Poetry

Poetry Feature Writer: Linda Sue Grimes

Poetry fascinates readers for many reasons, from its unique language use to the varied subjects that poets have dramatized down through the centuries.

The Ancients, including Homer and Vergil, captivated audiences with their ability to spin a memorable yarn. Ancient Indian epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, were so easily memorized that it was centuries before anyone wrote them down.

From the Ancients to Middle Eastern and Western Eurpoean bards to early Americans like Phillis Wheatley, Emily Dickinson, and Walt Whitman to the most contemporary poets such as recent poets laureate, Louise Glück, Ted Kooser, Charles Simic, and currently Kay Ryan, the journey through poetry remains a colorful and enticing one.

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Feature Writer Articles in Poetry

 		Borson's Talk
Roo Borson's piece, "Talk," focuses on four groups of people and how they relate to the act of talking.
Good-Bye Darjeeling
Poetry accompanied the American Revolution. One of the most poetic revolutionary acts was the dumping of Darjeeling in Boston Harbor.
Barbara Guest's Red Lilies
About Barbara Guest's poetry, Matthew Cooperman writes, "we can never quite fall into her worlds as the words get in the way."
Barghouti's Without Mercy
As a literary imaginationist, the speaker in Barghouti's "Without Mercy" creates a dramatic scene from which he attempts to extract values while plying fear with beauty.
Masters' Benjamin Pantier
Master's portrayal of a married couple, the Pantiers, reveals the sorrowful result of a marriage ruined by vanity and arrogance.
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Contributing Articles in Poetry

 		William Blake
William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience show "the two contrary states of the human soul".
Kenneth Koch's "Permanently"
Using grammatical metaphors to playfully bounce a poem's content off the structure of its language, Kenneth Koch works silliness against simplicity for poetic effect.
Traditional Inuit Poetry of Greenland and Canada
Inuit Poetry, Whether of Greenland or Arctic Canada, possesses a Philosophic Acceptance of Nature No Matter What Hazards or Beauty It May Present to Humanity
Halliday's "The Man Who Is Not at the Table"
It has been argued that to study English literature is to study death in all its forms. Is not a study of death or mortality inherently one that also studies life?
The Sonnet - Key Themes
The sonnet form can be split into three main categories; The Petrarchan, The Spenserian and the Shakespearian. Here is an explanation of the three Sonnet's key themes.
The Early Romantics
The spirit of early Romantic poetry is evidenced in the poetry of William Blake, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
The Waste Land and The Tempest
In The Waste Land, allusions to Shakespeare's The Tempest signal both the unbearable routine of unhappy marriages and the decline of civilization.
The Waste Land and Hamlet
Like Ophelia in Hamlet, unhappy wives in T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land often see no alternative to a miserable life other than suicide.
The Waste Land and Anthony and Cleopatra
By referencing Shakespeare's Anthony and Cleopatra, Part II of T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land shows a husband torn between fascination and contempt for his spouse.
The Poetry of Spring
Two poets (McKay and Cummings) see Spring as the season for hope and renewal, while a third (Millay) holds a dissenting opinion.
Review - My Escape to Freedom by Chez Raginiak
Freedom to be all one can be is the constant theme in this poetic autobiography of a Polish political refugee who immigrated to America and now lives the American Dream.
The Case For Philip Booth
Poet Philip Booth, who died in 2007, had the kind of career that deserves a lasting legacy, but not for the same reasons most poets' careers do.
Literary Criticism For All
Karl Kroeber, who died last November, wrote many books that matter, but none more so than the daring Ecological Literary Criticism.
Ogden Nash's "Spring Comes to Murray Hill"
After a long, gray winter sometimes the best medicine is laughter, especially when it comes from such a serious art form.
Enlightened Beat Poet Gary Snyder
One of the most influential writers of the 50s and 60s, Gary Snyder has received numerous awards and has been recognized as a visionary.
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