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].
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What role did surrealism play in new york school poetry?
What role did surrealism play in new york school poetry? I know there are book length studies about this, but I wondered if anyone could paraphrase anything.
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What does "The Shampoo" written by Elizabeth Bishop tell?
The still explosions on the rocks,
the lichens, grow
by spreading, gray, concentric shocks.
They have arranged
to meet the rings around the moon, although
within our memories they have not changed.
...
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What did Walt Whitman mean by "a pennant universal"?
(Edit: This was closed because it was marked as "opinion based" and I was asked to edit the question so that it could be answered by facts and citations.
@Fumblefingers gave citations, ...
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Reference to Novalis in Ghérasim Luca's poem "La Poésie Pratique"
Ghérasim Luca's poem "La Poésie Pratique" / "Practical Poetry" contains the following lines:
En pratiquant le bouche à bouche de mot à mot
de « feu » le mort à « feu » vif
d' « ...
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Are there standard guidelines on apostrophising to denote swallowed syllables for scansion?
There are various words in English which can be pronounced in different ways with different numbers of syllables. Poetry often requires them to be read in a particular way for appropriate scansion, ...
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What does this line from an essay on T. S. Eliot mean?
The following extract is from Charles Altieri's essay "Eliot's Impact on twentieth-century Anglo-American poetry" published in The Cambridge Companion to T. S. Eliot. Here, Altieri is ...
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What early copy of Kobzar was discovered in 2003?
The translator notes for the Taras Shevchenko poem Tribute to Shternberg in The Complete Kobzar mentioned that the authorship of the poem was in dispute until the 2003 discovery of a "rare early ...
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Why was a time of war described as "good"?
The poem Ivan Pidkova by Taras Shevchenko (in The Complete Kobzar) contains the following lines:
There was an age - that trouble
Pranced about Ukraine,
Grief quaffed honeymead
Like rebels in a tavern....
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Is "the Kozak in a stormy meadow" part of a traditional song?
The Taras Shevchenko poem To Osnovianenko (in The Complete Kobzar, translated by Peter Fedynsky) has the following lines:
I ramble through the snow
And to myself I sing:
The Kozak in a Stormy Meadow!...
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What do ellipses mean in the context of this Taras Shevchenko poem?
I recently encountered the following in a Taras Shevchenko poem (To Osnovianenko) in The Complete Kobzar (Peter Fedynsky translation):
Our idea and our song
Will neither die nor perish...
And that, ...
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Who or what is 'our God' in Swinburne's 'Ave atque Vale'?
The following is a bonus question to "Who is the 'pale Titan-woman' in Swinburne's 'Ave atque Vale'?", which I was advised to separate into its own question.
The twelfth verse of 'Ave atque ...
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Who is the 'pale Titan-woman' in Swinburne's 'Ave atque Vale'?
For those fond of intertextual references, 'Ave atque Vale' by Algernon Charles Swinburne, an English poet's lament for the French poet Charles Baudelaire, is something of a goldmine, being absolutely ...
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Did Lord Byron fluff his Greek in his poem beginning 'Maid of Athens, ere we part'?
One of Lord Byron's most famous poems appears, in the earliest editions of his works, under the simple title of 'Song', but is now more widely know by its first line, 'Maid of Athens, ere we part'. ...
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Who is the "lady weeping at the crossroads" in W. H. Auden's poem?
... and why does she need to go to the end of the world to plunge a penknife into her false heart?
W. H. Auden's poem
Lady Weeping at the Crossroads
starts with the stanza
“Lady, weeping at the ...
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What did W M Praed mean by 'see if he turns out his toe'?
I had the pleasure of coming across one of Winthrop Mackworth Praed's better-known poems the other day, his 'A Letter of Advice', which purports to be a verse epistle from one young woman to another, ...
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Who are the 'sweet Saterian dames'?
I came across a beautiful (and subtly extremely rude!) poem called 'A Present to a Lady' the other day, penned by that most prolific of poets, Anonymous. I think I understand all the references - ...
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Which poet explained 'why sweet Hesper glows'?
I came across a rather good poem by Michael Field (actually a pseudonym for an incestuous aunt-and-niece literary double act) the other day, which begins 'Adown the Lesbian vales'. It's just a bit too ...
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Is Plarr's 'Epitaphium Citharistriae' a translation?
Victor Plarr is most famous for a short poem called 'Epitaphium Citharistriae', which reads as follows:
Stand not uttering sedately
Trite oblivious praise above her!
Rather say you saw her lately
...
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Was there a unified "First World War poetry" movement (during the war itself)?
There is a massive body of literature which can collectively be called "First World War poetry", written by a huge number of poets from many different countries. Many of these poems were ...
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What happened on April 22, 1838?
The poem Kateryna by the Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko (also known as Kobzar) is dedicated to Vasilii Andreyevich Zhukovsky "in memory of April 22, 1838." What is this heading referring to?...
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'Wild-bee hours' and 'wild-parrot days' in Sarojini Naidu's "A Rajput Love Song"
Sarojini Naidu's poem A Rajput Love Song has the stanza:
Haste, O wild-bee hours, to the gardens of the sunset!
Fly, wild-parrot day, to the orchards of the west!
Come, O tender night, with your ...
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What are 'The cobweb clues of Rosamond'?
I came across a rather good poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson today. It's called simply 'April'. It's just a bit too long to post in full here, but here's a link.
I was a bit confused by these lines:
The ...
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Did George Bernard Shaw write the poem "Living Grave"?
You can read it here
The poem gets shared a lot in vegan circles but I can't find where it was originally published.
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What is the "slow wheel" in Frost's "Into My Own"?
Into My Own, by Robert Frost (first two stanzas):
One of my wishes is that those dark trees,
So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze,
Were not, as 'twere, the merest mask of gloom,
But ...
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Who are the '12 children of Aiolos Hippotadês', as introduced in Book 10, The Grace of the Witch, of Homer's Odyssey?
Below is an excerpt of Book 10, The Grace of the Witch, of Homer's Odyssey
We made our landfall on Aiolia Island, domain of the Aiolos Hippotadês, the wind king dear to the gods who never die- an ...
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How does the figure of “dropping oil to catch the air-borne motes” work in George Eliot’s “The Spanish Gypsy”?
The Spanish Gypsy (1868) by George Eliot is a closet drama in blank verse, set in Spain in the late 15th century, during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella. Duke Silva of Bedmár is engaged to Fedalma,...
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In George Meredith's "Ode to the Comic Spirit", what does "Thou guardian issue of the harvest brain !" mean?
The Internet Archive (see my tips for using this website at the end of this question) has in it's entirety J. B. Priestley's biography of George Meredith. On page 115 Priestley says that the first ...
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"Chieftain" and Toussaint's ethnicity in Wordsworth's "To Toussaint L'Ouverture"
Wordsworth's "To Toussaint L'Ouverture" apostrophises the eponymous freedom fighter as "O miserable Chieftain!" (line 5). In "Black Heroes/White Writers: Toussaint L'Ouverture ...
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The text of Wordsworth's "To Toussaint L'Ouverture"
Several different versions of Wordsworth's sonnet "To Toussaint L'Ouverture" can be found online. Here is one version, from Haram Lee's blog on the Brandeis University website:
Toussaint, ...
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Meaning of "No turban walks across the lessened floors" in Wallace Stevens' "The Plain Sense of Things"
In Wallace Stevens' "The Plain Sense of Things", the meaning of every sentence, the sense of every verse, every image, is clear and straightforward; nothing is impressionistic or vague - ...
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Meaning of "a bride high-mated with the spheres" in Sarojini Naidu's 'To India'
Sarojini Naidu's To India uses a nurturing mother as a metaphor for the country throughout the poem. The first few lines run so:
O young through all thy immemorial years!
Rise, Mother, rise, ...
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What does the title of "Leili" mean?
The poem "Leili" by Sarojini Naidu goes like this:
The serpents are asleep among the poppies,
The fireflies light the soundless panther's way
To tangled paths where shy gazelles are ...
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1
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Why is there a kokila in the henna-spray?
In Sarojini Naidu's short poem "In Praise of Henna", both stanzas start with the same two lines:
A kokila called from a henna-spray:
Lira! liree! Lira! liree!
I presume that "kokila&...
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Why are the champak flowers in particular "foredoomed... to shrivel and shrink and fade"?
Sarojini Naidu's "Champak Blossoms" contains the following lines:
Amber petals, ivory petals,
Petals of carven jade,
Charming with your ambrosial sweetness
Forest and field and glade,
...
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1
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What is the "love-god's string" in Sarojini Naidu's "A Song in Spring"?
Sarojini Naidu's "A Song in Spring" begins like this:
Wild bees that rifle the mango blossom,
Set free awhile from the love-god's string,
Wild birds that sway in the citron branches,
Drunk ...
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1
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What is "The sounding cheer of Time's prophetic horn" in Naidu's "An Anthem of Love"?
The middle stanza of Sarojini Naidu's "An Anthem of Love" goes like this:
Two ears are we to catch the nearing echo,
The sounding cheer of Time's prophetic horn;
Two eyes are we to reap the ...
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Why does the speaker in the famous poem want the western wind to blow?
There is a famous short poem, of very murky provenance, which exists in a number of versions, one of which reads:
Western wind, when wilt thou blow,
The small rain down can rain?
Christ, if my love ...
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Significance of the title of "Corn-Grinders" by Sarojini Naidu
Sarojini Naidu's "Corn-Grinders" tells the story of several creatures losing their partners, starting with a mouse killed in a trap, to a deer killed by a hunter, to a bride who's lost her ...
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1
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What are the "sirisha-bowers" in Sarojini Naidu's 'Indian Love Song'?
This is the first stanza of Sarojini Naidu's wonderfully evocative poem Indian Love Song:
She
Like a serpent to the calling voice of flutes,
Glides my heart into thy fingers, ...
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1
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What does "the clustering keovas" mean in Sarojini Naidu's "The Snake Charmer"?
In Sarojini Naidu's "The Snake Chamer", the poem opens like this:
Whither dost thou hide from the magic of my flute-call?
In what moonlight-tangled meshes of perfume,
Where the clustering ...
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What view of suttee comes across in Naidu's poem?
Sarojini Naidu's poem "Suttee" is reproduced several places on the internet (Wikisource, Allpoetry, Poetry Archive), but I don't know the context in which this work was written and published....
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Why a "moonless" vigil in Sarojini Naidu's "Dirge"?
The last stanza of Sarojini Naidu's "Dirge" contains these lines:
The yearning pain of unfulfilled delight,
The moonless vigils of her lonely night,
For the abysmal anguish of her tears,
...
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What is the "living shroud" in Sarojini Naidu's "Dirge"?
The third stanza of Sarojini Naidu's "Dirge" goes like this:
Shatter her shining bracelets, break the string
Threading the mystic marriage-beads that cling
Loth to desert a sobbing throat ...
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Are these lines by Thomas Nuce a translation and/or taken from a longer poem?
I was reading an anthology called Parnassian Molehill (1953) the other day, in which I found a rather beautiful poem by The Rev Thomas Nuce (1540? - 1617). This is the poem in question:
Swift winged ...
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What is the "pride of a soul that has conquered fate"?
The second half of Sarojini Naidu's "The Bird of Time" ends like this:
O Bird of Time, say where did you learn
The changing measures you sing? . . .
[...]
In the sigh of pity, the sob of ...
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0
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What's the role of "a, a" at the end of every stanza in Jaufré Rudel "No sap chantar qui so non di"?
At page 165 of the book Los trovadores. Historia literaria y textos by Martín de Riquer one finds the text of the cansó No sap chantar qui so non di (262, 3) by the troubadour Jaufré Rudel:
No sap ...
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Where is the setting of Millay's poem Renascence?
The first verse of Edna St. Vincent Millay's poem "Renascence" is as follows:
All I could see from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood;
I turned and looked another way,
And ...
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How was the poem "The Pardah Nashin" received by critics and the general public?
I've been reading the poem The Pardah Nashin from the book The Golden Threshold by Sarojini Naidu:
HER life is a revolving dream
Of languid and sequestered ease;
Her girdles and her fillets gleam
...
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What evidence do we have that, after her death, Christina Rossetti's brother destroyed some of her poems before he published the rest?
It is widely believed that Christina Rossetti had lesbian inclinations, although it is unclear whether she ever acted on them.
In several places, I have seen references to the fact that her brother, ...
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What deeds are emblematized by the cypress and myrtle in Byron’s “The Bride of Abydos”?
Byron’s poem The Bride of Abydos (1813) begins:
Know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle
Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime?
What deeds are these trees emblems of? What myth ...
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