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Poetry
The appearance of daffodils is often symbolic of heralding spring, which is a time of new birth and beauty. The speaker in "To Daffodils" examines how quickly this beauty fades and "weeps" to see...
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Poetry
John Donne uses apostrophe, or direct address, by talking to his beloved in this poem: he speaks directly to her to reassure her that he will not be gone long on his journey. He uses enjambment, or...
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Poetry
Two common themes that Seamus Heaney and Emily Dickinson address in their poems are insights into nature and the figurative connection between natural states, such as the seasons, to the human...
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Poetry
This poem, written by Guyanese poet Martin Carter, was published in his 1954 poetry collection called Poems of Resistance. Carter was a member of the People's Progressive Party, which was...
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Poetry
The subject of R.S. Thomas' poem called, "The Survivors," may provide us with an answer to the question one has at the end of the poem: what happens to the stranded people in the boat?—or it may...
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Poetry
Jenny Joseph's poem "When I am Old" speaks to the power poetry still wields in our society, with thousands of women becoming members of Red Hat societies as a result of it. A metaphor is a...
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Poetry
The poetic devices that are used in the poem "Taught me Purple" by Evelyn Tooley Hunt include: Stanzas This poem is divided into three stanzas of four lines each. A stanza is a unit or a grouping...
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Poetry
In general, (as per the introduction) this poem is a tribute to the life of Peter Porter. As such, I believe there are several "inside jokes" throughout the piece, that are so personal, only those...
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Poetry
“The Sea” by James Reeves is a three stanza poem that includes the use of metaphor, imagery, onomatopoeia, and varied rhyming schemes. In the first stanza, the poet uses a metaphor to say...
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Poetry
In the first stanza of "The Spider and the Fly," the spider tries to convince the fly to come up to his parlour (web), but the fly replies that those who do so never return. In the second stanza,...
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Poetry
Literal language means exactly what it says. If some word is written, it means exactly that. Let's think about Frost's "Desert Places." He says that he has his own desert places that scare him....
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Poetry
"The Demon Lover" is a traditional ballad from Scotland. Like most traditional ballads, it adheres to a fairly rigid structure and form. It is comprised of stanzas with four lines each, each of...
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Poetry
In Davies' "The Kingfisher," the poet is directly addressing a kingfisher. He suggests that the kingfisher took its beautiful colors from its mother, "the Rainbow," and also that the mother of the...
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Poetry
My Body is a wide house A commune Of bickering women, hearing their own breathing denying each other. This entire poem is built on the bolded metaphor presented in the first stanza. The speaker...
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Poetry
You have the opportunity to draw some striking conclusions about the similarities and differences in the two poems. Personally (as a writer and a teacher), I would prefer a bold thesis statement in...
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Poetry
Before beginning a line-by-line summary of "The Wife's Lament," it should be noted that it is very difficult to determine the exact circumstances the wife in this poem is lamenting. She has in...
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Poetry
You have asked about the twelfth line of the poem called "The Sea," written by James Reeves, a twentieth-century British writer. In this poem, the speaker compares the sea to a "hungry dog" that...
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Poetry
This line is from a poem called "The Kingfisher" by William Henry Davies. In the poem, the speaker implores the "lovely Bird" to "Live with proud peacocks in green parks," and "clap thy wings /...
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Poetry
Poetic language is the use of any of the literary/poetic language techniques that are used by poets to convey their message. The following are some of the most common: Figurative Language...
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Poetry
Tony Dey Hoagland's poem "America" describes an America that is "drowning" in a culture of materialism and "bright merchandise." The speaker describes a dream in which his father bled "not blood...
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Poetry
The line "I am entirely longing—" from "The Wife's Lament" is reinforced by the circumstances and setting in which she lives. Her husband, whom she loved and felt a great affinity for, has left...
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Poetry
As the title of the poem implies, this is a poem about the brotherhood of all men. The author is trying to argue that all people are essentially the same. He uses the word "foreign" to mean...
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Poetry
In my opinion, the theme of "Extended Family" by AK Ramanujan is the deep conflict within himself at the contrast between the old and the new and perhaps a bit of fear of the future. The author was...
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Poetry
Victorian Poetry- while coming on the heels of the Romantic Era- is characterized by much different subject matter and tone than that of the Romantics. Where the Romantic poets are famous for their...
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Poetry
The major device used in this poem is metaphor, a comparison of two unalike things where one is said to be the other. The immigrants's past is compared to a "heavy cargo" that they "smuggled in" to...
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Poetry
“You don’t believe in the love that corrodes, the love that ruins?” “No,” laughed Zuleika. “You have never dipped into the Greek pastoral poets, nor sampled the Elizabethan...
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Poetry
In "Africa" David Diop apostrophizes the continent, saying: Africa, tell me AfricaIs this your back that is unbentThis back that never breaks under the weight of humiliationThis back trembling...
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Poetry
The street in the poem is described with a different epithet at the end of each stanza. It is first "eager," then "panting," and finally "singing." In the first stanza, at dawn, it is both the...
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Poetry
The poem "An Ordinary Day" by Norman MacCaig is about how we observe things on an average day. It is also about how important the mind is in the interpretation of our daily reality. For example, in...
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Poetry
I think in order to answer your question it is necessary to start with the different sonnet forms. English (or Shakespearean) Sonnet - probably the most common studied in high school literature; 14...
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Poetry
Besides its imagery, the most obvious poetic devices in this poem are irony and paradox. While the clown is the "king on the throne" (4) with a silly "red nose" (7) whose job it is to make his...
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Poetry
The elements of poetry include meter, rhyme, form, sound, and rhythm (timing). Different poets use these elements in many different ways. Some poets do not use rhyme at all. Some use couplets,...
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Poetry
Agha Shahid Ali is a poet from India. He was born in 1949 and grew up in Kashmir. In 1975 he moved to America. In his poem, "Postcard from Kashmir," published in 2019, Ali implies that his memories...
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Poetry
This is an interesting question, because the poem has no obvious setting. It is not a narrative with an external location; rather, it is a hypothetical train of thought. Therefore, the literal...
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Poetry
"Desiderata" by Max Ehrmann is a didactic, or morally instructive, prose poem that addresses the challenges of living in a harsh world and provides practical advice for how to weather those...
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Poetry
The overarching theme of this poem by Karen Connelly is the fear all humans experience every day of our lives, due to the fact that life is a great unknown and we can never be certain of what is...
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Poetry
In Toru Dutt's poem, the speaker describes "Love" coming to "Flora" to hear her choice of which flower she thought should be named the "undisputed queen" of flowers. It seems that the rose and the...
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Poetry
In this context, “critical” means paying attention to the elements of construction – rhyme scheme, meter, stanza arrangement, imagery, etc. – that give the poem its balance, beauty, and...
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Poetry
The poems "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" by Dylan Thomas and "Annabel Lee" by Edgar Allen Poe share themes of death, love, and confronting loss. Your teacher will almost definitely want...
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Poetry
Sipho Sepamla is a South African poet born in 1932. He wrote during Apartheid and had some of his work banned by the Apartheid regime. Apartheid was a strict and violently enforced system of racial...
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Poetry
"Heron at Port Talbot" describes the speaker's "near-collision" with another motorist. It is set against the industrial background of the Welsh town of Port Talbot. One language device used in the...
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Poetry
Jenny Joseph’s poem titled “Warning” is a whimsical presentation on the options available to older people, particularly older women. In lines that have become somewhat famous, the speaker...
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Poetry
In "A Song of Hope" by Oodgeroo Noonuccal, the poet makes use of various poetic devices in order to stress the themes of racism and freedom, and the ending of this injustice against a "darker...
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Poetry
"The Laburnum Top" is a poem which celebrates the energy and life of nature. The laburnum tree is sitting in the silence of fall, without movement or apparent life. In flies a goldfinch, stirring...
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Poetry
This poem is about the mindless destruction of natural landscapes for the resources hidden within them – oil, ore, minerals – all in the greedy name of profit and with no concern for the damage...
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Poetry
The major literary devices, also called poetic devices, in "A Legend of the Northland" by Phoebe Cary are in the literary element category, with a striking absence of any in the literary technique...
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Poetry
The chief symbol in Crozier’s poem is blatantly the swan. The girl’s “innocence” is a black swan, not the traditional white, because she’s not the traditional lady she was raised and...
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Poetry
The main differences between the forms known as haiku and free verse are as follows: 1. Haiku is classified in the "traditional" category (as opposed to the "organic" category). 2. Haiku has a...
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Poetry
The speaker in Elizabeth Daryush's poem "Anger Lay by Me" is a trapped woman. She is trapped by her "lord," but also by society's expectations of her. It seems that she has been writing and that...
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Poetry
Poems are usually written as a way to express the feelings of the author. The person or place or event that has created those feelings is the subject or object of the poem. There isn't one uniform...