Stephen Spender

"The Express" by Stephen Spender is a semi-meter free verse poem of 27 lines with a presence of iambs in lines that can be scanned according to pentameter. Examples of places where the traces of...

Salt can also be a reference to tears - and salt is highly irritant to eyes. So in the poem ' My parents kept me from children who were rough' the poet Stephen Spender is talking about the idea of...

In everyday language, the poem 'My parents kept me from children who were rough' by Stephen Spender might go something like this (as a modern day summary:) Title 'My parents controlled who I could...

In the first stanza, the boys are described as neglected and troubled. The “rough” children do not seem to choose to be mean. They are clearly living in poverty, and have nearly no one to take...

In "My Parents," Spender explores the theme of the isolation and alienation he felt from the other boys his age in his neighborhood. They were poor, rough boys dressed in torn, ragged clothing who...

One of the themes of the poem 'My parents kept me from children who were rough' by Stephen Spender is isolation - another is lack of control. There is a certain lack of rhyme and rhythm in that...

There is no hiding the fact that there is a noticeable break between who Spender's parents wanted him playing with and who they did not (in the poem "My Parents Kept Me From Children Who Were...

We could argue that there are two disparate types of childhood experience presented in Spender's poem, but the perspective of the speaker only allows us full understanding of one of those. The...

The meaning of the poem "The Shapes of Death" by Stephen Spender is that knowledge of our mortality is something that hangs over our lives and often influences our thoughts and behaviors,...

In the poem " Seascape: In Memoriam, M.A.S.," Stephen Spender conveys characteristic aspects of the sea. The poet emphasizes the power and deceptive nature of the sea over mankind. The author...

This poem is about the "ritual sacrifice" of death as part of the natural order of living, particularly as seen against the backdrop of the ocean, which although beautiful on the surface,...

The key theme of this poem by Stephen Spender is death, particularly the way that "shapes of death haunt life." Spender's concern is that the darker parts of the human character, such as greed and...