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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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. ...
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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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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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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The use of "thou" etc. in Romantic poetry
A lot of Romantic poetry (for e.g. Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" and Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn") uses words like thou, thee and thy even though these had fallen out of use in ...
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What's the symbolism of the Cid's beard?
The book El "Cantar de Mio Cid" y la épica medieval española by Alan Deyermond, at page 37, mentions
el simbolismo de la barba del Cid
that is, "the symbolism of the Cid's beard",...
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Why these specific "things that fly" in "Kite-Flying"?
Rose Justice, the main character of Rose Under Fire, writes several poems that appear in various places in the book. This is the second verse of Kite-Flying:
Hope waits stubbornly,
watching the sky
...
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Ko Un's "Around Unmun Temple at Ch'Eongdo"
Ko Un's poem "Around Unmun Temple at Ch'Eongdo" can be read, in its English translation by Sunny Jung (and Hillel Schwartz?), at the Poetry Foundation website. There's a lot to unpack in ...
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Is there any significance to the lemons and the port in Ko Un's "Asking the Way"?
"Asking the Way" is a short poem by Ko Un, addressing "You fools who ask what god is" and telling them to ask about life instead, illustrating the principle with examples about ...
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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 Tagore not consistently use ‘thou’ when addressing the supreme being in Gitanjali?
The large majority of poems in the English version of Tagore's Gitanjali address a supreme being. Tagore uses the pronouns "thou", "thee" and "thy" in almost all of these ...
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How does the change in syllables change the reading in Maya Angelou's "Still I Rise"?
In the opening stanza of Maya Angelou's "Still I Rise", the syllables go 9 / 7 / 9 / 6. The second verse goes 8 / 7 / 9 / 7. All of these are within two or three syllables of each other, and ...
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Did those things really happen to Robert Frost?
The poems of Robert Frost generally start with some events that are quite common, like
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To ...
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Marianne Moore’s ‘Four Quartz Crystal Clocks’
Marianne Moore’s poem ‘Four Quartz Crystal Clocks’ (1940) was first published in The Kenyon Review 2:3, pp. 284–285, and collected in What Are Years (1941). Here's the first stanza (of seven):
...
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Are "simple sheep" a biblical reference in Keats' "Endymion"?
In the poem Endymion: A poetic romance (1818), the first stanza of Book I (beginning, "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever") contains the following passage:-
...
user7969
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Is there specific mythological significance to the Dingli Cliffs?
The poem "Cliffs" ("Irdumijiet") is part of a collection available online by the Maltese-Canadian writer, poet, and academic professor John P. Portelli. Written in 1973, and found ...
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Significance of the name Annabel Lee?
"Annabel Lee" is one of many pieces of writing by Edgar Allan Poe which explore the theme of a beloved woman who died young. As with other such works, most famously "The Raven", critics have ...
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Help finding poem about a red tide coming in which mentions "memory"
I'm trying to find a poem. I thought it was a Mary Oliver poem, but I can't find it when searching the few words I know along with her name.
The poem talks about a red tide coming in. There is a part ...
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What is "ache-and-pain-a-me back-o-hardness" in "We the Women"?
I need an explanation for what Grace Nichols is trying to say in the following stanzas from her poem "We the Women":
We the women who cut
clear fetch dig sing
We the women making
something ...
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What does the six-legged dog in Charles Simic's poem "Country Fair" represent?
The poem "Country Fair" by Charles Simic centers around a dog with six legs. I'm sure the dog is supposed to symbolize something important that the speaker feels the presupposed audience is ...
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Formatting poetry books [closed]
In a book of poetry, should there be uniformity throughout the book in its format? Should every poem be formatted the same way? Can a few poems have hanging indents while others a regular margin?
For ...
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Trying to identify short poem
I remember a wonderful poem from my school anthology but I don't know the name or author. Is there a kind person who might recognise the following poem?
It's a very short poem.
Female poet, I think.
...
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Was Whitman the first poet to write in sentence fragments?
One aspects of some modern poets is that they sometimes write sentences without main verbs or no main verb in the main clause. I'm not talking about interjections or sentences where an implied 'be' ...
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What's the meter of "Song of Young Girl" by William Lang?
What's the meter of the poem "Song of Young Girl" by William Lang? The first three stanzas are:
Softly I walk through the forest
The owl sleeps in the thicket
I hear the voice of the lake ...
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1
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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 ...
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Meaning of Rumi's quote "Lo, for I to myself am unknown, now in God's name what must I do?"
I really like this quote but didn't get its correct meaning.
My deduction is - One is asking God that what should he do when he didn't know himself at first.
What is the meaning of Rumi's quote "Lo, ...
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Who wrote this poem?
This is what grief is.
A hole ripped through the very fabric of your being.
The hole eventually heals along the jagged edges that remain. It may even shrink in size.
But that hole will always be there....
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Is Rabindranth Tagore talking about the actual wave nature of light here in Gitanjali?
The Nobel prize winning work Gitanjali by Rabdinranath Tagore quotes:
Lilies and jasmines surge up on the crest of the waves of light
Is he referring to the actual electromagnetic wave nature of ...
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Poem that ends with "...whispers, snow!"
I recall a poem that talks about nature and the changing seasons (maybe Summer to Autumn, or Autumn to Winter) that ends with "...whispers, snow!"
I've Googled the phrase with and without punctuation ...
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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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What does "and who is poorer than he who is in love..." from "The Mental Hospital Garden" by William Carlos Williams mean?
What do the following lines from the poem "The Mental Hospital Garden" by William Carlos Williams mean?
and who is poorer than he
who is in love
when birds are nesting
in the spring of the ...
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1
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Meaning of "only a bird could have got in" in "The Castle"
From "The Castle" by Edwin Muir:
Our gates were strong, our walls were thick,
So smooth and high, no man could win
A foothold there, no clever trick
Could take us, have us dead or quick.
...
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1
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English translation of "Encargo"
Is there an English translation of "Encargo" by Julio Cortázar? I've not been able to find one online.
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What does "raised waves in my mind" mean in Tagore's "At the End of the Day"?
In Rabindranath Tagore's "At the End of the Day", there's one stanza that goes like this:
To you I only pray –
Before I go let me know
Looking at the sky
Why mother earth so green
Gave me a ...
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1
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Is this a pararhyme?
"Halted", "Fed" and "Eased" from first stanza of "Spring Offensive" by Wilfred Owen.
Halted against the shade of a last hill
They fed, and, lying easy, were at ease;
And, finding comfortable ...
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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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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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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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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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Meaning of "let the old and weary sleep" in Byron's "The Bride of Abydos"
I am unsure about the meaning of a passage from Lord Byron's The Bride of Abydos (Canto I, stanza 3).
How are we to understand the sentence between dashes: let the old and weary sleep below?
What ...
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Why is "The choir of bell-flowers" referred to as "a fragment of a long poem" in the subtitle?
The Choir of Bell-Flowers by Pavlo Tychyna in The Complete Early Poetry Collection has the subtitle "A fragment of a long poem". What does this mean? Was that added by the translator or by ...
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Name for device in "Possessions" by Hart Crane?
The poem 'Possessions' by Hart Crane contains a lot of what I call 'false units', that is, sentences which appear to have predicates describing subjects, but in reality the predicates do not modify ...
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What is Nioman water?
Jakub Kolas's poem Evenings (from The New Land) contains the following lines:
I see level lands, far over
Nioman water, and their clothing
What is Nioman water?
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What was the original rhyming scheme of "Do not shun me..."?
The poem Do Not Shun Me... starts as follows:
Do not shun me, my lord, nor recoil
Because callouses all my hands cover;
For such sis the badget of a hard toil,
And will not defile you, no never.
'Tis ...
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1
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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 ...
Suzie8
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In which poem(s) in Day by Day does Robert Lowell describe erectile dysfunction?
Robert Lowell's Wikipedia page states that Helen Vendler, in contrast to certain other critics, praised Lowell's final publication, Day by Day, especially because of:
his descriptions of impotence, ...
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In Tagore's "Along the Way", who is the entity that the "your touch" is referring to?
Rabindranath Tagore's "Along the Way" several times refers to "your touch", such as in this first stanza:
As I walk along my way
I receive your touch
Now and then
But I don’t know ...
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What does "even so did I" mean?
I am reading Oscar Wilde's poem "The House of Judgment" and it uses the phrase. I have seen it in other older texts. What does it mean?
Here is a copy of the passage. The phrase is bolded.
...
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