Rukhaya M.K

A Literary Companion

Category: American Literature (page 4 of 4)

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.…

Poetry Analysis: Walt Whitman’s “I Sit and Look Out “

September 9, 2014 / / 1 Comment

The poems that Walt Whitman wrote in the second half of the 19th century differed radically from his earlier ones. The advent of capitalism had a tremendous impact on the lives of the people. In the manipulative and calculative rat race, principles were relegated and human concerns sidelined. People in such a situation, in response to the misery and atrocities around turned a detached observer as echoed in the title “I Sit and Look Out”. The verb in the title ‘sit’ and its capitalization in the first line –is an attempt to underline the action of the onlooker. It implies that the speaker is idle and has no intention to do anything about the situation. Also, the idea of looking out highlights how he in the confinement of complacency, is far removed from the suffering multitudes. The verbal phrase ‘look out’ also points to his concern of his own safety. The use of free verse echoes the continuity of the situation. The tone of the poem is pessimistic and the imagery presented is apocalyptic.

I SIT and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all oppression and shame;
I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men, at anguish with themselves, remorseful after deeds done;
I see, in low life, the mother misused by her children, dying, neglected, gaunt, desperate;
I see the wife misused by her husband—I see the treacherous seducer of young women;

The speaker states that he ‘sees’ and looks upon the sorrows of the dystopian world; the oppression and shame.…

Poetry Analysis: Pat Mora’s “Legal Alien”

September 9, 2014 / / 1 Comment

Pat Mora‘s “Legal Alien” from the collection Chants describes her own predicament as she was an American born to Mexican parents who settled in Texas. Texas is a city that borders on Mexico. Apart from being a writer, Pat Mora is also a cultural preservationist as she endeavours to document the lives of Mexican Americans and U.S. Latinas and Latinos through varying genres.(Wikipedia) “For a variety of complex reasons,” Mora explains, “anthologized American literature does not reflect the ethnic diversity of the United States. I write, in part because Hispanic perspectives need to be part of our literary heritage; I want to be part of the validation process. I also write because I am fascinated by the pleasure and power of words. “The poem “Legal Alien” is such a tribute to these diaspora and more significantly to her own state of identity crisis.

Bi-lingual, Bi-cultural,
able to slip from “How’s life?”
to “Me’stan volviendo loca,”
able to sit in a paneled office
drafting memos in smooth English,
able to order in fluent Spanish
at a Mexican restaurant,
American but hyphenated,

Though she is an American citizen established by the law, she feels like an alien as she is constantly singled out for her roots.…

Poetry Analysis: Edward Arlington Robinson’s “Miniver Cheevy”

September 7, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Edward Arlington Robinson’s “Miniver Cheevy” written in iambic tetrameter quatrains was first published in The Town down the River in 1910. Edward Arlington Robinson deals with characters who are generally disillusioned with life’s turn of events. Miniver Cheevy always found a refuge in the nostalgia of the past. Miniver is hopelessly romantic. The poet opts for a common name to suggest the insignificance of the persona, and a funny one to point to his eccentricity. Miniver prefers romantic idealism to tarnished reality.
Miniver was a “child of scorn” His character seems to have been shaped on the contempt for others. Ironically, it was his wry temperament that invited the wrath of others. He grew lean, and became fragile as he constantly wrestled against the seasons: the diverse circumstances and changing climes. He detested the fact that he was even born. And he had genuine reasons for it. He loved the bygone era, and longed for the pastness of the past. He rather aspired for a Quixotic Yesterday that had valiant men engaged in sword-fight. He was incorrigibly obsessed with a knight in armour. Such thoughts of the medieval romance set him in seventh heaven.
He cherished the thought of the city of Thebes.…

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