...interpretation analysis and techniques Introduction Fire and Frost are a poem written by Robert Frost that brings distinction between two things that destroy the world (Little, 176). Simple language that portrays significant meaning of hatred and desire is evident in the poem. The poem says the world will end with fire and at the same time with ice. The narrator states that he has tested desire and stood with those who favor fire. However, when it comes to perishing for by two things; he only thinks of hate as the second option. That is the destruction by ice. He sees an ice as a great destruction just like fire. The poem ends by showing that both ice and fire destructs. Fire and ice are expression of authority anxiety to get identity (O’ Brien, 29). The poem displays two darkest traits of humanity that is; the capacity of hate as ice and capacity to be consumed by desire or lust as the fire (Little, 175). As to the desire, it demonstrates aspects such as greed and jealousy that destroys the world. Greed and jealousy are things that affect one’s emotion and mind to think clearly. Once the two aspects overwhelm one, he or she becomes restless. The two things are like fire that keep on burning in the mind and become difficult to be stop until a particular agenda is achieved; like murder. Jealousy and greed are the things that destroy the world in recent days. People kill each other because of jealousy of their fellow men being successful than them. Apart from the desire, the poem shows...
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..."The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter" (1917) Summary: This poem takes the form of a letter from a lonely wife who has not seen her husband in five months. She begins by reminiscing about meeting him during childhood. She was pulling flowers at the front gate and he came by on stilts, playing horse. The next two lines, "And we went on living in the village of Chokan/Two small people, without dislike or suspicion," imply that the pair did not grow close right away following that encounter; they continued to grow up separately. In the next stanza, the wife describes marrying her husband at age fourteen. After that, she was continuously shy, either out of respect, sub-ordinance, or just because of her introverted personality. According to the next stanza, she became more comfortable with the marriage by age fifteen and "stopped scowling." A year later, her husband (a merchant) departed for another village, which is where he has been for the past five months. The monkeys' sorrowful noise mirrors her loneliness. She writes that her husband "dragged [his] feet" when he left - indicating that he did not want to leave her. She ends her letter by writing that if he comes back along the river, he should send word ahead, and she will come out to meet him. The poem is signed "by Rihaku." Analysis: Pound was not the creator of this poem; he translated it from the original Chinese version by Li Po. The Chinese original likely had a specific form and identifiable meter, but Pound...
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...The poem “Barbie Doll” by Marge Piercy, discusses how people think that beauty is the most important thing. As a child grows up, society brainwashes them into thinking that looks are more important than anything else. Every little girl has had a Barbie doll, and that Barbie is always beautiful with an hour glass figure and this is where it all starts. When a child becomes a teenager, their body starts to change and develop into ways that society may not improve of. Then when adulthood is reached, some spend a lot of money to change their appearance just to feel excepted. Sometimes they make it off of the operation table, sometimes they don’t. The Barbie doll has become the ideal way that girls are supposed to look like when they get older. The title is not about just a toy, it’s more about an image of perfection. In the first stanza of the poem, Piercy gives an example of metonymy by illustrating that “This girlchild was born as usual/ and presented dolls that did pee-pee”( Doherty 1 ). She lets the readers know that the child is being compared to a doll. This also describes that the child was given small toys that seemed like real life. The toys gave her the wrong image of what life really is. In the last two lines of the first stanza, Piercy states “Then in the magic of puberty, a classmate said/ you have a great big nose and fat legs.” In that line of the poem, the child is turning into a teenager and she doesn’t like the ways she looks. Other kids make fun of her because...
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...Robert Frost is one of America’s most beloved poets, and "Mending Wall" is one of his most popular poems. This poem tells the tale of a rock wall which sits between two properties in the countryside. Something continually destroys this rock wall. A compelling aspect of "Mending Wall" is the Frostian sense of mystery and loneliness. What begins as a quest to discover the identity of the wall-destroyer, ends in a meditation on the value of tradition and boundaries. "Mending Wall" is the first poem in North of Boston, Frost’s second book of poetry. This book was published when Frost was in England, rubbing elbows with the likes of W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot, andEzra Pound. Frost was a contemporary of many modernist poetic movements, but he isn’t associated with any particular group of poets. He marched to his own drummer, and as a result, he garnered a good deal of criticism from the literary world. But, it is precisely because he was such an individual and his voice so original that Frost became so beloved. Born in San Francisco, Frost moved to Massachusetts at age eleven following his father’s death. He attended both Dartmouth College and Harvard University, but never earned a college degree. He was, however, often invited to teach at Dartmouth and Harvard later on in his life. You know you’re good when you get to teach college students without having a diploma yourself. After spending some time in England, Frost befriended a lot of poetic giants, including William Butler Yeats...
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...2016 Paper on Simon J. Ortiz “(My Father’s Song) A poem is a set up of words out together into a piece of writing that partakes of the nature of both speech and song that is nearly always rhythmical, usually metaphorical, and often exhibits such formal elements as meter, rhyme, and stanza structure. In the poem written by Simon J. Ortiz is a very touch poem about ones father and how he misses him dearly. He recalls a memory they had once shared together. The next poem that will be laid out and made more clearer to the viewer will be a poem about a mans father and his hard work. The narrator of the story is one that is recalling his past and how he felt bad for his dad as a young boy. As he has gotten older and more understanding to challenges in life he starts to relative the hardship and to feel bad for his dad. Some expressions or descriptions that are used inside poems are figurative language, symbolisms, metaphor, simile, and personification. Figurative language is words or expressions with a meaning that is different from the literal interpretation. Symbolisms are the use of symbols to represent ideas or qualities. In the essay we will discuss the ideas of how the author uses different ways that they have put there thought together in the poem. Metaphor is a term of used to imply comparison between two literally incompatible items; it does not use explicit connective words. Simile is an explicit comparison of items from different classes using words such as like, as, appears...
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...Poetry in 1959. ‘Childhood’ explores a dual perspective on the ageing process. On the one hand, it is a child who watches ‘through the banisters’ and is ‘helplessly young’, but the whole poem is a memory – ‘I used to think’. Between the lines, the reader understands that the crafting narrator is moving towards old age. Both young and old are ‘helpless’ in the progression of time. These wider considerations are based on precise, particular memories and observations. The first section vividly describes the physical features of old age, while the second centres around the moment of realisation about ‘My great-aunt Etty’s friend’ and her rolling beads from a broken necklace. Though written in one stanza, consider the effects of Cornford’s use of short lines. The first serves to complete the childish observation before the epiphany in the poem’s second section, while the final short line provides the ambivalent conclusion. Note the way too that the couplets, established in the early part of the poem, break up in the last four lines. Compare with My Parents Stephen Spender For Heidi With Blue Hair Fleur Adcock Praise Song for My Mother Grace Nichols Follower Seamus Heaney Country School Allen Curnow A Quoi Bon Dire Charlotte Mew Songs of Ourselves: Section 5: Notes 3 ANALYSIS OF "Childhood" by Frances Cornford 1. I used to think that grown-up people chose 2. To have stiff backs and wrinkles round their nose, 3. And veins like small fat snakes on either hand...
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...“Her good nature wore out/ like a fan belt./ So she cut off her nose and her legs/ and offered them up.” This quote from “Barbie Doll”, by Marge Piercy, refers to a young girl who wishes to change her character and her appearance in order to live up to society’s expectations. In fact, instead of being complimented or admired for whom she truly is, people would rather criticize and condemn her for whom she isn’t. As a result of endlessly trying to alter her portrait, the “girlchild” eventually “wore herself out”. This poem suggests that unrealistic societal demands are destructive for a woman’s self-esteem and well-being. When comparing oneself to an idealistic notion of female beauty and behaviour, one can only expect to feel demoralized, discouraged and devalued. Indeed, "Barbie Doll," the title of the poem, symbolizes society’s view of a perfect woman; the way society expects every woman to be. In fact, by using “Barbie Doll” as the title to her poem, Marge Piercy wants the reader to compare and contrast the adolescent’s appearance to that of a Barbie doll. Stereotypically, Mattel’s Barbie dolls have tall, thin yet curvy bodies, with symmetrical, perfect facial features, blonde hair and blue eyes. This, in turn, leads to the protagonist’s void of self-confidence. Additionally, living up to such standards - all the while being a housewife who must clean the house, raise the children and please her husband - is very demanding on the female gender. Moreover, the doll is symbolic...
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...and the Merriam-Webster dictionary has ten definitions for love in it but it seems as though it doesn’t have any good definitions of love. However I carefully searched for an adequate definition and it was found in the most surprising place, a place that should have been the most obvious but not wanting to start controversy, I refused to see what was sitting right in front of me, a poem. One might say that a poem couldn’t possibly demonstrate the meaning of love. Conversely, many disagree; a poem could in fact demonstrate the meaning and feeling of love. A poem are the words that come from a person’s heart, mind, or soul, meaning it is personal and no one can know the true definition and meaning of something unless one has experienced it. With that being said, a poem, specifically, a poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “How Do I Love Thee?” demonstrated the preeminent meaning of love, compared to all other meanings, this definition has to be the best. This particular poem is important to study because it is popular to American poets, literature authors, and journalists. It is a famous love poem reviewed, critiqued, and interpreted by many, and majority of the people who come across it find it interesting. Personally it is interesting because of the way it is written, it is written so that the...
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...Yvette Nyodog Ms. Reinhart AP Literature Rape of the Lock Literary Analysis 11 March 2015 Commodities have been a part of human culture from the start of the first civilizations. They can be crudely constructed or richly made works of art; they are still objects, however some people treasure their possessions more than anything in the world. These objects can become the driving force behind a person's life and desires. When someone's prized possession is stolen, it may seem as though a disaster has taken place. In The Rape of the Lock, Alexander Pope is commenting on the triviality of a lost possession. Pope blurs the line between people's personalities and their possessions. He creates a world in which people are their commodities and important ideals in society are also transformed into concrete objects that could be stolen from society. Pope opens the poem by invoking a muse, but rather than invoking one of the mythic Greek muses, he leaves the muse anonymous. In the first verse paragraph of Canto I, he introduces his epic subject matters: a war arising from “amorous causes” (1) and “mighty contests rise from trivial things” (2). In lines 11-12 Pope juxtaposes grand emotions with unheroic character-types, specifically “little men” and women: “In tasks so bold can little men engage, / And in soft bosoms dwells such mighty rage.” The irony of pairing epic characteristics with lowly human characters contributes to Pope’s mock-heroic style. Pope uses the mock-heroic genre to...
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...White Man’s Burden (Handout) Summary & Annotation: A straightforward analysis of the poem may conclude that Kipling presents a"Euro-centric" view of the world, in which people view society from only a European cultures point of view. This view proposes that white people consequently have an obligation to rule over, and encourage the cultural development of people from other ethnic and cultural backgrounds until they can take their place in the world by fully adopting Western ways. The term "the white man's burden" can be interpreted simply as racist, or taken as a metaphor for a condescending view of non-Western national culture and economic traditions, identified as a sense of European ascendancy which has been called "cultural imperialism". A parallel can also be drawn with the charitable view, common in Kipling's formative years, that the rich have a moral duty and obligation to help the poor "better" themselves whether the poor want the help or not until according to Europeans, "they can take their place in the world socially and economically." The term "white man's burden" is a phrase that became current in the controversy about the United States acquisition of the Philippines after the Spanish-American war of 1898. It was a concept that was the responsibility of white Europeans to bring "proper" European civilization to the nations (mostly brown, black, red or yellow) that did not have it. The underlying thought was that Europeans were correct in their beliefs and...
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...“anyone lived in a little how town” ee cummings • non-conformity • form = function o Poe’s unity of effect o poem = unique, does not conform to any poetic standards, grammatical rules, expectations • songs: o Justice & Independence, Jack & Diane (JC Mellencamp) o The Dance, The River (Garth Brooks) E. E. Cummings' "anyone lived in a pretty how town" tells the story of anyone. The name has a double meaning; anyone could be anyone in the dictionary definition sense, and could be seen as a singular entity, reinforcing the theme of isolation the independent individual has from the rest of society. The events all occur in a "pretty how town". "Pretty" connotes a mere façade, describing the superficiality of the town's inhabitants. "How", an adverb, is used as an adjective here. It could be describing the extent of the town's prettiness, but a better reason is that it describes the routine humdrum of the town's activities, since "how" also means "in a method or manner". The juxtapositions continue into the next line, "(with up so floating many bells down)". The rhythm of the line and the vowels emulate both the motion and the sounds of bells. This line occurs again later in the poem, and its function here is the same as it is there - to signify the passing of time. The next line is an ordered list of the seasons, also symbolizing the passing of time, describing anyone's activities as occurring continuously. The activities...
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...friends, family, and the most relevant for this poem, a lover. This world is in constant change and nothing can really last forever. The loss and the ability to forget easily will increase as the years accumulate, it just a matter of time. So why should people care?, why should people try to resist it and suffer though?, Elizabeth Bishop’s poem “One Art” deals with the dilemma and the tragedy of losing everything. Jonathan Sircy explains the poem briefly and says “In the face of overwhelming loss, Bishop appears in this first stanza to have constructed an admittedly bittersweet, but nonetheless efficacious, philosophy of survival” (2). The author applies several poetic techniques from the villanelle’s style in the poem. For example, she uses refrain and two repeated rhymes, to give a specific effect on words and produce a message of ideas to the reader. The stanzas four and six are the most relevant for the analysis and research of this poem, in order to understand its structure and the reason of the writer to work write this down. The first stanza to be explained is the fourth one, it begins with this first line that says “Then practice losing farther, losing faster:” In this line the author uses euphony to make it sound good, and emphasize certain words, so that the reader can remember the line easily. This line changes the poem to the direction of losing progressively from less to more and from things not really relevant to things with significance in someone’s life. There are...
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...The Interaction between Imagery and Allusions in translating Chinese PoetryBased on Tu Fu’s Poems Shih-ying Liaw Prof. Wang Linguistics and Translation June 18 2012 Shih ying Liaw1 Shih-ying Liaw Prof. Wang Linguistics and Translation June 18 2012 The Interaction between Imagery and Allusions in translating Chinese PoetryBased on Tu Fu’s Poems Though Chinese poetry has been translating for almost a hundred years, there are still many questions about the translation strategies and situations worth discussing. In this paper, the interaction between imagery and allusions when translating are discussed and the practical situation used when translating are presented. To discuss the interaction between imagery and allusions, the first thing is to identify and define each term. First is imagery. Imagery is thought to be the most important factor to the poetry. I use Ezra Pound’s word as definition because he is not only a pioneering translator in Chinese poetry and also a great poet. He says that “an image' is that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time.” Further explanation is given by Professor Liu in “The Art of Chinese Poetry” by putting imagery into two categories. The first is “simple imagery,” which is defined as “a verbal expression that evokes a mental picture, which not merely picture in words but also arouses emotional associations and enriches the poetic context”. The Shih ying Liaw2 second category...
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...One of William Shakespeare’s great advantages as a writer was that, as a dramatist working in the public theater, he was afforded a degree of autonomy from the cultural dominance of the court, his age’s most powerful institution. All over Europe, even if belatedly in England, the courts of the Renaissance nation-states conducted an intense campaign to use the arts to further their power. The theater, despite its partial dependency on court favor, achieved through its material products (the script and the performance) a relative autonomy in comparison with the central court arts of poetry, prose fiction, and the propagandistic masque. When Shakespeare briefly turned to Ovidian romance in the 1590’s and, belatedly, probably also in the 1590’s, to the fashion for sonnets, he moved closer to the cultural and literary dominance of the court’s taste—to the fashionable modes of Ovid, Petrarch, and Neoplatonism—and to the need for patronage. Although the power of the sonnets goes far beyond their sociocultural roots, Shakespeare nevertheless adopts the culturally inferior role of the petitioner for favor, and there is an undercurrent of social and economic powerlessness in the sonnets, especially when a rival poet seems likely to supplant the poet. In short, Shakespeare’s nondramatic poems grow out of and articulate the strains of the 1590’s, when, like many ambitious writers and intellectuals on the fringe of the court, Shakespeare clearly needed to find a language in which to speak—and...
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...another source whether they know it or not. Individuality in writing is influenced through transferability. Technical writing is something that is learned. In school everyone was taught how to format an essay or different types of writing like poems or stories. Anything that I did in class I was always given a template of how the instructor wanted the paper to be written. This would have word count, the format, and what the paper should be about. All throughout school we learned the fundamentals of writing starting with letters, words, sentences, paragraphs, to structures of writing like essays and poems. The thing that is learned from writing is technical. As my English education grows the technical side is less focused on while the content is the most important thing. Content is the writing that I am doing now. The content portion of writing is not learned but influenced by others. My writing becomes influenced through examples like essays. In this English class, I believe that that’s how these three previous essays worked out. The Scholarly Discourse Unit paper was a paper that had us synthesize how we thought the writers Gee, Swales, and Porter connected to each other. I used transferability to apply the knowledge that I got from each of the three sources and created an argument that I could synthesize with each other. This paper gave me the opportunity to express my ideas but what I had to write about was more about the three sources rather than using those three sources...
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