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-language]).
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About Sappho's epigram for the little girl Aithopia: first line (manuscript tradition and experts' take), and authorship
Background and research:
As I am planning to post this poem on my blog relatively soon, I was doing some research on the first line. From what I had written previously, I seem to have found two ...
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What's the origin of the rhyme "My friend Billy had a ten foot willy"?
A simple rhyming song which I heard growing up and which still gets stuck in my head every so often:
My friend Billy had a ten foot willy.
He stuck it through the neighbour's door. OR He showed ...
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Meaning of "Ephete" in Seamus Heaney's "The Stations of the West"
So far, the only definition I've managed to get is "a member of an ancient Athenian court that tried certain murder cases" (Merriam-Webster), but since the poem is about traveling to the ...
user19172
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Any significance to the "Dutch clock" and "Chinese plate" in Eugene Field's "The Duel"?
I just learned from an answer to an ID question about the poem "The Duel", or "The Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat", in which Eugene Field describes a vicious fight between two stuffed animals as told ...
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Who is the author of this contradictory poem starting "The night was dark and stormy"?
Does anyone know the name of or the author of the poem below? My grandfather used to say it all of the time and I would like to read it at his funeral. It's very silly and goes something like this:
...
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Why does Tahir Hamut Izgil speak "the names of ants" he's known?
Reading Tahir Hamut Izgil's "Somewhere Else"*, I was confused by why "ants" specifically were brought up here:
night after night
one after another
I spoke the names of ants I’ve ...
- 9,883
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Was Fontane's Tay Bridge poem compared to McGonagall's at the time?
The Tay Bridge Disaster is one of the most famous bridge collapses. It inspired a universally reviled (yet nevertheless wildly (in)famous) poem from William McGonagall, "The Tay Bridge Disaster&...
- 9,883
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Is the comparison in "The Clod and the Pebble" between different types of love?
The poem "The Clod and the Pebble" from William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience (which you can read online) is just three verses long and compares two different descriptions of love, ...
- 74.4k
7
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Does Auden's poem 'The Model' refer to any particular painting?
I re-read 'The Model' by W H Auden earlier today, and I was struck by how good it is. I've venerated Auden since I was sixteen, but I hadn't appreciated this poem properly until now.
I find myself ...
- 1,182
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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' « ...
6
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What did Yeats in his late period think of his early work?
The poetry of W.B. Yeats is commonly seen as belonging to three rough phases. The first is a Romantic and pre-Raphaelite style of flowery verse which commonly invokes figures of Irish mythology. The ...
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What's the first "reverse" poem?
I recently discovered an interesting type of poetry. When read one way, it says one thing and when read a different way, the opposite, all with the same words.
A sub-type of these is known as the ...
- 1,974
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Is my controlling idea for my poem analysis accurate?
This is my current controlling idea of my essay on the poem "On Pleasure":
"The speaker challenges the idea of pleasure in the minds of the
audience, and argues that pleasure is an ...
- 61
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101
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What does Tiriel's blindness symbolize?
In Tiriel, it's mentioned several times that Tiriel is blind, first in Chapter I, line 27:
Look at my eyes, blind as the orbless skull among the stones!
And later again in Chapter II, lines 61-65:
...
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What if any is Will Hicok Low's connection to "Will o'the Mill"?
Robert Louis Stevenson's short story "Will o'the Mill" was first published in the January 1878 issue of The Cornhill Magazine (vol. 37, issue 217, pp. 41–60). Some years later, on January 2, ...
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Why are the non-fellow-students not referred to as guns in Clint Smith's "The Gun"?
This is sort of the reverse of my previous question on Clint Smith's poem "The Gun". While it's blatant about referring to all of the kids as "guns", I find it interesting that the ...
- 9,883
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What is an "intermezzo from the dusky elm's trunk"?
Phone Call by Tahir Hamut (full text on Words Without Borders) contains the following line:
An intermezzo from the dusky elm’s trunk
fans the spirit lamp into a bonfire
I'm somewhat confused by the ...
5
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What does the ellipsis in Machado's poem 'Pegasos, lindos pegasos' mean?
What does the ellipsis in Machado's poem 'Pegasos, lindos pegasos' mean? I don't know what all those dots represent. Maybe it is something specific I'm not aware of. Here is the poem.
Pegasos, lindos ...
user13380
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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 ...
user8097
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Are there different formats of haikus?
This is similar to this question but not exactly the same. I have seen haikus in the following formats:
The traditional / which is in five-seven-five / and is most common
But I have also read that ...
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Why does isolating "there" on its own line sound less emphatic in Korean than English?
I was reading Translator’s Note: Three Poems by Ko Un from the Poetry Foundation and came across this excerpt:
We translated “명사도 동사도 다” (“all nouns and verbs”) as “all words,” which sounds less ...
- 9,883
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Poems collecting African proverbs
When I was a student, many years ago, in the mid 1990s, I remember reading a fascinating piece about traditional African poetry. If I remember correctly, it was a scholarly article reprinted an ...
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Why does Petrarch's sequence of poems to Laura have three different titles?
Petrarch's celebrated sequence of 366 poems to Laura goes by three different titles. As far as I can tell, they're used interchangeably:
Il Canzoniere, The Songbook
Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta, ...
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Who is the 'one who had lifted it' in Shelley's sonnet about 'the painted veil'?
In Shelley's famous sonnet, which begins 'Lift not the painted veil', the "turn" is placed - unusually - in the seventh line.
Lift not the painted veil which those who live
Call Life: ...
- 1,182
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Is Hemingway's poem entitled MITRAILLIATRICE or MITRAIGLIATRICE?
I read -- a few months ago -- Hemingway's juvenilia poetry & short-story collection stoically entitled Three Stories & Ten Poems. It was published in the early 1920s -- I think 1923, but I've ...
- 83
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Who wrote the poem that begins, "The Yeti, experts will attest . . ."
The Yeti, experts will attest, is physically unkempt at best.
And due to this may go for weeks, alone amidst the snowy steeps.
(Goes on to tell how he is looking for his "yet unmet counterpart".)
- 59
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'meter' vs. 'rhythm': How do their meanings in poetry differ from those in music?
'meter' and 'rhythm' are termed in poetry and music. So what are their parallels? Their differences?
Source: Listening to Music (2013 7 ed, but ∃ 8 ed) by Yale Prof. Craig Wright:
[p. 463] meter: ...
user175
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What metaphor(s) are represented by the mysterious figure in Charles Causley's "Innocent's Song"?
The other day, I came across this rather sinister poem by Charles Causley, set to music.
Innocent's Song
Who's that knocking on the window,
Who's that standing at the door,
What are ...
- 23.3k
5
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1
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What is the “presence” in Wordsworth’s ‘Tintern Abbey’?
In Wordsworth’s ‘Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey’ he describes a “presence”:
And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated ...
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59
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Did Uyghur poets make a "strong" distinction between poetry and song lyrics?
The forward to Uyghur Poems (written by Aziz Isa Elkun) comments that
In later centuries, Uyghurs continued to compose poems in order to spread news, record significant contemporary events or the ...
4
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Why are children described as "folly free" in the poem "Mothers Heart"?
The poem Mothers Heart (in Drops of Melodies by Hemirah Tohti) contains the following lines:
She always thinks of her children
Children play, folly free
Why are children described as "folly ...
4
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Poem from a teacher: "There is a tree I love // And she loves me // Sentient beings call her home"
There is a tree I love
And she loves me
Sentient beings call her home,
She is their world
Their womb of God
Knowing only here.
She sings out the perfection
The rightness, the holy stillness of all ...
- 41
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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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What does “it” refer to in this line from “The Mental Hospital Garden”?
What is “it” in the following lines from "The Mental Hospital Garden" by William Carlos Williams?
It is a bounty
from last year’s nest.
Williams, William Carlos. "...
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Symbolism in the final lines of Yeats' Song of Wandering Aengus
Yeats' early poem The Song of Wandering Aengus is a poetic retelling of a famous Irish myth as I explored in this question. It's also a metaphor in which Aengus' quest for his fae lover is compared to ...
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How does one count syllables in medieval Galician-Portuguese poetry?
I'm trying to figure out how to count syllables in medieval Galician-Portuguese cantigas. I've tried to find it in the book A poesía lírica galego-portuguesa by Giuseppe Tavani, which I found in my ...
- 2,781
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Understanding comparisons in Crowcolour by Ted Hughes
In the poem "Crowcolour", the shortest of Ted Hughes' Crow poems, there's a series of comparisons of Crow's blackness with other black images.
Here's the full poem:
Crow was so much ...
- 1,594
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What does this mean about the interpretation of Lauretta's song at the end of Day 3?
At the end of Day 3 of the Decameron, Lauretta sings the following song after dinner, at the request of the new "king" Filostrato:
What dame disconsolate
May so lament as I,
That vainly ...
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Looking for an elegy poem about a flower the narrator cared for (at the cost of enjoying life), which died and left him devastated
I'm looking for an elegy-style poem in which the narrator recounts ignoring the beautiful flowers around them, instead attending to a single flower that had yet to bloom. They thought this one flower ...
- 41
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What inspired the “lava-lymph” in Elizabeth Browning’s “Aurora Leigh”?
In book V of Aurora Leigh (1856) by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the narrator asks herself what she expects to achieve in her poetry:
Shall I hope
To speak my ...
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What is the relationship between Tagore's poems and his song lyrics?
Rabindranath Tagore composed and wrote the lyrics for approximately 2,200 songs, collectively known as Rabindra Sangeet, "Rabindra music". These songs remain immensely popular in India and ...
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668
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The motif of Tom O' Bedlam
The 17th-century motif of Tom O' Bedlam has always been one that I hold much affection and wonder for (as can be assumed by the choice of username on my part.)
The motif most famously makes an ...
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Is there a name for poems where each verse is a time period?
I'm having a hard time finding examples of this, but I found one by a man named Darryl Davis, called Almanac of a man, that goes like this:
When I was five,
I was supreme ruler
of a boundless ...
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How is the connection between the picture on page 59 and the last line of "Allison Beals and Her 25 Eels" shown in other publications of the poem?
"Allison Beals and Her 25 Eels" is a poem in Falling Up by Shel Silverstein. It describes how Allison uses 24 eels -- as shoelaces, earrings, ladle, etc. The 25th, however, is different. The poem ends ...
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What was William Carlos Williams “plagiarising” in Spring and All XIII
In Chapter XIII, it says:
In the imagination, flying above the wreck of ten thousand million souls, I see you departing sadly for the land of plants and insects, already far out to sea. (Thank you, I ...
- 131
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In R. S. Thomas' poem "Careers", why is the word "memory" hyphenated across lines?
While reading R. S. Thomas' collection Not That He Brought Flowers (1968) I was struck by the peculiar typesetting of the opening poem, "Careers" (page 7), in which the poet reflects on how ...
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3
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Who is “very fond of bearing false witness” in Byron’s “Don Juan”?
Here’s a stanza from canto I of Byron’s Don Juan, published in 1819. The narrator has been surveying the talents (or lack thereof) of his fellow-poets, and comments:
Thou shalt not covet Mr. Sotheby’...
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Poem about the coffee rings left behind on a table
This poem was published in a quarterly poetry magazine in the mid-'90s. It was about the coffee rings left behind on a table in a cafe. The coffee stains were compared to the memories of our lifetime. ...
- 31
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What is the original of this poem Kenealy supposedly translated from Bengali?
The poems (to use the word loosely) of the Irish writer and lawyer Edward Kenealy contain this alleged translation from the Bengali:
Song in the Metre of the Original
A maid there is more bright than ...
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3
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What is the significance of the drawings in the first few pages of "Drops of Melodies"?
Drops of Melodies by Hemirah Tohti has the following images in the first couple pages of the Kindle edition:
However, I don't see any attribution for these images and don't exactly understand their ...