Grant. Ashbery’s poetry challenges its readers to
discard all presumptions about the aims, themes, and stylistic scaffolding of verse in favor of a
literature that reflects upon the limits of language and the volatility of consciousness. In 2008,
critic Langdon Hammer remarked, “No figure looms so large in American poetry over the past 50
years as John Ashbery.”
Ashbery’s first book, Some Trees (1956), won the Yale Younger Poets Prize. The competition was
judged by W.H. Auden, who famously confessed later that he hadn’t understood a word of the
winning manuscript. Ashbery published a spate of successful and influential collections in the
1960s and ‘70s, including The Tennis Court Oath (1962), The Double Dream of
Spring (1970), Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1975) and Houseboat Days (1977). Self-Portrait
in a Convex Mirror, considered by many to be Ashbery’s masterpiece, won the Pulitzer Prize, the
National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award, an unprecedented triple-crown
in the literary world. Essentially a meditation on Francesco Parmigianino’s painting “Self-Portrait
in a Convex Mirror,” the long title poem showcases the influence of visual art on Ashbery’s style,
as well as introducing one of his major subjects: the nature of the creative act, particularly as it
applies to the writing of poetry. This is also, as Peter Stitt noted, a major theme of Houseboat
Days, a volume acclaimed by Marjorie Perloff in Washington Post Book World as “the most
exciting, most original book of poems to have appeared in the 1970s.” Stitt maintained in
the Georgia Review that “Ashbery has come to write, in the poet’s most implicitly ironic gesture,
almost exclusively about his own poems, the ones he is writing as he writes about them.” Roger
Shattuck made a similar point in the New York Review of Books: “Nearly every poem in Houseboat
Days shows that Ashbery’s phenomenological eye fixes itself not so much on ordinary living and
doing as on the specific act of composing a poem… Thus, every poem becomes an ars poetica of
its own condition.”
Critics noted how Ashbery’s poetry took shape under the influence of abstract expressionism, a
movement in modern American painting stressing nonrepresentational methods of picturing
reality. “Modern art was the first and most powerful influence on Ashbery,” Helen McNeil
declared in the Times Literary Supplement. “When he began to write in the 1950s, American
poetry was constrained and formal while American abstract-expressionist art was vigorously
taking over the heroic responsibilities of the European avant-garde.” True to this influence,
Ashbery’s poems, according to Fred Moramarco in the Journal of Modern Literature, are a “verbal
canvas” upon which the poet freely applies the techniques of expressionism. Ashbery’s experience
as an art critic in France during the 1950s and ‘60s, and in New York for magazines like New
York and the Partisan Review strengthened his ties to abstract expressionism. But Ashbery’s
poetry, as critics observed, evolved under a variety of influences besides modern art, becoming in
the end the expression of a voice unmistakably his own. Ashbery’s influences include the
Romantic tradition in American poetry that progressed from Whitman to Wallace Stevens, the
New York School of Poets featuring contemporaries such as Frank O’Hara, James Schuyler,
and Kenneth Koch, and the French surrealist writers with whom Ashbery featured in his work as
a critic and translator.

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Ashbery’s style—self-reflexive, multi-phonic, vaguely narrative, full of both pop culture and high
allusion—has become “so influential that its imitators are legion,” Helen Vendler observed in
the New Yorker in 1981. Although even his strongest supporters agreed that his poetry is often
difficult to read and willfully difficult to understand, many critics also commented on the manner
in which Ashbery’s fluid style conveys a major concern in his poetry: the refusal to impose an
arbitrary order on a world of flux and chaos. In his verse, Ashbery attempted to mirror the stream
of perceptions of which human consciousness is composed. His poetry is open-ended and multi-
various because life itself is, he told Bryan Appleyard in the London Times: “I don’t find any direct
statements in life. My poetry imitates or reproduces the way knowledge or awareness come to me,
which is by fits and starts and by indirection. I don’t think poetry arranged in neat patterns would
reflect that situation. My poetry is disjunct, but then so is life.” His poems move, often without
continuity, from one image to the next, prompting some critics to praise his expressionist technique
and others to become frustrated with his refusal to adhere to traditional approaches to meaning.
Ashbery’s poetry—and its influence on younger poets—remains controversial because of just this
split in critical opinion: some critics laud what Paul Auster described in Harper’s as Ashbery’s
“ability to undermine our certainties, to articulate so fully the ambiguous zones of our
consciousness,” while others deplore his obscurantism and insist that his poems, made up of
anything and everything, can mean anything and everything. Reflecting upon the critical response
to his poem, “Litany,” Ashbery once told Contemporary Authors, “I’m quite puzzled by my work
too, along with a lot of other people. I was always intrigued by it, but at the same time a little
apprehensive and sort of embarrassed about annoying the same critics who are always annoyed by
my work. I’m kind of sorry that I cause so much grief.” Helen Vendler offered her summary of the
debate in the New Yorker: “It is Ashbery’s style that has obsessed reviewers, as they alternately
wrestle with its elusive impermeability and praise its power of linguistic synthesis. There have
been able descriptions of its fluid syntax, its insinuating momentum, its generality of reference, its
incorporation of vocabulary from all the arts and sciences. But it is popularly believed, with some
reason, that the style itself is impenetrable… An alternative view says that every Ashbery poem is
about poetry.”
Ever prolific, Ashbery published over 30 books of poetry since 1970. His critically acclaimed
collection A Wave (1984) won both the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize and the Bollingen Prize. The
long title poem was regarded as his finest since Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1975). Ashbery’s
second epic poem, Flow Chart, was published in 1991. Lawrence Joseph declared in
the Nation that the poem, “more than any of his other books, portrays the essence of Ashbery’s
process… Flow Chart is a catalogue, which Ashbery presents as endlessly expansive and open to
interpretation, encompassing within its subject matter—well, as much as the poet may imagine.”
Ashbery’s next collection, Hotel Lautréamont (1992), was met with mixed critical response.
Nicholas Everett noted in the Times Literary Supplement, “Those who expect poetry to evoke a
specific experience or event, real or fictional, will always find Ashbery’s work frustrating or just
dull.” He added, “Besides, the essential subjects of Ashbery’s poetry—subjectivity and time… are
themselves general and elusive; and though in passing it says a good deal about them, its means
are in the end mimetic rather than discursive.”
In Ashbery’s later works, such as Girls on the Run (1999), Chinese Whispers (2002), Where Shall
I Wander? (2005), A Worldly Country (2007), Quick Question (2012), Breezeway (2015),
and Commotion of the Birds (2016) critics have noted an infusion of elegy as the poet contemplates

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aging and death. In the Nation, Calvin Bedient stated: “For all his experimentation, Ashbery writes
(as the important writers have always done) about happiness and woe. If the woe he knows is
treated comically, it’s still woe.” In the Times Literary Supplement, Stephanie Burt compared late-
Ashbery to Wallace Stevens, another poet of old age: “if [Ashbery’s poems] do not even seek the
kinds of formal completion we find in Stevens, they make up for it in their range of tones—
befuddled, affectionate, bubbly, chastened, somber, alarmed, and then befuddled again.” But, Burt
declares, “Ashbery seems more contemporary, more topical, now than when he started writing,
though the culture has changed around him more than he has changed: he has become the poet of
our multi-tasking, interruption-filled, and entertainment-seeking days.”
Mark Ford, also writing in the Times Literary Supplement, compared Ashbery’s poetry to Walt
Whitman‘s. “Like Whitman’s, it is essentially a means of involving the reader in the poem on what
Whitman calls ‘equal terms’… Ashbery’s evasions might be seen as motivated by a similar desire
to achieve a greater—and more democratic—intimacy by short-circuiting conventional modes of
address.” Nicholas Jenkins concluded in the New York Times Book Review that Ashbery’s poetry
“appeals not because it offers wisdom in a packaged form, but because the elusiveness and
mysterious promise of his lines remind us that we always have a future and a condition of
meaningfulness to start out toward.” In 2008, the Library of America published John Ashbery:
Collected Poems, 1956-1987, the first collection of a living poet ever published by the series. And
in 2017, the first volume of Karin Ruffman’s biography of Ashbery was published, titled The
Songs We Know Best: John Ashbery’s Early Life.
Ashbery’s art criticism was collected in Reported Sightings: Art Chronicles, 1957-1987 (1989).
His series of Norton lectures at Harvard covered six poets who had “probably influenced” his own
work, including John Clare, Raymond Roussel and Laura Riding. It was published as Other
Traditions: The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures in 2000. His Selected Prose was published in 2005.
He translated numerous French poets, including Marjory’s The Landscapist (2008), and his French
translations were assembled in the two-volume collection Collected French Translations:
Poetry (2014). In addition to his numerous awards, John Ashbery was the poet laureate of New
York State from 2001 to 2003. He also served as chancellor of the Poets and was the Charles P.
Stevenson, Jr., Professor of Languages and Literature at Bard College. He taught at the university
level for many years, including at Brooklyn College, Harvard University, and Bard College.
Considered for many years to be the leading U.S. candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, he
was never awarded the honor. He died at his home in Hudson, New York, in 2017. His husband,
David Kermani, said his death was from natural causes.
Some Trees
JOHN ASHBERY- 1927-2017
These are amazing: each

Joining a neighbor, as though speech
Were a still performance.
Arranging by chance

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To meet as far this morning

From the world as agreeing
With it, you and I
Are suddenly what the trees try
To tell us we are:
That their merely being there
Means something; that soon
We may touch, love, explain.
And glad not to have invented

Such comeliness, we are surrounded:
A silence already filled with noises,
A canvas on which emerges
A chorus of smiles, a winter morning.

Placed in a puzzling light, and moving,
Our days put on such reticence
These accents seem their own defense.
(((((****)))))
Summary
The speaker observes the trees and how each seems to connect with another. This connection is
expressed through a simile that compares the natural and chaotic arrangement of trees appear to
the power of speech. The first stanza joins into the second stanza to create a metaphor of the trees—
which are not mentioned specifically, but the title of poem lends the “these” which opens the open
a pretty solid interpretative definition—as how relationships are established among humans’
beings.
The second stanza informs the reader that the narrative is taking place in the morning. Now the
trees are personified by being endowed with the power of speech and the incipient sentience to tell
the narrator and the unidentified “neighbor” what they are and, even better, that they are soon
going to be given the opportunity and the allowance to touch, to love, to explain.
What they are not allowed to do is feel any sort of pride at having created the beauty which
surrounds them in the form of some trees which provide such a stunning and beautiful backdrop
to their meeting. It is now that the silence of the natural word begins to come alive and this entire
portrait of the natural world is transformed into metaphor which expands beyond portraiture to be
described as a chorus of smiles.
It is morning—that we already knew—and now we learn it is winter. There is something about the
coldness and the sounds and the beauty that brings to the narrator the sense that the slowly
transformation of the day seems almost a display of restraint and discretion. This reticence—as
the narrator describes it—becomes an almost artificial decorative accent or even a performance
that keeps the deeper truths revealed and undisclosed to those who may be mere intruders.

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Analysis
Despite being written in common and simplified language, "Some Trees" is incredibly difficult to
make sense of. The five stanzas, despite their separation, are almost all connected with various
instances of enjambment, making the poem flow with an odd rhythm and its ideas string together
with nebulous threads. Ashbery is famous for being nearly incomprehensible, but on the Ashbery
spectrum, "Some Trees" isn't too bad, so some meaning can perhaps be gleaned from these lines.
We can presume that the narrator is looking at a grove of trees, an assumption made based on the
title and the general subject of the poem. Also, from the pronouns "we" and "us," along with the
phrase "you and I," we can say with relative confidence that the narrator is not alone, being
accompanied by an unnamed person of unidentifiable gender. He begins the poem by describing
the amazing arrangement of the trees, who comfortably join their neighbors without the motion-
driven use of artificial speech. This content coexistence is perhaps illustrated as a model for true
companionship, as the theme of relationship comes out later in the poem.
It is possible that these people have met by chance by the trees ("Arranging by chance / To meet
as far from the world as agreeing / With it"), or that the destination is random. Either way, the
meaning is relatively straightforward: the trees are telling them that simply being together is
something to notice and revel in. Camaraderie is under-appreciated; the mere state of being in any
sort of relationship with another person is worthy of awe-filled contemplation. Living in this
contented state, the narrator and his companion are surrounded by "a silence filled with noises."
The world is silent and serene, but in the stillness, elements of the scene take on an almost auditory
quality. Smiles fill in major chords, and the winter air is almost audible in its crisp coolness. The
specific meaning of all of the poem's elements is uncertain, but at any rate, it's a call to dwell on
the amazing phenomenon that is community with another person.

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10: Rita Dove: Biography and Poems Study Guide

On August 28, 1952, Rita Dove was born in Akron, Rita Dove was born in Akron, Ohio, the
daughter of one of the first black chemists in the tire industry. Dove was encouraged to read widely
by her parents, and excelled in school. She was named a Presidential Scholar, one of the top one
hundred high-school graduates in the country and attended Miami University in Ohio as a National
Merit Scholar. After graduating, Dove received a Fulbright to study at the University of Tübingen
in West Germany, and later earned an MFA at the Iowa Writers' Workshop where she met her
husband, the German writer Fred Viebahn. Dove made her formal literary debut in 1980 with the
poetry collection The Yellow House on the Corner,which received praise for its sense of history
combined with individual detail. The book heralded the start of long and productive career, and it
also announced the distinctive style that Dove continues to develop. In works like the verse-
novel Thomas and Beulah (1986), which won the Pulitzer Prize, On the Bus with Rosa
Parks (1999), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Sonata Mulattica (2009),
Dove treats historical events with a personal touch, addressing her grandparents’ life and marriage
in early 20th-century Ohio, the battles and triumphs of the Civil Rights era, and the forgotten career
of black violinist and friend to Beethoven, George Polgreen Bridgetower. Poet Brenda
Shaughnessy noted that “Dove is a master at transforming a public or historic element—re-
envisioning a spectacle and unearthing the heartfelt, wildly original private thoughts such historic
moments always contain.”
But Dove’s work is known for its lyricism and beauty as well as its sense of history and political
scope. She frequently writes about other art forms, including music in Sonata Mulattica and dance
in the collection American Smooth (2004). Writing in the New York Times, Emily Nussbaum noted
how dance and poetry connect for Dove: “For Dove, dance is an implicit parallel to poetry. Each
is an expression of grace performed within limits; each an art weighted by history but malleable
enough to form something utterly new.” Sonata Mulattica follows the tempestuous life of 18th
century violinist Bridgetower, who took Europe by storm, had a famous sonata composed for him,
and died in obscurity. The Los Angeles Times described Dove’s book as an “ambitious effort, using
multiple distinctive voices and perspectives to chronicle the complex tale ‘of light and shadow, /
what we hear and the silence that follows.’” Poet Mark Doty called the work “richly imagined,”
with “the sweep and vivid characters of a novel, but… written with a poet's economy, an eye for
the exact detail.” Her Collected Poems: 1974-2004 (2016) is a finalist for the National Book
Award.
In addition to poetry, Dove has published works of fiction, including the short story collection Fifth
Sunday (1990) and the novel Through the Ivory Gate (1992). Her play The Darker Face of the
Earth (1996) was produced at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.
Dove is also an acclaimed lyricist, and has written lyrics for composers ranging from Tania León
to John Williams. Of her forays into other genres, Dove told Black American Literature Forum:
“There's no reason to subscribe authors to particular genres. I'm a writer, and I write in the form
that most suits what I want to say.” Dove’s own work, the popular Thomas and Beulah, was staged
as an opera by Museum for Contemporary Art in Chicago in 2001.

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Rita Dove has had a tremendous impact on American letters, not only through the scope of her
poetry, but also through her work as an advocate. Dove was named US Poet Laureate in 1993. Just
forty years old at the time of her appointment, she was the youngest poet ever elected to the
position. She was also the first African American to hold the title (Gwendolyn Brooks had been
named Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1985). Dove was also the first poet
laureate to see the appointment as a mandate to generate public interest in the literary arts. She
traveled widely during her term, giving readings in a variety of venues from schools to hospitals.
Dove noted in the Washington Post that her appointment was “significant in terms of the message
it sends about the diversity of our culture and our literature.” Dove has continued to play an
important role in the reception of American poetry through her work as editor of the Penguin
Anthology of 20th Century American Poetry (2011). The omnibus collection of a century-worth of
American verse stirred controversy and generated new dialogues about the legacy of American
poetry, and its current state. Many praised the anthology for its inclusiveness and scope,
however. Katha Pollitt in The Nation called it “comprehensive and broad-ranging,” whatever its
omissions.
Rita Dove has received numerous honors and awards for her work, including a Heinz Award in
the Arts and Humanities and a Common Wealth Award. In 1996 she received a National
Humanities Medal. She is currently Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of
Virginia in Charlottesville.
Demeter's Prayer to Hades

RITA DOVE-1952-
This alone is what I wish for you: knowledge.
To understand each desire has an edge,
to know we are responsible for the lives
we change. No faith comes without cost,
no one believes without dying.
Now for the first time
I see clearly the trail you planted,
what ground opened to waste,
though you dreamed a wealth
of flowers.
There are no curses – only mirrors

held up to the souls of gods and mortals.
And so, I give up this fate, too.
Believe in yourself,
go ahead – see where it gets you.
(((((****)))))

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Summary
The speaker (whom we know from the title to be Demeter) tells Hades that she wants him to have
one thing: knowledge. The knowledge she wishes for him involves learning that acting on desires
can have consequences, and that he has to consider these consequences since he is a god and
therefore in power over a lot of people. She also lets him know that she can see the repercussions
of what he has done already, and how it has hurt the world. She ends the prayer without giving a
curse. Instead she says that the biggest curse is having to face up to what you've done, whether
you are god or mortal.
Analysis
Demeter's Prayer to Hades is a free verse poem of fifteen lines, in two stanzas. There is no rhyme
scheme as such, but the first two lines end in full rhyme knowledge/edge, as do lines thirteen and
fifteen to/you, although these seem almost accidental.
There is no clear meter, so the suggestion is that of a nontraditional form of expression. The poem
is one of a collection that focuses on femininity, the mother and her love for family.
This poem has a conciliatory tone to begin with, the speaker's anger is suppressed and all she
wishes for her tormentor (Hades) is knowledge and understanding. In this she implies that
ignorance has been a major factor in the actions of Hades, who took her daughter away. In the last
two lines she sarcastically urges the perpetrator to just get on with life, perhaps hinting that no
good will come out of false self-belief.
The early part of the poem is full of the language of worth, the price we pay for being human.
Trust, understanding, knowledge - as humans we need to have these three fundamental pillars to
function in society. The speaker is appealing to Hades (to society, to an individual) to consider the
consequences of the deed, in this specific case, the abduction of her daughter.
Note also the use of earthy words in the latter part of the first stanza. Demeter is goddess of the
land's fertility so planted, ground, waste, flowers are all related to the earth.
A prayer is an unusual offering from a mother who has lost her daughter. It is delivered in a calm,
softly spoken manner - there are no angry words, there is no abrasive language - the speaker is
suggesting that it is the ignorant ones who cause the damage to others when they act irresponsibly.
So how come the wish is for knowledge? Why want the guilty party to have knowledge? Are we
talking about education here, facts, experience, or is it more like wisdom? It's important, note the
colon to emphasise the word: knowledge. Just what is the mother, Demeter, thinking about? What
we can infer is that Hades doesn't yet have this knowledge; she wishes it for him.
The combination of desire and edge suggests that there's some kind of threshold we reach, at the
edge of the cliff perhaps, facing the sharp edge of a blade? Once the fall occurs, once the cut is
made, there's no going back. It is pain and even blood that results from the transformation.

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The speaker is imparting her own kind of wisdom - borne of grief no doubt - think before you act
or suffer the consequences, and remember that whatever you choose to do will have a knock-on
effect. Others will be hurt.
Faith has its price the speaker implies, perhaps because she doesn't yet know if her daughter is
dead or will ever return? Think of the mother whose daughter has gone missing, how difficult to
muster up faith and believe in a higher power trusted with a satisfactory spiritual ending.
• There is some ambiguity. This is a prayer yet it reads like a letter or note; there is no
personal appeal or heartfelt plea for help from any god. The mother is being critical yet at
the same time wants to enlighten.
If Hades and the underworld is the equivalent to modern society, male dominated, then the path
the daughter took through that society has led her to this crucial point in her life - it all becomes
clear to the mother for the first time.
• Is the speaker referring to the trail Hades left when he burst out of the underworld? In other
words, is this the destructive reality left by men (who play the role of gods) as they go
about their business. Living the dream, pretending to grow flowers, the flowers of
innocence, or experience?
Everything is at stake now. The daughter's life might be wasted or go on to bloom. The mother is
somewhat helpless - what good would cursing do? Better for those involved to look in the mirror
and reflect on their selfishness. They need to ask some really soul-searching questions.
She'll leave it to the fates; the choices her daughter makes may bring suffering and grief but isn't
this is the only way to learn about all things spiritual? Life resurrects itself somehow, spring
returns; resentment is useless. Is this a cynical ending, or is the mother, Demeter, simply suggesting
a positive attitude to the future is best? Believe in yourself. Either way, this prayer is based on love
and faith.

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11: Martha Collins: Biography and Poems Study Guide

Born in Omaha, Nebraska, poet and translator Martha Collins earned a BA at Stanford University
and a PhD at the University of Iowa. In precise and meditative poems, Collins engages
historiography and uncertainty through the use of fragmentation, white space, and interruption. In
a 2012 interview with Michael Simms for Coal Hill Review, Collins stated, “I’ve learned that I
have to push past the a whole army of mental censors (based on parents, teachers, critics, the
culture at large) that tell me I cannot / should not / must not write what I’m writing, whether for
aesthetic or moral or some other reasons. It took me awhile, but I finally learned that I’m usually
onto something when I hear the censor’s voice.” In a 2006 New York Times Book Review of Blue
Front (a collection of poems exploring Collins’s father’s boyhood witnessing of a lynching), Dana
Goodyear observes that Collins “suppresses punctuation and traffics in fragmentary non sequiturs;
her shifts in perspective are abrupt. Therefore, nothing about the narrative is straight. Her
discursive, breathless, self-contradicting, breaking-off-and-circling-back technique makes the
book feel like the testimony of a traumatized witness. Which, of course, it is.”
Collins is the author of numerous poetry collections, including Day Unto Day(2014); White
Papers (2012); Blue Front (2006), which won an Ohioana Award and an Anisfield-Wolf Book
Award; and The Arrangement of Space(1991), which won the Peregrine Smith Poetry
Competition. She has co-translated several collections by Vietnamese poets, including Black
Stars(2013), by Ngo Tu Lap; Green Rice (2005), by Lam Thi My Da; and The Women Carry River
Water (1997), by Nguyen Quang Thieu. Collins is also the editor of Critical Essays on Louise
Bogan (1984).
Additional honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ingram
Merrill Foundation, the Bunting Institute, and the Witter Bynner Foundation, an Alice Fay Di
Castagnola Award, three Pushcart Prizes, a Laurence Goldstein Poetry Prize, and a Lannan
residency grant.
Founder of the creative writing program at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, Collins is a
professor emerita at Oberlin College. An editor for Oberlin College Press and editor-at-large
for Field magazine, she lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The Story We Know

Martha Collins- 1940-
The way to begin is always the same. Hello,

Hello. Your hand, your name. So glad, just fine,
and Good bye at the end. That’s every story we know,
and why pretend? But lunch tomorrow? No?

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Yes? An omelette, salad, chilled white wine?

The way to begin is simple, sane, Hello,
and then it’s Sunday, coffee, the Times, a slow

day by the fire, dinner at eight or nine
and Good bye. In the end, this is a story we know
so well we don’t turn the page, or look below

the picture, or follow the words to the next line:
The way to begin is always the same Hello.
But one night, through the latticed window, snow

begins to whiten the air, and the tall white pine.
Good bye is the end of every story we know
that night, and when we dose the curtains, oh,

we hold each other against that cold white sign
of the way we all begin and end. Hello,
Good bye is the only story. We know, we know.
(((((****)))))
Summary
The Story We Know is a villanelle. The overall meaning of this poem is that all relationships use
the words hello and goodbye, except they have different meanings every time they are used.
One device Collins uses to add to the meaning of this poem is a metaphor that also works as a type
of imagery. She writes "snow begins to whiten the air" the imagery of it is the snow literally
covering the view. However, taken metaphorically, the snow is symbolizing the covering up of
flaws and mistakes. This is the "hello" to the new times, and the "goodbye" to the old times.
Another symbol Collins uses to add to the meaning of the poem is the "cold white sign of the way
we all begin and end", which is symbolic of relationships and other meaningful things beginning
and ending. The "cold white sign" is symbolic of something that both starts and finishes a
relationship, such as a wave or a hug.
A second device Collins uses to add to the meaning of the poem is the repetition of the word
"hello". It signifies that all encounters, no matter how strong the relationship, start with hello. The
last "hello" also signifies that all relationships start with "hello", and end with "goodbye".
Analysis
In the first three stanzas of the poem “The Story We Know” by Martha Collins. She starts out with
imagery of how people meet and shake each other’s hand and how they say hello how are you and
goodbye. Then it goes into making more plans such as dinner and when to schedule it. Next it goes
into how people go through meeting people like it’s a daily routine, and then starts to show imagery
by looking out at a tree which could mean they are reminiscing about the past and someone they

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knew. Also, another way the poem shows the story we know is by like how they are getting coffee.
This all shows that even though people may come and go new people will come into our lives
because everything happens for a reason.
In the Second three stanzas it talks more about death. That creates a sad or a disappointed mood. I
say this because it talks about looking out upon a tree and the white pine. then the poem goes into
how cold it turned to and how the snow began to fall creating a sense or feeling of remembrance
or someone reminiscing in the past of their events that happened to them. Also, this poem shows
repetition which gives us a good idea that the last line in stanzas 1,3,5 are important because it
says “That’s the story we know”. That most nearly means that’s how daily life is approached in a
sense of a normal being getting up every day in a city. Finally, this poem shows it to be lyrical. By
the poem doing this it is much easier to see how the poem is read because of the beat making it
easier to read almost like writing a song.
The Authors attitude in the poem starts off sad and stays that way. this is because in the poem the
author is wondering why that this is the story, we all know. The author wonders this because they
must have experienced the loss of someone very close to them and that creates the tone in the poem
to be upset. This happens because the author is remembering the time, they met the person and
then how they would make plans to go out and eat or just grab a simple coffee because it was the
simplicity in their lives that made the author happy. In the end though everyone leaves and has to
die as crappy as that sound it’s the truth and that’s why this is the story, we all know.
In conclusion the story we all know at some point in our life is the story of happiness into to
sadness. This is because we all meet someone special to us, someone that changes our lives and
others and it feels absolutely extraordinary, but then at some point or another we have to come to
a realization no one lasts forever because every good thing comes to an end at some point in time
meaning experiencing the death of that loved one. Even though this all happens for a reason we
are blessed to meet some of the most amazing people we come into contact with it’s more like a
blessing because those that mean that much are special because they have that it factors that just
impresses you. That’s why when people come and go in and out of life that's why it’s “The Story
We Know”.

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12. Langston Hughes: Biography and Poems Study Guide

A poet, novelist, fiction writer, and playwright, Langston Hughes is known for his insightful,
colorful portrayals of black life in America from the twenties through the sixties and was important
in shaping the artistic contributions of the Harlem Renaissance.
James Mercer Langston Hughes was born February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. His parents
divorced when he was a young child, and his father moved to Mexico. He was raised by his
grandmother until he was thirteen, when he moved to Lincoln, Illinois, to live with his mother and
her husband, before the family eventually settled in Cleveland, Ohio. It was in Lincoln that Hughes
began writing poetry. After graduating from high school, he spent a year in Mexico followed by a
year at Columbia University in New York City. During this time, he held odd jobs such as assistant
cook, launderer, and busboy. He also travelled to Africa and Europe working as a seaman. In
November 1924, he moved to Washington, D. C. Hughes's first book of poetry, The Weary Blues,
(Knopf, 1926) was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1926. He finished his college education at
Lincoln University in Pennsylvania three years later. In 1930 his first novel, Not Without
Laughter, (Knopf, 1930) won the Harmon gold medal for literature.
Hughes, who claimed Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg, and Walt Whitman as his primary
influences, is particularly known for his insightful, colorful portrayals of black life in America
from the twenties through the sixties. He wrote novels, short stories and plays, as well as poetry,
and is also known for his engagement with the world of jazz and the influence it had on his writing,
as in his book-length poem Montage of a Dream Deferred (Holt, 1951). His life and work were
enormously important in shaping the artistic contributions of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s.
Unlike other notable black poets of the period—Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, and Countee
Cullen—Hughes refused to differentiate between his personal experience and the common
experience of black America. He wanted to tell the stories of his people in ways that reflected their
actual culture, including both their suffering and their love of music, laughter, and language itself.
The critic Donald B. Gibson noted in the introduction to Modern Black Poets: A Collection of
Critical Essays (Prentice Hall, 1973) that Hughes "differed from most of his predecessors among
black poets . . . in that he addressed his poetry to the people, specifically to black people. During
the twenties when most American poets were turning inward, writing obscure and esoteric poetry
to an ever-decreasing audience of readers, Hughes was turning outward, using language and
themes, attitudes and ideas familiar to anyone who had the ability simply to read . . . Until the time
of his death, he spread his message humorously—though always seriously—to audiences
throughout the country, having read his poetry to more people (possibly) than any other American
poet."
In addition to leaving us a large body of poetic work, Hughes wrote eleven plays and countless
works of prose, including the well-known “Simple” books: Simple Speaks His Mind, (Simon &
Schuster, 1950); Simple Stakes a Claim, (Rinehart, 1957); Simple Takes a Wife, (Simon &
Schuster, 1953); and Simple's Uncle Sam (Hill and Wang, 1965). He edited the anthologies The
Poetry of the Negro and The Book of Negro Folklore, wrote an acclaimed autobiography, The Big

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Sea (Knopf, 1940), and cowrote the play Mule Bone (HarperCollins, 1991) with Zora Neale
Hurston.
Langston Hughes died of complications from prostate cancer on May 22, 1967, in New York City.
In his memory, his residence at 20 East 127th Street in Harlem has been given landmark status by
the New York City Preservation Commission, and East 127th Street has been renamed "Langston
Hughes Place."
Dreams
LANGSTON HUGHES - 1902-1967
Hold fast to dreams

For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams

For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.
(((((****)))))
Summary
The speaker advises the reader to hold onto dreams, because if dreams die, life will be like a bird
with damaged wings that cannot fly. When dreams go away, life is “barren field” covered with
frozen snow.
The author describes the importance of dreams in life. According to him, life is meaningless in the
absence of dreams. It is the dreams which provide reason and a goal for achieving success in our
endeavors.
One should hold onto his dreams and should not let the dreams die. If the dreams die, life will
become like a broken-winged bird. In this phrase, the author has used a beautiful metaphor to
explain the essence of dreams.
Just like a bird gets his independence to fly in the open sky only through its wings, and without
these wings, he cannot fly, move, reach his destinations, and eventually he dies.
Similarly, if we do not hold tight to our dreams, we also live like a broken wings bird. The
dreamless creature means no goal, no objective in life. It would be like living life just for the sake
living. Dreams provide the essence to our living.
In the last four lines, the author is once again emphasizing on holding onto our dreams. He is
explaining the consequences of dreamless life. He says that if we let our dreams go, then life is not
just a waste, but it is like a barren land.

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Just like a barren land is useless for a farmer since nothing can be harvested on it, similarly a
dreamless life will not be fruitful for anyone. It would not serve any benefits to anyone. Without
dreams, the life will not just be barren land, but will be covered with snow. Snow symbolizes cold
and emotionless. The author describes that our life will also lack it is warmth and will become cold
and emotionless without dreams.
Each and every word in Langton’s poem has some deep meaning. It gives us a hidden lesson for
watching good dreams, for if we will watch dreams, we will listen to them, strive to achieve them
and gather some achievements in our lives.
Hence, one should always hold on to our dreams, and try to fulfill them. It is no doubt, no doubt,
very sad and depressing, when our dreams break or are not fulfilled. But it does not mean that one
stops dreaming. We shall always try our best to fulfill our drams and work in the direction of
achieving them.
Analysis
"Dreams" is an extremely short poem written in free verse. It is two stanzas long, and the content
dictates the form. Hughes instructs his readers to hold on tightly to their dreams because without
them, life is a "broken-winged bird / That cannot fly." The hobbled and downtrodden bird is a
physical symbol of the discrimination and struggles that African Americans faced during Hughes's
time. Dreams, however, have no physical limitations. Dreams are important for maintaining faith
as they provide comfort, solace, and hope in a brutal world.
To begin, Langston Hughes uses personifications to create a meaningful and strong mood in the
poem. In the first stanza, the speaker, Langston Hughes, says, “Hold fast to dreams/For if dreams
die.” The personification “Hold fast to dreams “gives us a meaning that Langston Hughes is saying
that you should never give up on your hopes and dreams. The speaker uses a human
characteristic(holding) to a non-living thing (dreams) which is a personification. So, the message
is to hold on tight to your dreams and never let go.
Secondly, Langston Hughes’ use of metaphors also points out to the poem being about never to let
go of your dreams. The following lines from the first stanza have metaphor: “Life is a broken-
winged bird/that cannot fly. Langston Hughes compares a broken-winged bird to life meaning life
can hard at point. The message of this part of a poem is that life can hard and struggling as a
broken-winged bird trying to fly but cannot.
Lastly, Langston Hughes uses similes to create a very cold and sad mood in the poem. In the second
stanza of the poem, the speaker says “Life is a barren field/ Frozen with snow.” What the speaker
is trying to say is that live can and would be cold, nothing would grow within us without our
dreams. Langston Hughes compares life to a barren field; empty, nothing but snow. The message
is that if you let your dreams go, your life will be frozen as snow.
In conclusion, through figurative language rhythm and rhyme, Langston Hughes uses a
meaningful poem yet powerful. Dreams are an important thing in your life. Everyone should know
that. Without dreams, we would not be or we are today.

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13. Charles Bukowski: Biography and Poems Study Guide

Charles Bukowski was born in Andernach, Germany, on August 16, 1920, the only child of an
American soldier and a German mother. At the age of three, he came with his family to the United
States and grew up in Los Angeles. He attended Los Angeles City College from 1939 to 1941,
then left school and moved to New York City to become a writer. His lack of publishing success
at this time caused him to give up writing in 1946 and spurred a ten-year stint of heavy drinking.
After he developed a bleeding ulcer, he decided to take up writing again. He worked a wide range
of jobs to support his writing, including dishwasher, truck driver and loader, mail carrier, guard,
gas station attendant, stock boy, warehouse worker, shipping clerk, post office clerk, parking lot
attendant, Red Cross orderly, and elevator operator. He also worked in a dog biscuit factory, a
slaughterhouse, a cake and cookie factory, and he hung posters in New York City subways.
Bukowski published his first story when he was twenty-four and began writing poetry at the age
of thirty-five. His writing often featured a depraved metropolitan environment, downtrodden
members of American society, direct language, violence, and sexual imagery, and many of his
works center around a roughly autobiographical figure named Henry Chinaski. His first book of
poetry was published in 1959; he went on to publish more than forty-five books of poetry and
prose, including Pulp (Black Sparrow, 1994), Screams from the Balcony: Selected Letters 1960-
1970 (1993), and The Last Night of the Earth Poems (1992). He died of leukemia in San Pedro on
March 9, 1994.
His poetry sheds light on atrocities of urban life and American culture. The dark, edgy style and
tone of Bukowski's writing cultivates intense imagery of violence, sex, and drugs, among other
things. Bukowski's raw and provocative poetic approach stems from the harsh realities of his own
life, which started at a young age, involving parental beatings as well as tense interaction with
peers.
As a young adult and college dropout, he experienced substantial rejection as he chased after a
writing career, which fueled his alcoholism. Yet he didn't let his setbacks stop him from pursuing
his writing dream; his first poetry book was published during 1959: Flower, Fist, and Bestial Wail.
After his death, posthumous works of his poetry were published, which carry the same style and
tone of earlier poems. Some poem titles include "Love, Fame & Death" and "About My Very
Tortured Friend, Peter."
Love & Fame & Death

CHARLES BUKOWSKI- 1920-1994
it sits outside my window now
like and old woman going to market;
it sits and watches me,

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it sweats nevously
through wire and fog and dog-bark
until suddenly
I slam the screen with a newspaper
like slapping at a fly
and you could hear the scream
over this plain city,
and then it left.
the way to end a poem

like this
is to become suddenly
quiet.
(((((****)))))

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14. Hart Crane: Biography and Poems Study Guide

Born on July 21, 1899, in Garrettsville, Ohio, Harold Hart Crane began writing verse in his early
teenage years, and though he never attended college, read regularly on his own, digesting the works
of the Elizabethan dramatists and poets Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Donne and the nineteenth-
century French poets Vildrac, Laforgue, and Rimbaud. His father, a candy manufacturer,
attempted to dissuade him from a career in poetry, but Crane was determined to follow his passion
to write.
Living in New York City, he associated with many important figures in literature of the time,
including Allen Tate, Katherine Anne Porter, E. E. Cummings, and Jean Toomer, but his heavy
drinking and chronic instability frustrated any attempts at lasting friendship. An admirer of T. S.
Eliot, Crane combined the influences of European literature and traditional versification with a
particularly American sensibility derived from Walt Whitman.
His major work, the book-length poem, The Bridge, expresses in ecstatic terms a vision of the
historical and spiritual significance of America. Like Eliot, Crane used the landscape of the
modern, industrialized city to create a powerful new symbolic literature. Hart Crane committed
suicide in 1932, at the age of thirty-two, by jumping from the deck of a steamship sailing back to
New York from Mexico.
To Brooklyn Bridge
HART CRANE - 1899-1932
How many dawns, chill from his rippling rest
The seagull's wings shall dip and pivot him,
Shedding white rings of tumult, building high
Over the chained bay waters Liberty—
Then, with inviolate curve, forsake our eyes

As apparitional as sails that cross
Some page of figures to be filed away;
—Till elevators drop us from our day . . .
I think of cinemas, panoramic sleights

With multitudes bent toward some flashing scene
Never disclosed, but hastened to again,
Foretold to other eyes on the same screen;
And Thee, across the harbor, silver-paced

As though the sun took step of thee, yet left
Some motion ever unspent in thy stride, —
Implicitly thy freedom staying thee!

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Out of some subway scuttle, cell or loft

A bedlamite speeds to thy parapets,
Tilting there momently, shrill shirt ballooning,
A jest falls from the speechless caravan.
Down Wall, from girder into street noon leaks,

A rip-tooth of the sky's acetylene;
All afternoon the cloud-flown derricks turn . . .
Thy cables breathe the North Atlantic still.
And obscure as that heaven of the Jews,

Thy guerdon . . . Accolade thou dost bestow
Of anonymity time cannot raise:
Vibrant reprieve and pardon thou dost show.
O harp and altar, of the fury fused,

(How could mere toil align thy choiring strings!)
Terrific threshold of the prophet's pledge,
Prayer of pariah, and the lover's cry, —
Again the traffic lights that skim thy swift

Unfractioned idiom, immaculate sigh of stars,
Beading thy path—condense eternity:
And we have seen night lifted in thine arms.
Under thy shadow by the piers I waited;

Only in darkness is thy shadow clear.
The City's fiery parcels all undone,
Already snow submerges an iron year . . .
O Sleepless as the river under thee,

Vaulting the sea, the prairies' dreaming sod,
Unto us lowliest sometime sweep, descend
And of the curveship lend a myth to God.
(((((****)))))
Summary
A seagull takes flight from its perch on the water. It flies past the "chained" shadow of the Brooklyn
Bridge and on into the distance past the Statue of Liberty. It flies out of sight like a boat sailing
out of a harbor, or like a page of sales figures that an office clerk files away.
The sea gull's disappearing flight reminds the speaker of the ghostlike flickers of movies. Movies
are like a prophecy or the promise of some truth that is never told. He's not too keen on them. The
speaker admires the bridge from across the harbor: the way the sun hits it, the way the bridge
embodies potential energy, the way it hangs free in the air.

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A insane person runs to the top of the bridge, stands for a moment, then jumps off, committing
suicide. The person is anonymous and seen only from a distance. On Wall Street, bright light
passes down through the girders of high buildings on to the street below. Clouds are flying by and
tall structures called derricks seem to be turning. The wind from the North Atlantic passes through
the cables of the bridge.
The bridge offers the promise of a reward as mysterious as the heaven described in Jewish
scriptures. It also seems to praise the anonymity of people. It makes them feel small and
anonymous, even more than the passage of time. Like a king, it pardons people. The bridge is
described as a fusion of religious and artistic symbols. It's a refuge for extraordinary and marginal
figures like prophets, pariahs, and lovers.
As night falls, the speaker watches the traffic lights go over the bridge. The lights remind him of
eternity, and the bridge seems to hold the sky up on its towers. The speaker stands by the piers in
Manhattan, looking at the shadow of the bridge in the light of the city.
The lights in the windows of office buildings and apartments have already gone out. It's winter and
another year is passing. But, like the river beneath it, the bridge never sleeps. Not only does it
connect one side of the river with another, it seems to connect one side of America with another.
It connects Americans. In the final two lines, the speaker asks the bridge to descend to the level of
mere mortals and to help fill the space that God has left empty.
Analysis
The Proem: to Brooklyn Bridge by Hart Crane functions as the introduction or “overture” to
Crane’s epic poem “The Bridge.” Conceived by Crane both as an “answer” to Eliot’s famous poem
“The Wasteland” and as a “synthesis of America,” “The Bridge” reveals itself as a complex series
of interconnected lyric poems loosely configured around American history, unified by a theme of
sustained ecstasy and poetic illumination. As such, “Proem: to Brooklyn Bridge” introduces
Crane’s central literary symbol, the Brooklyn Bridge itself, and reveals, through a succession of
“visions” the myriad facets of the Bridge’s ultimate symbolic connotations, which are pursued
throughout the ensuing set of lyrics.
The Bridge operates symbolically as an indicator of transcendent truth, a touchstone for American
myth, and a plastic demonstration of the romantic urge Crane believes is inherent in humanity.
“To Brooklyn Bridge” predicates its poetic expression on two dominant compositional modes. The
first mode is symbolist, (notably after the example of the French poet Arthur Rimbaud), wherein
objects (such as the Brooklyn Bridge) are revealed as indicators of other, unspecified quantities,
emotions, or epiphanies.
For example, the seagull in the poem’s opening stanza “The seagull’s wings shall dip and pivot
him, /Shedding white rings of tumult, building high/Over the chained bay waters Liberty” indicates
the surge of transcendental freedom, inherent in the exhilaration of art and poetry.

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The seagull represents inspiration and spiritual exaltation, in fact operating as an “invocation to
the muses” to the extent that this single image sets the poem and the reader in flight. The
subsequent “dive” “—Till elevators drop us from our day” results in a new symbolic connotation:
the use of a movie theater “I think of cinemas, panoramic sleights/With multitudes bent toward
some flashing scene” which symbolically evokes the inverse of the seagull symbol:
The second dominant mode in “To Brooklyn Bridge “is slightly more difficult to grasp or quantify,
but can, nevertheless, be securely regarded as metaphysical. That is, the use of image, symbol,
metaphor and prosody in the poem are meant to indicate spiritual and religious urges that have
been hitherto undiscovered by means of ordinary perception and expression. This mode manifests
itself via the poem’s obvious religious imagery in stanzas 7-11, but also propels the sense of
urgency throughout the poem’s entirety. The fact that “To Brooklyn Bridge” meets the printed
page, italicized throughout, also promotes the motion and urgency of an invocation or prayer.
Prosodically, ‘To Brooklyn Bridge” presents eleven blank-verse quatrains. This form fosters a
formal, deliberate atmosphere while avoiding the predictability of a regular rhyme-scheme or the
“digressive “feeling of free-verse. Against this prosodic form, Crane poses brilliant variations in
meter: “A bedlamite speeds to thy parapets,” “A rip-tooth of the sky’s acetylene,” as well as
compressed diction: “Of anonymity time cannot raise;” “Unfractioned idiom, immaculate sigh of
stars,” and stunning imagery; “Under thy shadows by the piers I waited;/Only in darkness is thy
shadow clear.”
Crane’s diction owes considerable debt to his own conception of the “logic of metaphor” wherein
a type of metaphorical and linguistic “shorthand” aspires to replace expository or non-
metaphorical language in poetry. “To Brooklyn Bridge” stands notable devoid of non-poetic
language or prosaic phrasing or meter.
Along with the symbolist, metaphysical, and prosodic modes mentioned above, “To Analysis
Poem on `To Brooklyn Bridge` by Hart Crane”, advances a confessional mode which continues
throughout the duration of “The Bridge.” This confessional mode grounds the poem in lyric
articulation, coupled with a non-linear narrative “plot” which begins in “To Brooklyn Bridge” and
ends in the closing poem of “The Bridge: “Atlantis.”
Crane’s intention: to stamp the Brooklyn Bridge immediately at the opening of his “epic” poem
with manifold symbolic connotations succeeds not only by virtue of his stunning craftsmanship
but in the logopoeia of the poem, itself, which originates in the image of the free flying seagull
(which is connected symbolically to the later repetition of eagle imagery in the poem) and
terminates in the lines “Unto us lowliest sometime sweep, descend/And of the curveship lend a
myth to God.”
Thus, the poem begins and ends with an arc of spiritual flight and an ambiguous sense of spiritual
transcendence. Ambiguity of this nature persists throughout the entirety of “The Bridge.” “And as
obscure as that heaven of the Jews” — in this line, Crane makes clear his intention to accept
ambiguity over certainty; this, in fact, emerges as a central theme in “To Brooklyn Bridge” the
motif of flight into the unknown as represented symbolically by the seagull, the sails, the bedlamite,
the sea, and the city all of which transmute and change while the Brooklyn Bridge stays constant:

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“And Thee, across the harbor, silver-paced/As though the sun took step of thee/ yet left/ Some
motion ever unspent in thy stride,— / Implicitly thy freedom staying there.”
In this way, Crane fuses the disparate strands of his proem: symbolist, metaphysical, formal—
lyric and narrative into the breathtaking symbol of the Brooklyn Bridge as the link between
humanity and the eternal— providing a plastic expression in poetry of the likewise
The Proem: To Brooklyn Bridge,” is far from being merely a successful poem or successful
introduction to Crane’s epic “The Bridge” stands as a masterpiece of poetic composition notable
not only for its marvelous symbolism and imagery but for the greatness of its technical
composition; as well as for its originality, thematic range, and emotional resonance.

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15. Ruth Sophia Padel: Biography and Poems Study Guide

Ruth Sophia Padel (b. 1947) has won the National Poetry Competition and written six collections
of poetry, several shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot or Whitbread Prize; taught Greek at Oxford, sung
in an Istanbul nightclub, is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Zoological Society of
London, and a great great grand-daughter of Charles Darwin.
She writes prose as well as poetry. "There are few women writing non-fiction today with such a
sophisticated understanding of language, nuanced approach to style, and willingness to engage
with the big issues, personal and political" (Guardian). The much-loved 52 Ways of Looking at a
Poem is based on her Independent on Sunday column (in which she discussed one contemporary
poem each week), and I'm A Man, on Greek myth, rock music and the "invention of the teenager",
featured as a clue in Ian Rankin's thriller A Question of Blood. In Tigers in Red Weather she
searches for wild tigers in Asian jungles.
Her poems draw unselfconsciously on an unusual breadth of cultural reference: high and low,
humour and gravity, sit in strangely democratic balance in her work. 'Writing to Onegin' illustrates
the Times Literary Supplement's account of her poetry as "Wallace Stevens hijacking Sylvia Plath
with a dash of punk Sappho thrown in." In a free version of a passage from Pushkin it combines
references to Charon and Darth Vader in dense, musical lines which celebrate the risk in
writing anything, especially as a woman.
Art and creativity permeate her work. 'Shaping Up' and 'Kiss' show musician Tori Amos and
painter Bridget Riley making new music and new painting, finding "a shape for pain." 'Pharoah's
Cup' is celebrated for its beauty: "Who wouldn't be glad / To have made it?" In 'Icicles Round A
Tree In Dumfriesshire' (winner of the 1997 National Poetry Competition), an ice-sculpture evokes
meditation on love, creativity and truth.
Padel's expressive reading style matches the poems' rich texture. She provides illuminating
introductions to each poem: even, endearingly, mentioning when a factual detail in a poem has
turned out to be wrong. This recording shows her, in Jeanette Winterson's words, as "sexy, strong,
rhythmic, passionate, fully alive and a whiz with words."
Indian Princess Picks Lover out from Gods

RUTH SOPHIA PADEL-1947
Thank God we cast
A spot of shadow in our lives,
Said the Mahabharata bride,
Facing five versions of her groom-
Your man himself plus four male gods,
Four dead-spit images, self-xeroxed in his shape
Who recognised that heartbeat,

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The man she'd have to part with

By the shadow at his heel. Gods don't go round
Casting shadow. Things we do and feel
(As a leader in The Independent
Put it afterwards) are incomplete,
Imperfect, therefore real.
(((((****)))))
Bladderwrack
RUTH SOPHIA PADEL-1947
You give up your dream like a hero

sitting on bladderwrack at the edge of ocean
calling on his mother whom he believed
a goddess of the sea. He was half-divine,
at play in his dual self. The watercourse
was always there and she was you-in-me,
a gray-green safety, swirl of hair. But one day
when he put his foot on earth, she'd gone.
The gift had been withdrawn. Hermaphrodite
had crossed and not come back, the way Jews
in the Byzantine world forgot the Hebrew,
read Holy Writ in Greek and chanted prayer
like flame from an unknown source.
(((((****)))))

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16. Ted Hughes: Biography and Poems Study Guide

One of the giants of 20th century British poetry, Ted Hughes was born in Mytholmroyd, Yorkshire
in 1930. After serving as in the Royal Air Force, Hughes attended Cambridge, where he studied
archeology and anthropology, taking a special interest in myths and legends. In 1956 he met and
married the American poet Sylvia Plath, who encouraged him to submit his manuscript to a first
book contest run by The Poetry Center. Awarded first prize by judges Marianne Moore, W.H.
Auden, and Stephen Spender, The Hawk in the Rain (1957) secured Hughes’s reputation as a poet
of international stature. According to poet and critic Robert B. Shaw, “Hughes’s poetry signaled a
dramatic departure from the prevailing modes of the period. The stereotypical poem of the time
was determined not to risk too much: politely domestic in its subject matter, understated and mildly
ironic in style. By contrast, Hughes marshaled a language of nearly Shakespearean resonance to
explore themes which were mythic and elemental.” Hughes’s long career included unprecedented
best-selling volumes such as Lupercal (1960), Crow (1970), Selected Poems 1957-1981 (1982),
and The Birthday Letters (1998), as well as many beloved children’s books, including The Iron
Man (1968). With Seamus Heaney, he edited the popular anthologies The Rattle Bag (1982)
and The School Bag (1997). Named executor of Plath’s literary estate, he edited several volumes
of her work. Hughes also translated works from Classical authors, including Ovid and Aeschylus.
An incredibly prolific poet, translator, editor, and children’s book author, Hughes was appointed
Poet Laureate in 1984, a post he held until his death. Among his many awards, he was appointed
to the Order of Merit, one of Britain’s highest honors.
The rural landscape of Hughes’s youth in Yorkshire exerted a lasting influence on his work. To
read Hughes’s poetry is to enter a world dominated by nature, especially by animals. This holds
true for nearly all of his books, from The Hawk in the Rain to Wolfwatching (1989) and Moortown
Diary (1989), two of his late collections. Hughes’s love of animals was one of the catalysts in his
decision to become a poet. According to London Times contributor Thomas Nye, Hughes once
confessed “that he began writing poems in adolescence, when it dawned upon him that his earlier
passion for hunting animals in his native Yorkshire ended either in the possession of a dead animal,
or at best a trapped one. He wanted to capture not just live animals, but the aliveness of animals in
their natural state: their wildness, their quiddity, the fox-ness of the fox and the crow-ness of the
crow.” However, Hughes’s interest in animals was generally less naturalistic than symbolic. Using
figures such as “Crow” to approximate a mythic everyman, Hughes’s work speaks to his concern
with poetry’s vatic, even shamanic powers. Working in sequences and lists, Hughes frequently
uncovered a kind of autochthonous, yet literary, English language. According to Peter Davison in
the New York Times, “While inhabiting the bodies of creatures, mostly male, Hughes clambers
back down the evolutionary chain. He searches deep into the riddles of language, too, those that
precede any given tongue, language that reeks of the forest or even the jungle. Such poems often
contain a touch—or more than a touch—of melodrama, of the brutal tragedies of Seneca that
Hughes adapted for the modern stage.”
Hughes’s posthumous publications include Selected Poems 1957-1994 (2002), an updated and
expanded version of the original 1982 edition, and Letters of Ted Hughes (2008), which were
edited by Christopher Reid and showcase Hughes’s voluminous correspondence. According

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to David Orr in the New York Times, Hughes’s “letters are immediately interesting and accessible
to third parties to whom they aren’t addressed… Hughes can turn out a memorable description
(biographies of Plath are ‘a perpetual smoldering in the cellar for us. There’s always one or two
smoking away’), and his offhand observations about poetry can be startlingly perceptive.” The
publication of Hughes’s Collected Poems (2003) provided new insights into Hughes’s writing
process. Sean O’Brien in the Guardian noted, “Hughes conducted more than one life as a poet.”
Publishing both single volumes with Faber, Hughes also released a huge amount of work through
small presses and magazines. These poems were frequently not collected, and it seems Hughes
thought of his small-press efforts as experiments to see if the poems deserved placement in
collections. O’Brien continued: “Clearly [Hughes] needed to be writing all the time, and many of
the hitherto uncollected poems have the provisional air of resting for a moment before being taken
to completion—except that half the time completion didn't occur and wasn't even the issue… as
far as the complete body of work went, Hughes seems to have been more interested in process than
outcome.”
Though Hughes is now unequivocally recognized as one of the greatest poets of the 20th century,
his reputation as a poet during his lifetime was perhaps unfairly framed by two events: the suicide
of Plath in 1963, and, in 1969, the suicide of the woman he left Plath for, Assia Wevill, who also
took the life of their young daughter, Shura. As Plath’s executor, Hughes’s decision to destroy her
final diary and his refusal of publication rights to her poems irked many in the literary community.
Plath was taken up by some as a symbol of suppressed female genius in the decade after her
suicide, and in this scenario Hughes was often cast as the villain. His readings were disrupted by
cries of “murderer!” and his surname, which appears on Plath’s gravestone, was repeatedly
defaced. Hughes’s unpopular decisions regarding Plath’s writings, over which he had total control
after her death, were often in service of his definition of privacy; he also refused to discuss his
marriage to Plath after her death. Thus it was with great surprise that, in 1998, the literary world
received Hughes’s quite intimate portrait of Plath in the form of Birthday Letters, a collection of
prose poems covering every aspect of his relationship with his first wife. The collection received
both critical praise and censure; Hughes’s desire to break the silence around Plath’s death was
welcomed, even as the poems themselves were scrutinized. Yet despite reservations, Katha
Pollitt wrote in the New York Times Book Review that Hughes’s tone, “emotional, direct, regretful,
entranced—pervades the book’s strongest poems, which are quiet and thoughtful and
conversational. Plath is always ‘you’—as though an old man were leafing through an album with
a ghost.”
Though marked by a period of pain and controversy in the 1960s, Hughes’s later life was spent
writing and farming. He married Carol Orchard in 1970, and the couple lived on a small farm in
Devon until his death. His forays into translations, essays, and criticism were noted for their
intelligence and range. Hughes continued writing and publishing poems until his death, from
cancer, on October 28, 1998. A memorial to Hughes in the famed Poets’ Corner of Westminster
Abbey was unveiled in 2011.

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The Horses
TED HUGHES-1930-1998
I climbed through woods in the hour-before-dawn dark.
Evil air, a frost-making stillness,
Not a leaf, not a bird—
A world cast in frost. I came out above the wood
Where my breath left tortuous statues in the iron light.
But the valleys were draining the darkness
Till the mooring—blackening dregs of the brightening grey—
Halved the sky ahead. And I saw the horses:
Huge in the dense grey—ten together—
Megalith-still. They breathed, making no move,
with draped manes and tilted hind-hooves,
Making no sound.
I passed: not one snorted or jerked its head.
Grey silent fragments
Of a grey silent world.
I listened in emptiness on the moor-ridge.
The curlew’s tear turned its edge on the silence.
Slowly detail leafed from the darkness. Then the sun
Orange, red, red erupted
Silently, and splitting to its core tore and flung cloud,
Shook the gulf open, showed blue,
And the big planets hanging—
I turned
Stumbling in the fever of a dream, down towards
The dark woods, from the kindling tops,
And came to the horses.
There, still they stood,
But now steaming and glistening under the flow of light,
Their draped stone manes, their tilted hind-hooves
Stirring under a thaw while all around them
The frost showed its fires. But still they made no sound.
Not one snorted or stamped,
Their hung heads patient as the horizons,
High over valleys in the red levelling rays—
In din of crowded streets, going among the years, the faces,
May I still meet my memory in so lonely a place
Between the streams and red clouds, hearing the curlews,
Hearing the horizons endure.
(((((****)))))

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17. Dylan Thomas: Biography and Poems Study Guide

Born in Swansea, Wales, Dylan Thomas is famous for his acutely lyrical and emotional poetry, as
well as his turbulent personal life. The originality of his work makes categorization difficult. In
his life he avoided becoming involved with literary groups or movements, and unlike other
prominent writers of the 1930s—such as W.H. Auden and Stephen Spender, for example—he had
little use for socialistic ideas in his art. Thomas can be seen as an extension into the 20th century
of the general movement called Romanticism, particularly in its emphasis on imagination,
emotion, intuition, spontaneity, and organic form. Considered to be one of the greatest Welsh poets
of all time, Thomas is largely known for his imaginative use of language and vivid imagery in his
poems.
Thomas began writing poetry as a child, and was publishing by his teens. His notebooks from 1930
and 1934, when he was 16 to 20 years old, reveal the young poet’s struggle with a number of
personal crises. In his 1965 Dylan Thomas, Jacob Korg described them as “related to love affairs,
to industrial civilization, and to the youthful problems of finding one’s identity.” Revised versions
of some of the notebooks’ poems became in 1934 his first published volume of poetry, Eighteen
Poems. Published in December 1934, it received little notice at first, but by the following spring
some influential newspapers and journals had reviewed it favorably.
Like James Joyce before him, Dylan Thomas was obsessed with words—with their sound and
rhythm and especially with their possibilities for multiple meanings. This richness of meaning, an
often illogical and revolutionary syntax, and catalogues of cosmic and sexual imagery render
Thomas’s early poetry original and difficult. In a letter to Richard Church, Thomas commented on
what he considered some of his own excesses: “Immature violence, rhythmic monotony, frequent
muddle-headedness, and a very much overweighed imagery that leads often to incoherence.”
Similarly, in a letter to Glyn Jones, he wrote: “My own obscurity is quite an unfashionable one,
based, as it is, on a preconceived symbolism derived (I’m afraid all this sounds wooly and
pretentious) from the cosmic significance of the human anatomy.”
The Eighteen Poems reveal some of Thomas’s key themes, which he was to return to later in his
career: the unity of time, the similarity between creative and destructive forces in the universe, and
the correspondence of all living things. This last theme was identified by Elder Olson in The Poetry
of Dylan Thomas as part of the tradition of the microcosm-macrocosm: “He analogizes the
anatomy of man to the structure of the universe … and sees the human microcosm as an image of
the macrocosm, and conversely.”
During the almost two years between the publication of Eighteen Poems in 1934 and Twenty-five
Poems in 1936, Thomas moved back and forth between London and Wales a great deal. In London
he met influential people in the literary world, including Vernon Watkins, an older man whose
sedate lifestyle contrasted markedly with Thomas’s. Watkins became a frequent source of money
for the continually destitute Thomas. During this period Thomas’s drinking became a serious
problem, and his friends would sometimes take him off to out-of-the-way places in Cornwall and
Ireland to remove him from temptation with the hope that he would do more writing.

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Thomas’s second volume of poetry, Twenty-five Poems, was published in September 1936. Most
of the poems were revised from the notebooks; Constantine FitzGibbon reported in The Life of
Dylan Thomas that “only six entirely new poems, that is to say poems written in the year and a
half between the publication of [Eighteen Poems] and the despatch of the second volume to the
printers, are to be found in that volume.” In his Dylan Thomas, Paul Ferris noted that “the reviews
were generally favourable, but with one exception they were not as enthusiastic as they were for
[Eighteen Poems].” This exception, however, almost assured the volume’s commercial success; it
was a laudatory review by Dame Edith Sitwell in the Sunday Times. As cited by Ferris, the review
proclaimed: “The work of this very young man (he is twenty-two years of age) is on a huge scale,
both in theme and structurally. … I could not name one poet of this, the youngest generation, who
shows so great a promise, and even so great an achievement.”
The volume includes a significant sonnet sequence of 10 poems, “Altarwise by owl-light,” written
in Ireland the year before publication. In these sonnets Thomas moved from the pre-Christian
primitivism of most of the Eighteen Poems to a Christian mythology based upon love. While much
of the attention given to Twenty-five Poems has been focused on the religious sonnets, the volume
as a whole contains indications of a shift in emphasis in Thomas’s writing. Richard Morton noted
in An Outline of the Works of Dylan Thomas that the poems of this volume are “concerned with
the relationship between the poet and his environment,” particularly the natural environment.
“In Twenty-five Poems, we can see the beginnings of the pastoral mode which reaches its
fulfillment in the great lyrics of Thomas’s last poems.” And, as Korg said, “at least three of the
poems in the second volume are about the poet’s reactions to other people, themes of an entirely
different class from those of [Eighteen Poems]; and these three anticipate [Thomas’s] turning
outward in his later poems toward such subjects as his aunt’s funeral, the landscape, and his
relations with his wife and children.”
Some of the best poems in the book are rather straightforward pieces—”This bread break,” “The
hand that signed the paper,” “And death shall have no dominion”—but others, such as “I, in my
intricate image,” are as involved and abstruse as the poems of the earlier volume. Derek Stanford
noted that still “there are traces of doubt, questioning, and despair in many of these pieces.”
Thomas, however, chose to place the optimistic “And death shall have no dominion” at the end of
the volume. This poem has always been one of Thomas’s most popular works, perhaps because,
as Clark Emery noted, it was “published in a time when notes of affirmation—philosophical,
political, or otherwise—did not resound among intelligent liberal humanists, [and thus] it answered
an emotional need.…It affirmed without sentimentalizing; it expressed a faith without
theologizing.”
The “Altarwise by owl-light” poems as well as “And death shall have no dominion” raise questions
concerning the extent to which Dylan Thomas can be called a religious writer. In an essay for A
Casebook on Dylan Thomas, W.S. Merwin was one of the first to deal with this issue; he found
Thomas to be a religious writer because he was a “celebrator in the ritual sense: a maker and
performer of a rite … . That which he celebrates is creation, and more particularly the human
condition.” However, the positions on this issue can be—and have been—as various as the
definitions of what constitutes a religious outlook. At one end of the scale, critics do not dispute

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that Thomas used religious imagery in his poetry; at the other end, critics generally agree that, at
least during certain periods of his creative life, Thomas’s vision was not that of any orthodox
religious system. The range of interpretations was summarized by R.B. Kershner Jr., in Dylan
Thomas: The Poet and His Critics: “He has been called a pagan, a mystic, and a humanistic
agnostic; his God has been identified with Nature, Sex, Love, Process, the Life Force, and with
Thomas himself.”
On July 11, 1937, Thomas married dancer Caitlin Macnamara; they were penniless and lacked the
blessings of their parents. After spending some time with each of their reluctant families, they
moved to a borrowed house in Laugharne, Wales. This fishing village became their permanent
address, though they lived in many temporary dwellings in England and Wales through the war
years and after, until Thomas’s death in 1953. The borrowing of houses and money became
recurring events in their married life together. Korg associated these external circumstances in the
poet’s life with his artistic development: “Thomas’s time of settling in Laugharne coincides
roughly with the period when his poetry began to turn outward; his love for Caitlin, the birth of
his first child, Llewellyn, responses to the Welsh countryside and its people, and ultimately events
of the war began to enter his poetry as visible subjects.”
Thomas’s third book, The Map of Love, appeared in August 1939, a month before war officially
broke out in Europe. It comprised a strange union of 16 poems and seven stories, the stories having
been previously published in periodicals. The volume was a commercial failure, perhaps because
of the war. Ferris reported that “the book was respectfully and sometimes warmly reviewed, with
a few dissenters”; yet these works of Thomas’s middle period were his least successful.
In sharp contrast to the stories in The Map of Love are those published the following year, 1940,
in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog. Thomas claimed in a letter to Vernon Watkins that he
“kept the flippant title for—as the publishers advise—money-making reasons.” These Thomas
stories are different from the earlier ones in their particularity of character and place, their
straightforward plot lines, and their relevance to Thomas’s childhood in Wales. Thomas wrote to
Watkins in August 1939: “I’ve been busy over stories, pot-boiling stories for a book, semi-
autobiographical, to be finished by Christmas.” Reviews of the book were mixed, and it didn’t sell
well at the time, though it later became enormously popular.
Thomas avoided service in World War II because of medical problems; he had also considered
filing for conscientious objector status. He was able to secure employment during the war years
writing documentary scripts for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). While he considered
it hack work, it provided the first regular income since his newspaper days and also allowed him
to spend a good deal of time in London pubs. This pragmatic writing was the beginning of a career
that Thomas pursued until his death; it did not, however, replace what he considered his more
important work, the writing of poems. In addition to the documentaries, he wrote radio scripts and
eventually screenplays for feature films. Though his income from these activities was moderate, it
did not allow him relief from debt or borrowing.
In 1940 Thomas began writing Adventures in the Skin Trade, a novel that he never completed,
though its first section was subsequently published. It is essentially the time-honored story of a

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country boy in the big city. Annis Pratt commented that Thomas intended the story to be “a series
of ‘adventures’ in which the hero’s ‘skins’ would be stripped off one by one like a snake’s until
he was left in a kind of quintessential nakedness to face the world.”
Thomas’s work next saw publication in a 1946 poetry collection, Deaths and
Entrances, containing many of his most famous poems. This volume included such works as “A
Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London,” “Poem in October,” “The Hunchback
in the Park,” and “Fern Hill.” Deaths and Entrances was an instant success. Ferris noted that 3000
sold in the first month after its publication and that the publisher, Dent, ordered a reprint of the
same number.
H. Jones, in his Dylan Thomas, declared the volume to be the core of Thomas’s achievement. The
poems of Deaths and Entrances, while still provoking arguments about interpretation, are less
compressed and less obscure than the earlier works. Some, like “Fern Hill,” illustrate an almost
Wordsworthian harmony with nature and other human beings but not without the sense of the
inexorability of time. As Jacob Korg said of these poems, “the figures and landscapes have a new
solidity, a new self-sufficiency, and the dialectic vision no longer penetrates them as though they
were no more than windows opening on a timeless universe.”
While these later poems in Deaths and Entrances are less compressed than the earlier ones, they
reveal no less verbal facility or less concern for what is generally called poetic style. Thomas was
always a highly individual stylist. Sound was as important as sense in his poems—some would
even say more important. He made ample use of alliteration, assonance, internal rhyme, and
approximate rhyme. In The Craft and Art of Dylan Thomas, William T. Moynihan describes his
rhythm as “accentual syllabic”: “its stress pattern generally sounds as though it is iambic, but this
very justifiable assumption cannot always be borne out by traditional scansion. Thomas may, in
fact, have depended upon an iambic expectancy, as he varied his rhythms beyond any customary
iambic formulation and then—by completely unprecedented innovations—created his own
rhythm, which is very close to iambic.”
By the time of the publication of Deaths and Entrances Thomas had become a living legend.
Through his very popular readings and recordings of his own work, this writer of sometimes
obscure poetry gained mass appeal. For many, he came to represent the figure of the bard, the
singer of songs to his people. Kershner asserted that Thomas “became the wild man from the West,
the Celtic bard with the magical rant, a folk figure with racial access to roots of experience which
more civilized Londoners lacked.” His drinking, his democratic tendencies, and the frank sexual
imagery of his poetry made him the focal point of an ill-defined artistic rebellion.
In 1949 Thomas and his family moved to the Boat House of Laugharne, Wales, a house provided
for them by one of Thomas’s benefactors, Margaret Taylor. For the last four years of his life he
moved between this dwelling and the United States, where he went on four separate tours to read
his poetry and receive the adulation of the American public. The often-sordid accounts of these
tours are provided in John Malcolm Brinnin’s Dylan Thomas in America. Thomas’s last separate
volume of poetry before the Collected Poems, 1934-1952 was Country Sleep, published by New
Directions in the United States in 1952. As originally published, this book contained six of the

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poet’s most accomplished works: “Over Sir John’s Hill,” “Poem on his Birthday,” “Do not go
gentle into that good night,” “Lament,” “In the white giant’s thigh,” and “In country sleep.”
Concerning this volume, Rushworth M. Kidder commented in Dylan Thomas: The Country of the
Spirit that “the fact of physical death seems to present itself to the poet as something more than
distant event. … These poems come to terms with death through a form of worship: not
propitiatory worship of Death as deity, but worship of a higher Deity by whose power all things,
including death, are controlled.”
Several of Thomas’s film scripts have been published, including The Doctor and the
Devils and The Beach at Falesa. Neither of these was produced, but they gave Thomas the
opportunity to develop his dramatic skills. These skills culminated in his radio play, Under Milk
Wood, written over a long period of time and frantically revised in America during the last months
of his life. The play grew out of the story “Quite Early One Morning,” which was broadcast by the
BBC in 1945. Under Milk Wood is set in a small Welsh town called Llareggub and covers one day
in the lives of its provincial characters. Raymond Williams, in an essay for Dylan Thomas: A
Collection of Critical Essays, said that Under Milk Wood is “the retained extravagance of an
adolescent’s imaginings. Yet it moves, at its best, into a genuine involvement, an actual sharing of
experience, which is not the least of its dramatic virtues.” Thomas read the play as a solo
performance in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on May 3, 1953; the first group reading was on May
14. The following November, Dylan Thomas died in New York of ailments complicated by alcohol
and drug abuse.
Do not Go Gentle into that Good Night

Dylan Thomas - 1914-1953
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

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And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
(((((****)))))
Summary
The speaker asserts that old men at the ends of their lives should resist death as strongly as they
can. In fact, they should only leave this world kicking and screaming, furious that they have to die
at all. At the end of the poem, we discover that the speaker has a personal stake in this issue: his
own father is dying.
Analysis
Dylan Thomas finished Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, a villanelle, in 1951, and sent it
off to an editor friend of a magazine, together with a note which read: “The only person I can’t
show the little enclosed poem to is, of course, my father, who doesn’t know he’s dying”. He also
remarked to his friend, American Robert J. Gibson, that the spark for the poem was his father's
approaching blindness. Thomas's father was to pass away a year later and the poet himself
succumbed to illness and died in 1953.
When Dylan Thomas was a child his father would read Shakespeare and nursery rhymes to him
and the dreamy, sensitive Welsh boy absorbed the sounds and music of the texts at an early age.
Their relationship was complex but loving. Dylan Thomas respected his father, a senior master of
English, but was no academic at school, and left without furthering his education at university.
The young Dylan wanted to publish his poems and go one better than his father, himself a
frustrated, never published poet.
So Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night is a poem that meant a lot to Dylan Thomas, who
wanted to see his father face death in a blaze of defiance. Dylan Thomas wrote many crafted,
musical poems during his turbulent and boozy life as a romantic poet. His love of sound and his
subject matter - religion, death, sin, redemption, love, the nature of the universe, the processes of
time - helped create uniquely memorable poetry.
This villanelle, in iambic pentameter - 5 beats and 10 syllables per line - has masculine words
ending most lines. A traditional villanelle has 19 lines split into 5 tercets and a quatrain. Thomas
stuck to tradition. The rhyme scheme is as follows: aba aba aba aba aba abaa. All the rhymes are
full.
Reading through, note the lilt effect of the unstressed/stressed words, the use
of enjambment allowing a paused follow on into the next line.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they

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The first stanza is an imperative call, the following four consolidate and the final stanza implores,
and the whole builds into a tremendous powerful message of defiance and would be resolve. Be
sure to read it quietly to yourself but then recite it out loud and note the difference. The poet is
witnessing the end of a life and cannot seem to tolerate a gentle status quo. A villanelle is hard to
get right but this example by Dylan Thomas is considered to be one of the best, the least contrived.
Light and dark play an important role in this villanelle, as symbols of life and death. From the first
stanza to the last, this theme is reinforced with a number of devices. Note the use of good
night,a pun, and close of day, a euphemism for death.
In the second stanza lightning is used, creating a vivid image of vocal energy, whilst in the third
bright and danced and green suggest the season of Spring and the surge of life in Nature.
The fourth stanza contains alliteration - sang the sun - whilst the fifth stanza has the wonderful
alliterative line: Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay
Note the simile - like meteors - and the final stanza has the paradox of the father who might curse,
bless the speaker with mere tears. This image, of the father on the heights - the Welsh hills? - with
the son close by praying, is surely one of the strongest Dylan Thomas ever created.
This is a short poem with words of one and two syllables, the only word with three being meteors
(but some pronounce it with two). Note the contrasts in the choice of words such as:
gentle/good with burn/rave, frail/danced with rage/rage and curse/bless with fierce tears; all
reflecting opposite forces at work in the poem, further reinforced by the use of the
preposition against. It's as if the speaker wants the old father to rebel, to confront the idea of death
with heated passion, like when the sunset burns the sky red raw.
This is a poem with strong sounds coming out of most lines. Just listen to the consonance of: Do
not go gentle into that good night which tests the vocal powers and pronunciation of the reader.
Whilst the line: Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay is choc-a-bloc
with assonance. And stanzas 2-5 focus on four different types of universal male - wise, good,
wild and grave - who all have their own characteristic approach to life but still rage against the
dying of the light, as one.
In a villanelle, some of the lines repeat, which can often dilute the overall effect but in this
particular case repetition strengthens the poem. The final stanza drives home the message in a
personal way, the speaker in two minds about the reaction of his father but clear as to how he
would like the ending to be.
This poem is full of passionate intensity from the start. The imperative - do not - sets the tone as
the speaker showcases four types of male who rage and do not and in the final stanza faces his
father, who is at the point of no return.
Rage, rage - the advice given to all who face the inevitable mystery of death. This direct message
is somewhat like an old-fashioned sermon delivered to those who would dare to go timidly to the
threshold. And there is strong emotion throughout, from the early and repeated rage to the joy of
dance and the idea of blazing away like a meteor. This villanelle, though compact and structured,
takes the reader away into the skies and beyond, out into the cosmos.

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18. Nissim Ezekeil: Biography and Poems Study Guide

Considered to be the Father of post-independence Indian verse in English, Nissim Ezekiel was a
prolific poet, playwright, critic, broadcaster and social commentator. He was born on December
24, 1924 in a Jew family. His father was a professor of botany and mother was principal of her
own school. Ezekiel was inclined to the poets such as T.S. Eliot. Yeats, Ezra Pound in his school
days. The influence of all these literary personalities was apparent in his early works. His formal
use of the English language was linked to colonialism and resulted in controversy.
His first collection of poetry ‘Time To Change’ was published by Fortune Press (London) in 1952.
His poetry has all the elements of love, loneliness, lust, and creativity. Nissim Ezekiel went on to
join The Illustrated Weekly of India as an assistant editor in 1953. ‘Sixty Poems’ was his next
book followed by ‘The Unfinished Man’. Nissim Ezekiel started writing in formal English but
with the passage of time his writing underwent a metamorphosis. As the time passed, he
acknowledged that ‘the darkness has its own secrets which light does not know.’ His poem ‘The
Night Of Scorpion’ is considered to be one of the best works in Indian English poetry and is used
as a study material in India and British schools.
Nissim Ezekiel worked as an advertising copywriter and general manager of a picture frame
company. He was the art critic of The Times Of India (1964-66) and editor of The Poetry India
(1966-67). He was also the co-founder of the literary monthly Imprint. Ezekiel was awarded the
Sahitya Akademi award in 1983. In 1988 he received another honor, Padma Shri, for his
contribution to the Indian English writing. He passed away on January 9, 2004, in Mumbai after a
prolonged illness.
Ezekiel’s poetic collections include: Time to Change (1952), Sixty Poems (1953), The
Third (1959), The Unfinished Man (1960), The Exact Name (1965), Snakeskin and Other
Poems (1974), Hymns in Darkness (1976), Latter-Day Psalms (1982), and Collected Poems 1952-
88 (1989).
Major works of Nissim Ezekiel:
• Time To Change
• Sixty Poems
• The Third
• The Unfinished Man
• The Exact Name
• The Three Plays
• Hymns In Darkness
• The Night Of Scorpion
• The Professor
• Case Study
• Poster Prayers

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Night of The Scorpion

NISSIM EZEKIEL-1924-2004
I remember the night my mother

was stung by a scorpion. Ten hours
of steady rain had driven him
to crawl beneath a sack of rice.
Parting with his poison - flash

of diabolic tail in the dark room -
he risked the rain again.
The peasants came like swarms of flies

and buzzed the name of God a hundred times
to paralyse the Evil One.
With candles and with lanterns

throwing giant scorpion shadows
on the mud-baked walls
they searched for him: he was not found.
They clicked their tongues.
With every movement that the scorpion made his poison moved in Mother's blood, they said.
May he sit still, they said

May the sins of your previous birth
be burned away tonight, they said.
May your suffering decrease
the misfortunes of your next birth, they said.
May the sum of all evil
balanced in this unreal world
against the sum of good

become diminished by your pain.
May the poison purify your flesh
of desire, and your spirit of ambition,

they said, and they sat around
on the floor with my mother in the centre,
the peace of understanding on each face.
More candles, more lanterns, more neighbours,
more insects, and the endless rain.
My mother twisted through and through,

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groaning on a mat.
My father, sceptic, rationalist,
trying every curse and blessing,
powder, mixture, herb and hybrid.
He even poured a little paraffin
upon the bitten toe and put a match to it.
I watched the flame feeding on my mother.
I watched the holy man perform his rites to tame the poison with an incantation.
After twenty hours
it lost its sting.
My mother only said

Thank God the scorpion picked on me
And spared my children.
(((((****)))))
Summary
In "Night of the Scorpion," the speaker tells a story from his childhood in which his mother was
bitten by a scorpion. The poem begins with a simple declaration: "I remember the night my mother
/ was stung by a scorpion" (1-2). The scorpion had entered the speaker's home because it wanted
to hide from the rain. When it bit the speaker's mother, it was hiding beneath a sack of rice.
The speaker describes the incident in which the scorpion stings his mother without mentioning his
mother at all. Instead, he focuses on the scorpion and what he did immediately afterward: "Parting
with his poison—flash / of diabolic tail in the dark room— / he risked the rain again" (5-7). Rather
than stick around and look at the scene he had caused, the scorpion ran back outdoors.
After the speaker's mother was bitten, the speaker notes that poor people went to his mother's side
"like swarms of flies," buzzing with Christianity and hoping to kill one of their visions of Satan
(8). The peasants look for the scorpion on their hands and knees with lanterns. Their wish is to
find the scorpion quickly because they believe that every movement the scorpion makes without
getting killed affects the speaker's mother: "With every movement that the scorpion made his
poison moved in Mother's / blood, they said" (16-18).
The peasants begin to share good wishes for the speaker's mother, hoping that the scorpion will
die that night, or at least sit still, that the sins of her past life will be burned away, and that she may
return to an even better life in her next life because of her suffering.
The peasants continue making wishes for the speaker's mother, wishing that the forces of evil
might be diminished by the speaker's mother's pain. They sat on the floor around the speaker's
mother, hoping that the scorpion's bite would "purify" her, with "the peace of understanding on
each face" (29).
As more people come to visit the speaker's mother, the speaker takes in his surroundings: "More
candles, more lanterns, more neighbours, / more insects, and the endless rain" (30-31). The
speaker's mother, oblivious to it all, spent this time suffering and twisting on a mat.

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The speaker turns his attention to his father, who he describes as a "sceptic" and "rationalist" (34).
The speaker notes that even his father is making an effort to help his mother in any way that he
knows how, which means turning towards that which he wouldn't otherwise believe: "trying every
curse and blessing, / powder, mixture, herb and hybrid" (35-36). The speaker's father even lit the
bite on fire in an attempt to remove the poison.
The speaker's mother suffered for 20 hours. Her only response at the end of it all was her gratitude
that it didn't happen to anyone else in their family: "My mother only said / Thank God the scorpion
picked on me / And spared my children" (43-5).
Analysis
"Night of the Scorpion," which was published as a part of The Exact Name, demonstrates a new
and emerging aesthetic in Ezekiel's poetry. Whereas his early poems conformed to a strict meter
and rhyme, later poems like "Night of the Scorpion" adopts a natural, colloquial meter and tone.
This poem was published in a time when Ezekiel was making a deliberate attempt at formal
innovation by using a loose, seemingly free-verse structure for his narrative poems. Additionally,
Ezekiel stopped putting capitals at the beginning of each line, which allows his later poems to flow
much more easily on the page.
The fact that Ezekiel distances himself from formal poetic conventions does not imply a lack of
care when it comes to the form of "Night of the Scorpion." In fact, Ezekiel makes deliberate choices
about line breaks, enjambment, voice, chronology, and tone in this poem which gives it the effect
on the reader that made it so famous to begin with. There is only one-line break in this poem,
which occurs right after the speaker's mother is released from her suffering:
"After twenty hours
it lost its sting.
My mother only said
thank God the scorpion picked on me
and spared my children" (44-48).
This line break is a literal break in the tension of the poem and endows the conclusion with a quiet
depth. The tension in the poem before the line break comes from two sources: first, that the
speaker's mother is suffering with little prospect of relief, and second, the tension that the speaker
holds between personal crisis and mocking social observation.
While the personal crisis is clearly on the surface of the poem, the mocking social commentary is
evident through the speaker's tone. The speaker in the poem, who inhabits a perspective between
the little boy watching his mother suffer and the older man looking back upon that memory, relays
the events of the crisis in a calm and detached manner. The casualness with which the speaker
relays this scene is incongruous and even alarming for the reader. Even so, the speaker moves
slowly through the events of the poem in one long stanza without breaks—unhurried and, it seems,
unbothered. This emotional detachment lets the poem speak directly to the reader, who understands
right away what Ezekiel means without having to juggle emotional pain over the suffering mother.
When the speaker addresses the peasants, we find a tone that we often see in the Collected Works—
Ezekiel's sardonic and mocking gaze, which is the gaze of an insider that is nonetheless distanced

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from his subject. In this poem, Ezekiel's irony dramatizes the peasant's, as well as the speaker's
father's, superstition in their desperate attempts to save the speaker's mother. The speaker does not
see the peasants in a positive light and instead compares them to "swarms of flies" in their
desperation to help his mother (8). Their mixture of Christianity and Hinduism allows for slight
confusion, as they pray to God for the mother's wellbeing yet also hope for the best in her
reincarnations. The speaker highlights how futile their spiritual efforts were in helping his mother:
"My mother twisted through and through / groaning on a mat" (32-33). While this perspective does
reflect a slight elitism—the speaker is looking down on the peasants for believing what they
believe—it also indicates the religious and cultural diversity that India holds. In this way, "Night
of the Scorpion" is a quintessentially Indian poem in that it shows the meeting of worlds through
a sense of community ties after a specific disastrous event.
Though "Night of the Scorpion" does not use the strict formal structures that Ezekiel had used in
his earlier poetry, this does not mean that the poem is not rhythmic or musical. The punctuation
and enjambment of the lines cause the poem to flow in the large first stanza. This helps to build
tension and make a large block of text easier and more pleasant to read. For example, the
descriptions of the peasants looking for the scorpion contain an easy internal rhythm: "With
candles and with lanterns / throwing giant scorpion shadows / on the sun-baked walls / they
searched for him: he was not found" (11-14). These lines start out in an even rhythm (with CAN-
dles and with LAN-terns), which is broken by the colon, and the depressing revelation that the
scorpion was not found. In this way, the careful variation of rhythm throughout "Night of the
Scorpion" helps Ezekiel achieve different emotional effects.
Finally, this poem communicates a tension between urban living and the natural world that Ezekiel
returns to again and again in this work. The speaker's community, which lives close together and
keeps itself informed about its residents, rose up in this work to surround the mother as she burned.
The antagonist of the poem is the scorpion, who is forgiven by the speaker very early on since he
was indoors simply for survival: "Ten hours / of steady rain had driven him / to crawl beneath a
sack of rice" (2-4). In this way, the true force of chaos and evil is the rain, which drove the scorpion
indoors and beats down upon the speaker and his family throughout their ordeal: "More candles,
more lanterns, more neighbours, / more insects, and the endless rain" (30-31). Like "Monsoon
Madness," the natural world is a force of its own in "Night of the Scorpion" and is directly
responsible for all of the characters' troubles.

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19. Imtiaz Dharker: Biography and Poems Study Guide

Imtiaz Dharker (born 1954 is a Pakistan-born British poet, artist and documentary filmmaker. She
has won the Queen’s Gold Medal for her English poetry. Dharker was born in Lahore, Punjab,
Pakistan to Pakistani parents. She was brought up in Glasgow where her family moved when she
was less than a year old. She was married to Simon Powell, the founder of the organization Poetry
Live, who died in October 2009 after surviving for eleven years with cancer. Dharker divides her
time between London, Wales, and Mumbai. She says she describes herself as a "Scottish Muslim
Calvinist" adopted by India and married into Wales. Her daughter Ayesha Dharker, (whose father
is Anil Dharker), is an actress in international films, television and stage.
Dharker has written five books of poetry Purdah (1989), Postcards from God (1997), I speak for
the Devil (2001), The Terrorist at my Table (2006), Leaving Fingerprints (2009) and Over the
Moon (2014) (all self-illustrated).
Dharker is a prescribed poet on the British AQA GCSE English syllabus. Her poems Blessing and
This Room are included in the AQA Anthology, Different Cultures, Cluster 1 and 2 respectively.
Dharker was a member of the judging panel for the 2008 Manchester Poetry Prize, with Carol Ann
Duffy and Gillian Clarke. For many she is seen as one of Britain's most inspirational contemporary
poets. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2011. In the same year, she
was awarded the Cholmondeley Prize by the Society of Authors. In 2011 she judged the Foyle
Young Poets of the Year Award with the poet Glyn Maxwell. In 2012 she was nominated a
Parnassus Poet at the Festival of the World, hosted by the Southbank Centre as part of the Cultural
Olympiad 2012, the largest poetry festival ever staged in the UK, bringing together poets from all
the competing Olympic nations. She was the poet in residence at the Cambridge University Library
in January–March 2013. In July 2015 she appeared on the popular BBC Radio 4 programme Desert
Island Discs and spoke about growing up in Glasgow and her decision to leave her family and
elope to India, as well as her second marriage to the late Simon Powell.
Imtiaz Dharker's Favourite Poetry Sayings:
"Poetry is everywhere; it just needs editing." - James Tate
"Writing a poem is a kind of hunt for language." - Jackie Kay
"Poetry is ... a kind of leaving of notes for another to find, and a willingness to have them fall into
the wrong hands. " - Matthew Hollis
"Poetry is an utterance of the body ... It is the language in thrall to the corporeal, to the pump and
procession of the blood ... " - Glyn Maxwell
Purdah
IMTIAZ DHARKER- 1954-
One day they said
she was old enough to learn some shame.
She found it came quite naturally.

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Purdah is a kind of safety.

The body finds a place to hide.
The cloth fans out against the skin
much like the earth that falls
on coffins after they put dead men in.
People she has known

stand up, sit down as they have always done.
But they make different angles
in the light, their eyes aslant,
a little sly.
She half-remembers things

from someone else's life,
perhaps from yours, or mine -
carefully carrying what we do not own:
between the thighs a sense of sin.
We sit still, letting the cloth grow

a little closer to our skin.
A light filters inward
through our bodies' walls.
Voices speak inside us,
echoing in the places we have just left.
She stands outside herself,

sometimes in all four corners of a room.
Wherever she goes, she is always
inching past herself,
as if she were a clod of earth
and the roots as well,
scratching for a hold
between the first and second rib.
Passing constantly out of her own hands,

into the corner of someone else's eyes . . .
while the doors keep opening
inward and again
inward.
(((((((0))))))

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Minority
IMTIAZ DHARKER- 1954-
I was born a foreigner.
I carried on from there
to become a foreigner everywhere
I went, even in the place
planted with my relatives,
six-foot tubers sprouting roots,
their fingers and faces pushing up
new shoots of maize and sugar cane.
All kinds of places and groups

of people who have an admirable
history would, almost certainly,
distance themselves from me.
I don't fit,
like a clumsily-translated poem;
like food cooked in milk of coconut

where you expected ghee or cream,
the unexpected aftertaste
of cardamom or neem.
There's always that point where

the language flips
into an unfamiliar taste;
where words tumble over
a cunning tripwire on the tongue;
where the frame slips,
the reception of an image
not quite tuned, ghost-outlined,
that signals, in their midst,
an alien.
And so I scratch, scratch

through the night, at this
growing scab on black on white.
Everyone has the right
to infiltrate a piece of paper.
A page doesn't fight back.

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And, who knows, these lines

may scratch their way
into your head -
through all the chatter of community,
family, clattering spoons,
children being fed -
immigrate into your bed,
squat in your home,
and in a corner, eat your bread,
until, one day, you meet

the stranger sidling down your street,
realise you know the face
simplified to bone,
look into its outcast eyes
and recognise it as your own.
(((((****)))))

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20. Moniza Alvi: Biography and Poems Study Guide

Moniza Alvi was born in Lahore, Pakistan, and came to England when she was a few months
old. She grew up in Hertfordshire and studied at the universities of York and London. Peacock
Luggage, a book of poems by Moniza Alvi and Peter Daniels, was published as a result of the two
poets jointly winning the Poetry Business Prize in 1991. Moniza Alvi went on to write five
further poetry collections: The Country at My Shoulder (1993), which was shortlisted for the T.S.
Eliot Prize and the Whitbread Poetry Award, and which led to her being selected for the Poetry
Society's New Generation Poets promotion; A Bowl of Warm Air (1996), one of the Independent
on Sunday's Books of the Year; Carrying My Wife (2000), a Poetry Book Society
Recommendation; Souls (2002); and How the Stone Found its Voice (2005), inspired by
Kipling's Just So Stories.
Her most recent collections are Split World: Poems 1990-2005, which contains material from these
five earlier books, and a new collection, Europa, both published in 2008. Europa was shortlisted
for the 2008 T.S. Eliot Prize. In 2011, her collection Homesick for the Earth was published,
English versions of selected poems by Jules Supervielle. Moniza's collection At the Time of
Partition (2013) was a Poetry Book Society Choice and shortlisted for the 2013 T.S. Eliot Prize.
After a long career as a secondary school teacher, Moniza Alvi now tutors for the Poetry School
and lives in Norfolk. In 2002 she received a Cholmondeley Award for her poetry.
In ‘O Maharani’, from her collection A Bowl of Warm Air (1996), Moniza Alvi imagines being
within a miniature painting ("my clothes surged // with brushstrokes from camel’s eyebrow").
And then finding a patterned carpet "which changed landscapes // as you walked on it, / and was
at first India // which melted into England". Finally, she addresses her royal patron: "I’d rather be
like the miniaturist who works alone / Painting on rice paper, silk and camel bone / Polishing an
image with a stone". This dream-like work seems emblematic of Alvi’s characteristic imaginative
delicacy of touch and her cross-cultural perspectives. It also perhaps recalls what is still Alvi’s
best-known poem, ‘I Would Like to be a Dot in a Painting by Miro’, which brought her much
admiration when she was part of the influential New Generation Poets promotion back in 1994.
Since then, Alvi has usually been characterised as "a bold surrealist" (Ruth Padel). But she has
become a truly multicultural writer who deals with the problems of spanning West and East and
the at times fraught relationship between them. Whimsical fantasy has increasingly given way to
darker allegorical imagery, as is apparent in her new book Europa (2008), whose lengthy
centrepiece poem concerns the rape of Europa by Jupiter disguised as a bull.
Being of mixed race and having been brought to Britain from Pakistan as a small child, Alvi
sometimes inhabits a persona who anxiously felt herself "translated into an English girl", or even
of no fixed nationality. Her poems remain highly conscious of places, people and a cultural
heritage elsewhere that can only be partially connected with. In beautifully expressing this
dilemma, and perhaps because of its apparently child-like imagination, her work has been widely
studied in schools (Alvi herself is a former schoolteacher). While she has some affinities with other
contemporary poets such as Sujata Bhatt and Mimi Khalvati, one might also think of Stevie Smith

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and – perhaps most significantly – the rich tradition of magic realism in much writing associated
with the Subcontinent.
Early on, her work tended to adopt the viewpoint of a child, as well as drawing upon the fantasies,
dreams and fairytales associated with childhood (explicitly, as in ‘Red Ridinghood’s Plan’). The
magical transformations in her work have been likened to paintings by Chagall or the Surrealists.
Of course, the best example of this special closeness to art is ‘I Would like to be a Dot in a Painting
by Miro’, whose narrator finds herself within the painting, wondering whether to "push my curves
/ against its edge, to get myself / a little extra attention?". She settles for being "on the edge of
animation, / a dream, a dance, a fantastic construction, / A child’s adventure". It is included in her
first collection The Country at My Shoulder(1993). With hindsight, arguably the most significant
section within it is ‘Presents from my Aunts in Pakistan’. These clothes, seen as exotic in England,
such as "a salwar kameez / peacock blue", are carrying a set of meanings, to do with cultural
identity and gender. The clothing is suggestive of cultural and personal layers, which are "stretched
from Lahore to Hyderabad". And, "Eventually / they wrapped me in it / whispering Your body is
your country" (‘The Sari’). Connections with her birthplace are equivocal, "where chaos and
enchantment/ jostle like relatives". In the title poem, Pakistan itself is perceived as "growing larger,
soon it will burst, / rivers will out, run down my chest". And yet, "I water the country with English
rain, / cover it with English words".
A Bowl of Warm Air explores the remembered impact of her first journey back to Pakistan: "I
gather all the smells and sounds/ like a shawl around me". Amidst the details of family and social
life, cultural differences and similarities abound. There are observations of a ‘Delhi Christmas’,
and of wedding guests: "when they opened their suitcases/ England spilled out". In ‘The Laughing
Moon’, "An unknown country crept between / my toes, threw an ocean behind each eye … I’d
held out my arms to kingfishers and tigers / I’d sipped each moment like a language". Carrying
My Wife (2000) marked an imaginative new direction in her work, with most of its poems taking
the voice of a husband trying to understand – sometimes even struggling to describe - his wife.
The shifting nature of relationships, especially when taken over by pregnancy, gives a richly
paradoxical viewpoint on both fantasy and reality. In ‘My Wife and the Composer’, for instance,
he sees her with Takemitsu, "taking tea, talking and kissing" only to realize that her real affair is
"with the music / of gardens, distance and solitude". In the title poem, his wife’s pregnancy is both
a burden and a fascination to him: "The hospital parted for us / strongly as the Red Sea. / I coaxed
her through swing doors // which gusted to and fro / like our past and future". Then he imagines
himself pregnant, ("a man impregnated with light and dark") until "at last I awoke with a glass
abdomen". Finally, ‘If I was Forced’ to compare the wife "to something", he goes into the kitchen
and holds an aubergine. "Nothing is more beautiful / than its soft, dark, smooth skin, / and for a
moment no colour / is harder to define".
In How the Stone Found its Voice (2005), the imaginative approach is different again, its title
sequence of parable-like poems being inspired by creation myths. ‘How a Long Way Off Rolled
Itself Up’ begins as a children’s story: "the trees grew upside down, and the houses / appeared to
have been turned inside out", but concludes in a much darker vein. And ‘How the World Split in
Two’ reflects on current global conflicts: "there was an arm on one side / and a hand on the other,

105
/ a thought on one side/ and a hush on the other // And a luminous tear / carried on the back of a
beetle/ went back and forwards/ from one side to the other". In other poems she returns to her
familiar surreal slant on personal relationships, as an elderly father struggles inside a jar of
marmalade, "with his stick he pushes coarse amber shreds / to the side". We also hear again the
voice of a husband talking about his wife: "She is not the woman I met. / She never was. / … It
appeals to me that this is so" (‘After Escher’). Versions of poems by the French poet Jules
Superveille also diversify the volume. In ‘For my Daughter’, the perception is "perhaps we are all
immigrants/ in these towns and villages, // and all strangers to ourselves". The title of her new
volume of Selected Poems, Split World (2008), indicates how Moniza Alvi’s multiculturalism can
both entertain and, perhaps increasingly, warn us.
An Unknown Girl
MONIZA ALVI-1954-
In the evening bazaar
Studded with neon
An unknown girl
Is hennaing my hand
She squeezes a wet brown line
Form a nozzle
She is icing my hand,
Which she steadies with her
On her satin peach knee.
For a few rupees
An unknown girl is hennaing my hand
As a little air catches
My shadow stitched kameez
A peacock spreads its lines
Across my palm.
Colours leave the street
Float up in balloons.
Dummies in shop-fronts
Tilt and stare
With their western perms.
Banners for Miss India 1993
For curtain cloth
And sofa cloth
Canopy me.
I have new brown veins.
Very deftly

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An unknown girl
is hennaing my hand
I am clinging
To these firm peacock lines
Like people who cling
to sides of a train.
Now the furious streets
Are hushed.
I’ll scrape off
The dry brown lines
Before I sleep,
Reveal soft as a snail trail
The amber bird beneath.
It will fade in a week.
When India appears and reappears
I’ll lean across a country
With my hands outstretched
Longing for the unknown girl
In the neon bazaar.
(((((****)))))
Summary
An Unknown Girl” by Moniza Alvi speaks on an intense connection between an “unknown girl,”
a bazaar, and Indian culture. The poem begins with the speaker sitting in a marketplace getting a
henna tattoo from an “unknown girl,” this girl, like the speaker, is never named or described in
greater detail. The speaker looks down at the peacock that has been “iced” onto her hand and then
around at the shops. She feels a connection to the market stalls, and mannequins in the shop
windows with their western style wigs. She wants to remember this moment, hold onto it, and
force to it become part of herself.
She looks forward in time and sees herself returning home with the henna tattoo, picking off the
dark brown lines and watching the light brown markings fade over the next days. She will have a
temporary connection to this place for which she will always yearn.
Analysis
Alvi begins this poem by describing the setting in which her speaker is placed. She is in an
unnamed city, in an “evening bazaar” or market. The market is most likely made up of individual
stalls some of which are “Studded with neon.” There are electronic, neon lights guiding visitors
from place to place. Immediately there is a sense of contrast to this place. It is called a “bazaar,”
evoking an image of old fashioned market places, but this is clearly not the case.

107
The speaker continues describing what she is experiencing. She has entered one of the stalls and
is having her hand tattooed, with henna, by “An unknown girl.” As it will become clear by the end
of the poem, this “unknown girl” is not who the title is referring to, rather the speaker herself.
The henna artist squeezes out the liquid from “a nozzle” as if she is “icing” the speaker’s hand.
She is steadying herself, balancing the speaker’s hand on her “satin peach knee.”
While the specifics of where they are and who they are might be patchy, the narrator is clearly
paying close attention to the small details. She is taking note of everything around her but is unable
to paint a clear, entire, picture of the place.
This “unknown girl” is working cheaply, “hennaing” the speaker’s hand for only “a few rupees.”
With this detail the reader now knows that this scene is taking place in a market in India. The scene
is broken by a “little air” that blows through the street and “catches” the speaker’s “kameez,” a
type of traditional Indian dress.
Once more the reader might be tempted to place this scene further back in time than is appropriate.
It is taking place in a contemporary Indian city in which there are both markets and neon lights
and one can wear a “kameez” and get henna in the street.
The speaker glances down at her hand and sees the artist’s work. A “peacock” now “spreads its
lines” on the palm of her hand. It is as if it came into being by itself or perhaps had always been
there.
The speaker is now spreading her view beyond what is directly in her line of sight. She is looking
around and describing the areas within, and next to, the market. In the shops that surround her she
can see “Dummies” or mannequins. Their heads are tilted as if analyzing her, and their eyes “stare”
out past the window. They are wearing “western perms.” The wings have been styled to mimic
popular trends in the west. This is one more out of place element in the scene. The speaker, feeling
out of place herself, is noticing all those things around her that stick out. She is not the only one
that is stuck between two worlds. All of India, or at least this representational portion presented
here, seems to be split between the past and present.
She continues looking around and can see “Banners for Miss India,” advertisements for the Miss
India competition in 1993, being used as “curtain cloth / And sofa cloth.” These old pieces of cloth
are being repurposed in the market. They are strung up and around the stalls, separating them and
creating a “Canopy” around the speaker.
In the next lines of the poem, as her continuous strain of thought progresses, she returns the reader
to her observations about the “unknown girl” who is hennaing her hand.
She looks down once more at her hand and sees the peacock that has been painted onto it. She sees
the design as “new brown veins.” She is becoming more Indian, more part of this world she feels
separate from.
She is “clinging” to these new lines; she compares her need to the desperation of …people who
cling / to sides of a train. They are a lifeline to a different life she did not have.

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The poem starts to concludes in these next lines. The moment that the speaker has lived through,
this desperate need to remain part of the Indian culture around her has passed. The “furious streets”
and her racing thoughts are “hushed.” She is ready to “scrape off” the brown henna lines from her
hand and allow the more permanent, lighter brown lines to remain. They will stay on her skin,
“soft as a snail trail” for a week, and then begin to fade. The speaker’s connection to India is
temporarily raging and strong, it will quiet down to a simmer, and then fade away entirely as she
returns to her previous life.
The last lines of the poem return the speaker to the country in which she lives. From there, when
memories or thoughts of India “appear” and reappear, she will lean into them. She’ll reach from
one land to the other, her “hands outstretched” and feel a longing for the “unknown girl” in the
bazaar. This last mention of the “unknown girl” if the most obvious in its connection to the speaker.
She is reaching for a past version of herself, the Indian version that is sitting in the marketplace.
Less, Much Less

MONIZA ALVI-1954-
He hardly spoke any words
only two —
or you could call it one
the last thing

he said
was bye-bye
flight-feathers
veined and hairlike
with interlocking barbules
of sound
the bye-bye trapped
a breath of air
the two linked words

drifted out
on a calm lake
that lay there

with a single purpose —
to receive final words
and allow them

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to drift on its surface

out and further out
on the lake of thought

and composure
encircled by mountains
the simple phrase

soared upwards
to the highest peak
where it would be planted

like a flag
would eventually be enshrined
each identical word carefully

balanced either side
of the invisible join —
like baby talk

he put equal emphasis
on each word
his face was pinched

and his bird beak
very prominent
there have never been

two joined words
with so much space around them
pack up all my cares and woes

light the light
I’ll arrive late tonight
blackbird bye bye

bye
(((((****)))))

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21. Pablo Neruda: Biography and Poems Study Guide

Born Ricardo Eliecer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto in the town of Parral in southern Chile on July 12,
1904, Pablo Neruda led a life charged with poetic and political activity. In 1923 he sold all of his
possessions to finance the publication of his first book, Crepusculario("Twilight"). He published
the volume under the pseudonym "Pablo Neruda" to avoid conflict with his family, who
disapproved of his occupation. The following year, he found a publisher for Veinte poemas de
amor y una cancion desesperada ("Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair"). The book made
a celebrity of Neruda, who gave up his studies at the age of twenty to devote himself to his craft.
In 1927, Neruda began his long career as a diplomat in the Latin American tradition of honoring
poets with diplomatic assignments. After serving as honorary consul in Burma, Neruda was named
Chilean consul in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1933. While there, he began a friendship with the
visiting Spanish poet Federico García Lorca. After transferring to Madrid later that year, Neruda
also met Spanish writer Manuel Altolaguirre. Together the two men founded a literary review
called Caballo verde para la poesîa in 1935. The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936
interrupted Neruda's poetic and political development. He chronicled the horrendous years which
included the execution of García Lorca in Espana en el corazon (1937), published from the war
front. Neruda's outspoken sympathy for the loyalist cause during the Spanish Civil War led to his
recall from Madrid in 1937. He then moved to Paris and helped settle Spanish republican refugees
in Chile.
Neruda returned to Chile in 1938 where he renewed his political activity and wrote prolifically.
Named Chilean Consul to Mexico in 1939, Neruda left Chile again for four years. Upon returning
to Chile in 1943, he was elected to the Senate and joined the Communist Party. When the Chilean
government moved to the right, they declared communism illegal and expelled Neruda from the
Senate. He went into hiding. During those years he wrote and published Canto general (1950).
In 1952 the government withdrew the order to arrest leftist writers and political figures, and Neruda
returned to Chile and married Matilde Urrutia, his third wife (his first two marriages, to Maria
Antonieta Haagenar Vogelzang and Delia del Carril, both ended in divorce). For the next twenty-
one years, he continued a career that integrated private and public concerns and became known as
the people's poet. During this time, Neruda received numerous prestigious awards, including the
International Peace Prize in 1950, the Lenin Peace Prize and the Stalin Peace Prize in 1953, and
the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971.
Diagnosed with cancer while serving a two-year term as ambassador to France, Neruda resigned
his position, ending his diplomatic career. On September 23, 1973, just twelve days after the defeat
of Chile's democratic regime, the man widely regarded as the greatest Latin American poet since
Darío died in Santiago, Chile.

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Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines

PABLO NERUDA- 1904–1973
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Write, for example, 'The night is starry and the stars are blue and
shiver in the distance.'
The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.
She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.

How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.
To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.

And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.
What does it matter that my love could not keep her.

The night is starry and she is not with me.
This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.

My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.

My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.
The same night whitening the same trees.

We, of that time, are no longer the same.
I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.

My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.
Another's. She will be another's. As she was before my kisses.

Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.
I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.

Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms

my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

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Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer

and these the last verses that I write for her.
(((((****)))))
Summary
The speaker of the poem says that that night he could write the saddest lines. He loved a girl and
the girl loved him back too, but only at some times. That night was like the nights in which he held
her and kissed her. He loved her great still eyes. But now he does not have her, he lost her. He
knew the nights were immense but without her they seemed more immense than ever. The verse
of his poems fell to his soul like dew to the pasture. His love could not hold her back. He could
hear someone singing somewhere but no song could satisfy him now. His eyes and heart seek her
but she is nowhere to be seen. The nights they lived through remained the same though but they
themselves changed. He says he no longer loved her but he used to love her and how; he tried to
find the wind just to hear her voice. And soon she will be another’s. He no longer loves but thinking
again, maybe he still does. Their love existed for a short time but the forgetting part is taking so
long. Because nights like that night reminded him of all the time, he spent with her. He ends the
poem by saying that these will be the last verse her writes for her and he will no longer be subjected
to suffering due to her.
Analysis
The speaker of the poem recently lost the love of his life. We can tell though that some time passed
since the separation from the first sentence. He says ‘tonight I can write’ implying that till that day
he couldn’t. Maybe the emotions and pain he felt were still too raw to put it down to words. In that
case this line implies that he is slowly healing from the separation.
Poets generally describe a broken heart using metaphors and imagery. Pablo Neruda’s style is
simple and concise. But the speaker says he can write flowery language too in the second
paragraph. That is how heart-broken he is.
The speaker says that he loved her and she sometimes loved him back too. This puts us in a state
of thinking that the one who was primarily responsible for the separation was the woman. The
night he was sitting under was like the nights he used to hold her and kissed her. He describes the
sky as endless. Maybe he felt his love would be like the sky too but sadly, it had ended. He says
‘kissed her again and again’. This type of eroticism was shocking to the general public at the time,
especially when the poet was only 18 years old. Sentences like this earned the poem collection
censorship.
The speaker continues by putting emphasis on his loss and sadness. He uses repetition and some
imagery to pull at the heart string of the reader. One feels sympathy for the speaker as he repeats
again that she loved him sometimes. The night which was described as endless before felt much
more so after the separation. And this makes him feel verse of poetry flow as naturally into his
soul as dew falls onto the pasture. This makes the reader feel that it was indeed true that the most
beautiful poetry flows from a broken heart.
‘The same night whitening the same trees. He repeats ‘same’ twice to show that while they both
changed the world remained the same. Now he says that he no longer loved her as he used to.

113
He thinks that soon she will be another’s. ‘Like my kisses before.’ This line can have either of the
two following meanings. The speaker of the poem is now together with another girl and he kissed
her recently. In this case, he says that like how his kisses belonged to another now, hers will be
too. Or he simply says that she will be kissed by another man like how he used to kiss her. The
meaning is closer to the latter one when the whole poem is considered.
The speaker now contradicts himself saying that he no longer loves her for sure and then
immediately saying that maybe he loves her. This shows the conflict within in the speaker. He
loved her so deep that he finds it hard not to. This conflict is spoken of throughout the poem, albeit
in allusions.
He says love is so short but forgetting is so long. This is one of the best remembered quotes from
the poem. And the nights aren’t helping his forgetting process. Nights like the one that day
particularly remind him of the time when he held her. And when these thoughts crossed his mind,
his soul becomes dissatisfied with the fact that he lost her. The conflict is shown deeply in these
two lines.
The speaker ends the poem saying that this, that particular night would be the last night he suffers
pain because of her and this poem will be the last one he will write for her. This shows that the
speaker has now finally resolved to completely move on.
In this poem, the speaker's feelings of loneliness lead to immense sadness. The opening line
instantly establishes the mood of this poem. It establishes the incredible sense of loss the speaker
feels early in the poem. This line repeats two more times in poem, giving it the feel of a terrible
epiphany. In this poem, the sorrow does not diminish, but intensifies as you read.
The recurring images of night can present internal darkness, sadness, and lost romance. At night
we think about something that tortures us, as if tossing and turning in bed, unable to be
comfortable, unable to sleep. In short, this is a breakup poem, so perhaps night represents the
emptiness he feels after she left.
The loneliness of night is immense without her. He couldn’t keep her. She has gone, but he still
can’t accept it. It is hard to forget someone you love. You feel like your lover is still with you. You
remember everything you passed through together. The poet wants to forget her, and he is trying
to convince himself he doesn’t love her anymore, but he clearly does.
The theme of Pablo Neruda's poem “Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines” is the finality of lost
love. The speaker is so upset that he starts to ask himself if they ever truly loved each other or if it
was all a figment of his imagination. In short, he discovers how sometimes she loved him and other
times he loved her, but that his love was not enough for her to stay with him. While he might not
write about his lover anymore, it doesn’t mean he will forget her.

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22. Faiz Ahmed Faiz: Biography and Poems Study Guide

Faiz Ahmed Faiz was born on February 13, 1911, in Sialkot, India, which is now part of Pakistan.
He had a privileged childhood as the son of wealthy landowners Sultan Fatima and Sultan
Muhammad Khan, who passed away in 1913, shortly after his birth. His father was a prominent
lawyer and a member of an elite literary circle which included Allama Iqbal, the national poet of
Pakistan.
In 1916, Faiz entered Moulvi Ibrahim Sialkoti, a famous regional school, and was later admitted
to the Skotch Mission High School where he studied Urdu, Persian, and Arabic. He received a
Bachelor's degree in Arabic, followed by a master's degree in English, from the Government
College in Lahore in 1932, and later received a second master's degree in Arabic from the Oriental
College in Lahore.After graduating in 1935, Faiz began a teaching career at M.A.O. College in
Amritsar and then at Hailey College of Commerce in Lahore.
Faiz's early poems had been conventional, light-hearted treatises on love and beauty, but while in
Lahore he began to expand into politics, community, and the thematic interconnectedness he felt
was fundamental in both life and poetry. It was also during this period that he married Alys George,
a British expatriate and convert to Islam, with whom he had two daughters. In 1942, he left
teaching to join the British Indian Army, for which he received a British Empire Medal for his
service during World War II. After the partition of India in 1947, Faiz resigned from the army and
became the editor of The Pakistan Times, a socialist English-language newspaper.
On March 9, 1951, Faiz was arrested with a group of army officers under the Safety Act, and
charged with the failed coup attempt that became known as the Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case. He
was sentenced to death and spent four years in prison before being released. Two of his poetry
collections, Dast-e Saba and Zindan Namah, focus on life in prison, which he considered an
opportunity to see the world in a new way. While living in Pakistan after his release, Faiz was
appointed to the National Council of the Arts by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's government, and his poems,
which had previously been translated into Russian, earned him the Lenin Peace Prize in 1963.
In 1964, Faiz settled in Karachi and was appointed principal of Abdullah Haroon College, while
also working as an editor and writer for several distinguished magazines and newspapers. He
worked in an honorary capacity for the Department of Information during the 1965 war between
India and Pakistan, and wrote stark poems of outrageover the bloodshed between Pakistan, India,
and what later became Bangladesh. However, when Bhutto was overthrown by Zia Ul-Haq, Faiz
was forced into exile in Beirut, Lebanon. There he edited the magazine Lotus, and continued to
write poems in Urdu. He remained in exile until 1982. He died in Lahore in 1984, shortly after
receiving a nomination for the Nobel Prize.
Throughout his tumultuous life, Faiz continually wrote and published, becoming the best-selling
modern Urdu poet in both India and Pakistan. While his work is written in fairly strict diction, his
poems maintain a casual, conversational tone, creating tension between the elite and the common,
somewhat in the tradition of Ghalib, the reknowned 19th century Urdu poet. Faiz is especially

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celebrated for his poems in traditional Urdu forms, such as the ghazal, and his remarkable ability
to expand the conventional thematic expectations to include political and social issues.
Before You Came

FAIZ AHMAD FAIZ- 1911 – 1984 Translated by Victor Kiernan
Before you came, all things were what they are—
The sky sight’s boundary, the road a road,
The glass of wine a glass of wine; since then,
Road, wineglass, colour of heaven, all have taken
The hues of this heart ready to melt into blood—
Now golden, as the solace of meeting is,
Now grey, the livery of despondent hours,
Or tint of yellowed leaves, of garden trash,
Or scarlet petal, a flowerbed all ablaze:
Colour of poison, colour of blood, or shade
Of sable night. Sky, highroad, glass of wine—
The first a tear-stained robe, the next a nerve
Aching, the last a mirror momently altering....
Now you have come, stay here, and let some colour,
Some month, some anything, keep its own place,
And all things once again be their own selves,
The sky sight’s bound, the road a road, wine wine.
(((((((((0)))))))))
A lover to his beloved

FAIZ AHMAD FAIZ- 1911 – 1984 Translated by Sain Sucha
This path of memory,
On which you have walked for so long,
Will end, if your were to proceed a few steps more,
Where it diverts to oblivion’s desolation
And from there onwards neither you nor I exist.
My eyes, still on you, wait that any instant,
You may return, pass on, or just look back.
Yet, I am aware,
That it is merely an illusion:
When I believe that if my eyes
ever embrace you somewhere,
A new path shall erupt there;

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And a similar encounter shall resume;

Under the fall of your locks,
The journey of my arms.
Then, the other situation is just a false,
Because my heart knows:
There is no diversion, desolation or hiding,
Which may conceal my beloved from me.
So, while this path erupts under your feet,
Let it be so;
And if you never even look back,
It doesn’t matter.
(((((((((0))))))))
Ghazal
I am being accused of loving you, that is all
It is not an insult, but a praise, that is all
My heart is pleased at the words of the accusers

O my dearest dear, they say your name, that is all
For what I am ridiculed, it is not a crime

My heart's useless playtime, a failed love, that is all
I haven't lost hope, but just a fight, that is all

The night of suffering lengthens, but just a night, that is all
In the hand of time is not the rolling of my fate

In the hand of time roll just the days, that is all
A day will come for sure when I will see the truth
My beautiful beloved is behind a veil, that is all
The night is young, Faiz start saying a Ghazal

A storm of emotion ns is raging inside, that is all.
((((((***))))))

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23. Don Paterson: Biography and Poems Study Guide

Originally from Dundee, Scotland, Don Paterson left school at 16 and moved to London to pursue
music and join a band. He found success with the jazz-folk ensemble Lammas, but was captivated
by poetry upon encountering poet Tony Harrison. A self-taught poet influenced by Coleridge, Paul
Muldoon, Derek Mahon, and Michael Longley, Paterson devoted a year to reading before he began
to write and publish in earnest.
Paterson’s first poetry collection, Nil Nil (1993), won the Forward Prize for Best First
Collection. God’s Gift to Women (1997) won both the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Geoffrey Faber
Memorial Prize, and Landing Light (2003) won the Whitbread Poetry Award and an
unprecedented second T.S. Eliot Prize. Christina Patterson, reviewing Landing Light for
the Independent, praised Paterson as “one of the few poets writing today whose work combines
postmodern playfulness with a sense of yearning for the transcendental.” Paterson’s poem “A
Private Bottling” won the Arvon Foundation International Poetry Competition. He has won an Eric
Gregory Award, three Book Awards from the Scottish Arts Council, and a Creative Scotland
Award. The Poetry Society named Paterson one of the New Generation Poets.
Paterson has also published several collections of aphorisms. Of the connection between poetry
and aphorism, he notes in an interview for the Independent that “between the two there's a really
interesting flux, which is about asking questions, which poetry does supremely well, but also about
positing some kind of possible solution.”
Paterson edited 101 Sonnets: From Shakespeare to Heaney (1999) and co-edited, with Jo
Shapcott, Last Words: New Poetry for the New Century (1999) and, with Charles Simic, New
British Poetry (2004). In an interview for the Independent, Paterson describes The Eyes (1999),
his versions of poems by Spanish poet Antonio Machado, as “piano transcriptions of guitar music.”
His 2006 translation of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus was praised by poet Mark
Doty for its success in capturing “an unsettling, destabilizing force.”
Paterson is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. In 2008, for his service to literature, he
was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire. He joined the London publisher Picador
as poetry editor and has also taught creative writing at University of St. Andrews and Dundee
University. He continues to perform as a jazz guitarist and lives in Dundee, Scotland.
The Dead
DON PATERSON - 1963-
Our business is with fruit and leaf and bloom;
though they speak with more than just the season's tongue—
the colours that they blaze from the dark loam
all have something of the jealous tang
of the dead about them. What do we know of their part

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in this, those secret brothers of the harrow,

invigorators of the soil—oiling the dirt
so liberally with their essence, their black marrow?
But here's the question. Are the flower and fruit

held out to us in love, or merely thrust
up at us, their masters, like a fist?
Or are they the lords, asleep amongst the roots,

granting to us in their great largesse
this hybrid thing—part brute force, part mute kiss?
((((((****))))))
Poetry
In the same way that the mindless diamond keeps
one spark of the planet's early fires
trapped forever in its net of ice,
it's not love's later heat that poetry holds,
but the atom of the love that drew it forth
from the silence: so if the bright coal of his love
begins to smoulder, the poet hears his voice
suddenly forced, like a bar-room singer's -- boastful
with his own huge feeling, or drowned by violins;
but if it yields a steadier light, he knows
the pure verse, when it finally comes, will sound
like a mountain spring, anonymous and serene.
Beneath the blue oblivious sky, the water
sings of nothing, not your name, not mine.
((((((****))))))

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24. Carol Ann Duffy: Biography and Poems Study Guide

Carol Ann Duffy is an award-winning Scots poet who, according to Danette DiMarco in Mosaic, is
the poet of "post-post war England: Thatcher's England." Duffy is best known for writing love
poems that often take the form of monologues. Her verses, as an Economist reviewer described
them, are typically "spoken in the voices of the urban disaffected, people on the margins of society
who harbour resentments and grudges against the world." Although she knew she was a lesbian
since her days at St. Joseph's convent school, her early love poems give no indication of her
homosexuality; the object of love in her verses is someone whose gender is not specified. Not until
her 1993 collection, Mean Time, and 1994's Selected Poems, does she begin to write about
homosexual love.
Duffy's poetry has always had a strong feminist edge, however. This position is especially well
captured in her Standing Female Nude, in which the collection's title poem consists of an interior
monologue comprising a female model's response to the male artist who is painting her image in
a Cubist style. Although at first the conversation seems to indicate the model's acceptance of
conventional attitudes about beauty in art—and, by extension, what an ideal woman should be—
as the poem progresses Duffy deconstructs these traditional beliefs. Ultimately, the poet expresses
that "the model cannot be contained by the visual art that would regulate her," explained DiMarco.
"And here the way the poem ends with the model's final comment on the painting 'It does not look
like me'—is especially instructive. On the one hand, her response suggests that she is naive and
does not understand the nature of Cubist art. On the other hand, however, the comment suggests
her own variableness, and challenges traditionalist notions that the naked model can, indeed, be
transmogrified into the male artist's representation of her in the nude form. To the model, the
painting does not represent either what she understands herself to be or her lifestyle."
Duffy, who is currently the United Kingdom's poet laureate, was seriously considered for the
position in 1999. Prime Minister Tony Blair's administration had wanted a poet laureate who
exemplified the new "Cool Britannia," not an establishment figure, and Duffy was certainly
anything but establishment. She is the Scottish-born lesbian daughter of two Glasgow working-
class radicals. Her female partner is also a poet and the two of them are raising a child together.
Duffy has a strong following among young Britons, partially as a result of her poetry
collection Mean Time being included in Britain's A-level curriculum, but Blair was worried about
how "middle England" would react to a lesbian poet laureate. There were also concerns in the
administration about what Britain's notorious tabloids would write about her sexuality, and about
comments that Duffy had made urging an updated role for the poet laureate. In the end, Blair opted
for the safe choice and named Andrew Motion to the post.
After Duffy had been passed over, Katherine Viner wrote in the Guardian Weekend that her
"poems are accessible and entertaining, yet her form is classical, her technique razor-sharp. She is
read by people who don't really read poetry, yet she maintains the respect of her peers. Reviewers
praise her touching, sensitive, witty evocations of love, loss, dislocation, nostalgia; fans talk of
greeting her at readings 'with claps and cheers that would not sound out of place at a rock concert.'"
Viner lamented that Duffy only came to the attention of many people when she was caricatured

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and rejected as poet laureate. However, the poet got some satisfaction when she earned the
National Lottery award of 75,000 pounds, a sum that far exceeded the stipend that poet laureates
receive.
After the laureate debacle, Duffy was further vindicated when her next original collection of
poems, The World's Wife, received high acclaim from critics. In what Antioch Review contributor
Jane Satterfield called "masterful subversions of myth and history," the poems in this collection
are all told from the points of view of the women behind famous male figures, both real and
fictional, including the wives and lovers of Aesop, Pontius Pilate, Faust, Tiresius, Herod,
Quasimodo, Lazarus, Sisyphus, Freud, Darwin, and even King Kong. Not all the women are wives,
however. For example, one poem is told from Medusa's point of view as she expresses her feelings
before being slain by Perseus; "Little Red-Cap" takes the story of Little Red Riding Hood to a new
level as a teenage girl is seduced by a "wolf-poet." These fresh perspectives allow Duffy to indulge
in a great deal of humor and wit as, for example, Mrs. Aesop grows tired of her husband's constant
moralizing, Mrs. Freud complains about the great psychologist's obsession with penises,
Sisyphus's bride is stuck with a workaholic, and Mrs. Lazarus, after finding a new husband, has
her life ruined by the return of her formerly dead husband. There are conflicting emotions as well
in such poems as "Mrs. Midas," in which the narrator is disgusted by her husband's greed, but, at
the same time, longs for something she can never have: his physical touch. "The World's
Wife appeals and astonishes," said Satterfield. "Duffy's mastery of personae allows for seamless
movement through the centuries; in this complementary chorus, there's voice and vision for the
coming ones." An Economist reviewer felt that the collection "is savage, trenchant, humorous and
wonderfully inventive at its best." And Ray Olson, writing in Booklist, concluded that "Duffy's
takes on the stuff of legends are . . . richly rewarding."
Duffy has also written verses for children, many of which are published in Meeting
Midnight and Five Finger-Piglets. The poems in Meeting Midnight, as the title indicates, help
children confront their fears by addressing them openly. "They explore the hinterland in a child's
imagination where life seems built on quicksand and nameless worries move in and will not leave,"
explained Kate Kellaway in an Observer review. Kellaway also asserted that "these are real poems
by one of the best English poets writing at the moment."
In addition to her original poetry, Duffy has edited two anthologies, I Wouldn't Thank You for a
Valentine: Poems for Young Feminists and Stopping for Death: Poems of Death and Loss, and has
adapted eight classic Brothers Grimm fairy tales in Grimm Tales. Not intended for young children
but for older children and young adults in drama and English classes, Grimm Tales includes
adaptations of such stories as "Hansel and Gretel" and "The Golden Goose," which are rewritten
"with a poet's vigor and economy, combining traditions of style with direct, colloquial dialogue,"
according to Vida Conway in School Librarian.

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Ship
CAROL ANN DUFFY- 1955
In the end,
it was nothing more
than the toy boat of a boy
on the local park’s lake,
where I walked with you.
But I knelt down
to watch it arrive,
its white sail shy
with amber light,
the late sun
bronzing the wave
that lifted it up,
my ship coming in
with its cargo of joy.
(((((****)))))
Summary
The first poem in the collection is entitled "Ship’’ and is a short poem, without rhyme and without
being structured as a normal poem would be. In the poem, the narrator is in a park, watching a boy
playing with a toy boat. The boat makes the narrator think about her lover and how she disappeared
from the narrator’s life in a short time. Despite this, the narrator is happy the boat stopped before
her and because she had the opportunity to experience the love offered by the woman.
Havisham
Beloved sweetheart bastard. Not a day since then
I haven't wished him dead. Prayed for it
so hard I've dark green pebbles for eyes,
ropes on the back of my hands I could strangle with.
Spinster. I stink and remember. Whole days

in bed cawing Nooooo at the wall; the dress
yellowing, trembling if I open the wardrobe;
the slewed mirror, full-length, her, myself, who did this

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to me? Puce curses that are sounds not words.

Some nights better, the lost body over me,
my fluent tongue in its mouth in its ear
then down till I suddenly bite awake. Love's
hate behind a white veil; a red balloon bursting

in my face. Bang. I stabbed at a wedding cake.
Give me a male corpse for a long slow honeymoon.
Don't think it's only the heart that b-b-b-breaks.
(((((****)))))

The poem "Havisham’’ tells the story of a woman betrayed by her lover. The first stanza presents
the feelings of hatred the woman has for the man and how she felt ready to kill him, should she
have the chance.
The second stanza begins with the word "spinster’’, a derogatory term the narrator hates and the
description of a dress inside a wardrobe that reminds the narrator she is alone. The poem ends with
a disturbing image, the narrator asking for a male corps to live with and a wedding cake she can
stab and take her anger out.
She begins by telling the reader the cause of her troubles - her phrase “beloved sweetheart bastard”
is a contradiction in terms (called an oxymoron). She tells us that she has prayed so hard (with
eyes closed and hands pressed together) that her eyes have shrunk hard and her hands have sinews
strong enough to strangle with - which fits her murderous wish for revenge. (Readers who know
Dickens' novel well might think at this point about Miss Havisham's ward, Estella - her natural
mother, Molly, has strangled a rival, and has unusually strong hands.)
Miss Havisham is aware of her own stink - because she does not ever change her clothes nor wash.
She stays in bed and screams in denial. At other times she looks and asks herself “who did this” to
her? She sometimes dreams almost tenderly or erotically of her lost lover, but when she wakes the
hatred and anger return. Thinking of how she “stabbed at the wedding cake” she now wants to
work out her revenge on a “male corpse” - presumably that of her lover.
The poem is written in four stanzas which are unrhymed. Many of the lines run on, and the effect
is like normal speech. The poet
• uses many adjectives of colour - “green”, “puce”, “white” and “red” and
• lists parts of the body “eyes”, “hands”, “tongue”, “mouth”, “ear” and “face”.
Sometimes the meaning is clear, but other lines are more open - and there are hints of violence in
“strangle”, “bite”, “bang” and “stabbed”. It is not clear what exactly Miss Havisham would like to
do on her “long slow honeymoon”, but we can be sure that it is not pleasant.

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25. Derek Walcott: Biography and Poems Study Guide

Born on the island of Saint Lucia, a former British colony in the West Indies, poet and playwright
Derek Walcott was trained as a painter but turned to writing as a young man. He published his first
poem in the local newspaper at the age of 14. Five years later, he borrowed $200 to print his first
collection, 25 Poems, which he distributed on street corners. Walcott’s major breakthrough came
with the collection In a Green Night: Poems 1948-1960 (1962), a book which celebrates the
Caribbean and its history as well as investigates the scars of colonialism. Throughout a long and
distinguished career, Walcott returned to those same themes of language, power, and place. His
later collections include Tiepolo’s Hound (2000), The Prodigal (2004), Selected
Poems (2007), White Egrets (2010), and Morning, Paramin (2016). In 1992, Walcott won the
Nobel Prize in Literature. The Nobel committee described his work as “a poetic oeuvre of great
luminosity, sustained by a historical vision, the outcome of a multicultural commitment.”
Since the 1950s Walcott divided his time between Boston, New York, and Saint Lucia. His work
resonates with Western canon and Island influences, shifting between Caribbean patois and
English, and often addressing his English and West Indian ancestry. According to Los Angeles
Times Book Review contributor Arthur Vogelsang, “These continuing polarities shoot an
electricity to each other which is questioning and beautiful and which helps form a vision
altogether Caribbean and international, personal (him to you, you to him), independent, and
essential for readers of contemporary literature on all the continents.” Known for his technical
control, erudition, and large canvases, Walcott was, according to poet and critic Sean O’Brien,
“one of the handful of poets currently at work in English who are capable of making a convincing
attempt to write an epic … His work is conceived on an oceanic scale and one of its fundamental
concerns is to give an account of the simultaneous unity and division created by the ocean and by
human dealings with it.”
Many readers and critics point to Omeros (1990), an epic poem reimagining the Trojan War as a
Caribbean fishermen’s fight, as Walcott’s major achievement. The book is “an effort to touch
every aspect of Caribbean experience,” according to O’Brien who also described it as an ars
poetica, concerned “with art itself—its meaning and importance and the nature of an artistic
vocation.” In reviewing Walcott’s Selected Poems (2007), poet Glyn Maxwell ascribes Walcott’s
power as a poet not so much to his themes as to his ear: “The verse is constantly trembling with a
sense of the body in time, the self-slung across metre, whether metre is steps, or nights, or breath,
whether lines are days, or years, or tides.”
Walcott was also a renowned playwright. In 1971 he won an Obie Award for his play Dream on
Monkey Mountain, which the New Yorker described as “a poem in dramatic form.” Walcott’s plays
generally treat aspects of the West Indian experience, often dealing with the socio-political and
epistemological implications of post-colonialism and drawing upon various genres such as the
fable, allegory, folk, and morality play. With his twin brother, he cofounded the Trinidad Theater
Workshop in 1950; in 1981, while teaching at Boston University, he founded the Boston
Playwrights’ Theatre. He also taught at Columbia University, Yale University, Rutgers University,
and Essex University in England.

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In addition to his Nobel Prize, Walcott’s honors included a MacArthur Foundation “genius” award,
a Royal Society of Literature Award, and, in 1988, the Queen’s Medal for Poetry. He was an
honorary member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. He died in 2017.
A Far Cry from Africa

DEREK WALCOTT - 1930-2017
A wind is ruffling the tawny pelt
Of Africa. Kikuyu, quick as flies,
Batten upon the bloodstreams of the veldt.
Corpses are scattered through a paradise.
Only the worm, colonel of carrion, cries:
"Waste no compassion on these separate dead!"
Statistics justify and scholars seize
The salients of colonial policy.
What is that to the white child hacked in bed?
To savages, expendable as Jews?
Threshed out by beaters, the long rushes break
In a white dust of ibises whose cries
Have wheeled since civilization's dawn
From the parched river or beast-teeming plain.
The violence of beast on beast is read
As natural law, but upright man
Seeks his divinity by inflicting pain.
Delirious as these worried beasts, his wars
Dance to the tightened carcass of a drum,
While he calls courage still that native dread
Of the white peace contracted by the dead.
Again brutish necessity wipes its hands
Upon the napkin of a dirty cause, again
A waste of our compassion, as with Spain,
The gorilla wrestles with the superman.
I who am poisoned with the blood of both,
Where shall I turn, divided to the vein?
I who have cursed
The drunken officer of British rule, how choose
Between this Africa and the English tongue I love?
Betray them both, or give back what they give?
How can I face such slaughter and be cool?
How can I turn from Africa and live?
(((((****)))))

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Summary
A Far Cry from Africa is a powerful poem that sets out one person's divided viewpoint on the
subject of British colonial takeover in Kenya, east Africa, and its horrifying consequences for local
people and the poet himself.
Analysis
A Far Cry from Africa focuses on the racial and cultural tensions arising from colonial occupation
of that continent and the subsequent dilemma for the speaker, Walcott himself, a black poet writing
in English.
Derek Walcott, teacher, playwright, poet and artist, as well as Nobel prize winner, was born on the
island of St Lucia in the British West Indies.
As he grew up, he became aware of his mixed racial ancestry - he had both white and black
grandparents - and this theme of roots divided became a rich source of material for some of his
poetry.
A Far Cry from Africa, published in 1962, explores the history of a specific uprising in Kenya,
occupied by the British, in the 1950s. Certain members of the local Kikuyu tribe, known as Mau
Mau fighters, fought a violent 8 yearlong campaign against settlers, who they saw as illegal
trespassers on their land.
In the first two stanzas of the poem, the speaker expands on the thorny issue of colonial takeover
and its bloody consequences before finally asking himself the awkward question - How can I face
such slaughter and be cool?
He is caught between love of the English language, with which he expresses himself poetically,
and the ancestral blood ties of his African family, who have been oppressed by the very people
whose native language he needs, to survive as a poet.
• The title is a little ambiguous. Is the author saying that because he lives on Santa Lucia, an
island far away from Africa, his cry has a long distance to travel to reach African shores?
• Or is he being ironic? The expression a far cry means that something is quite different from
what you had expected. Had the author this ideal image of Africa and its deep culture only
to be disappointed by the current reality of the situation there?
The first stanza is an overview of the situation, set in the present. It starts with a highly visual,
movie-like opening - the wind ruffling the pelt of Africa - a country, a continent, likened to an
animal.
Perhaps these are the winds of change come to disturb a once contented country.
The Kikuyu tribe are then seen as flies battening on to the bloodstreams (to batten is to gorge, or
to feed greedily at someone else's expense) and the blood is on the veldt (grassland with trees and
shrubs).
Dead bodies are scattered in this beautiful landscape, seen as a paradise, an irony not lost on the
speaker. The personified worm, made military, has a cruel message for the world - What is the use
of compassion for those already dead?

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Officialdom backs up its policies with numbers. Academics point out the relevant facts and figures.
But what do these mean when you consider the human cost? Where is the humanity in all of this?
The allusion to the Jews reflects the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis in WW2.
The opening four lines of the next stanza paint a detailed picture of a typical hunt (for big game)
carried out by colonials and settlers. Beaters use sticks and shout as they scour the undergrowth
(the rushes), driving out the animals into the open, where they will be shot.
The ibis is an iconic wading bird with a special call and has been a part of the African landscape
since humans first used tools. Is this an ironic use of the word 'civilisation' (civilization in the
USA)?
Lines 15 - 21 seem to reinforce this idea that, in the animal kingdom, evolution dictates who wins
and losses, through a pure kind of violence. But man uses the excuse of following a god, or
becoming a god, by causing pain to other humans (and animals). There is an emphasis on the male
of the species being responsible for war and pain, and war and peace.
Note the use of special language - the tightened carcass - the native dread - contracted by the
dead. The opening four lines of the last stanza juxtapose historical reference with a visual here and
now, embodied in gorilla and superman.
The personification of brutish necessity, as it wipes it hands on a napkin, is an interesting narrative
device. Napkins are usually white, but the cause is dirty, that of colonial settlement alongside
injustice.
By repeating what the worm cries in the first stanza - a waste of our compassion - the speaker is
bringing extra weight to the idea of meaningless death. Compassion cannot alter the circumstances.
By using our, is the speaker implying the compassion of the world, or of those who are African or
black?
And what has Spain to do with colonial Kenya? Well, it seems that violent struggle isn't just limited
to the continent of Africa. It can happen in Europe too, as with the Spanish civil war (1936-39)
which was fought between democratic Republicans and Fascists.
In line 26 the speaker declares a personal involvement for the first time, acknowledging the fact
he is divided because of his blood ties to both camps. The use of the word poisoned suggests to
the reader that the speaker isn't too happy with his situation, which he deems toxic.
He wants to side with the oppressed but cannot reconcile the fact that the language of the oppressor
is the same one he uses to speak, write and live by. The dramatic language heightens the tension:
brutish...dirty...wrestles...poisoned...cursed...drunken.... betray...slaughter. A series of heart-
wrenching questions are not, or cannot be, answered.
The bloody conflicts, the deaths, the subjugation, the cruelty, the need for domination, all reflect
the dilemma for the speaker. He feels estranged yet a part of African heritage; he feels a love for
the language of the British who are the cause of such strife in the tribal lands.

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Perhaps the final irony is that, by the very act of writing and publishing such a poem and ending it
with a question about turning away from Africa, the speaker somehow provides his own answer.
A Far Cry from Africa is a 3-stanza poem, the first stanza containing 10 lines, the second 11 lines
and the third 12 lines. It is not a true free verse poem because it does have a rhyme scheme of sorts,
best described as erratic.
There is no set regular rhyme scheme in this poem but there are certain lines that have full rhymes
and others that have slant rhymes. So, for example:
• Stanza 1:
full rhymes include pelt/veldt and flies/cries and dead/bed.
slant rhymes include flies/paradise and seize/Jews.
Full rhymes tend to bond lines together and bring harmony, whilst slant rhymes are not quite a
right fit and suggest tension.
• Stanza 2 also has full rhyme: plain/pain and dread/dead.
• Stanza 3 continues with full rhyme: again/Spain/vein.
The full rhymes are not regular, they're not part of a set scheme. But these lines, sometimes close
together, or further apart, when read, end in full rhyme and give a fleeting, almost deceptive,
impression of a regular rhyming poem.
So, in the first stanza you have pelt/veldt and flies/cries.
In the second plain/pain and dread/dead and in the third again/Spain and vein.
Likewise, the slant or near rhymes occur at random, creating dissonance. Whilst the dominant
meter (metre in British English) is iambic pentameter, many lines are anything but steady and
familiar iambic. They chop and change, altering in stress, as below:
A wind / is ruff / ling the taw / ny pelt (9 syllables, 3 iambs, 1 anapaest)
Of Af / rica. / Kiku / yu, quick / as flies, (10 syllables, 3 iambs, pyrrhic, trochee)
Batten / upon / the blood / streams of / the veldt. (10 syllables, Trochee, 4 iambs)
Line length is more or less constant, balanced on the 10 syllables, here and there expanding to
twelve or shrinking, as in line 28, to just four, bringing a stark emphasis to the line I who have
cursed.
Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was yourself.

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Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored

for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
(((((****)))))
Love After Love is an unusual love poem which concentrates on loving the self, the inner self,
following the breakdown of a relationship. Its main theme is that of becoming whole again through
self-recognition, a kind of healing that works by self-conscious invitation.
Being in a loving relationship can be a wonderfully thrilling experience. Learning to love another
person can lead to a rare fulfilment but when things don't turn out for the good, when love dies,
some people can be devastated when the relationship ends, for whatever reason.
• Love After Love gives the reader a direct message: Do not worry, you will be able to love
yourself again. Having put so much of yourself into the relationship, doing things for the
other person, expressing selfless love, it's only natural you feel incapable. But persevere,
love for you will return.
First published in 1976 in the book Sea Grapes this poem has become a popular choice for self-
help groups and workshop leaders who use it to help facilitate positive change in those who have
lost self-esteem and confidence.
The poet himself acknowledged that 'the process of poetry is one of excavation and of self-
discovery' so the cycle becomes complete when you consider that the poet's own experience comes
through in the poem which is then used to shine light on other people's darker experiences.
Love After Love is a modern poem yet was inspired by a poem published in 1633. George Herbert's
Love (III), a religious poem, is all about accepting love and ends with the lines:
"You must sit down," says Love, “and taste my meat."/ So I did sit and eat.
The basic message is that each and every individual is of value and can learn to accept and nurture
that part of the psyche which is estranged. Facing up to the challenge isn't easy but it is possible to
love oneself again.
Love After Love is a poem that instructs, gently, and reassures. With no set rhyme scheme or meter
(metre in British English), the poem is a loose structure pinned with occasional short lines and
single words. It takes its time, the subtle caesura (natural and punctuated breaks or pauses) placed
for the reader to ponder on.
From the outset the suggestion is that the individual will start to acknowledge an inner self and the
need for a kind of reconciliation between the two parts, a rediscovered love.

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What has been a split psyche can become whole again.

Formed out of a long sentence that tails off with a comma into the second stanza, this first is an
accumulation of reassuring statement, aimed personally at the reader and more specifically at those
who know through their own experiences.
The lines grow in length, repetition helping to reinforce the idea that you will be ok in the long
run, you'll become aware of the need for self-love and a positive outlook. Each time you get home
and stand before your door, each time you see yourself in the mirror this feeling will grow, just
like the stanza...
You may even start to talk to yourself again, inside. The message is to sit. The purpose is to eat.
This could come as a bit of a surprise, the imperative Eat. Why eat? With yourself?
Well, if you're eating you have an appetite and that means more positive energy, it means an act
of communion (religious as well as secular) can take place and that in itself is a vital start, a
practical step towards loving oneself.
Note the mention of the stranger in line seven, underlining the idea of a split in the psyche - and
the reassuring tone of the speaker who insists that this stranger will be loved again. The stranger
who was yourself but who has been neglected.
The wine and bread are taken from the Christian communion (they symbolise the blood and body
of Christ) but are here meant to convey the humanity involved in this process rather than any
divinity. The syntax is unusual, broken up by full stops, end stops as the imperative comes to the
fore. All through this stanza is an emphasis on the stranger, the metaphorical stranger, that part of
every individual who unconditionally loves but who, through time has lost heart.
Enjambment carries the reader from second to third and continues to focus on the stranger, that
side of the psyche who during the relationship suffered, but still is the one who knows best. And
in line twelve the first mention of a practical step towards finally ending the heartache and
estrangement. Remove love letters. Remove photos. Remove notes. Presumably they have to be
destroyed or kept out of sight before a healing can be reached.
That use of the word peel in the final stanza gives an added significance - not take down your own
image but peel, slowly and surely, unseal yourself before you can at last sit and finish off the wine
and bread in a suitable manner. Don't eat the food, feast on it. You deserve it.

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26. Paul Muldoon: Biography and Poems Study Guide

Paul Muldoon is one of Ireland's leading contemporary poets. He was born in Portadown, County
Armagh and raised near The Moy, in Northern Ireland. Muldoon’s work is full of paradox: playful
but serious, elusive but direct, innovative but traditional. He uses traditional verse forms such as
the sonnet, ballad, and dramatic monologue, but alters their length and basic structure, and uses
rhyme and meter in new ways. His work is also notable for its layered use of conceit, allusion, and
wit. The cryptic wordplay present in many poems has often been called Joycean, but Muldoon
himself has cited lyric poets such as Frost, Thomas, and MacNeice as his major influences.
Muldoon is the youngest member of a group of Northern Irish poets—including Seamus

Heaney, Michael Longley, and Derek Mahon—which gained prominence in the 1960s and 1970s.
As a student at Queen's University, Muldoon studied under Heaney, and refined his own analytical
and critical skills in weekly discussions with other poets. In 1971, at the age of nineteen, Muldoon
completed his first short collection, Knowing My Place. Two years later, he published New
Weather (1973), his first widely reviewed volume of poetry. The book secured Muldoon's place
among Ireland's finest writers and helped establish his reputation as an innovative new voice in
English-language poetry.
The poems in New Weather generally illuminate the complexities of seemingly ordinary things or
events. Calling the collection "the result of continuous age and aging," Roger Conover suggested
in a review for Eire-Ireland, "Muldoon's is a poetry which sees into things, and speaks of the world
in terms of its own internal designs and patterns." Muldoon followed New Weather with the 1977
collection Mules. Recurring themes of political and social relevance inform the pastorals and
ballads in Mules, as do family anecdotes, Muldoon’s rural upbringing and a wide range of literary
and cultural allusion. In Preoccupations: Selected Prose, Heaney deemed Mules "a strange, rich
second collection" and judged the poet "one of the very best."
By the time Muldoon's next volume of poetry, Why Brownlee Left (1980), was published, the poet
had attracted considerable attention for his technical acumen, dry verbal wit, and provocative use
of language. Some critics considered Why Brownlee Left a more mature effort than Muldoon's
earlier collections. The book’s influential final poem, the long “Immram” brings together the two
impulses that inform Muldoon’s work, argued Ian Hamilton in The Oxford Companion to
Twentieth-Century Poetry in English, “a Northern Irish Catholic sensibility and the English poetic
tradition.” Muldoon's 1983 collection, Quoof, takes its title from his family's name for a hot-water
bottle. "Gathering Mushrooms" opens the book with the narrator's drug-induced reminiscences of
his childhood, his father, and the turmoil in Ireland. "The More a Man Has the More a Man Wants,"
the final poem and the volume's longest, is a narrative that follows the exploits of the mercenary-
like figure Gallogly as he voyages through Northern Ireland. Writing in the London Review of
Books, John Kerrigan asserted that the poetry in Quoof is "a bewildering display of narrative
invention . . . written with that combination of visual clarity and verbal panache which has become
the hallmark of Paul Muldoon."

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Meeting the British, Muldoon's 1987 collection, contains the long poem "7, Middagh Street,"
which, according to Terry Eagleton in the Observer, blends fantasy and history with "dramatic
energy and calculated irony . . . to produce a major poem." A series of imaginary monologues by
such prominent artistic and literary figures as W. H. Auden, Salvador Dali, Gypsy Rose Lee,
Carson McCullers, and Louis MacNeice, "7, Middagh Street" contains provocative commentary
on the importance of politics in Irish art. Deeming Meeting the British Muldoon's "most ambitious
collection," Mick Imlah, writing in the Times Literary Supplement, noted that the volume proves
an innovative addition "to a difficult and delightful body of poetry."
Muldoon's next collection was the ambitious and notoriously difficult Madoc: A Mystery (1990)."
Named after the title of a Robert Southey poem concerning a Welsh prince who discovers America
in the twelfth century, the narrative flow of Madoc revolves around "what might have happened if
the Romantic poets Robert Southey and Samuel Taylor Coleridge had indeed come (as they
planned in 1794) to America and created a 'pantisocracy' ('equal rule for all') on the banks of the
Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania," commented Lucy MacDiarmid in her New York
Times review. Critical opinion divided on whether Madoc was a success or not. Muldoon’s next
book, The Annals of Chile (1994), “is easier of access and more emotionally direct than Madoc,
while more allusive and arcane than [his] earlier work," argued Richard Tillinghast in the New
York Times Book Review. Mark Ford, in the London Review of Books, found the themes of "less
scope for the kinds of all-synthesizing wit characteristic of Muldoon." The Los Angeles Times
Book Review's Katherine McNamara, however, argued that in Annals, "every word, every
reference, every allusion, carries meaning. Muldoon never flinches in his brilliant verbal
workings."
Muldoon's 1998 Hay is a diverse collection, covering subjects from the personal to the political,
offering a range of forms and styles that includes sonnets, sestinas, and haiku. Some reviewers
criticized Muldoon's technical virtuosity: in the pages of the New Republic, Adam Kirsch noted:
"if virtuosity is all that a poet can display, if his poems demand attention simply because of their
elaborateness and difficulty, then he has in some sense failed." According to Logan: "Muldoon is
in love (not wisely but too well) with language itself. . .. Too often the result is tedious foolery, the
language run amok with Jabberwocky possibility (words, words, monotonously inbreeding), as if
possibility were reason enough for the doing." Yet, both Logan and Kirsch also offered praise for
Hay. Logan concluded: "Everyone interested in contemporary poetry should read this book. In our
time of tired mirrors and more-than-tiresome confession, Muldoon is the rare poet who writes
through the looking glass."
Muldoon’s poems have been collected into three books, Selected Poems 1968-1986 (1986), New
Selected Poems: 1968-1994 (1996), and the hefty Poems 1968-1998 (2001). His book Moy Sand
and Gravel (2002) won both the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the International Griffin Poetry Prize.
While the book clearly draws from Muldoon’s well-known bag of tricks, Ian Samson in
the Guardian found that no bad thing: “He may resort to familiar charms and rubrics, but his
obsessions with particular forms and registers and vocabularies never dwindles to insensitivity.
His is a triumph of technique—a constant resuscitation of the self and of form.” Muldoon’s tenth
collection (by some estimates), Horse Latitudes (2006), received both wide spread praise and

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criticism. Jim McCue in the Independent wrote that the book represented “a good poet in the
doldrums,” while James Fenton, reviewing for the Guardian, called it “as usual, an event.”
Horse Latitudes was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize and released the same year as Muldoon’s The
End of the Poem: Oxford Lectures in Poetry. Bringing together the fifteen lectures Muldoon
delivered as Oxford Professor of Poetry—a post he held from 1999 to 2004—the lectures, argued
Adam Phillips in the London Review of Books, “are about poetic influence more than anything
else…Muldoon is generous and expansive in his naming of names; he is the exemplary poet as
fan…one of the most thrilling books of ‘literary criticism’ published in the last fifty years.”
Muldoon’s Clarendon lectures in English were collected in the alphabetic survey of Irish
literature, To Ireland, I (2000), Reviewing the book for the Times Literary Supplement, Clair Wills
found “something irreducibly esoteric about this trip through the weird and wonderful land of Irish
letters, and the quirkiness, bordering on whimsy, will no doubt alienate many readers. This is
unfortunate, because the book also contains some of Muldoon’s most forthright reflections to date
on the relations of history, literature and politics.”
In addition to poetry, Muldoon has written libretti, rock lyrics—for Warren Zevon, The Handsome
Family, and his own band, Rackett—and many books for children. He edited both the Faber
Anthology of Contemporary Irish Poetry (1986) and the Faber Book of Beasts (1997). He has also
translated the work of Irish poets, including Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, into English. He has won many
major poetry awards, including the John William Corrington Award for Literary Excellence. In
2007, he was hired as poetry editor of the New Yorker. Since 1987 Muldoon has lived in the United
States, where he is now Howard G.B. Clark Professor of the Humanities and Chair of the
University Center for the Creative and Performing Arts at Princeton University. Paul Muldoon
lives with his wife, writer Jean Hanff Korelitz, and their two children near Princeton, New Jersey.
Hedgehog
PAUL MULDOON- 1951-
The snail moves like a
Hovercraft, held up by a
Rubber cushion of itself,
Sharing its secret
With the hedgehog. The hedgehog

Shares its secret with no one.
We say, Hedgehog, come out
Of yourself and we will love you.
We mean no harm. We want

Only to listen to what
You have to say. We want
Your answers to our questions.

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The hedgehog gives nothing

Away, keeping itself to itself.
We wonder what a hedgehog
Has to hide, why it so distrusts.
We forget the god

Under this crown of thorns.
We forget that never again
Will a god trust in the world.
(((((****)))))
Summary
In Paul Muldoon’s “Hedgehog” he describes the distrusting nature of the hedgehog. He compares
the hedgehog to the snail, saying they both “share [a] secret” (lines 3-4). Muldoon carries the image
of the secretive hedgehog throughout the entire poem and in the last stanza, he makes a connection
from the hedgehog to a Christ-like figure, saying “We forget the god/Under this crown of thorns.
We forget that never again/Will a god trust in the world” (lines 17-20).
Muldoon describes the hedgehog as distrusting and portrays this claim through its ability to
become concave, curling itself into a ball with the needles pointing outward for protection. He
employs a conversation between mankind and the hedgehog by writing “We say, Hedgehog, come
out/Of yourself and we will love you” (lines 7-8).
By creating a dialogue, Muldoon makes the reader think about hedgehogs in a more personal way,
as if they could talk. He creates the image of a speaking hedgehog, and what, if anything, would it
say? How would we gain trust of a hedgehog?
I think Muldoon creates this personification on purpose. I think he wants the reader to think deeper
about what it means to trust, and to gain one’s trust. He wants to make the reader think about how
ruining trust, or dealing with someone who is void of trust, is important in creating and maintaining
a relationship.
I think Muldoon effectively creates a subtle personification of the hedgehog, and efficiently uses
metaphors, all the way from the “snail like a/Hovercraft” (lines 1-2), to the hedgehog being a “god”
(line 17).
Analysis
"Why start out with a snail? comparative metaphor and how to read the poem -- absurd but
somewhat reasoned images." That's the first comment past me put on this poem. Well, I'm
pretty sure from the first stanza no one could guess where this poem ends up, but it makes sense
when a reader goes back to the beginning and reads the poem again. But the comparative
metaphor, the absurd, the images -- those are important aspects in this poem.
"Why start out with a snail?" Yes, this comment is about the first stanza. The image of the snail
is compared to a hovercraft -- and although the images are surreal, the important line here is,
"Rubber cushion of itself, / Sharing its secret" The last line is the change of tempo from image

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to rhetoric / however, the cushion of itself blends in two concepts -- the physical and the self and
here the real thread goes through.
But first, the thread of the "secret." The next stanza focuses on the hedgehog, "shares its secret
with no one." The introduction of the "we" in the third line of the second stanza puts the reader
and the speaker at the reader vantage point -- that means the speaker is inferring the metaphors
and images, rather than implying. What's the difference? Focus and power. The image and the
rhetoric come first, and with the statement of the speaker as part of the collective "we" then
there's a tension between sides building up.
"We say, Hedgehog, come out / Of yourself and we will love you." This is also the only time
that "Hedgehog" is capitalized, also the speaker wants couples two things together -- "come out
/of yourself" seems to be the equivalent to the "secret." And exposure of the self -- we will love
the exposed self.
The third stanza focuses on what the "audience" wants from the hedgehog -- to listen, to gain
answers to "our questions." A focus on the audience builds the tension as what "we" ask, the
hedgehog responds by, "The hedgehog gives nothing / Away, keeping itself to itself." The "we"
wants and the "hedgehog" doesn't give.
Absurd, right? Funny, a little. But the kind of light tone changes with this couplet, "We wonder
what a hedgehog / Has to hide, why it so distrusts us." A direct statement that questions intent.
Also, there is a shift from "the" to "a." Something specific to more of a generalization.
The last stanza ties in another metaphor to the situation:
We forget the god

under this crown of thorns.
We forget that never again
will a god trust in the world.
So, the direct jab to the Christian mythos of "crown of thorns" (Jesus/god) and the last line of "will
a god trust in the world" has some power through the rhetoric. But note that this powerful
statement doesn't have a strong sentiment behind it; rather the opposite. The claim is made through
loose visual association, and, to me, the lines come off as a light philosophical pondering brought
on by the absurd images rather than a pounding of a statement. Musing versus statement. "We
think" vs "We know".

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27. Simon Armitage: Biography and Poems Study Guide

Simon Armitage was born in West Yorkshire, England in 1963. He earned a BA from Portsmouth
University in geography, and an MS in social work from Manchester University, where he studied
the impact of televised violence on young offenders. He worked as a probation officer for six years
before focusing on poetry. In 2015, he was elected Oxford Professor of Poetry and in 2017 he was
appointed Professor of Poetry at the University of Leeds. In 2019 he was named UK Poet Laureate.
Known for his deadpan delivery, Armitage’s formally assured, often darkly comic poetry is
influenced by the work of Ted Hughes, W.H. Auden, and Philip Larkin. As a reviewer for
the PoetryArchive.org observed, “With his acute eye for modern life, Armitage is an updated
version of Wordsworth’s ‘man talking to men.’”
Armitage is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including The
Unaccompanied (2017); Paper Aeroplan: Selected Poems 1989–2014 (2014); Seeing
Stars (2010); Tyrannosaurus Rex Versus the Corduroy Kid (2006); The Shout: Selected
Poems (2005), which was short-listed for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Kid (1992),
which won the Forward Prize; and his first collection, Zoom! (1989), a Poetry Society Book
Choice. Several of his collections have also been short-listed for the Whitbread Prize and the T.S.
Eliot Prize. He has won an Eric Gregory Award and a Lannan Award, and was chosen as a Sunday
Times Author of the Year. His translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Night (2007) from Middle
English was selected as a Book of the Year by both the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times.
His other translations from medieval English include The Death of King Arthur (2011), which was
awarded the Poetry Society Choice Hay Medal for Poetry, and Pearl (2016).
Armitage has also published fiction, including the novels The White Stuff (2004) and Little Green
Man (2001), and the memoir All Points North (1998), which was chosen as a Yorkshire Post Book
of the Year. He has written extensively for radio, television, film, and theater, including the libretto
for the opera The Assassin Tree (2006), the play Mister Heracles (2000), based on Euripides’s The
Madness of Heracles, and the film Xanadu (1992). His radio play Black Roses: The Killing of
Sophie Lancaster (2011) was short-listed for the Ted Hughes Award as well as adapted for stage
and screen. He co-authored Moon Country (1996) with Glyn Maxwell, which retraced the 1936
travels of W.H. Auden and Louis MacNeice in Iceland. He co-edited, with Robert Crawford, The
Penguin Anthology of Poetry from Britain and Ireland Since 1945(1998), and edited Short and
Sweet: 101 Very Short Poems (1999).
His poetry is often influenced by music, a connection he pursues in his nonfiction book Gig (2008).
Armitage has also performed as a member of the band The Scaremongers.
He has taught at the University of Leeds, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and Manchester
Metropolitan University. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society for Literature. The recipient of
numerous honors and awards, Armitage was named the Millennium Poet in 1999 and a
Commander of the British Empire in 2010. In 2014 he was awarded the Cholmondeley Award.

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I Am Very Bothered
SIMON ARMITAGE- 1963-
I am very bothered when I think
of the bad things I have done in my life.
Not least that time in the chemistry lab
when I held a pair of scissors by the blades
and played the handles
in the naked lilac flame of the Bunsen burner;
then called your name, and handed them over.
O the unrivalled stench of branded skin
as you slipped your thumb and middle finger in,
then couldn’t shake off the two burning rings. Marked,
the doctor said, for eternity.
Don’t believe me, please, if I say
that was just my butterfingered way, at thirteen,
of asking you if you would marry me.
(((((****)))))

In this unconventional love poem, I am very bothered, the Speaker reveals how, in a bungled
attempt to show his attraction for a classmate, he ill-advertently scars her for life. It could be used
in a question regarding romantic love, and be about expressing regrets, complications or even
misunderstandings in relationships.
I’d say the most interesting thing about this particular Armitage poem is the way in which it follows the
traditional length of the romantic sonnet; although abandons all of the other usual facets. A sonnet professes
the poet’s love for the recipient and in a strange and unconventional way, this poem does exactly that. It
describes a juvenile love and the innocent disregard for consequences and the ‘butterfingered way[s]’ we
use to get attention when falling in–what we then are convinced is – love at a young age. The language used
massively juxtaposes what one would expect to find in the traditional sonnet; roses and wine are replaced
with white-hot scissors, Bunsen burners and ‘the stench of branded skin’ not quite the pinnacle of
conventional romance; and it is in some ways endearing how the speaker still holds some guilt over his
actions so many years into the future
Marriage is used as a covert motif throughout the poem and is finally professed as the speaker’s
intentions in the final line. Armitage refers to the victim of the speaker’s ‘butterfingered ways’ as
‘slipping [your] thumb and middle finger in / then couldn’t shake off the two burning rings.’ Now,
this particular line is a very interesting one. As opposed to the ring finger, Armitage puts emphasis
upon the fact that the unnamed girl is using other fingers to use the scissors, perhaps suggesting
that she is blatantly not ready for even contemplating the thought of marriage in the same way that
the speaker’s immature act proves his lack of readiness. Of course a lack of readiness for marriage
at the age of thirteen is to be both expected – to a degree – encouraged, but the following line

137
which depicts that the girl ‘couldn’t shake off the two burning rings, Marked / the doctor said, for
eternity’ seems to imply that just because these two are not ready for marriage in that present
moment, they are in some way destined for each other and ‘marked’ to be together.’ The speaker’s
anecdote of how he burned the hand of a girl he loved to draw her attention suggests an entirely
positive message overall; it denotes that an action does not have to be lavishly brimming with
romance for it to be romantic in itself uniquely.
The poem beings almost in a conversational style, taking the title of the poem as its opening. The
Speaker tells us that he is ‘bothered’ when he thinks upon ‘the bad things’ he has done, using the
simplistic language of right and wrong. Even the adjective ‘bad’ seems somewhat childish
but since he reveals that this event takes place in the ‘chemistry lab’, we know that he was a school boy at
the time. He then gives us a specific example of a ‘bad thing’. He tells us exactly how he engineered the
incident; and through the use of active verbs- ‘held’, ‘played’ ‘called’ and ‘handed’, it is clear that this is
not a spontaneous decision; it is hard to feel much sympathy for him as this is meticulously planned.
Sensuous language is employed to help us imagine the scene. We are alerted to danger as he holds
the scissors by their ‘blades’ and played the handles/in the naked lilac flame. There is something
almost luxuriant in the verb ‘played.’ This also suggests that it is ‘just a game’ but we fear what will happen
next. This long sentence, describing his actions scans over 5 lines.
He is taking his time, and we can almost see the shimmering flame. The fact that it is lilac, not
even orange, lends it an even more ferocious heat and the adjective ‘naked’ heightens the sense of
risk. As well as the alliteration of ‘b sounds’ in ‘Bunsen burner’ we hear the word ‘burn’ and
wonder what the Speaker is plotting to do.
The first line is almost shocking in its brutality, all the more so because the poet omits any mention of the
victim’s reaction. This use of omission or understatement makes us, the reader, imagine what happened,
which serves to intensify the horror. The line begins ‘O’, which is a literary device known as an apostrophe,
and is used here to add impact. Next it is the sense of smell which is channeled, and if we are to believe
what the Speaker says, this is unrivalled. We know exactly how serious this injury is by the use of the verb
‘branded.’ This is the only line in the poem which sounds like the traditional language used in conventional
love poetry.
In Shakespeare’s sonnets he often made comparisons, implying that the object of his affection was
superior to something else. However, this poem of Armitage’s has taken a twisted turn, as he
describes the smell of burnt flesh. It takes us into the murky world of medieval torture and the
harsh, cacophonous sound of ‘stench’ further accentuates this.
The reader feels more sickened still when reading the next line, as the unsuspecting
girl unwittingly takes the proffered items. The repetition of ‘burning’ re-emphasises the residual
heat, and of course the mention of rings makes us wince. Wedding rings are exchanged to express
love and never-ending devotion, unlike these permanent reminders of pain. We can feel something
of the girl’s agony as the rings refuse to budge. There is a juxtaposition between how easy it was
as she ‘slipped’ her thumb and finger in, and then her inability to ‘shake off the burning rings.’ A
full stop here provides the caesura pause; to suspend these agonising moments and etch them in
our minds. Our suspicions that this has been a serious injury is confirmed with the doctor’s

138
prognosis, that they will be ‘Marked,’ for eternity.’ Again, this line is delivered in a flat, matter-
of-fact tone. This story is simply being reported, as it happened, open and honest.
This 14-line long poem, I am very bothered is a sonnet, although it does not follow the traditional
rhyme scheme and is split into three uneven stanzas, of 7, 4, and 3 lines long. The Speaker breaks
too from the usually elevated style of writing often associated with love poetry. Armitage employs
‘plain English’ and straightforward language in his poem and makes must use of internal and half-
rhyme. It is these half-lines which give the poem its distinctive rhythm. Particularly when read
aloud, the reader knows instinctively where to pause and place the emphasis.

139
28. Sujata Bhatt: Biography and Poems Study Guide

Sujata Bhatt (b. 1956) grew up in Pune but emigrated with her family to the United States in 1968.
She studied in the States receiving an MFA from the University of Iowa and went on to be writer-
in-residence at the University of Victoria, Canada. More recently she was visiting fellow at
Dickinson College, Pennsylvania. She currently lives with her husband and daughter in Bremen,
Germany. Her first collection, Brunizem, won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize (Asia) and the
Alice Hunt Bartlett Award. Subsequent collections have been awarded a Poetry Book Society
Recommendation and in 1991 she received a Cholmondeley Award.
For Bhatt, language is synonymous with the tongue, the physical act of speaking. She has described
Gujarati and the Indian childhood it connects her to as "the deepest layer of my identity". However,
English has become the language she speaks every day and which she, largely, chooses to write
in. The repercussions of this divided heritage are explored in her work, most explicitly in 'Search
for My Tongue' which alternates between the two languages. The complex status of English - its
beauties and colonial implications - are also conveyed in the moving ironies of 'A Different
History' and 'Nanabhai Bhatt in Prison' about her grandfather who read Tennyson to comfort
himself during his incarceration by the British authorities. Such division finds geographical
expression in poems which explore ideas of home ('The One Who Goes Away') and question our
mental mapping of the world ('How Far East is it Still East?'). It's present too in her voice, with its
musical melding of Indian and American inflections.
However, it's in the non-verbal world of animals and plants that Bhatt finds a source of unity denied
to humans except for the very young, as in her poem 'The Stare' in which the 'monkey child' and
the 'human child' experience a moment of tender connection. Perhaps it is this longing for unity
which makes Bhatt's writing so sensual; her poems are rich with the smell of garlic, the touch of
bodies, the vibrant plumage of parrots. An intense colourist like the women artists who inspire
some of these poems, Bhatt acknowledges that language splits us from experience but through the
physical intensity of her writing brings us closer to it so that "the word/is the thing itself".
A Different History
SUJATA BHATT-
Great Pan is not dead;
he simply emigrated
to India.
Here, the gods roam freely,
disguised as snakes or monkeys;
every tree is sacred
and it is a sin
to be rude to a book.
It is a sin to shove a book aside
with your foot,

140
a sin to slam books down

hard on a table,
a sin to toss one carelessly
across a room.
You must learn how to turn the pages gently
without disturbing Sarasvati,
without offending the tree
from whose wood the paper was made.
Which language
has not been the oppressor’s tongue?
Which language
truly meant to murder someone?
And how does it happen
that after the torture,
after the soul has been cropped
with the long scythe swooping out
of the conqueror’s face –
the unborn grandchildren
grow to love that strange language.
(((((****)))))
A Different History written by Sujata Bhatt portrays the loss of language and cultures after
colonization in India. This poem describes the bitterness and sadness Bhatt felt about her mother
tongue and cultures. Bhatt explores the idea of history, culture and language throughout the poem.
Bhatt uses two enjambments in the poem. The first enjambment talks about the book, which
represents the culture and the way people should treat the books. The tone of voice used in the
second enjambment is more aggressive and critical, as it described the period of colonization when
the cultures and language were taken away by the conquerors.
There is no rhyme utilized throughout the poem. This shows that Bhatt wants to show how serious
and complex the problem is, wanting the readers to think of the loss of mother tongue and one’s
culture. Moreover, an irony is used throughout the whole poem. Bhatt, who cries for the loss of
language, used English to write the poem.
This indicates that she is one of those ‘unborn grandchildren’ who ‘grow to love that strange
language’ creating a sense of sadness, because even the author herself cannot speak Indian but
uses English – the ‘strange language’.
‘Great Pan is not dead; he simply emigrated to India’ tells that the cultures and religions are
transmitted across the globe. ‘Great pan’ symbolizes the pantheism existing in Indian religion
where everything has a god in charge of it, even human. Bhatt talks about the culture and lifestyle
moving with people by implying that God Pan is not seized to exist but simply moved to India.

141
This also indicates the similarity between the religions of the Eastern and the Western due to the
constant transmitting of cultures and lifestyles. ‘The god roams freely, disguised as snakes and
monkeys’ portrays the acceptance of new religion and cultures in India. ‘God’ represents the new
cultures and lifestyles. Snakes and monkeys were worshipped during the past time, as Indians
believed that there were god slaying on them. This indicates that Indians welcomed and
worshipped the new culture and lifestyles. This also exhibits the innocence of Indians who allowed
foreign religion to enter and ‘roam freely’ in India.
There is a repetition of ‘sin’ when the author lists the way people should treat the books. The word
‘sin’ reinforces the negative commentary and intensifies the critical tone of the poem. Bhatt uses
book as an example to show people that the cultures must be appreciated and treated carefully by
mentioning the tradition and custom of India in how to treat the book. Pantheism is, again,
underscored in ‘you must not learn how to turn the pages gently without disturbing Sarasvati’.
Sarasvati is a goddess of knowledge and art, who Indians believed to be laying on the book. Bhatt
is telling the people that people should treat books just as the way people treat the goddess of
knowledge, highlighting the importance of god and the way people should treat them. It also
depicts the emancipation of freedom in valuing one’s culture but not liberating oneself with
selfishness.
There is a sudden change in the tone of voice in the second enjambment; it is more hostile and
aggressive. This change is supported by the rhetorical questions: ‘which language has not been the
oppressor’s tongue? Which language truly meant to murder someone?’ This creates a sense of
uncertainty and infuriation, which the author felt about the colonization. Bhatt describes her
depressions as she realizes that there are neither the oppressors not the oppressed. No one means
to be any of those – no one can be blamed. In addition, the repetition of ‘which language’ enhances
the sense of criticalness and uncertainty in her expression. The repetition and rhetorical questions
lead the readers to feel the shamefaced of human history.
Further sense of torment is created in ‘and how does it happen that after the torture, after the soul
has been cropped with a long scythe swooping out of the conqueror’s face’. ‘Soul’ symbolizes the
self-esteem of Indians for being able to speak Indian and follow the Indian culture. Scythe is a tool
used to harvest crops by hand, which obviously takes much longer time than by machine. ‘Scythe’
in this phrase represents the colonization and injustice. This shows that the colonization has cut
out the ‘soul’ of Indian by forbidding the cultures and language. This also reveals that Indians
suffered long time during the colonization.
Final tone of the poem is made in the last two lines: ‘the unborn grandchildren grow to love that
strange language’. Sense of sadness and uncertainty are enhanced as it described Bhatt’s
realization of cultural consequences such as the colonization does not ruin one’s history but begins
a new era where a new generation of ‘unborn grandchildren’ grow ‘to love that strange language’
– the inevitability of cultural change.
Sujata Bhatt explores the theme of cultural consequence and the loss of language and cultures
throughout the poem by describing he feeling about her lost mother tongue and culture. This poem
leads the readers to think back about their own history, which may either be painful or happy.

142
29. Mahmoud Darwish: Biography and Poems Study Guide

Palestinian Mahmoud Darwish was born in al-Birwa in Galilee, a village that was occupied and
later razed by the Israeli army. Because they had missed the official Israeli census, Darwish and
his family were considered “internal refugees” or “present-absent aliens.” Darwish lived for many
years in exile in Beirut and Paris. He is the author of over 30 books of poetry and eight books of
prose, and earned the Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize from the Lannan Foundation, the Lenin
Peace Prize, and the Knight of Arts and Belles Lettres Medal from France.
In the 1960s Darwish was imprisoned for reciting poetry and traveling between villages without a
permit. Considered a “resistance poet,” he was placed under house arrest when his poem “Identity
Card” was turned into a protest song. After spending a year at a university of Moscow in 1970,
Darwish worked at the newspaper Al-Ahram in Cairo. He subsequently lived in Beirut, where he
edited the journal Palestinian Affairs from 1973 to 1982. In 1981 he founded and edited the
journal Al-Karmel. Darwish served from 1987 to 1993 on the executive committee of the
Palestinian Liberation Organization. In 1996 he was permitted to return from exile to visit friends
and family in Israel and Palestine.
Mahmoud Darwish’s early work of the 1960s and 1970s reflects his unhappiness with the
occupation of his native land. Carolyn Forché and Runir Akash noted in their introduction
to Unfortunately It Was Paradise (2003) that “as much as [Darwish] is the voice of the Palestinian
Diaspora, he is the voice of the fragmented soul.” Forché and Akash commented also on his 20th
volume, Mural: “Assimilating centuries of Arabic poetic forms and applying the chisel of modern
sensibility to the richly veined ore of its literary past, Darwish subjected his art to the impress of
exile and to his own demand that the work remain true to itself, independent of its critical or public
reception.”
Poet Naomi Shihab Nye commented on the poems in Unfortunately It Was Paradise: “[T]he style
here is quintessential Darwish—lyrical, imagistic, plaintive, haunting, always passionate, and
elegant—and never anything less than free—what he would dream for all his people.” Mahmoud
Darwish died in 2008 in Houston, Texas.
If I Were Another
MAHMOUD DARWISH-1941-2008, translated by Fady Joudah
If I were another on the road, I would not have looked
back, I would have said what one traveler said
to another: Stranger! awaken
the guitar more! Delay our tomorrow so our road
may extend and space may widen for us, and we may get rescued
from our story together: you are so much yourself ... and I am
so much other than myself right here before you!
If I were another I would have belonged to the road,

143
neither you nor I would return. Awaken the guitar

and we might sense the unknown and the route that tempts
the traveler to test gravity. I am only
my steps, and you are both my compass and my chasm.
If I were another on the road, I would have
hidden my emotions in the suitcase, so my poem
would be of water, diaphanous, white,
abstract, and lightweight ... stronger than memory,
and weaker than dewdrops, and I would have said:
My identity is this expanse!
If I were another on the road, I would have said

to the guitar: Teach me an extra string!
Because the house is farther, and the road to it prettier—
that’s what my new song would say. Whenever
the road lengthens the meaning renews, and I become two
on this road: I ... and another!
(((((****)))))
Mahmoud Darwish has been Palestine’s de facto poet laureate for decades. A new posthumous
collection of poems, If I Were Another, selected and translated by Fady Joudah, provides readers
with a carefully chosen intellectual continuum of Darwish’s thought through the last 18 years of
his life. As is evident in every line of every poem, Darwish was a poet who never stopped evolving,
and his two near-death experiences (1984, 1999) become points of reference and reflection for
greater art and landmark poetic accomplishment.
Joudah is an accomplished poet in his own right, and has already received acclaim for his
translation of Darwish’s Butterfly’s Burden. In presenting these later works, which investigate the
pain, anxiety and complexity of exile, Joudah has clearly taken pains to carry through the density
of Darwish’s rolling, ever-changing lines. The result is a highly readable book of poetry, even for
someone like me, with only an American-level understanding of the Palestinians’ struggle for a
peaceful homeland.
If peace is stillness, then the reader of If I Were Another is made to see how it is impossible in
Darwish’s world. There is constant flux, so much so that a reader might occasionally feel
disoriented and disembodied. Every time Darwish seems to stand on something solid, some truth
or moment, it is immediately overwhelmed, overcome and discarded. Darwish’s notions of self,
his images of gardens, grass, animals, skies and oceans come from a fundamentally unique
perspective embodied in mystery, fundamental sympathy and constant contradiction. In the love
poem “Rita’s Winter,” for example, romantic passion – the urge to blend with another person – is
matched with the omnipresent fact of individualism:
Rita sleeps in her body’s garden
the berries on the fence of her nails light up the salt
in my blood. I love you. Two birds slept under my hands…
The noble wheat wave slept on her slow breathing
a red rose slept in the hallway
a night that isn’t long slept

144
and the sea in front of my window slept to Rita’s cadence

rising and falling in the rays of her naked chest
so sleep, Rita, in the middle of me and you and don’t cover
the deep golden darkness between us
sleep with one hand around echo and the other
scattering the solitude of the forests
sleep between the pistachio shirt and the lemon seat
like a mare upon the banners of her wedding night…
The neighing has quieted
the beehives in our blood have died down, but was Rita
here, and were we together?
Romantic passion is all the more urgent when one recognizes that two bodies can never truly
merge. Independence is central in Darwish, much as it is in Whitman: it is an essential stopping
point, the only conception that allows for understanding of, or relationships with, others and the
world. There are undeniable echoes of Whitman in the book-length poem “Mural,” one of the only
great poems published so far this century. Like Whitman, Darwish identifies that things are
defined by their contradictions:
I come from there. My here leaps
from my steps to my imagination…
I am who I was and who I will be,
the endless vast space makes me
and destroys me
Here cannot exist without there, light cannot exist without dark, life and death are two words for
the same phenomenon. What remains is self: the single poet attempts speaking for all, and finds
that his own profound limitation – his intrinsic smallness – might be what allows him to do so:
And the poet says: Take my poem if you want,
there’s nothing in it for me besides you,
take your “I.” I will complete exile
with the messages your hands have left for the doves.
Which one of us is “I” that I may become its other?
And later,
I found myself as present as a filled absence.
Whenever I searched for myself I found
the others. Whenever I searched for the others I found
only my stranger self in them,
so am I the one, the multitude?
Contradictions form a metaphysical whole, and allow for transcendent oppenness – “I” am
profoundly isolated, individual as any human, including “you,” and on these terms, you and I
are one. Like Whitman (“Do I contradict myself? / Very well then….I contradict myself; / I am
large….I contain multitudes”), Darwish finds the impossible contradiction that the singular
individual is component of a singular universe. The individual, through essential singularity,
speaks to all-encompassing unity built upon the pairing of contradictions. Call the result yin yang,
universe, self, even deity.

145
But Darwish expands upon the Whitman model with his unrelenting focus on the concept of exile
both political and metaphysical. His obsession with contradiction presents exile in the
metaphysical; life cannot exist without death, for example, so when one is alive, one is exiled from
death – when one is dead, exiled from life. Darwish drives home with frightening diligence and
accuracy how very little one knows about oneself or the directions one’s life will take. There is a
constant movement in our lives; our level of control over it is minimal, and we are never capable
of any sort of genuine “return.” This is undoubtedly an exile theme, raised to the level of the
human condition:
There isn’t enough life to pull my end towards my beginning. The shepherds took my story and
infiltrated the grass that grows over the beauty of ruins. They overcame forgetfulness with
trumpets and radiant rhymed prose, then bequeathed me the hoarseness of memory on farewell’s
stone and didn’t return…
(“Mural”)
But exile is meant literally as well. Darwish is very interested in the concept of naming, or labeling,
a person or thing (“Mural” opens with a birth: “This is your name / a woman said / and disappeared
in the spiraling corridor”). Yet to be named one thing is to be branded, and to not be named another
thing; to be native of one country is to not be native to another – and to be exiled from a homeland
can mean being stripped of whatever identity you thought that you had. Darwish obsessively
navigates this balance: identities are in some sense accidental or arbitrary, but this does not make
them meaningless. One name might be as good as another, and the same would be true of national
identity, if not for the violent, corruptive forces that impose their will upon whole populations of
individuals and make it harder and harder to try and live a life, let alone discover a self.
Where Whitman’s terrestrial expanse tended to account for the promise of the then-nubile United
States, Darwish stretches around the globe. His references to the West are not antagonistic; he
represents another culture, not an opposition culture. He is often political, but is not dependent on
being pro-Palestinian or anti-Western. He comfortably references Sophocles, the Bible, the Koran,
Saladin and more. He is not stuck in the modern conception of a juggernaut “West” with all other
cultures in some degree of orbit:
And if this autumn is the final autumn, let us move away
from the sky of exile and from others’ trees. We grow a little older
and didn’t notice the wrinkles in the flute’s timbre…the road lengthened
and we didn’t admit we were on the marching path to Caesar. We
didn’t notice
the poem as it emptied its folk of their sentiments to widen its shores
and pitch our tent where the wars of Athens with Persia,
Iraq with Egypt, tossed us. We love the plow more than
we love the sword, we love the autumn air, we love the rain.
(“We Will Choose Sophocles”)
There may be some subtle suggestion in Darwish’s frequent referencing of Rome, but poems like
“We Will Choose Sophocles” show cross-cultural interest. The poet’s access to all cultures and
none adds to the feeling of permanent exile:
Where is the road to anything? I see the unseen clearer than
a street no longer mine. Who am I after the stranger’s night?

146
I used to walk to the self along with others, and here I am

losing the self and others. My horse on the Atlantic coast disappeared
and my horse on the Mediterranean thrusts the Crusader’s spear in me.
Who am I after the stranger’s night? I cannot return
to my brothers near the palm tree of my ancient house, and I cannot
come down
to the bottom of my pit. O the unseen! There is no heart for love…no
heart for love in which I can dwell after the stranger’s night…
(“Eleven Planets and the End of the Andalusian Scene, part vii: Who Am I After the Stranger’s
Night?”)
This confusion of constant exile manifests itself in the construction of Darwish’s poems. Nearly
all are at least several pages long (often much longer), cyclical and self-referencing. Each poem’s
structure draws out of the reader what Darwish intends to communicate: confusion that is at turns
blissful, and at turns devastating. In Part 1 of Exile, titled “Tuesday and the Weather is Clear,” he
writes:
I walk lightly and grow older by ten minutes,
by twenty, sixty, I walk and life diminishes
in me gently as a slight cough does.
I think: what if I lingered, what
if I stopped? Would I stop time?
Would I bewilder death? I mock the notion
and ask myself: Where do you walk to
composed like an ostrich? I walk
as if life is about to amend its shortcomings.
And I don’t look behind, for I can’t return
to anything, and I can’t masquerade as another.
Repetition, refrain, rhetorical question and (in many other cases) sprawling lines sychronize with
the notion that space and time are fused, immeasurable, mutating. One is always in a state of exile.
At many points in If I Were Another, the setting becomes a nothingness which is only an extension
of the speaker and his present company, who could be a friend, father, Death, or another
self. “Dense Fog Over the Bridge” shows Darwish’s constant identity crisis in which he is all
other people, not himself, himself again, no one, everyone, and on:
I said: Don’t bet on the realistic,
you won’t find the thing alive like its image
waiting for you. Time domesticates
even the mountains, which become higher, or lower
than what you knew them to be,
so where does the bridge take us?
He said: Have we been that long on this road?
I said: Is the fog that dense on the bridge: how
many years have you resembled me?
He said: How many years have you been me?
I said: I don’t remember.
He said: I remember only the road.

147
The flux of existence is ceaseless, personal, and universal. One thing remains fixed in Darwish’s
centerless world and that is poetry. Darwish seems to say that, for right or wrong, poetry is the
song we instill in life. Passively waiting for inspiration from the world is pointless. One must
actively push to imbue life with value; if doing so is delusional, it presents our greatest delusion:
If the canary doesn’t sing,
my friend,
blame only yourself.
If the canary doesn’t sing
to you, my friend,
then sing to it…sing to it.
(“Tuesday and the Weather is Clear”)
Where other recent translations of “Mural” have comes across as strained, even claustrophobic,
Joudah’s translation allows private access to the fluidity and expanse of one the great artistic minds
of the modern era. Mahmoud Darwish’s late poetry, spilling over with hard beauty and visceral
philosophy, is essential.
Digitally signed by Rozi Khan
Rozi
DN: cn=Rozi Khan gn=Rozi
Khan c=US United States
l=US United States ou=HED
e=rozikhan782@hotmail.com
Reason: I am the author of
this document
Khan Location:
Date: 2019-08-22
21:16+05:00

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Digitally signed by Rozi Khan

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1. Ezra Pound: Biography and Poems Study Guide

2. To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation.

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In a Station of the Metro (1913)

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Tree you are,

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2. Robert Frost: Biography and Poems Study Guide

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‘What is it—what?’ she said.

‘You don’t,’ she challenged. ‘Tell me what it is.’

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‘The wonder is I didn’t see at once.

‘Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t,’ she cried.

She withdrew shrinking from beneath his arm

‘Not you! Oh, where’s my hat? Oh, I don’t need it!

‘Amy! Don’t go to someone else this time.

‘You don’t know how to ask it.’

‘Help me, then.’

Her fingers moved the latch for all reply.

‘My words are nearly always an offense.

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Anything special you’re a-mind to name.

‘There you go sneering now!’

‘I’m not, I’m not!

‘You can’t because you don't know how to speak.

‘I shall laugh the worst laugh I ever laughed.

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I’m cursed. God, if I don’t believe I’m cursed.’

‘I can repeat the very words you were saying:

‘There, you have said it all and you feel better.

‘You—oh, you think the talk is all. I must go—

‘If—you—do!’ She was opening the door wider.

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ROBERT FROST- 1874-1963

And when I come to the garden ground,

A tree beside the wall stands bare,

I end not far from my going forth

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3. W. H. Auden: Biography and Poems Study Guide

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Far from his illness

But for him it was his last afternoon as himself,

Now he is scattered among a hundred cities

But in the importance and noise of to-morrow

What instruments we have agree

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With the farming of a verse

In the deserts of the heart

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4. W. B. Yeats: Biography and Poems Study Guide

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Leda and the Swan