Poetry

There exists a duality in this sparsely written poem through combining the speaker's frustration and recognition of the humiliation of women with a spirit of resilience and dry optimism. The...

To examine a poem's style, let's first consider two poems with quite different styles. First, these are the opening lines of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven": Once upon a midnight dreary, while I...

Poetic language is language that "adds value" to a literary work. Prosaic language, with which it is often contrasted, focuses on "just the facts." Prosaic language is the language of science and...

The first stanza's rhyme scheme is A-B-C-B-D-E-F-E. In other words, the words at the ends of lines 2 and 4 rhyme, and the words at the ends of lines 6 and 8 rhyme. The words at the ends of lines 1,...

In a critical appreciation of "Bequest," you could focus on the role of women as it is presented in the poem and how Souza utilizes literary devices and form to accomplish that purpose. Souza was...

This intriguingly unique poem has an overall tone and a secondary, middle tone along with a tertiary (third) tone. The overall tone is heard in the first six and last two lines. In between are the...

The Elizabethan age ushered in a period of literary freedom and provided grounds for experimentation for the poets. The age was a break away from the tumultuous socioeconomic events of the previous...

Nowadays, a line of poetry is most commonly called just that, a line. A line can be identified as the string of words before a break, even if a sentence is not complete before the break occurs. A...

In short, what makes a poem a poem is the ability to make the reader feel something. I know that can happen with prose, as well, but it seems to me it must happen with a poem. As has already been...

First, neither haiku or free verse rely on end rhymes or a set meter for their effect. Second, both are often used to convey emotion. Third, both often have longing or a love of nature as themes. A...

In general, the titles of long works are italicized or underlined; italicize them when you are typing and underline them when you are writing them out by hand. Likewise, in general, we place the...

The best starting point when writing a critical appreciation of a poem is to determine what the author's message or theme is. Once you determine this key point, the rest of the paper falls into...

This poem by Lenrie Peters is resigned and disappointed in its tone and uses an intriguing rhyme scheme with unexpected internal rhymes to reflect the arresting and, at times, disorienting feeling...

Lyric poetry is relatively short, especially compared to epic poetry, and it makes use of one speaker who presents his or her emotions or state of mind. The sonnet is one of the quintessential...

The first thing I encourage my students to do when reading a new poem for the first time is to read it once to get a sense of the entire text and where it is leading, and then to read it one more...

The most important thing to remember in analyzing literature of any kind—certainly poetry—is that authors choose their words for a reason. Especially when you're close reading, assume that the...

Brown, an English poet and university instructor who specializes in Caribbean and African studies, wrote this poem as a commentary on the Caribbean islands but particularly on Puerto Rico. From...

In “Breaking Silence,” Janice Mirikitani writes eloquently of the terrible experiences that her mother underwent during the Second World War, and of how her deafening silence over those experiences...

Arun Kolatkar, an Indian poet, wrote in both Marathi and English. An exceptional graphic artist, he is considered as the premiere Indian poet. Kaolatkar's poem "An Old Woman" follows a formal...

The theme of a poem is determined by its overall message. The speaker uses apostrophe to address a lover who isn't present, gushing over memories of her and longing to be with her again. However,...

The basic elements of "metaphysical poetry" include a certain naturalness and directness of language, an emphasis on the argumentative (often taking the form of the use of questions), and use of...

The tone of an author roughly means the same thing as the mood. When examining the tone of a poet, it normally refers to the author's feelings towards the subject. In regards to poetry, on the...

The main similarity between lyric and epic poetry is that they're both primarily concerned with telling stories of one kind or another. Lyric poetry is poetry of the emotions; more often than not,...

The Romantic movement began in a period of revolution and ended in a period of reaction. Many of the English Romantic poets embraced the ideals of liberty, fraternity, and equality that...

Let's begin by taking the poem piece by piece in order to figure out what it means: "This is the Dark Time, My Love" --we can learn a lot by looking at the titles to poems. "Dark Time" has the...

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...

I think that the choice between poetry and prose might be dependent on the type of experiences one has had with both as a learner of both. In my experience, students who have had awful times with...

Popular among the nobility and upper crust during the Renaissance, metrical romances are non-rhyming prose poems that tell a story, usually concluding with a happy ending. Metrical romances do not...

In “The Planners,” Boey Kim Cheng makes a creative, vivid, yet sobering statement about the nature of “progress.” The main characters in the poem are the planners, as the title tells us. They plan...

Unfortunately, structuralism is so dependent upon a background in linguistics, semiotics, and other relatively esoteric elements that it is very difficult to explain its use in literary criticism,...

In this poem, the sea is compared to a dog via a metaphor, a comparison of two unalike things where one (in this case, the sea, which is the literal term) is said to be the other (in this case, the...

It is very common- and easy- to confuse a subject and theme of a literary work, particularly poetry. However, these literary terms have universal meanings across different genres and types of...

The Scottish ballad "Edward, Edward" relates a series of questions or observations and answers between a mother and her son. In simple modern English, stripped of the repetition, these exchanges...

The great thing about Poetry is that it is timeless. When we read poetry, we interpret it based on our own ideas and cultural perceptions. Even very old poems still appeal to us and resinate with...

"The Clown's Wife" is a poem that examines the theme of appearance versus reality. This is a very common theme in literature. It's the idea that things are not really how they appear. The clown...

Arguably, the main theme in the poem "The Sea" is the power and playfulness of nature, represented here by the sea. The sea is described, metaphorically, as "a hungry dog" that "rolls on the beach...

All literature, including poetry, can be interpreted using different methodologies. For example, if you were to analyze William Wordsworth's poetry, you might do a biographical analysis of his life...

Juliet Wilson's poem "The Lost Dances of Cranes" reflects on the changeover from endangered species to the development of cities via construction cranes. In this poetic analysis, lines from the...

This poem is a celebration of the history and cultural diversity of the British people. The speaker, as if describing the steps in a recipe, describes the different cultural and ethnic groups which...

In terms of poetry, there are two kinds or forms, based upon the "structure or pattern of organization" that a poet adopts when writing his verse. These are called "open" or "closed" forms. When...

Two understated poems about the love of nature and the importance of capturing its fleeting moments of beauty are "Loveliest of Trees" by A. E. Housman and "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy...

All of "The Wife's Lament," a heartfelt elegy for a lost loved one, is written with caesuras. These are wide breaks or pauses in the middle of a line. Along with alliteration, they add a sense of...

“Puerto Rican Obituary” is an epic poem by Pedro Pietri, a member of the Nuyorican Movement. This was a movement in the 1960s and 1970s of Puerto Rican artists, writers, and musicians. The...

The theme of Eunice de Souza's "Advice to Women" is that relationships are not for the faint of heart. De Souza begins the poem by advising the reader or listener, who is considering entering a...

This poem very clearly conveys hope for a "juster justice," and a "glad tomorrow"; it conveys hope that the native peoples of Australia will rise above their oppression and be represented fairly...

The most significant theme of this poem, I think, has to do with its depiction of sex workers as individuals with identities that exist outside of the work that they do. There is a temptation for...