Rukhaya M.K

A Literary Companion

Category: Poetry (page 6 of 18)

Poetry Analysis: Pablo Neruda’s “I do not love You”

February 5, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Pablo Neruda, the Chilean poet, was endowed with the Nobel; Prize for Literature in 1971. The writer’s original name being Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto, he assumed the pseudonym Pablo Neruda for about 20 years before legalizing the same in 1946. Neruda is said to be the most popular amongst the Spanish American poets His writings exhibit a preoccupation with the 1940s political struggle of the left. His works also reflect the socio-historical developments in South America. He also penned numerous love poems.

The poet puts across all the set standards for measuring love. He starts with ‘salt’ that has been a benchmark in many legends. Especially in Shakespeare’s King Lear, Cordelia’s reply to Lear was that he is to her as important as salt. The poet uses ‘salt’as a hyperbole here,and in the process may also regard to it as an essential element of life-forms. “Rose” was generally used in the 17th century poems with the ‘carpe diem’ motif. The image of rose stood for the brevity of Life, and to love as long as life lasted. The poet means to say here that he does not love her because Life is short ,but for the sake of love itself.…

Poetry Analysis: Kishwar Naheed’s “I am not that Woman”

February 5, 2015 / / 5 Comments

The poem”I am not that woman” exemplifies the stereotyping of women in a patriarchal society .As she is limited to the domestic domain and household chores, she iterates that her reputation is not limited to selling socks and shoes, for she too possess an intellect .The speaker asserts that she possesses an individuality that the man tries to conceal in walls of stone, while he wandered around free as the breeze. The speaker claims that he can only imprison her physical being and not her spiritual self for her voice could be heard. It could not be smothered or stifled by stone. The phrase ‘that woman’ in the title of the poem mocks at the general conception of women in a male- chauvinistic society.

Selling you socks and shoes!

Remember me, I am the one you hid

In your walls of stone, while you roamed

Free as the breeze, not knowing

That my voice cannot be smothered by stones,

She is rather, the woman who has been crushed by the rigid constraints of custom and irrational barriers of tradition. Nevertheless, light cannot be hidden in darkness and manifest itself. A woman is the epitome of light (knowledge) As the saying goes: “If a man is educated, an individual is educated but if a woman is educated, the whole family is educated.” She is the lap that ensures security, caring and sharing.…

Poetry Analysis: Elizabeth Daryush’s “Children of Wealth in your Warm Nursery”

February 5, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Elizabeth Daryush, the English poetess, was the daughter of British poet laureate   Robert Bridges. She was a product of the sophisticated Victorian and Edwardian England. She employs the traditional verse style, and her themes pertain to the refined and elite classes, and the injustice they caused to other classes. She is best known for her experiments with syllabic meter. Finlay noted, “For her. . .poetry always dealt with the `stubborn fact’ of life as it is, and the only consolations it offered were those of understanding and a kind of half- Christian, half-stoical acceptance of the inevitable.” However, he also argued that Daryush’s best poems transcend such fatalism, “dealing with the moral resources found in one’s own being. . .and a recognition of the beauties in the immediate, ordinary world around us.”

The phrase “children of wealth” signifies two meanings. The word ‘wealth’ may qualify the word ‘children’ as an adjective. Further, it may also imply that they were the children of their parents. The word ‘wealth’ is substituted for parents here. Therefore, it suggests their artificial upbringing with all amenities that wealth could buy. It is far from human touch. The poetess emphasizes in this aspect yt gain with the phrase that they are guided by the warmth of their nursery, and not by maternal warmth.…

Poetry Analysis: Phyllis McCormack’s Crabbit Old Woman

February 5, 2015 / / 0 Comments

 

“Crabbit Old Woman”, is also entitled  ”Look Closer Look Closer Nurse, Kate, Open Your Eyes or What Do You See?” The authorship of the prescribed poem is uncertain.  It has been pointed out by critics that the author is Phyllis McCormack. The tone of the poem is persuasive; the speaker of the poem is an infirm woman in the geriatric ward of a Dundee nursing home. The poem was  first published in the  poetry anthology Elders (Reality Press, 1973) edited by Chris Searle. Searle is uncertain about the authorship of the piece, but voices it as the genuine writing of an old woman. “Crabbit Old Woman” had later featured in the Christmas edition of “Beacon House News” .It was a magazine of the Northern Ireland Mental Health Association.

This was the Lady’s gift to generations to come. The poem has been oft quoted in works meant for caring for the elderly and underlines the need to enable them to lead a life of self-esteem. It comes across as a poniter to humane treatment where man is caught in the rat race of survival of the fittest.

As per  the Daily Mail ( 12 March 1998), “Phyllis McCormack’s son claims that his mother wrote it while working at the Sunnyside Hospital in Montrose in the 1960s, where she submitted it anonymously to a small magazine intended just for Sunnyside with the title “Look Closer Nurse.”

The term ‘crabbit’ is Scottish slang for ‘grumpy’ or ‘miserable’.…

Poetry Analysis: Margaret Atwood’s “The City Planners”

February 5, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Margaret Eleanor Atwood, is a Canadian author, poet, critic, essayist, feminist and social campaigner. Best known as a novelist, she is also an award-winning poetess.”The City-Planners” is an indictment on the superficiality of progress, and the attribution of incorrigible rationality to the same.

The word “cruising” implies to move along, in an unhurried or unconcerned fashion. As the poet moves about in a residential area, she is offended by the “sanities” of the area. The word ‘sanities’ may possess a double meaning here. Firstly, it may allude to the unnatural ‘sanitariness’ of the place. Secondly, it may denote the saneness of minds, or soundness that render them sophisticated, uniform and therefore boring. The “dry August sunlight” alludes to the province from which the speaker hails: Canada. The houses in rows appear too pedantic to be real. The trees have the appearance of being planted to render the scene picture-perfect. The levelness of surface further provokes the poetess as it appears to be a rebuke to the dent in their car door. There is no shouting there, no shatter of glass. No instinctive action takes place here: everything is after-thought and preplanned. There are no shouts here, no loud wants as people are economically well-off and complacent.…

Poetry Analysis: Allen Curnow’s “House and Land”

February 5, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Allen Curnow’s “House and Land” published in 1941, is one his most frequently anthologized poems. Allen Curnow’s “House and Land” investigates the sentiment of alienation experienced by the settlers even though they have spent two generations in the adopted land. Curnow emphasizes the theme of displacement. Though the sellers displaced from England to New Zealand, they failed to recognize New Zealand as their homeland. Though they live in the adopted land, they have not yet adapted to the circumstances. Miss Wilson, the daughter of one of the settlers finds herself filled with a void. The historian asks the cowman:

Wasn’t this the site, asked the historian, Of the original homestead?

The phrase” under the bluegums” underlines the feeling of depression. The dog seems to be brooding and wasting itself as it languishes around. It just lazily strolls from privy to fowl house-to privy. It senses the innate stagnation, the state of decay. He senses that it is going to rain. Rain is a symbol of fertility and redemption. The historian learns that the lady lives a luxurious life, her expansive building being equipped with all the basic amenities of life. Nevertheless, their long-tern affair has not brought in it any genuine emotion, they feel detached as though they do not belong or fit into the place.…

Poetry Analysis: Allen Curnow’s “Continuum”

February 5, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Allen Curnow’s  works concerning “the New Zealand Landscape and the sense of isolation experienced by one who lives in an island colony are perhaps his most moving and most deeply pertinent works regarding the New Zealand condition. His poetry specially concerns landscape/isolation.”

The poem “Continuum” is a poem on the continuity of poetic inspiration. The poetic source of stimulation of great poets since ages has been the landscape. The moon has been a persistent metaphor for poetic inspiration in celebrated poems like Samuel Coleridge’s “Dejection: An Ode.” The poet’s quality of being a satirist is prominent here. He first asserts that the moon rolls over the roof, and falls back. This is to imply that his poetic capabilities are sinking. Subsequently, he goes on to substantiate that the moon does neither of these things, he is talking about himself. When poets do generally stumble in poetic output or due to lack of inspiration, they tend to blame the external circumstances. However, Here Allen Curnow asserts that the poet himself is to be blamed; for, Poetic inspiration comes from within and not from outside.

Being sleepless is not an excuse for writing a poem. Sleeplessness does not necessarily allow one to ruminate over a subject, or subjective thoughts.…

Poetry Analysis: Robert Herrick’s “To the Virgins to Make Much of Time”

December 20, 2014 / / 1 Comment

Robert Herrick’s poem, “To the Virgins to make much of Time” extols the ‘carpe diem’ motif, the rose being a powerful emblem of the brevity of life. ’ Carpe diem’ is a Latin phrase meaning ‘seize the day.’ It was a common theme in Cavalier poetry. The rose also symbolizes the beauty of youth and its ephemeral nature. The poem was penned in 1648 and published in a collection of verse entitled Hesperides. The theme of the poem is similar to Ben Jonson’s poem “Song: To Celia” where the speaker stresses on the transient nature of life, but advises to seek union in holy matrimony and not in adulterous association. The latter combined with the ‘carpe diem’ motif was utilized in Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress.” The combination of Christianity and the carpe diem motif is singular to Robert Herrick, and has not been employed in conventional poetry. The influence emerges from Herrick’s’ position as vicar of Dean Prior, as appointed by King Charles I. The background of the poem is the political turbulence that led to Britain’s Civil War. Therefore it emphasized the relishing of the present while it lasted.

Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,
Old Time is still a flying:
And this same flower that smiles today,
Tomorrow will be dying.…

Poetry Analysis: Rudyard Kipling’s “If”

December 20, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Rudyard Kipling’s “If” is one of the most celebrated poems in the corpus of English Literature. The poem was published in 1910 in Kipling’s collection of children’s stories, Rewards and Fairies,along with “Brother Square Toes,” Washington’s inspiring tenure during the French Revolution.The poem aims at delivering moral instruction to the little minds and also functions as a source of motivation. It soon turned into an anthem to impart instruction and instill inspiration. The emphasis on the second person “you’ indicates the one-to-one correspondence between the speaker and listener.

The first lesson the poet communicates is to be positive in face of differences of opinion and disapproval. The easiest resort for a person is to blame his failures on others: the basic tendency of men to pacify the supreme ego . One should learn to take responsibility for his actions. Self-confidence and Self-respect are the best assets one can own. Nevertheless, self-confidence must not verge on over-confidence and must make room for others’ views and beliefs. One must rely on the self, while others regard his capabilities with suspicion. If one patiently and persistently waits for the fruits of one’s perseverance, nothing can stop him. A wise man once said: “A man is not poor if he does not possess a penny.…

Poetry Analysis: Seamus Heaney’s “Storm on an Island”

December 20, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Seamus Heaney’s “Storm on an Island” is included in Death of a Naturalist (1991).The word ‘island’ foregrounds the concept of isolation. The modern way of existence, is an egotistical one. It is set in an era of competition, and focuses on survival instinct. People like to live as isolated entities divorced from each other, and lead a complacent life free from the responsibilities of brotherhood. The idea of the joint family is no longer cherished, and people prefer to confine themselves to nuclear families. The lesser the number, the more the advantages, and less significant the disadvantages. They are free from all hassles of ties and are self-satisfied. However, little do they comprehend that a “storm” can occur on this island too.

The poem begins with the line: “We are prepared: we build our houses squat.”That is, people presume they are prepared for the inevitable. They build their houses ‘squat’.’ Squat’ implies to cower or crouch, and therefore assumes a protective posture. The house is designed to function this way. The walls are set with solid rock, the house is roofed in ‘slate’ and the stage is set for the ideal life. The ‘wizened’ earth has never troubled them. Since the earth exists before the speaker, it is seen as aged (echoing once again the concept of living with the elders of the joint family).Beneath the age of the earth, the speaker fails to discern the vast experience that it encompasses.…

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