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3 votes

What does "The Shampoo" written by Elizabeth Bishop tell?

This is a love poem, written to Elizabeth Bishop's lover Lota de Macedo Soares. I am going to give a very impressionistic interpretation of it. A more literal close reading may not yield the same ...
Peter Shor's user avatar
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3 votes

What does "The Shampoo" written by Elizabeth Bishop tell?

This is a poem about people's perception of, and response to, love and ageing and the passing of time. But it doesn't start that way. Rather, the first verse appears to be a poetic meditation on ...
Matt Thrower's user avatar
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9 votes

What did Walt Whitman mean by "a pennant universal"?

He is talking about a "spiritual" "flag" for all sailors. Whitman starts by talking about the different flags of different nations. But by line three he is talking about "one ...
DJClayworth's user avatar
1 vote

What did Walt Whitman mean by "a pennant universal"?

Not a kind of pennant , but pennants in general. Adjectival postposition (and strange syntax/anastrophe in general) is a classic poetic device, particularly in older texts. As A Poet's Glossary ...
CDR's user avatar
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2 votes

Name for device in "Possessions" by Hart Crane?

A similar device is the basis of a traditional/anonymous British 17th century semi-nonsense poem, probably the one recalled by Peter Shor in comments: I saw a Peacock with a fiery tail I saw a ...
Peter LeFanu Lumsdaine's user avatar
2 votes
Accepted

What does this line from an essay on T. S. Eliot mean?

Altieri is arguing that although Eliot tried to combat the dissociation of sensibility with a poetics that relied on impersonality, in his early poems this very impersonality led only to a further ...
verbose's user avatar
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