Untitled

Proposed here as a thematic companion to Bishop’s “Sonnet (1928).” 1 ***         *** It is so revealing to thematically compare the poem of a major so-called “Victorian”/Proto-Modernist 19th c. priest with that of a major 20th c. Modernist female poet. Their opening lines–I have desired to go and I am in need of–both reflect the poets’ longing for solace, both then using water as metaphor.…

This is a purely personal post, motivated both by my admiration for 20th c. American poet Elizabeth Bishop and the association with 19th c. French Symbolist poetry that it engenders for me, specifically Verlaine’s Clair de Lune (included at the end of the post)1. I am not sure many readers will share that association, but Bishop’s poem stands alone, as it is. *** Sonnet I am in need of music…

Since poets are wordsmiths, it should come as no surprise that sometimes the “playing” with words becomes a major focus. This is particularly evident in the late 16th and early 17th century and the Metaphysical Poets (see John Donne blogs on my list), known for intricate and sometimes very challenging wordplay, but the love of words is evident also in the Elizabethan Poetry of the same…

A prelude in music and art is an isolated, introductory fragment that announces a theme but goes no further than announcement, as in Chopin’s Preludes. It evokes a tone, in poetry using images rather than exposition to declare itself. The poem consists of four stanzas with inconsistent rhyme and meter, the latter predominantly tetrameter (four stressed syllables per line)–but also dimeter (two…

No Rack can torture me (384) and This World is not Conclusion (373) *** *** The poem consists of four 4-line stanzas (quartet), with three stresses per line (trimeter), of variable iambic1 meter, with rhyme scheme aabb, using liberal slant rhyme2 and enjambment3, creating a typically unique Dickinson structure. No Rack can torture me—My Soul—at Liberty—Behind this mortal BoneThere knits a…

*** In Memoriam A. H. H. is a long elegy–a poem of serious reflection, typically a lament for the dead–by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, written in memory of his close friend Arthur Henry Hallam, who died suddenly in 1833. The poem, composed of 131 sections, or cantos, chronicles Tennyson’s grief, doubt, and eventual return to faith, exploring themes of loss, nature’s seeming indifference, and the…

Museum of Fine Arts. Landscape with the Fall of Icarus  *** W. H. Auden wrote Musée des Beaux Arts in December 1938 following a visit to the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique (a.k.a. Belgium’s Royal Museums of Fine Arts). The poem’s speaker walks through a gallery, contemplating various paintings and admiring their ability to convey the “human position” towards suffering—that is,…

Metaphysical Poetry at Its Best. *** Metaphysical poetry is a 17th-century genre, pioneered by John Donne, characterized by highly intellectual, witty, and philosophical exploration of love, religion, and existence. It uses complex, unconventional metaphors (conceits1), paradoxes, and colloquial language to blend emotion with intense analysis. These two poems are a great contrast of two kinds…

*** Byzantium was an ancient Greek city in classical antiquity that became known as Constantinople in late antiquity and Istanbul in modern times.  The poem consists of five 8-line stanzas (octave or octet), with a varied rhyme scheme, often using slant rhyme1, and a varied iambic2 meter. All the variations create an unsteady, shifting format. *** The unpurged images of day recede; The…

I have included Love Song as a post because it is a terrific example of an extended metaphor. *** Nothing is plumb, level, or square:      the studs are bowed, the joists are shaky by nature, no piece fits      any other piece without a gap or pinch, and bent nails      dance all over the surfacing like maggots. By Christ      I am no carpenter. I built the roof for myself, the…

When everything began to change. *** This poem is particularly fascinating today since it symbolically represents a gradual great shift in thinking in the 19th century from faith in Faith to faith in Science, a dichotomy no less prevalent today than it was then. It is significant to remember that Darwin’s Origin of the Species was published in 1859. It is thought that Matthew Arnold wrote this…

*** The poem consists of four quatrains (four-line stanzas) with rhyme scheme abcb, the “b” lines being examples of slant or inexact rhyme. The first and third lines are in iambic tetrameter1 (four stresses), the second and fourth in iambic trimeter (three stresses), a ballad format. I heard a Fly buzz – when I died – The Stillness in the Room Was like the Stillness in the Air – Between the…

*** Terence is the poet-persona Housman uses to represent himself in his collected poems, Shropshire Lad. (1898) The poem consists of four stanzas of varying length, all with rhyming couplets (2-line stanzas), written in iambic tetrameter (lines with four iambic feet-each containing one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one (ta-DUM). ***      ‘Terence, this is stupid stuff: You eat…

Figurative language at its best. . *** Metaphysical Poetry is a 17th-century genre, pioneered by John Donne, and characterized by ingenious, witty, and philosophical exploration of love, religion, and existence. It uses complex, unconventional metaphors (conceits1), paradoxes, and colloquial language to blend emotion with often clever analysis. Sunne Rising is a paradigm of all of those…

Death and the Dissolution of a Marriage. Home Burial is written as a dramatic dialogue between a husband and wife, with an “omniscient narrator’s” commentary; loosely composed in pentameter (five stresses to a line). ** He saw her from the bottom of the stairs Before she saw him. She was starting down, Looking back over her shoulder at some fear. She took a doubtful step and then undid…

*** There’s been a Death consists of six quatrains (4-line stanzas), with a loose rhyme scheme, abcb, and alternating meters of iambic tetrameter 1(four stresses to a line) and iambic trimeter (three stresses to a line); this is the poetic Ballad form used so often by Dickinson. *** There’s been a Death, in the Opposite House,As lately as Today—I know it, by the numb lookSuch Houses…

Also, the poem and this blog. . *** This poem could be a kind of anthem for this blog, which began as a testimony to the power of perception and how what we experience becomes part of us. (See Post, Perception 1. Toward a Better Understanding How We Are Transformed. Welcome. The neurons in the image above symbolize my concept of a blog: two minds–yours and mine–in contact, and through that…