Just a few more days of this exiting month of April and National Poetry Month!
Here are more articles to help you observe this “cruelest” but also coolest of months for Poetry:
Apr 27, 2007
Louise Glück’s ‘The Pond’: Nightmares and Blood The former poet laureate dramatizes the incest taboo in her poem "The Pond," which portrays a birdwing covering a pond and a disembodied spirit that stings her memory.
Apr 26, 2007
Shakespeare Sonnet 14: ‘Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck’ In sonnet 14 the speaker says he does not have the power to predict the future by gazing at the stars in the sky, but the eyes of the young man tell all he needs to know.
Apr 25, 2007
The Sonnet as a Cage: Millay’s ‘I Will Put Chaos into Fourteen Lines’ In Millay's Petrarchan sonnet, the speaker resolves to tame Chaos by placing him in the cage of a sonnet, where she will be able to make an orderly being of him.
Apr 24, 2007
Shakespeare Sonnet 13: ‘O! That you were yourself; but, love, you are’ In sonnet 13 the speaker continues pleading with the young man to marry and father a son. Again, the speaker is quite specific: "You had a father: let your son say so."
Apr 23, 2007
Robert Frost’s ‘Bereft’: Hissing Leaves Robert Frost's amazing "Bereft" contains one the most fascinating metaphors of all time: "Leaves got up in a coil and hissed / Blindly struck at my knee and missed."
Apr 22, 2007
Williams and Auden: ‘Landscape with the Fall of Icarus’ Williams and Auden both address the issue of "turning away" from other people's failures and suffering in their poems that focus on Peter Brueghel's Icarus painting.
Apr 21, 2007
Clifton’s ‘homage to my hips’: Celebrating Big Hips Lucille Clifton's fun poem literally praises a large posterior while implying that there is an equally expansive mental facility attached to that physical expansiveness.
Apr 20, 2007
Shakespeare Sonnet 12: ‘When I do count the clock that tells the time’ The speaker of Shakespeare's marriage poem 12 again shows how changing nature always comes under "Time's scythe," and only one remedy can fend him off: producing an heir.
Apr 19, 2007
Hughes’ ‘Theme for English B’: Writing What is True In his poem "Theme for English B," Langston Hughes dramatizes a black college student's assignment to write a theme that is true.
Apr 18, 2007
'The Ballad of the Girlie Man': Bernstein’s Political Propaganda Poet Charles Bernstein wants a "poetry that is bad for you." So he has written "The Ballad of the Girlie Man," a superb example of poem that is certainly bad for poetry.
Apr 17, 2007
Prufrock’s Love Song: A Funny Poem T. S. Eliot is really a very funny poet. His works are taken way too seriously. A reader needs to think irony, satire, and enjoy a few belly laughs when reading Eliot.
Apr 16, 2007
‘A Bird came down the Walk': Dickinson’s Frightened Beads This poem is one of Dickinson's many fun poems loaded with clever plays on words, making a keen observation that serves to remind the reader of images stored in memory.
Apr 15, 2007
Shakespeare Sonnet 11: ‘As fast as thou shalt wane, so fast thou grow’st’ In marriage sonnet 11, the speaker again evokes the young man's pleasing qualities, claiming that the lad has an obligation to marry and pass them on to offspring.
Apr 14, 2007
Philip Freneau: Poetry and Politics Philip Freneau was the first American born poet, who earned a reputation as a revolutionary pamphleteer satirizing the British in the struggle for American independence.
Watch for the new blog with a commentary about this month’s poll—appearing on April 30.
