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Poetry Analysis: Wilfred Owen’s “Greater Love”

In Wilfred Owen’s “Greater Love”, the poet places patriotic love or love for one’s country men on a pedestal as compared to romantic love. Wilfred Owen thus negates the innumerable love poems that have been immortalized by the past poets. He talks of it as a greater love as it is higher in degree being platonic, selfless and based on altruistic sacrifice. Physical love in such a stance is reduced to naught as the poet opines:”Red lips are not so red.” The kindness of the wooer and wooed both holds an element on selfishness in contrast to the one who dies out of love for his country. ‘Stead’ is the place of a person or thing as occupied by a successor or substitute.As the stained stones of the dead are kissed by the English, the poet gets disillusioned as he foresees his successors being blinded by worldly concerns as opposed to their duty to countrymen. Romantic Love is portrayed as a woman who has lost her ability to seduce and lure.

The profession of the soldier is one where the soldiers are rendered immune by the greatest teacher-Experience. The slender lover trembles exquisitely in passion; but the imagery is eclipsed in comparison to the trembling limbs of the soldier skewed by hardships in the battlefield.…

Poetry Analysis: Wilfred Owen’s “Disabled”

February 17, 2015 / rukhaya / 0 Comments

Owen stated that his chief concern was “War, and the pity of War. The poetry is in the pity.” Wilfred Owen’s “Disabled” is inspired from a real life tragedy during World War I; a soldier whose life was drastically changed after the monstrous war. Owen encountered various instances like these when he was hospitalized in Craiglockhart Hospital. Several of these injuries aggravated due to lack of adequate medical care. Wilfred Owen depicts the typical picture of the disabled where “people with disabilities are more dependent, childlike, passive, sensitive, and miserable” than their nondisabled counterparts, and “are depicted as pained by their fate.” (Linton, 1998, p. 25).

The man appears to be in a stagnant condition, on a wheelchair. His reference of the passing time is not action, but the changing hues of day and night as he waits for the dark. He waits for the dark, as he has nothing productive to do. Darkness may also be a symbol of death , that what his vegetable existence longs for. His ghastly suit of grey does not offer him much protection as he shivers in it. The happy voices of the boys in the park come across as a melancholic hymn to him, as his perception of life is distressing as his life is.…

Poetry Analysis: Wilfred Owen’s “Futility”

February 17, 2015 / rukhaya / 0 Comments

Wilfred Owen’s “Futility” appeared in “The Nation” on 15th June 1918. Just as in his poem “Frustration”, Wilfred Owen talks “of the grievances of a wounded man who they move into the sun, in some hope that it will ‘stir’ him”. The poet begins the poem talking of a certain “Him’ It is obvious that the poet is talking about the Soldier. The anonymity points to his relegation of identity; and lack of individuality in a system that places the System over the individual. The anonymity of the dead soldier may also be employed for objectivity, and to render the experience universal-so as to point to the predicament of any soldier. The poem functions as an elegy for the dead soldier. The sun stands as a metaphor for the Giver of Life here. Once, the poet asserts, the sun’s touch did awaken the man in question. Once upon a time, he was ‘at home’. “At home” signifies that the man was comfortable and satisfied. The phrase “whispering of fields unsown.” suggests the possibility of fields yet to be sown, dreams yet to be realized.

The sun always awoke him, until this day. This suggests the likelihood that he is not anymore in a condition to be awakened by the sun.…

Poetry Analysis: W.H.Auden’s “Funeral Blues”

February 16, 2015 / rukhaya / 1 Comment

W.H. Auden’s “Funeral Blues” was first published as “Song IX” from ‘Twelve Songs’ (1936).The poem conjures up the atmosphere of a funeral. The tone of the poem is imperative as Death is commanding, inflexible and irreversible. The speaker dictates to stop all the clocks as time had been arrested for the deceased. To the ones associated with the dead person, Time had come to a standstill. All communication had been cut off, and therefore the telephone, a metaphor of contact and communication has to be cut off. The dog barking with a juicy bone is silenced as instinct no longer reigns supreme. The piano and drum are relegated as the harmony and beat of life has ceased. The coffin has to be brought, and the mourner has to be summoned in the process of mourning.

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead

Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.

Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,

Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves

The airplanes seem to be moaning overhead paying a salute to the departed.…

Poetry Analysis: Wilfred Owen’s “Strange Meeting

February 16, 2015 / rukhaya / 0 Comments

My subject is war” wrote Wilfred Owen.,” and the pity of war. The poetry is in the pity.” Owen is different from his contemporaries, Julian Grenfell and Rupert Brooke in that he does not glorify war but treats it rather as a tragic and devastating experience, and treats the victims with compassion. Edmund Blunden labels the Wilfred Owen’s “Strange Meeting”as “the most remote and intimate, tranquil and dynamic, of all Owen’s imaginative statements of war experience.”

In an age of neo-imperialism based on power-politics, Wilfred Owen’s “Strange Meeting” is indeed significant. An analysis of the poem reveals how Owen overwrites the hollow romanticism and chivalry that war has been traditionally associated with it. He foregrounds the calamitous effects of the same. Though the war upheld lofty ideals, it was opposed to progressiveness and humanity in general. The poet transcreates a corporeal world, where the dead soldier comes in contact with a person he had killed the previous day underground. The narrowness of the tunnel signifies the narrowness of the situation. The speaker’s treading over the slumbering soldiers points to the neo-colonialist stance that has countries stepping over humanity and relegating principles to climb up the ladder.

The granite that rubbed against each other in the tunnel echoed the devastation of several titanic wars.

…

Poetry Analysis: William Wordsworth’s “Solitary Reaper”

February 15, 2015 / rukhaya / 0 Comments

William Wordsworth’s “The Solitary Reaper” is one of the most loved ballads in the corpus of English Literature. The poem “The Solitary Reaper ” was first published in Poems, in Two Volumes in 1807.The poem was written after the publication of his Lyrical Ballads and is in iambic tetrameter. The poem bears testimony to his theory how poetry ought to focus on the mundane and the commonplace. His subject here is a Scottish Highland lass who sings while reaping. Dorothy Wordsworth tells us in her diary how solitary reapers were a common phenomenon in the Scottish scenario. Wordsworth expresses his gratitude to Thomas Wilkinson for his manuscript that pertains to a tour of Scotland.

The reaper is defined by her cutting and binding. She is described with the adjective ‘solitary’. Nevertheless, it is this solitariness that sets her apart. Wordsworth often dealt with solitary characters to exemplify that they were the sole companions of Nature and were in total communion with the same. Her tremulous voice haunts the distances. The valley seems to be significant, primarily for this enchanting music that envelops it. The poet implores to: stop here or gently pass. He requests to stop to listen to the song; or gently pass so as to not disturb the smooth flow of the song.…

Poetry Analysis: Tennyson’s “The Lotos-Eaters”

February 13, 2015 / rukhaya / 0 Comments

Tennyson’s “The Lotos-Eaters” was published in 1832. The inspiration for the poem was Tennyson’s visit to Spain (1829) along with Arthur Hallam where they visited the Pyrenees Mountains.

About the Poem

The prescribed poem deals with a group of mariners who after consuming the lotos, went into a state of trance or temporal amnesia. The poem functions as a marked contrast to Tennyson’s “Ulysses” that had as its motto, “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” This particular poem is diametrically opposite in theme as it stands for Victorian complacency. The background of the poem is scroll IX of Homer’s Odyssey.

As they proceed from Troy, the mariners get thwarted by a storm from their intended destination. Instead of Ithaca, they arrive at a land where people eat ‘lotos’(Greek for ‘Lotus)’. No description of the country is given. Some of the mariners consume the lotos and sink into lassitude, a sluggish condition devoid of activity and aspiration. The condition is probably emblematic of the pseudo-modern way of life where advanced technology has made life devoid of activity and creativity. In such a condition, George Bernard Shaw envisages that the human body will be reduced to a pulp of brain, as that would be the only organ functioning in the body.…

Poetry Analysis: William Wordsworth’s “Daffodils”

February 13, 2015 / rukhaya / 0 Comments

Wordsworth “Daffodils” also known as “I Wandered lonely as a Cloud” is one of the most celebrated and oft anthologized of Wordsworth’s works. The inspiration was an experience on April 15, 1802 when Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy Wordsworth came across “a long belt” of Daffodils.” The poem was first published in Poems in Two Volumes, in 1807.The poem penned in iambic tetrameter has the rhyme scheme ABABCC . Each stanza consists of a quatrain and a couplet. The Westminster Review described the poem as “very exquisite.”

The death of his brother John had a profound impact on Wordsworth and he felt dejected. Nevertheless, the warmth and love Dorothy Wordsworth exuded imparted a positive influence on Wordsworth. The influence of the Daffodils at once emblematizes the all-pervading essence and presence of Dorothy Wordsworth. At the outset, he describes himself as lonely as a cloud. The image of the cloud evokes the paradigm of transparency in its purest form. The initiative of floating over vales and hills reflects the idea of being in a state of high despite being in seclusion. Note that being in isolation, he notes the ‘crowd’ in the form ‘daffodils’ and, is enchanted to find the same more than he would at discovering human multitude.…

Poetry Analysis: Robert Browning’s “The Last Ride Together”

February 12, 2015 / rukhaya / 0 Comments

Robert Browning’ s “Last Ride Together” is a monologue of a rejected lover that expresses his undying love for his beloved. The title apparently gives out the notion that this is their last ride together. Nevertheless, what the speaker signifies is that he has lived all his life in this ride, with the all-sufficing splendor of love. The poem echoes the ‘carpe diem’ motif of seizing the present. He affirms that he is well-acquainted with his past. Even so, hitherto all that his life stood for, comes to naught when it comes to his unrequited love. His love is unselfish and does not avail of anything unreasonable, it is truly blessed with pride and happiness in having the Last ride with her which would endow him with the joy of a lifetime. For this, he would even handover his most priced possession- the hope of love, that inspired him to live on. If gifted with the Ride, he guarantees that he will be content with just the memory of the hope that inspired him to go on.

The Lady bent her brows to this entreaty; pity smoothening the pride had filled her dark eyes. The moment of her decision was a crucial point for the poet, as though he hung between life and death; and the colour left his face for a splitting second.…

Poetry Analysis: Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess”

February 12, 2015 / rukhaya / 0 Comments

Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess” is a dramatic monologue based on the 16^th century Duke of Ferrara, Alfonso who married Lucrezia di Cosimo de’ Medici . She was not well-educated or as high in heritage as the Duke’s family. She did bring with her a huge dowry, but died under mysterious circumstances three years later. The poem was first published in 1842 in Browning’s Dramatic Lyrics. .It employs iambic pentameter and the technique of enjambment. Just as lines run on from one to another without full stops, the Duke transgresses the limits of egotism. The situation is of the Duke negotiating his marriage with an emissary who has come to arrange the same. In keeping with the characteristics of the Dramatic monologue therefore, the speech is born out of a critical moment.

Also the monologue delineates the character of the Duke of Ferrara in the tradition of the dramatic monologue, and the envoy serves as the interlocutor who is silent throughout. They come upon a portrait of the Duchess and the duke divulges details of her character. The Duke comes across as extremely possessive of his wife as echoed by the prefixing of ‘my’ in the title. He also mentions that nobody reveals the portrait but him.…

Rukhaya M.K

A Literary Companion