Poetry
Latest Contributing Articles
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The Weight of Water in Oakes Smith's Poetry
The creative writing of Elizabeth Oakes Smith, an 19th century poet, lecturer and activist, was influenced by tragic experiences at sea.
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Frank O'Hara's "Today"
Everything, even the smallest most inane object, has meaning, but sometimes it is necessary to look a little closer to see what that meaning is.
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Louis Zukofsky's Sincere Perception of Language
Beginning with words as perceptible objects, Zukofsky's poetry generates a sense of dynamism and interactivity that moves beyond poetic description and authorial intent.
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The World of the Metaphysical Poets
The Metaphysical Poets lived and wrote in time of great upheaval and change. As poets they lived through some of the most momentous events in England's history
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Best Five Poems About Mothers
As time goes on, it gets harder and harder to choose gifts for mom. Why not make her something homemade and include a famous poem with heartfelt sentiment?
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Louis Zukofsky and the Objectified Poem
Louis Zukofsky used every aspect of the written word to create multi-faceted poems which replicate the dynamics of worldly, human experience.
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Best Five Poems About Fathers
As time goes on, it gets harder and harder to choose gifts for dad. Why not make him something homemade and include a famous poem with heartfelt sentiment?
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The Pantoum – A Rhyming, Repeating Poetic Form
Many poets have experimented with the pantoum form, using its interconnected quatrains and indeterminate length to dwell on or delve into the intricacies of any subject.
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The British Landscape Conserved by its Poets
Britain's landscape poets have done more to preserve its countryside than any environmental or ecological conservancy has.
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Eating Poetry and The Invention of Cuisine
Eating Poetry leads the reader down a mysterious literary digestive tract, while The Invention of Cuisine views a plate of food as a palate, full of primitive imaginings.
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The Profane Wit of John Wilmot Earl of Rochester
Rochester's "Allusion to Horace" and "Imperfect Enjoyment" exemplify the harsh, honest language and explicitly sexual imagery that have earned him both notoriety and fame
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Laurence Binyon, Poet of the Great War
Laurence Binyon was a figure of the literary establishment . He wrote the Ode to Remembrance with no experience of warfare and no idea of how great the toll was to be.
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Garrison's "Bach in the Subway"
Being lost without a direction or need for a direction can create wonderful feelings of weightlessness, and it is a perfectly respectable way to spend one's time.
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How to Write Haiku
Haiku are short poems with three lines and a certain number of syllables on each line.
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Joseph Brodsky's "A Polar Explorer"
Exploration is touted as the pathway to discovery and human achievement, but sometimes when you reach for the top the bottom falls out.
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W.H. Auden's Speaker in Musée Des Beaux Arts
Auden brilliantly demonstrates the application of 'speaker's voice' as an effective device for complicating a poem's semantic content with nuance and ironic complexity.
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A Dying Emperor's Unsolved Mystery
Hadrian Lay Dying at his Palace at Baiae, Naples. His Slaves Refused to Stab Him in the Place He had Found Beneath his Heart. He Left Five Lines that Defied Translation.
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W.B Yeats' Poem "The Folly of Being Comforted"
In W.B. Yeats' poem "The Folly of Being Comforted," a passionate lover's heart engages in a dialog with an "ever kind" friend - the lover's own intellect.
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Donald Hall Chronicle of Causality
Everyone knows that in order to have safe sex you must use protection, but sometimes the consequences of safe sex can be just as devastating as unsafe sex.
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John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester Biography
Though notorious for his debauched behavior and lascivious language, John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester was nevertheless one of Restoration London's most celebrated poets.
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Rumi, Hafiz, & the Truth of the Mystic Poets
According to the great Persian Sufi Poet Rumi (1207-1273), love is the most difficult concept to define, "My pen splinters when I write Love,"* he writes.
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Levine's "Animals Are Passing From Our Lives"
When facing an obstacle the easy way out is tempting, but it is better face to adversity with head held high even in the thick of increasing vacuousness.
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William Blake's 'The Garden of Love'
This poem uses the deterioration of an Edenic garden to represent the corrupting effect of organised religion upon our internal state of being.
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The White Man's Burden by Rudyard Kipling
The White Man's Burden is a layered poem in many ways; it represents numerous elements of late Victorian sensation and hints at the future of the empire.
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Natasha Trethewey Biography and Works
Contemporary poet Natasha Trethewey won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for her book "Native Guard" after a successful debut with her "Domestic Work" and "Bollocq's Ophelia."
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William Blake's 'The Sick Rose'
This brief poem encapsulates the fall that is detailed in the 'Songs of Innocence and Experience' with a multi-faceted symbolic premise.
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Recommended Poetry for Lovers
Communication is important in a love relationship. The best gift is one that shows how you feel. A gift of love poetry to your beloved sends a powerful intimate message.
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A Survey of the Sonnet and Its Many Forms
Sonnets have been around for a long time, and so have undergone a number of transformations. Regardless of its rigid structure, the sonnet remains a popular poetic form.
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Kunitz's "The Portrait"
Art often enables people to release pent up emotions and thoughts that would otherwise drive them mad, yet sometimes it is madness that drives creativity.
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William Blake's 'The Clod and the Pebble'
This compact poem symbolically presents a dichotomy between selfish and unselfish love.
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William Blake's 'London'
'London' is a viciously provocative poem that urges its readership to release themselves from the "mind-forg'd manacles" that are strangling the city.
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The Legendary Dodge Poetry Festival is Back On
Good news! The Festival, once threatened by the economic recession, is on for October 2010. Go to hear Billy Collins and other great poets, and rediscover what matters.
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Book Review – The Merry Muses of Caledonia
This new edition of The Merry Muses of Caledonia offers a scholarly context for these famous/infamous bawdy Scottish folk songs traditionally attributed to Robert Burns.
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Poets and Criticisms in 18th Century England
At the beginning of the 18th century, writers of prose and poetry were adhering to rigid rules and forms later described as feeble correctness.
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William Bronk – Oh What a Relief He Is
The American poet William Bronk, who died in 1999, is the perfect antidote for anyone whose not in tune with all the experimentation going on in American poetry today.
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Crow Is Still Flying High
Published eight years after Sylvia Plath's suicide, Ted Hughes's book of poetry Crow can now be read in light of the suicide of Hughes and Plath's son, Nicholas.
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Ted Kooser's "Tattoo"
Ageing, despite the futile attempts of modern medicine, is inevitable and it is through this vehicle of transience that all human beings eventually become equal.
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Character Development in "The Mountain"
As the mountain dominates Lunenburg, so also it dominates the narrator's mind. With blank verse techniques, Frost brings out the narrator's character in subtle ways.
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Remembering the Death of Alfred Lord Tennyson
Alfred Lord Tennyson died at age 83 on October 6, 1892. His long life ended via a quiet but insistent strain of influenza. His legacy continues more than a century later.
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Creative Nonfiction and Poetry
Creative nonfiction essays are more closely related to poetry than one might suspect, and in many ways bear more resemblance to poetry than its prose cousin: fiction.
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The Mountain by Robert Frost
With excellent blank verse techniques that includes wonderful dialog, this poem from "North of Boston", Frost's second book, keeps the reader captivated.
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W. H. Auden's Marriage
Throughout his prolific career, Wystan Hugh Auden defied conventions in literature.
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The Lyric Essay
Lyric essay-which resides on a literary boundary between creative nonfiction and poetry-has the appearance of prose but evokes the emotionality and imagery of poetry.
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Auden's The Unknown Citizen
Human beings are complicated, defying labels and over simplifications, yet in the interests of scientific or political progress humanity is often reduced base symbols.
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When Lilacs Last in the Door-Yard Bloom'd
When the great Anglo-American novelist Henry James first read 'When Lilacs Last in the Door-Yard Bloom'd,' he plainly detested it.
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Negative Religious Aspects The Canterbury Tales
The Canterbury Tales was not just a loose satirical mockery of the many levels of Medieval English society, Chaucer had some extremely important points to make.
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Metaphors by Sylvia Plath – Layers of Meaning
Plath loads multi-layered allusions onto every term in Metaphors. Waiting to be discovered are comments about Eve and Original Sin, and mothers devalued as mere breeders.
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Metaphors by Sylvia Plath is a Riddle Poem
Sylvia Plath has signalled that her poem Metaphors should be read as a light-hearted take on pregnancy by choosing a playful riddle poem format and using its fun aspects.
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Analysis of Robert Frost's The Mountain
Analysis of "The Mountain" shows how Robert Frost used both description and dialogue to convey a story. Much can be gathered from what he did not include in the poem.
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Passion Vs. Reason in the Works of Chaucer
Exploring the questions of life and love, reason and passion in two of Chaucer's poems, The Book of the Duchess and The Parliament of the Fowls.
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