Rukhaya M.K

A Literary Companion

Month: December 2014 (page 3 of 3)

Poetry Analysis: Sarojini Naidu’s “Bird Sanctuary”


Named as the nightingale of India, Sarojini Naidu ,is essentially a poetess of Indian flora and fauna. Nature was a spring of perpetual bliss to her.’ The ‘Bird Sanctuary’ depicts the ideal refuge of God that offers ideal fostering space and nurturing place for every bird regardless of its identity. The poem is addressed to the Master of the Birds. There is festive joy as the birds sing tumultuously. The enchanting aura they craft herald the Festival of Dawn. Birds of multitudinous colors produce music entrancing and melodious.

The birds strive to sing carols from their throats of amber, ebony and fawn and passionately evocate the pastoral arena of India. The bulbul, the oriole, the honey bird and the shama are perceived fluttering from the high boughs sodden with nectar and due. As the atmosphere is animated with colour and movement, the gull exhibits its silver sea-washed coat, and the hoopoe and the kingfisher their sapphire-blue. The wild gay pigeons envisage a home, amid the tree tops and endeavour to achieve the same, filling their beaks with silken down and banyan twigs. The pervading greenery is reflective of fertility and prosperity in the lives of the birds. Their ascent phrased as “sunward flight” signifies their aspiration to accomplish new heights.…

Poetry Analysis: Stephen Spender’s “Pylons”


The advent of pseudo-modernism onto a hitherto serene arena is the theme of Stephen Spender’s “Pylons”. The poem was so famous that it heralded a new school of poets, namely ‘the Pylon Poets’ to label the work of Spender and his associates.

The literal meaning of ‘pylons’ point to tall metallic posts that hold electric wires.Though they appear to be the harbinger of electricity, he feels that they are an intrusion into the peaceful countryside. The emblem of the pylons possess powerful symbolic significance. Their being tall, they seem to have a ‘towering’ influence on our lives. Secondly, though they are static, their energy is kinetic and therefore shown to be all-pervasive. Their being metallic, it projects a picture of being frozen to human emotions. Besides, pylons are universal, just as we cannot live without electricity and the most eloquent emblem of modern technology. They seem to run into everywhere and everything, as though runs the quick perspective of the future. Wordsworth defined poetry as the impassioned expression in the countenance of all science.

The poet begins by glorifying the hills and cottages that haunt our imagination, as they possess an elusive quality. The secret about these, says the poet was their ‘stone’: the only natural thing about them that nothing else could endow with.…

Poetry Analysis:Stephen Spender’s “My Parents Kept Me from Children who were Rough


Stephen Spender’s “My parents kept me from children who were rough” has as the focal point of the poem the idea conveyed in the title itself. The verb ‘keep’ with reference to the context of the poem implies “preventing”. However, the verb ‘keep’ also has its own negative connotations as in the illegitimate “keep”. Therefore it also indicates the deed of holding a person “illegally”. The notion that the parents were obdurate on restraining the speaker from such company, implies that the speaker desired to befriend them. He portrays the children for the most part with the adjective “rough”. That is, they come across as ‘rough’ both in appearance and attitude. The gist of the title verges on the fact that had these children not been ‘rough’, the parents would not have remained reluctant on their child befriending them.

These street kids flung words just as they threw stones… their verbalizing was aggressive, impulsive and raw. Generally, the act of throwing stones is intended to provoke someone, to chase someone away or to articulate contempt. One deduces that their choice of words was therefore incorrigibly abusive .They were clothed in torn dresses. These, however were not dictated by fashion, but by abject poverty.…

Poetry Analysis: A.K.Ramanujan’s “Obituary”


“Obituary” written by A.K. Ramanujan reminiscences his father’s death, and the merit and meaning in the speaker’s family-life. The opening lines enumerate the list of things the father left behind as legacy: his table heaped with newspapers full of dust, debts and daughters. The speaker carps that the father left them only with trials and tribulations. The newspapers are just stale pieces of past-news, and the father of his own has not contributed much in terms of creativity or productivity. Daughters are considered to be a source of burden in India, not lesser than debts. Parents are entrusted with the responsibility of “marrying them off” with adequate dowry to suit their status. In a conversational tone, reminiscent of Philip Larkin, he talks about the Grandson named after the father, who had the incorrigible habit of urinating in bed. This highlights that the poet’s father left behind nothing but only memories in the form of debris. He claims that the Grandson was named after his father “by chance” literally meaning ‘luckily’; however, signifying the opposite.

Added to the legacy is a dilapidated house. The poet mentions that the decrepit house leant on the coconut tree through their growing years. The deterioration in their quality of life is apparent, from the metaphor of the house.…

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