Poetic Analysis

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Poetic Analysis

Monday, November 23, 2015 "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" by Dylan ThomasBorn in Wales on October 27, 1914, Dylan Thomas was a well known poet and journalist. He wrote much as a teenager, and was even published for some of it, but his "Light breaks where no sun shines" is what brought him to fame initially. Thomas was often called a drunk which led to his marriage with Caitlin Macnamara to be weak. Even though successful as a poet, Thomas struggled to provide for himself, so he took up various jobs that increased his popularity. He died November 9, 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 theyDo not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how brightTheir frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sightBlind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.Do not go gentle into that good night.Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
The form Thomass poem takes is that of a villanelle, a nineteen line poem with a very specific structure in the sense of rhyme and repetition. This type of poem consists of five tercets, a quatrain, and includes two lines acting as the refrain. The rhyme scheme is aba which repeats in the other tercets, but the final stanza ends with an extra a. Through the use of such a narrowly ranging rhyme scheme, the attention of the reader is drawn to the end of each line, curious of what new word will be written, effectively encouraging the reader to want to continue reading. The two lines of the refrain are each written four times in the poem, often concluding each stanza. The idea is to have a refrain with such a profound meaning that it can begin the poem as well as close it. The refrain must be carefully selected, too, so that after each stanza it is used in, a new interpretation can be applied. In this instance, the refrain conveys the message to never forfeit without giving everything first. Although meter is not a requirement in a villanelle, Thomas writes Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night in iambic pentameter, creating a simple, steady beat. In the second line of the refrain, however, Rage, rage is a spondee that diverges from this pattern and directs the readers focus on these words that are meant to excite and inspire them to not go gentle into that good night.Posted byUnknownat5:40 PM2 comments: Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to FacebookShare to PinterestLabels:form,iambic pentameter,meter,repetition,rhyme,spondee,stanza,villanelle Thursday, November 19, 2015 "The Twenty-third Psalm" by AnonymousComing from the Book of Psalms from the Bible, there is no accepted author. Although some believe many psalms were King David, many only accept the fact that the writer(s) was anonymous and inspired by God as they wrote.

The Lord is my shepherd: I shall not want:He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: He leadeth me beside still waters,He restoreth my soul, He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness, For His names sake.Yea, though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no eveil, For Thou are near me.Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.Thou prepares a table before me in the presence of mine enemies; Thou anointest my head with oil; My cup runneth over.Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever I will dwell with him forever.
Due to the fact that this poem originates from the Book of Psalms, the reader should immediately be aware of the likelihood of there being a religious message and reference to God. The metaphor within the poem is clearly stated in the first line, The Lord is my shepherd. Comparing God to a shepherd does two things. The first thing is that it forms the metaphor which is expanded on throughout the poem. This metaphor explains that Gods followers are the sheep, and He will lead them to Heaven if they follow. He is always at the side of anyone in need to reassure them that all will be alright as long as they follow. He will keep them safe. Of all of the lifestyles and jobs to equate God to, a shepherd is most accurate because of the connotation that it carries. A shepherd is someone who is strong enough to lead a herd safely but still gentle enough to tend to a fragile lamb. The second thing comparing God to a shepherd does is convert the shepherd into a symbol. God the Father can be considered a shepherd because Jesus is most commonly described as the Lamb of God, and because we are the children of God just like Jesus, who is His literal child, we too can be seen as the lambs of God. The shepherd then, becomes a symbol for God.Posted byUnknownat8:05 PM1 comment: Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to FacebookShare to Pinterest Monday, November 16, 2015 "At the San Francisco Airport" by Yvor WintersYvor Winters was born October 17, 1900 in Chicago but moved to California for his childhood. He attended the University of Chicago, the University of Colorado, and Stanford. During this time, he overcame tuberculosis, worked as a poet, and also taught. Winters met his wife, Janet Lewis, at college who also became poet. In 1961, he was awarded the Bollingen Prize for Poetry for his peice Collected Poems. He died January 25, 1968.
To my daughter, 1954
This is the terminal: the lightGives perfect vision, false and hard;The metal glitters, deep and bright.Great planes are waiting in the yardThey are already in the night.
And you are here beside me, small,Contained and fragile, and intentOn things that I but half recallYet going whither you are bent.I am the past, and that is all.
But you and I in part are one:The frightened brain, the nervous will,The knowledge of what must be done,The passion to acquire the skillTo face that which you dare not shun.
The rain of matter upon senseDestroys me momently. The score:There comes what will come. The expenseIs what one thought, and something moreOnes being and intelligence.
This is the terminal, the break.Beyond this point, on lines of air,You take the way that you must take;And I remain in light and stareIn light, and nothing else, awake.
The title establishes the setting of poem to be at the airport. The connotation of an airport presents a vast variety of possibilities occurring. These possibilities would be that someone is either leaving or returning home or someone is there to witness another arrive or depart. The first stanza describes the terminal itself with a sense of awe at the lights, the metal, and the planes. It also states that the temporal setting is night which has a negative connotation. Not only does night often foreshadow an unfortunate event taking pace, but the darkness also creates a sense of mystery, or unsureness of what may come. Clearly, second stanza is focused on the speakers daughter, made evident by her description with delicate words. Therefore, the mother feels protective that her daughter is leaving, for she believes she could be too young. At the same time, though, the mother recognizes she must leave to find her own future, and in the third stanza, she notes the features of her daughter that remind her of herself. The fourth stanza demonstrates the pain the mother is feeling as she watches her daughter leave with powerful words such as destroys me. The final stanza contains the daughter departing and the mother staying behind in the light. By beginning this stanza the same as the first, the author compares the darkness of night and the light she is under. The daughter is leaving into the darkness, an uncertain path that can take her any way she chooses. The mother stands in the light with no more uncertainty in the direction her life is heading.Posted byUnknownat7:25 PM3 comments: Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to FacebookShare to PinterestLabels:connotation,denotation,diction,language Saturday, November 14, 2015 "The Night-Wind" by Emily BronteEmily Bronte was born on July 30, 1818. Northern England. She was one of 4 children to survive to childhood. Her two sisters, Anne and Charlotte, are now well known poets and novelists just like Emily. Emily lived only until age thirty when she died from tuberculosis three months after her brother. She wrote only one novel in her lifetime, Wuthering Height, which is considered a classic in English Literature. She also wrote several poems under the pseudonyms Ellis Bell.

In summer's mellow midnight,
A cloudless moon shone throughOur open parlour window,And rose-trees wet with dew.
I sat in silent musing;The soft wind waved my hair;It told me heaven was glorious,And sleeping earth was fair.

I needed not its breathing
To bring such thoughts to me;But still it whispered lowly,How dark the woods will be!
"The thick leaves in my murmurAre rustling like a dream,And all their myriad voicesInstinct with spirit seem."
I said, "Go, gentle singer,Thy wooing voice is kind:But do not think its musicHas power to reach my mind.
"Play with the scented flower,The young tree's supple bough,And leave my human feelingsIn their own course to flow."
The wanderer would not heed me;Its kiss grew warmer still."O come!" it sighed so sweetly;"I'll win thee 'gainst thy will.
"Were we not friends from childhood?
Have I not loved thee long?As long as thou, the solemn night,Whose silence wakes my song.
"And when thy heart is restingBeneath the church-aisle stone,I shall have time for mourning,And thou for being alone."


The two characters in this poem are the person and the wind. Because of the way the person describes the spatial setting such in a gentle way, one can assume it is a woman. This spatial setting is in a parlor near a forest. The temporal setting does not specify the year in which the poem is taking place, but what is given is the time of year. It is nighttime on a calm and peaceful summer day without a cloud in the sky. The moon is lighting the sky as a faint breeze caresses the woman. This breeze tempts the woman to come out into the dark forest, to get lost in the wilderness and in nature. The wind then can be seen as an extended metaphor for the womans imagination that is trying to dominate her thoughts. The situation, therefore, is the woman resisting the wind, or her imagination, consuming her mind. She is trying to keep her mind from going off on a tangent and daydreaming the night away. When taking into consideration the historical context, this fear of having unique, individualized thoughts as a woman becomes more understandable. In the 1840s when Bronte wrote this piece, women had significantly less of a role in society than today, so a different lens must be looked through to derive the meaning of the poem, a lens where women were raised to be less independent. This is why she resists the wind, her imagination, even when it was so tempting to her.Posted byUnknownat3:40 PMNo comments: Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to FacebookShare to PinterestLabels:conceit,context,situation,spatial setting,temporal setting Monday, November 9, 2015 "Hanging Fire" by Audre LordeAudre Lorde was a proclaimed supporter of civilrights, homosexuality, feminism, often writing about one, if not more, into herworks. Her main focus in writing was on poetry and essays which encapsulatedher views and injustices she witnessed in the world. She is known for herstrong use of pathos, or emotional appeal, in her pieces to express the fervorshe had for the topic.
I am fourteenand my skin hasbetrayed methe boy I cannotlive withoutstill sucks histhumbin secrethow come my kneesarealways so ashywhat if I diebefore morningand momma's in thebedroomwith the doorclosed.
I have to learn howto dancein time for thenext partymy room is toosmall for mesuppose I diebefore graduationthey will sing sadmelodiesbut finallytell the truthabout meThere is nothing Iwant to doand too muchthat has to be doneand momma's in thebedroomwith the doorclosed.
Nobody even stopsto thinkabout my side of itI should have beenon Math Teammy marks werebetter than hiswhy do I have to bethe onewearing bracesI have nothing towear tomorrowwill I live longenoughto grow upand momma's in thebedroomwith the doorclosed.
In order to understand the meaning of a poem, onemust first determine the tone of the piece. Before one can decide on what thetone is, however, the speaker must be identified. Hanging Fire by Audre Lordeis a poem written in the first person point of view from the perspective of a fourteenyear old girl, as stated in the first line, who seems overwhelmed by theconflicts she is having to face through puberty. She is the speaker. The stylein which this work is written is a stream of consciousness. In other words, thepoem is written as though it were directly the thoughts of the teenage girl. Thisis apparent from the sudden jumps between what she is thinking about and the lackof punctuation aside from the period at the end of each stanza. With thespeaker now addressed, the tone can be accurately described as despondent anddismal. The main portion of the poem is the girl finding flaws withherself. Whether it is physical, not making a team, or even who she fell in love with, she is incredibly critical. Also in each of the three stanzas, thegirl contemplates how people would be affected if she were to die, a topic no adolescentshould have to consider. All of the stanzas conclude with the same two linessaying her mother is away in the bedroom. One way this could be interpreted is that her mother, being locked in the bedroom, is rarely a part of her life, and the lack of mention of her father means he also is not in her life. Lorde uses the thoughtsof a distraught and depressed teenage girl to convey how hard a young girl ison herself, and how that is exacerbated in a broken home.Posted byUnknownat8:06 PM1 comment: Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to FacebookShare to PinterestLabels:repetition,speaker,stream of consciousness,style,tone,voice Friday, November 6, 2015 "Those Winter Sundays" by Robert HaydenRobert Hayden was born August 4, 1913 and died on February 25, 1980. His childhood was difficult because he was raised in a poor part of Detriot where he bounced between houses of his parents and of foster homes. After attending the Universtiy of Michigan and Wayne State University, he taught at Michigan, then at Fick University, and then again at Michigan. By 1976, Hayden became the first African American to be named as, what is known today as, the U.S. Poet Laureate. He died in Ann Arbor at the age of sixty-six.

Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, then with cracked hands that ached banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him. from labor in the weekday weather made 
When the rooms were warm, hed call, Id wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. and slowly I would rise and dress, who had driven out the cold fearing the chronic angers of that house, Speaking indifferently to him, and polished my good shoes as well. of loves austere and lonely offices? What did I know, what did I know of love's austere and lonely offices?In Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden, the theme of the poem can only be derived if the reader takes into consideration the tone in which Hayden is writing. With careful use of diction, Hayden looks back at all the things his father did for him with a sense of remorse rather than nostalgia. The poem begins with Sundays too instead of On Sundays because he wants to show the reader that his father did these little acts for him, not just on some days, but on every day of the week including Sunday, the one day that people usually do not and relax. This poem is reflecting on how Haydens father would work so hard for him, but at the time Hayden did not recognize how caring he was being. The first stanza ends with the telegraphic sentence, No one ever thanked him. Ending a stanza with such brevity usually means it is an important point the author wants the reader to consider. In this case, the sentence has two effects on the reader. First, it shows the remorse in Haydens voice because when people are sad or reflecting on an upsetting memory, they tend to be short. Second, the reader begins to wonder if his father has passed away. If this is indeed what has happened, part of the reason Hayden is so distressed about this subject is because now that he realizes all that his father did for him, he will never have the chance to thank him for it. This tone of regret is consistent throughout the whole poem and defines the theme of the poem which is to recognize what we have and be thankful for it. 

Posted byUnknownat5:40 PM1 comment: Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to FacebookShare to PinterestLabels:alliteration,diction,repetition,theme,tone Monday, November 2, 2015 "Ars Poetica" by Archibald MacLeishArchibald MacLeish,May 7, 1892 April 20, 1982, was an American poet who wrote "Ars Poetica" in 1926 as a tribute and interpretation of Horace's poem, "Ars Poetica." Graduating first in his class from Yale and Harvard, MacLeish went on to serve in Wold War I. After this, he became the Librarian of Congress who has the power to choose the U.S. Poet Laureate. He then worked as a collegeprofessor and, by the end of his life, had accumulated three Pulitzer Awards recognizing him as a writer and a poet.
A poem should be palpable and mute As a globed fruit,DumbAs old medallions to the thumb,Silent as the sleeve-worn stoneOf casement ledges where the moss has grownA poem should be wordlessAs the flight of birds.*A poem should be motionless in timeAs the moon climbs,Leaving, as the moon releasesTwig by twig the night-entangled trees,Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,Memory by memory the mindA poem should be motionless in timeAs the moon climbs.*A poem should be equal to:Not true.For all the history of griefAn empty doorway and a maple leaf.For loveThe leaning grasses and two lights above the seaA poem should not mean But be.
In the original Ars Poetica, Horace goes into great detail about the different aspects of poetry and how poems should be written. This work is 476 lines of Horace teaching the reader how to properly write poetry in his opinion. Archibald MacLeish takes the concept of what Horace is trying to convey and puts his own personal touch on it. In his short, twenty-four line poem, MacLeish avoids telling the reader about all of the different traditional structures poetry should include. Instead, he emphasizes the effect poetry should have on a reader. He does not talk about what the poem should include in a literal sense, but rather he states how it should feel in the figurative sense.


Throughout the poem, MacLeish compare poetry to fruit, coins, ledges, birds flying, and the moon in the form of similes. By comparing poetry to so many vastly different objects, MacLeish shows that every poem should be and will be unique. He wants poetry to be eternal and be motionless in time. The only way to achieve this is to withdraw from writing poems with meaning and try to write them to include feeling. He wants poetry to be something that conveys more than just a message. In the last two lines, he writes, A poem should not mean/But be. By saying this, MacLeish is instructing poets to, instead of writing poetry about a lesson that might become irrelevant with time, write poetry to evoke emotions that are timeless.Posted byUnknownat7:27 PM1 comment: Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to FacebookShare to PinterestLabels:alliteration,anaphora,parallelism,personification,repetition,simile HomeSubscribe to:Posts (Atom)About MeUnknownView my complete profileBlog Archive 2015(7) November(7)Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night by Dylan T...The Twenty-third Psalm by AnonymousAt the San Francisco Airport by Yvor WintersThe Night-Wind by Emily BronteHanging Fire by Audre LordeThose Winter Sundays by Robert HaydenArs Poetica by Archibald MacLeish

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