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]).
940 questions
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What is the significance of the 'one word' in Gabriela Mistral's poem Una palabra
In Gabriela Mistral's poem Una palabra (literally "one word"), the speaker says (in the first stanza, from the translation in Mapping a different star: five poems by Gabriela Mistral),
I ...
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How to figure out if something is iambic pentameter?
I have an assignment where I have to write a Shakespearean sonnet for my professor (who is very strict about the formatting of the assignment). Are there any ways/tricks in which I can figure out if ...
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Did William Blake intend The Tyger to resemble a nursery rhyme?
I have often heard that William Blake’s The Tyger is supposed to resemble a nursery rhyme.
For example, on “Mercs Poetry Blog”, the blogger writes that the poem reminds them of the nursery rhyme ...
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The endless afternoon of Lotus Land — when and where did this trope originate?
Tennyson says in his poem The Lotus-Eaters (published in 1832)
In the afternoon they came unto a land
In which it seemèd always afternoon.
In 1859, Baudelaire wrote the poem Le Voyage, which was ...
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What is the provenance of "A fox jumped up one winter's night"?
As a child, I used to love the following nursery rhyme:
A fox jumped up one winter’s night,
And thanked the moon for her bright light,
For he’d many miles to trot that night
Before he reached his den ...
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Procne and Philomela as swallow and nightingale, or vice-versa?
CW
Sexual violence. Murder. Filicide. Cannibalism.
tl;dr
When and how did Procne become identified with the nightingale, Philomela with the swallow, in Greek poetry? When and how did this ...
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What is Baudelaire's poem "Allégorie" an allegory of?
In his collection Les Fleurs du Mal (1857), Charles Baudelaire wrote a poem called "Allégorie". The poem begins:
C'est une femme belle, et de riche encolure
Qui laisse dans son vin traîner ...
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In what way is Tam O 'Shanter "honest"?
In the first part of Robert Burns's "Tam O 'Shanter", we are introduced to Tam and learn about his upset wife waiting at home ready to yell at him for staying all evening in town to drink. ...
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Why is the title of the poem "The Road Not Taken" Appropriate?
I have read the poem, "The Road Not Taken" recently.
You can read this here.
The source of my confusion is: Why did Robert Frost choose to name his poem that way?
Read this Guardian Article ...
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Why does the narrator in "Stopping by Woods" stop by the woods?
In Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Frost:
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with ...
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What did Alfred Austin mean by “poetry”?
In an essay on Robert Browning, Alfred Austin (later poet laureate) stated, repeatedly and emphatically, that Browning did not write, and was unable to write, poetry:
Now, Mr. Browning rarely, if ...
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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 ...
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What are the allusions in Dana Gioia’s poem “The Underworld”?
Dana Gioia’s poem The Underworld is about a trip to Hell (on the Western Line of the London Underground).
In his book Meet Me at the Lighthouse, he gives some notes on this poem, which say
This ...
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What does "where water is not thirsty" mean in Maya Angelou's "Alone"?
The opening stanza of Maya Angelou's poem "Alone" goes like this:
Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with ...
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Meaning of Second line of Shakespeare's Sonnet 66
I recently read Shakespeare's Sonnet 66 and I am quite confused as to what
As, to behold desert a beggar born
means. Sonnet 66 further goes on to talk about a list of things (supposedly) Shakespeare ...
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Why would a sinner both love and hate houses (Gabriela Mistral)?
In Gabriela Mistral's poem Flores, part of the posthumously published Poema de Chile, we find the following stanzas (emphasis added):
— No te entiendo ¿por qué tú
siempre andas pensando
para mí en ...
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Understand "rip through him as at a distance" in Ted Hughes' "A Kill"
In Ted Hughes' "A Kill" (A Crow poem. See the full poem here), Crow's conceiving and its coming into life is described with opposite terms related to death. Specifically, the creation of ...
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What makes people think Shakespeare's sonnets are autobiographical?
I often read that Shakespeare's sonnets are addressed to a Mr WH (although it was never Shakespeare, I believe, who addressed it but rather his publisher T.T., i.e. Thomas Thorpe) or to a dark lady ...
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Why "rojos brazos abiertos" in Gabriela Mistral's poem Anochecer?
In Gabriela Mistral's poem "Anochecer" (which can be found in the blog post Gabriela Mistral. Poemas. but not on the presumably official Gabriela Mistral website), part of the posthumously ...
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The textile factory and spinning machine in John Dyer’s “The Fleece”
In book 3 of The Fleece (1757), John Dyer describes a textile factory in the Calder Valley in Yorkshire, which has a water-powered spinning machine:
We next are shown
A ...
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Origin of the idea that cranes ballast themselves for flight, in Drayton’s ‘The Owl’
In his poem ‘The Owl’, Michael Drayton lists some lessons taught by various species of bird:
And every bird shew’d in his proper kind,
What virtue nature had to him assign’d
Michael Drayton (1604). ‘...
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Poem About Misshapen Tree
Looking for a poem about a tree that has grown in adverse conditions, but is more interesting because it has more character. Thought it was written by a famous American poet but my searches don't seem ...
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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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How does the first stanza of Robert Burns's "For a' that and a' that" translate into modern English?
I want to like this poem, but I guess I'm too dense to make sense of the first stanza, mainly because (I suppose) of Burns's dialect:
Is there, for honest poverty,
That hangs his head, and a’ that?
...
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Who was Blanca Subercaseaux, to whom Gabriela Mistral dedicated the poem Encargo a Blanca?
Many of Gabriela Mistral's poems are dedicated to specific persons. These are often authors who can be looked up on the Spanish Wikipedia, such as Emma Godoy, Max Daireaux, Francis de Miomandre, José ...
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Who or what is Gabriela Mistral's death-girl?
Gabriela Mistral's poem La muerte-niña is the first in a group titled "Historias de loca" ("Madwoman's stories"). According to the first stanza, she was born in a cave, but ...
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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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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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Why is Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" dedicated to Carl Solomon specifically?
The poem "Howl" by Allen Ginsberg (which can be read online) is partly a savage general commentary on society and partly an expression of solidarity for the institutionalised fellow writer Carl ...
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Who was Captain Hastel?
The Eagle Well-Spring by Alaksiej Zarycki was dedicated "to the memory of Captain Hastel."
It includes the lines
... For the eagle's grave came not seeking!
That's where Hastel's heart ...
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Who is Veronica in Gabriela Mistral's poem La huella?
The first stanza in Gabriela Mistral's poem La huella ("The footprint") mentions or appears to address a certain Veronica. The translation of that stanza follows below:
Of the fugitive man
...
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What style/Form is the Stranger's Poem in, from The Magnus Archives?
In season 5 of the Magnus Archives, Jon, the Archivist, reads a long poem inspired by viewing the phenomenon known as The Stranger.
An excerpt of the text is as follows, taken from Snarp:
Your face ...
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What is the fall of Europe in Gabriela Mistral's poem Caída de Europa?
Gabriela Mistral's poem Caída de Europa was published in the 1954 collection Lagar (Winepress). (The poem is dedicated to Roger Caillois, who published a bilingual edition of a selection of Mistral's ...
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What is the single word in Gabriela Mistral's La que camina?
The second stanza in Gabriela Mistral's poem La que camina introduces a "single word" that is somehow vital to the woman described in the poem. The poem's second and third stanzas can be ...
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What is the "Royal Air" in Dickinson's poem 788 (Publication – is the Auction)?
The third stanza of Dickinson's poem 788 (Publication – is the Auction) goes like this:
Thought belong to Him who gave it –
Then – to Him Who bear
It's Corporeal illustration – sell
The Royal Air –
...
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What does the word "well" mean in the last line of Shakespeare's Sonnet 73?
Shakespeare's Sonnet 73, "That time of year thou mayst in me behold", spends its first 12 lines comparing different types of the passage of time (such as seasons and days) to human mortality,...
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Who are Catalina and Teresa in Gabriela Mistral's poem Vieja?
The last two lines in Gabriela Mistral's poem Vieja are as follows:
las viejas que pudieron no morir:
Clara de Asís, Catalina y Teresa.
Translation:
the old women who could not die:
Clara/Clare of ...
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Why is the translation of cilicio as lash justified?
The penultimate stanza in Gabriela Mistral's poem Íntima goes as follows (emphasis mine):
Porque mi amor no es sólo esta gavilla
reacia y fatigada de mi cuerpo,
que tiembla entera al roce del cilicio
...
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Who or what are the Pelayos in Gabriela Mistral's poem Ronda de los metales?
In Gabriela Mistral's poem Ronda de los metales, one of the stanzas goes as follows (emphasis mine):
El cobre es arrebato,
la plata es maternal,
los hierros son Pelayos,
el oro Abderrahmán.
...
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Is Gabriela Mistral referring to a specific historical use of asbestos in South America?
The first stanza of the second part of Gabriela Mistral's poem Dos himnos contains the following lines (emphasis mine):
¡Cordillera de los Andes,
Madre yacente y Madre que anda,
que de niños nos ...
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What sort of love and epiphany are meant in Mistral's Dos ángeles?
The third stanza in Gabriela Mistral's poem Dos ángeles contains the following lines:
Sólo una vez volaron
con las alas unidas:
el día del amor,
el de la Epifanía.
Translation:
Only once did they ...
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What does "living walls of jet" mean in Donne's "The Flea"?
In John Donne's "The Flea", there's an extended conceit where the speaker and whoever he's speaking to are compared to a flea biting the woman, their blood mingling in the flea. The second ...
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Gabriela Mistral's La flor del aire
Gabriela Mistral's poem La flor del aire is the second in a group titled "Historias de loca" ("Madwoman's stories"); it comes right after La muerte-niña. The speaker of the poem ...
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Why Agamemnon? (Gabriela Mistral: Ronda de los colores)
Gabriela Mistral's poem Ronda de los colores contains the following stanza:
El amarillo se viene
grande y lleno de fervor
y le abren paso todos
como viendo a Agamenón.
Literally translated, this ...
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Why did Mistral choose these animals to compare with the sun in her poem "Dos Himnos"?
Dos Himnos (Two Hymns) is a poem by Gabriela Mistral in praise of the original Indian inhabitants of Latin America. The first part, Sol del Trópico, is a hymn in praise of the sun of the tropics. In ...
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Gabriela Mistral's La pajita
La pajita is another poem from Gabriela Mistral's second collection Ternura ("Tenderness") that uses simple language without necessarily being easy to interpret.
On the surface, it is about ...
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Does anybody know good English translations of Goethe's poems from German?
Does anybody know good English translations of Goethe's poems from German?
I am trying to find good English translations of Goethe's poems (his individual / miscellaneous lieder).
Are there freely ...
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What are the thousands of worlds in Mistral's Meciendo?
Gabriela Mistral's poem Meciendo contains the following stanza:
Dios Padre sus miles de mundos
mece sin ruido.
The translation on LyricsTranslate goes as follows:
God, the Father, your thousands of ...
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Poem about a cherry pie being saved, betrayed, and eaten
I once read (in a collection/anthology of children's literature?) a poem about a cherry pie. The title might have been just "Cherry Pie", but it wasn't this or this or this or this (you can ...
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What's with the rat and the bride in Gabriela Mistral's La rata?
In the first stanza of Gabriela Mistral's poem La rata animals run after other animals in a way that defies expectations. In the remaining stanzas, the speaker addresses someone else, telling him or ...
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