Rukhaya M.K

A Literary Companion

Month: September 2014 (page 4 of 6)

Poetry Analysis: R.S. Thomas’ “Death of a Peasant”

September 13, 2014 / / 1 Comment

“My chief aim is to make a poem . You make it for yourself firstly, and then if other people want to join in… then there we are.”

The speaker begins in his is abrupt, dramatical style as he does in “Evans:”

You remember Davies? He died, you know,
With his face to the wall, as the manner is
Of the poor peasant in his stone croft
On the Welsh hills. I recall the room

He dies with his face to the wall: the typical case of the poor peasant. Is it, in a sort of punishment that he turns his face to the wall? Is it owing to shame or guilt one wonders. The speaker then goes on to elaborate that this was the manner with all the peasants. Perhaps to the peasant, this was his way of sacramental absolution. A ‘croft’ is a fenced or enclosed area of land, usually small and arable with a crofter’s dwelling thereon.(Wikipedia). The ‘poor peasant’ dwelt in his ‘stone croft’. The word ‘croft’ therefore denotes the limitedness of his existence, and the confinement in which the peasant is. His knowledge of the world is restricted to this area. The word ‘hard’ points to the rigid conditions and the inflexible way of life making use of the barest basic amenities of life.…

Philip Sidney’s Sonnet 1 “Loving in Truth”

September 13, 2014 / / 0 Comments

“Loving in Truth” is the first in Philip Sidney’s sonnet sequence Astrophel and Stella. The name of the sonnet sequence echoes the romance of their rapport: of Philip Sidney and his lady love, Penelope Devereux. “Astro” in Greek means “star,” while “phel” or “phil” implies love .The word ‘stella’ in Latin signifies ‘star’. Therefore, Sidney is a star-lover, his star being his Stella. He orbits around the luminous Stella, who radiates him with her love and warmth. The poet and his beloved together as a couple represent the Greco-Roman concord of feeling and form. This classical sensibility was revived during the Renaissance and Sidney exemplifies the same in his sonnet. This sonnet is written in a hexam¬eter, consisting of six two-syllable feet per line.

The poet asserts that being truly and sincerely in love with his lady love he attempts to capture his love for her in verse. He desires to consecrate his love in poetry so that his beloved would comprehend his agony. The poet juxtaposes two complementary entities in the phrase “pleasure of my pain” to signify the bitter-sweet reality of the feeling of love. The pleasure might enable her to read his poetry; poetry may impart her with knowledge.…

Poetry Analysis: Paul Laurence Dunbar’s “We Wear the Mask “

September 13, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Paul Lawrence Dunbar’s “We Wear the Mask”appeared in Dunbar’s first published volume, Lyrics of Lowly Life, by Dodd, Mead, and Company in 1896. It also was in print in the volume Majors and Minors the previous year. Having parents who lead a past of slavery, and subjected to Apartheid himself, Dunbar was aware of the internal anguish and agony the blacks went through. The mask, an extended metaphor utilized here, marks a distinction between the mask and the man. Note that he says ‘We wear the Mask” and not ‘We are the mask.’ The action is done consciously and objectively. Henry Louis Gates referred to Dunbar’s dialect verse as “mask in motion”.The black puts up a brave face, as he would prefer to break than bend to life’s atrocities. The mask portrayed grins and lies. The mask hides the blood rushing to the cheek; and shades the eyes that most eloquently gives away one’s emotions. The blacks pay a heavy debt to human astuteness submitting to the vileness of the whites. The ‘We’ refers to the collective consciousness of the black race. Though the mouth gives away emotions in all its subtlety ,the smile that forms the mask camoufaluges the ‘torn and bleeding hearts.” Likewise, the black plays his role out in the world despite the fact what lies in his heart.…

Metaphysical Overtones in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick

September 13, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Moby Dick is an epic-novel with epic-dimensions to it. Moby Dick, as simple as it is on the superficial level has multifarious dimensions to it. A reason for the richness of the novel is the different layers of meaning that can be ferreted out from the novel. The metaphysical overtones contribute to this aspect. We may consider the different metaphysical aspects.

Ahab’s Transcendentalism

Ahab’s monomaniacal ambition has transcendental overtones. He does not check his ambitions on the basis whether they are good or evil, but only on the ground that they are entirely his. His monomaniacal tendencies are elevated by Melville who asserts that it is “a crucifixion on his face” and “the nameless overbearing of some mighty woe.” However, the novel can be an indictment of Transcendentalism as well in that it is an indictment of individualism as Ahab’s towering efforts are crushed towards the end.

Apart from making him a transcendentalist, he also makes his protagonist defy the symbolic perception that transmutes the instinctive violence of the white whale to existential frustration. Ahab’s tendency to symbolic thinking leads him to seeing his adversary “that intangible malignity that has been from the beginning. But this tendency also betrays in him in an inflated sense of obligation to give an outlet to “all the general hate and rage felt by his whole race from Adam down.”

At another level, it also symbolizes man’s quest for truth, the ultimate way to reach God.…

Poetry Analysis: Frances Harper’s “I Wear an Easy Garment”

September 13, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Harper, Frances Ellen Watkins (1825-1911) is an African American writer and antislavery, women’s rights, and temperance activist. Harper aimed at the upliftment of African Americans, and in particular African American women in the diverse ways that she could. Her campaigns at promoting the same has rendered her “one of the best-known and most respected black women of the 19th century.” She has restricted her literary capabilities to the causes she stood for: abolition of slavery, racial equality, suffrage and women’s rights.

The poem “I Wear an Easy Garment” is given the alternative title ‘Free Labour.’ This echoes the theme as the free labour comes across to the onlookers as an easy garment the average labourer wears. The garment may be the smile he adorns that is taken for granted by the capitalist class he works for. The speaker thus protests against the practice of slavery practiced amongst free African Americans. The garment does not project the tears of anguish over the years that the toiling slave registers. He does not exhibit the tears during the whole of his lifetime, and even during his passage to the grave. The tears are hopeless, as the slave is. He has no hope to live, for, hope is the primary requisite for those who aspire to live.…

Poetry Analysis: E.E.Cummings’ “Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town”

September 13, 2014 / / 0 Comments

E.E.Cummings’ poems are noted for their singular use of diction. The poem “Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town” is penned in iambic metre with rhyme and slant rhyme. Anyone” appears to be the protagonist of the poem. The attribution of a pronoun alone to address him points to his anonymity. It may also stand as a generalization of it being anyone. He was a person always buoyant and in jovial spirits. He remained unaffected by the mechanical routines, or the cycle of seasons. He sang his own songs; and the poet put forth a rhetorical question whether “he didn’t dance his did”?

Women and men both “big and small”did not care for Anyone at all. By the phrase “big and small” the poet may indicate the size physically/ in stature or position. The line:” they sowed their isn’t they reaped their same” implies that they reaped the benefits of their work. On a figurative level, it may signify that they reaped the reward of their good deed and bad deeds respectively. They did this whether: ”sun moon stars rain.” The first part (sun moon) refers to the cycle of day. The second part alludes to the fact whether it was rainy or not; as a day without rain is filled with stars.…

Poetry Analysis: Anne Bradstreet’s “To My Dear and Loving Husband”

September 13, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Anne Bradstreet is often called “America’s first female poet”. The poem “To My Dear and Loving Husband” is penned in iambic pentameter and was published in 1678 after her death.Her husband Simon Bradstreet became a Massachusetts governor and had to travel for weeks in keeping with his role as the administrator of the colony. The prescribed poem was born out of his absence. The subject of her poem professes unconditional love for her husband.

The influence of Complementarianism is evident in her writings. “Complementarianism is a theological view held by many in Christianity and other world religions that men and women have different but complementary roles and responsibilities in marriage, family life, religious leadership, and elsewhere. It assigns leadership roles to men and support roles to women, based on the interpretation of certain biblical passages. One of its precepts is that while women may assist in the decision making process, the ultimate authority for the decision is the purview of the male in marriage, courtship, and in the polity of churches subscribing to this view.”The title of the poem “To My Dear and Loving Husband” exemplifies how the spouse is not only dear to her but loves her in a complementary manner.…

Poetry Analysis:E.E.Cummings’s “Buffalo Bill’s”

September 13, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Buffalo Bill’s
defunct
who used to
ride a watersmooth-silver
stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
Jesus

he was a handsome man
and what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death

Edward Estlin Cummings was primarily an experimenter and is renowned for his unconventional syntax. His unique style lends novelty to poems. The poems of Cummings are hazy like French paintings. He echoes the paintings in Modernism as characterized by disharmony and discontinuity. On the superficial level, the poem “Buffalo Bill” has the simplicity of a nursery rhyme. “Buffalo Bill’s” appears to be written in a flippant manner. The lines reveal his preoccupation with experimentation, and the lack of space demonstrates a run-on effect that echoes his thirst for freedom of expression. The poet utilizes free verse to mirror the vibrancy of the legend. The poem belongs to the group of poems that uphold individualism.

The title may stand for a contraction that symbolizes the life of Buffalo Bill in a nutshell. The title may also be in the possessive case indicating that the narrative belongs to Bill. The word ‘defunct’ comes across as a portmanteau word that is a cross between deflate and extinct.The closing lines bring out the somber aspect of the poem in the direct address to Death.The poem is more than a tribute to Cowboy Buffalo Bill who died in 1916 as a testament to folk legend.…

Poetry Analysis: Wallace Stevens’ “The Emperor of Ice-cream”

September 9, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Wallace Stevens’s poems showcase an intellectual dimension not meant for the common masses. It is infused with poetic logic rather than rational logic. Stevens’ poems are quite often packed with emblematical images and are not easy to comprehend or paraphrase. The profuse figurative statements are brought into play to convey subtle ideas. The choice of words are quite often incomprehensible as in the phrase “Emperor of Ice-cream.” Stevens was of the opinion that it is “not able to give words a single rational meaning.” The poet gave more significance to technique than sense refusing to divorce meaning from technique. He is a Romantic poet in a different sense:” Imagination merely changes the appearance of this world.” He was of the view that disorder and chaos in the world are rendered order and pattern through imagination. There is no realm beyond this world. His theory of poetry is the theory of life. Stevens considered poetry as a mode of thinking. According to him, reality was what the imagination constructed as a response to desire. For him imagination was equivalent to aspiration. He defines poetry as ‘a holiday in reality.”The Emperor of Ice-cream” was first published in 1922 in the collection Harmonium.…

Poetry Analysis: Walt Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing”

September 9, 2014 / / 0 Comments

The poet Whitman apostrophizes America as a living being that can be heard. Its indelible presence can be discerned through the song it delivers. It is singular for the unison that it represents. Through the voice of America, the poet hears the varied carols that stand for the different states of America. America is the song and the various carols are the stars that it encompasses in its flag. The lines of the poem can be compared to Sarojini Naidu’s “Bird Sanctuary” where various birds in the sanctuary herald the festival at dawn in harmony. The Sanctuary at once symbolizes India and the people from different walks of life heralding the Dawn of Independence.

Here also, Walt Whitman asserts how as each one merged into unison, he also possessed an individuality of his own pronounced with all the technicalities. They sang in an all cordial-mood:

Those of mechanics—each one singing his, as it should be, blithe and strong;

The poet brings together people from all aspects of life together to underline the ‘unity in diversity’. He starts with the person who builds the very base-the mason. He sings his song as he gets ready for work. This highlights how this ‘song’ representative of America has become a way of life for the people.…

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