Questions tagged [poetry]
Questions about poetry in general or about any specific poem. Please use this tag with the appropriate author tag, and, if applicable, a language tag (such as [french-literature].
537
questions
4
votes
0answers
19 views
Poem-parody about O'Hare airport, written as though it were the Odyssey
I'm trying to find a poem that I'm relatively certainly was published in The New Yorker. I think I read it around 10 years ago, but definitely a margin of error of a couple of years on either side of ...
5
votes
1answer
389 views
What is the “a-” prefix in “a-flying” and “a-getting” in Herrick's “To the Virgins”?
From Robert Herrick's "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time":
Gather ye Rose-buds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to day,
To morrow will ...
10
votes
2answers
778 views
Is there a term for epic poetry’s detailed, successive introductions of multiple characters?
I’ve noticed a topos in a few epic poems I’ve read where a long list of characters is given, each receiving practically a paragraph of description. In The Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes, Jason’s ...
1
vote
0answers
30 views
Why does Sir Harry like Matthias's poem and not Basil's?
In Mattimeo, Chapter 29, the rescuers' party encounters Sir Harry, an owl who speaks in poetry for much of his dialogue. For one example, this is how he introduces himself:
"Why, pray, do you ...
1
vote
1answer
107 views
What does “a star” symbolize here?
Each morning gives thee wings to flee from hell,
Each night a star to guide thy feet to heaven.
This verse has been taken from the poem "Opportunity" by Walter Malone.
What does "a ...
3
votes
1answer
115 views
What is the figure of speech used in this part of “Cataract Operation”?
What is the figure of speech used in these lines taken from the Simon Armitage poem "Cataract Operation"?
the olé of a crimson towel.
the cancan of a ra ra skirt,
the monkey business of a ...
4
votes
0answers
52 views
What's the first appearance of the rhyme about “He died defending his right of way”?
There's a little poem that goes something like this:
Here lies the body of Thomas Grey,
Who died defending his right of way.
He was perfectly right as he sped along,
But he's just as dead as if he'd ...
2
votes
1answer
58 views
What do superscript circles mean in poetry?
I am reading a book on the collected works of Alexander Pope. Peppered throughout his poems are little superscript circles or degrees symbols, seen in this image of the text (transcribed below)
What ...
14
votes
1answer
2k views
What meter are “I lik the bred” poems in?
I'm trying to determine the meter of "i lik the bred" poems:
"i lik the bred" is a series of short poems about a domesticated cow written by British author Sam Garland, better ...
3
votes
2answers
77 views
In what way can a utility coat be a mockery in a Ted Hughes' “Crow” poem?
In Ted Hughes' Examination at the Womb-door (of the Crow collection), Crow's organs are listed with certain kinds of descriptions (bold is mine):
Examination at the Womb-door
Who owns these scrawny ...
2
votes
1answer
55 views
English translation of “Encargo”
Is there an English translation of "Encargo" by Julio Cortázar? I've not been able to find one online.
3
votes
1answer
107 views
What do the yellow banners in Edgar Allan Poe's “The Haunted Palace” symbolize?
The story "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allan Poe contains a poem, "The Haunted Palace", which starts like this:
In the greenest of our valleys,
By good angels ...
8
votes
2answers
622 views
What might “And God, for a Frontier.” mean in “I am afraid to own a Body—”?
I don't understand the second stanza of I am afraid to own a Body— by Emily Dickinson.
Double Estate—entailed at pleasure
Upon an unsuspecting Heir—
Duke in a moment of Deathlessness
And God, for a ...
19
votes
1answer
2k views
When and why did “No man is an island” start being regarded as a poem?
John Donne's "Meditation XVII" from Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (1624) includes the following well-known passage:
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the ...
0
votes
0answers
30 views
Symbolism in William Blake's The House of Death is unclear to me
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/blake-the-house-of-death-n05060
While I'm asking about a colour print it's as much about Blake's poetry. I haven't been able to find much analysis of this ...
10
votes
3answers
2k views
What does “But… They went home” mean in Maya Angelou's “They Went Home”?
Maya Angelou's "They Went Home" opens like this:
They went home and told their wives,
that never once in all their lives,
had they known a girl like me,
But... They went home.
The end of ...
1
vote
0answers
23 views
Which version of William Blake's “Jerusalem” did John Reith recite to celebrate the end of the General Strike?
In his 1PM radio broadcast on 12 May 1926, John Reith, managing director of the BBC, recited William Blake's "Jerusalem" to celebrate the end of the General Strike which had lasted for nine ...
6
votes
0answers
80 views
When and how was the phrase “these dark Satanic mills” in Blake's “Jerusalem” first altered to “those dark Satanic mills”?
William Blake's lines of verse "Jerusalem", which appear in the "Preface" to his poem "Milton", were written c.1804 and first printed c.1808.
They also appear, but with ...
2
votes
1answer
46 views
William Ernest Henley's “Invictus”
I am not able to understand William Ernest Henley's poem "Invictus" properly, except the last two lines. Can someone explain in detail the meaning of this poem?
Out of the night that covers ...
2
votes
0answers
24 views
I'm looking for a certain haiku about kusarigama in Japanese
The haiku I'm looking for is probably of an anonymous author. I got a hint on a Japanese message board that it's maybe Musashi's one and I should find it in Eiji Yoshikawa's famous novel, but it's not ...
2
votes
0answers
25 views
Meaning of three phrases from “An Elementary School Classroom in a Slum”
The poem "An Elementary School Classroom in a Slum" by Stephen Spender is given below
Far far from gusty waves these children's faces.
Like rootless weeds, the hair torn round their pallor:
...
4
votes
1answer
80 views
Why are the lotos-eaters “mild-eyed” and “melancholy”?
In Tennyson's famous poem "The Lotos-eaters", a group of mariners find themselves on an island inhabited by "Lotos-eaters", and themselves decide to stay after eating lotos has had ...
1
vote
1answer
32 views
What do these lines mean in Ivor Gurney's “Laventie”?
Could you please help me understand the meaning of a poem by Ivor Gurney, an Englishman who fought in the First World War.
From his "Laventie":
Of Maconachie, Paxton, Tickler, and ...
1
vote
0answers
41 views
What's the significance of the name “Johnnie” in “The Bridge by the Tay”?
There's only one named character in this translation of Fontane's "Die Brück’ am Tay" ("The Bridge by the Tay"): "Johnnie". Johnnie shows up twice in the poem:
Now, ...
5
votes
1answer
66 views
Why does “The Tragedy of Afghanistan” suddenly switch to second-person in the second-to-last verse?
Here's the second-to-last verse from a translation of Fontane's "Das Trauerspiel von Afghanistan" ("The Tragedy of Afghanistan"):
They played all night and the following day,
They ...
1
vote
0answers
38 views
The first line of “God's Grandeur”
The first line of Gerard Manley Hopkins's sonnet "God's Grandeur" is:
The world is charged with the grandeur of god.
What I found on the Internet regarding the analysis of this line was ...
5
votes
1answer
93 views
What is the dialect in “The Origin of White Folks” and what does it add to the poem?
I found "The Origin of White Folks" by Annie Virginia Culbertson (it's pretty far down the page) while reading a news article and became intrigued by its accent. The poem is clearly written ...
4
votes
1answer
63 views
What does the line “You're all that I can call my own” mean in Maya Angelou's “Woman Work”?
The first half of Maya Angelou's "Woman Work" details the extremely busy life of the narrator, ranging from taking care of a baby to mending clothes to picking cotton.
The second half ...
4
votes
0answers
62 views
Why are William Mcgonagall's poems considered so terrible?
While writing up the wiki excerpt for william-mcgonagall a couple of weeks back, I came upon a rather surprising remark about him in Wikipedia:
He won notoriety as an extremely bad poet who exhibited ...
7
votes
2answers
404 views
Meaning of “Where the return stands by disdain” in a poem by Thomas Wyatt
From "Who list his wealth and ease retain", by Thomas Wyatt:
Who list his wealth and ease retain,
Himself let him unknown contain.
Press not too fast in at that gate
Where the return stands ...
7
votes
1answer
133 views
Is Keats' swan with “neck of arched snow” an allusion to Milton's “swan with arched neck”?
I discovered something quite interesting today in John Milton's Paradise Lost. Here is Milton (this is the Archangel Raphael relating to Adam and Eve the creation of the world):
...
0
votes
1answer
34 views
How does “The Second Coming” form the background for “A Prayer for My Daughter”?
I was reading William Butler Yeats's “A Prayer for My Daughter”. The book which I was reading had a box named “Aid to Comprehend the poem” and in that box were written these lines:
The poem [A Prayer ...
5
votes
1answer
201 views
Why was John Keats called a poet “who was kill’d off by one critique”?
In Canto XI of Lord Byron’s magnificent work Don Juan, romantic poet Keats is mentioned as a poet
who was kill’d off by one critique.
Why he was referred to like that? And which critique was it?
2
votes
0answers
11 views
How is the poem “Gerontion” affected by being told in the first person?
The poem ‘Gerontion’ by T.S. Eliot is about an old man and his life. The very first lines if the poem are as follows:
Here I am, an old man in a dry month,
Being read to by a boy, waiting for rain.
...
1
vote
1answer
23 views
What did Keats mean by “it is not without a feeling of regret that I make it public” in his preface to “Endymion”?
John Keats, in the Preface to Endymion, wrote:
Knowing within myself the manner in which this poem has been produced, it is not without a feeling of regret that I make it public.
Why did he express ...
-2
votes
1answer
84 views
Who is “close bosom-friend of the maturing sun”?
John Keats, in his ode "To Autumn", writes
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun.
Who is the close bosom-friend of the maturing sun?
0
votes
0answers
6 views
Did Robert Frost stop to see the beauty of woods or for some philosophical thinking? [duplicate]
Robert Frost stopped by a wood on a snowy evening and thought whose woods they were, he thought he knew, the owner lives in his village. Then in the poem he talks about how the woods look with snow on ...
0
votes
0answers
43 views
Comprehending “how but in custom and ceremony are innocence and beauty born”
“A Prayer for My Daughter” is a poem written by W.B. Yeats on the birth of his daughter. One of the themes of the poem is contrasting the future he desires for his daughter with the life of Maud Gonne,...
1
vote
1answer
24 views
How can pleasant thoughts bring sad thoughts to the mind?
“Lines Written in the Early Spring” is English Romantic poet William Wordsworth’s meditation on the harmony of nature and on humanity’s failure to follow nature’s peaceful example.
However, in the ...
1
vote
1answer
18 views
Do the opening lines of Frost’s poem “After Apple-Picking” contain a biblical reference?
Robert Frost's poem ‘After Apple-Picking’, collected in North of Boston (1914), is a well-known poem on man’s encounter with the natural world, probing the dilemma of his existence.
The first two ...
0
votes
1answer
44 views
Is this line from Shelley’s A Lament an allusion to his Skylark?
The poem A Lament by P.B. Shelley goes like this
O world! O Life! O Time!
On whose last steps I climb,
Trembling at that where I stood before;
When will return the glory of your prime?
No more, —O ...
1
vote
1answer
35 views
Why did Tennyson write “The Brook” from the brook's first-person perspective?
In the poem "The Brook", Tennyson speaks about the journey of a small brook which later joins a mighty river. The poem is narrated in the first person by the small brook:
I come from haunts ...
0
votes
1answer
22 views
Can Edgar Allan Poe’s Alone be analyzed in the light of Existential Loneliness? [duplicate]
Can Edgar Allan Poe’s Alone be analyzed in the light of Existential Loneliness? The very first lines
From childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were—I have not seen
As others saw—I could not ...
2
votes
0answers
20 views
How blank verse is “closest to the natural rhythms of English speech”? [duplicate]
I was reading a book and in that it was written
Shakespeare has used this poetic form (the blank verse) skillfully in his dramas because it is closest to the natural rhythms of English speech, and ...
-1
votes
1answer
44 views
What does “inward eye” mean?
William Wordsworth’s poem "The Daffodils" contains the following lines:
For oft, when on my couch I lie,
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
which is bliss of ...
-1
votes
1answer
27 views
What does “Honor the Light Brigade” mean?
Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade”'s last stanza is
When can their glory fade?
Oh, the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honor the charge they made!
Honor the ...
0
votes
0answers
12 views
Is “Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought” a deliberate contradiction by Shelley?
Shelley was admiring the “profuse strains” of the “blithe spirit” and when he compares human songs with the skylark’s
Waking or asleep,
Thou of death must deem
Things more true and deep
Than we ...
0
votes
0answers
15 views
What does Shelley mean by “if we could scorn fear” in “To a Skylark”?
Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “To a Skylark” is not only a beautiful ode but a very realistic view of human nature as compared to the “blithe spirit”. Shelley all throughout the poem is sure that Skylark was ...
-2
votes
1answer
37 views
What is the actual meaning of verse?
I often hear people using the words “stanza” and “verse” interchangeably, the small quotes of The Holy Bible are also called verses, and even the non-chorus part of songs are also called verses.
I’m ...
0
votes
1answer
31 views
What literary device is Walter de la Mare's “It is I” in “Napoleon”?
Walter de la Mare's short poem "Napoleon" goes like this:
What is the world, O soldiers?
It is I:
I, this incessant snow,
This northern sky;
Soldiers, this solitude
Through which we go
Is I....
