Anthology of Poetry on Sexuality .

English 2306
Introduction to Poetry
Prof. Jamie Thomas
Final Paper
Fall 2007



Anthology of Poetry on Sexuality in the Post-Imagism Era.
Compiled by Anthony Ryder


Table of Contents.

Critical Introduction………………………………………………………3
Poems…………………………………………….……………………….8
Works Cited………………………………………………………………26
Critical Introduction.

The theme of sexuality has been considerably addressed by poets of the twentieth century more than ever before. Two factors may explain why this phenomenon has occurred in literature. On the one hand, the impact of Walt Whitman’s influences on the poets of the later generations is noticeable because he reinstated vigorously the use of free verse styles. In addition, the poets of the Imagism movement dovetailed their efforts with that of Whitman with regard to the free verses. Furthermore, they enhanced the emergence of a new poetic style that often breaks the traditional rules of syntax and grammar and often compose stanzas made of lines of various lengths.
On the other hand, the sexual revolution that erupted in the western society of the twentieth century meant that the society was eager to trim down many of the restrictive rules of the past and to set the stage for embracing innovative ideas and implementing new concepts. In Poetry for example, the compounded contribution of Whitman’s style, the Imagism philosophy and the new concept of sexual revolution yielded a new poetical trend that dislodged out the infamous stigmas related to discussing sexual fantasies and sexual experiences in the public arena.
In the post Imagism era dominated by a constant pursuit of freedom in the expression of sexuality, this new poetical trend has stimulated the proliferation of poets who elect to tackle the theme of human sexuality without being embarrassed by it. At the same token, this trend has gradually guided the modern society towards more tolerance and acceptance of open debates on sexuality. This anthology is a collection of a limited selection of poems written in the twentieth century by authors who addressed the theme of sexuality. As the debate on sexual revolution intensifies in the community, more poets will be inspired to write about human sexuality. Thus the prospect of such an anthology expanding in volume and diversity of sub-topics is astronomical.
“Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” of Eliot is published in 1915 in the middle of the period of the molding of the Imagism style. It is included in the anthology because it is written in the Imagism spirit. In addition, its narrator, J. Alfred Profrock, strives hesitantly, indirectly but surely to disclose in the poem, his sexual attraction towards a woman. Lines 1 to 12 read:
“Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the skyLike a patient etherized upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreatsOf restless nights in one-night cheap hotelsAnd sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argumentOf insidious intentTo lead you to an overwhelming question . . . Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"Let us go and make our visit.”
“Marriage” of Gregory Corso is released in 1952. It is chosen because its narrator is more forthcoming about his sexuality than Alfred Profrock whom we met in the previous poem. Corso’s narrator is a man who instead chooses the pathway of a real and stable sexual relationship with a woman. Lines 49 to 52 read:
“But I should get married I should be goodHow nice it'd be to come home to herand sit by the fireplace and she in the kitchenaproned young and lovely wanting my baby”
“Howl” by Allen Ginsberg is published in 1956. This poem is one of the literary cornerstones that mark the evolution of the poetry of the 20th century from a heavily and morally driven writing style to new indulgent style that tolerates a lavish and exuberant expression of sexuality. No wonder it caused deliriant reactions with spikes of hysteria in the society at large shortly after its release because of its offensive description of what was considered as flagrant and blatant homosexual acts. For example, line 36 reads as follow:
“Who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclist, and
screamed with joy,”
“After Making Love We Hear Footsteps” by Galway Kinnel is released in 1980. Its narrator brings the openly graphic representation of heterosexual practices into poetry. Lines 9 to 11 read as follow:
“and make for it on the run—as now, we lie together,
after making love, quiet, touching along the length of our bodies,
familiar touch of the long-married,”
“The Knowing” by Sharon Olds is an excellent illustration of a Modernist poet who uses Walt Whitman’s style to describe the voluptuous desires of her sexuality in a raw, liberated and provocative manner. Her female narrator honestly portrays her sensual perceptions about the intensity of a moment of her physical union with her male lover. Lines 35 to 44 read as follow:
“When I wake again, he is still looking at me, as if he is eternal. For an hour
we wake and doze, and slowly I knowthat though we are sated, though we are hardlytouching, this is the coming the otherbrought us to the edge of--we are entering,deeper and deeper, gaze by gaze,this place beyond the other places,beyond the body itself, we are makinglove.”
“Morning” by Frank O’Hara is included in the anthology because it symbolizes the continuity of the ideal platonic love as a valid form of sexual expression in the twentieth century. For example, in the following excerpt, the narrator verbalizes the emotional turmoil he or she experiences because of the prolonged absence of his or her soul mate. Lines 16 to 19 read:
“I miss you always
when I go to the beach
the sand is wet with
tears that seem mine”
“The Elephant is Slow To Mate” by D.H. Lawrence is an illustration of another modernist poet who was inspired by the theme of sexuality. In this poem, the narrator uses rhyme and meter he fantasizes about the sexual behavior of elephants. Lines 21 to 24 read:
“They do not snatch, they do not tear; their massive bloodmoves as the moon-tides, near, more neartill they touch in flood”
“What do Women Want” by Kim Addonizio, exemplifies the reality that some poets are committed in digging so passionately around the theme of sexuality nowadays. The female narrator in this excerpt displays to the reader partial clues as to why she believes that women deliberately choose to wear tight outfits. Lines 1 to 4 read as follow: “I want a red dress.I want it flimsy and cheap,I want it too tight, I want to wear ituntil someone tears it off me.” Poems
1) The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
S'io credesse che mia risposta fosseA persona che mai tornasse al mondo,Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondoNon torno vivo alcun, s'i'odo il vero,Senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the skyLike a patient etherized upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreatsOf restless nights in one-night cheap hotelsAnd sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argumentOf insidious intentTo lead you to an overwhelming question . . . Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"Let us go and make our visit.In the room the women come and goTalking of Michelangelo. The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panesLicked its tongue into the corners of the evening, Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains, Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys, Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, And seeing that it was a soft October night, Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.And indeed there will be timeFor the yellow smoke that slides along the street,Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;There will be time, there will be timeTo prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;There will be time to murder and create,And time for all the works and days of handsThat lift and drop a question on your plate;Time for you and time for me,And time yet for a hundred indecisions,And for a hundred visions and revisions,Before the taking of a toast and tea.In the room the women come and goTalking of Michelangelo.And indeed there will be timeTo wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"Time to turn back and descend the stair, With a bald spot in the middle of my hair--[They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!"]My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin, My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin--[They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!"]Do I dareDisturb the universe?In a minute there is timeFor decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.For I have known them all already, known them all:--Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;I know the voices dying with a dying fallBeneath the music from a farther room.So how should I presume?And I have known the eyes already, known them all--The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,Then how should I beginTo spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?And how should I presume?And I have known the arms already, known them all--Arms that are braceleted and white and bare[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]Is it perfume from a dressThat makes me so digress?Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.And should I then presume?And how should I begin?. . . . .Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streetsAnd watched the smoke that rises from the pipesOf lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? . . .I should have been a pair of ragged clawsScuttling across the floors of silent seas.. . . . .And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!Smoothed by long fingers,Asleep . . . tired . . . or it malingers,Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter, I am no prophet--and here's no great matter;I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,And in short, I was afraid.And would it have been worth it, after all,After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,Would it have been worth while,To have bitten off the matter with a smile,To have squeezed the universe into a ballTo roll it toward some overwhelming question,To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the deadCome back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"--If one, settling a pillow by her head,Should say: "That is not what I meant at all.That is not it, at all."And would it have been worth it, after all,Would it have been worth while,After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along thefloor--And this, and so much more?--It is impossible to say just what I mean!But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:Would it have been worth whileIf one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,And turning toward the window, should say:"That is not it at all,That is not what I meant, at all.". . . . .No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;Am an attendant lord, one that will doTo swell a progress, start a scene or two,Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,Deferential, glad to be of use,Politic, cautious, and meticulous;Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuseAt times, indeed, almost ridiculous--Almost, at times, the Fool.I grow old . . .I grow old . . .I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.I do not think that they will sing to me.I have seen them riding seaward on the wavesCombing the white hair of the waves blown backWhen the wind blows the water white and black.We have lingered in the chambers of the seaBy sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brownTill human voices wake us, and we drown.

2) 'Marriage' by Gregory Corso
Should I get married? Should I be good?1Astound the girl next door with my velvet suit and faustus hood?Don't take her to movies but to cemeteriestell all about werewolf bathtubs and forked clarinetsthen desire her and kiss her and all the preliminariesand she going just so far and I understanding whynot getting angry saying You must feel! It's beautiful to feel!Instead take her in my arms lean against an old crooked tombstoneand woo her the entire night the constellations in the sky- 9
When she introduces me to her parentsback straightened, hair finally combed, strangled by a tie,should I sit with my knees together on their 3rd degree sofaand not ask Where's the bathroom?How else to feel other than I am,often thinking Flash Gordon soap-O how terrible it must be for a young manseated before a family and the family thinkingWe never saw him before! He wants our Mary Lou!After tea and homemade cookies they ask What do you do for a living?19
Should I tell them? Would they like me then?Say All right get married, we're losing a daughterbut we're gaining a son-And should I then ask Where's the bathroom?
O God, and the wedding! All her family and her friendsand only a handful of mine all scroungy and beardedjust wait to get at the drinks and food-And the priest! he looking at me as if I masturbatedasking me Do you take this woman for your lawful wedded wife?And I trembling what to say say Pie Glue!I kiss the bride all those corny men slapping me on the backShe's all yours, boy! Ha-ha-ha!And in their eyes you could see some obscene honeymoon going on-Then all that absurd rice and clanky cans and shoesNiagara Falls! Hordes of us! Husbands! Wives! Flowers! Chocolates!All streaming into cozy hotelsAll going to do the same thing tonightThe indifferent clerk he knowing what was going to happenThe lobby zombies they knowing whatThe whistling elevator man he knowingEverybody knowing! I'd almost be inclined not to do anything!40Stay up all night! Stare that hotel clerk in the eye!Screaming: I deny honeymoon! I deny honeymoon!running rampant into those almost climactic suitesyelling Radio belly! Cat shovel!O I'd live in Niagara forever! in a dark cave beneath the FallsI'd sit there the Mad Honeymoonerdevising ways to break marriages, a scourge of bigamya saint of divorce- 48
But I should get married I should be good49How nice it'd be to come home to herand sit by the fireplace and she in the kitchenaproned young and lovely wanting my baby52and so happy about me she burns the roast beefand comes crying to me and I get up from my big papa chairsaying Christmas teeth! Radiant brains! Apple deaf!God what a husband I'd make! Yes, I should get married!So much to do! Like sneaking into Mr Jones' house late at nightand cover his golf clubs with 1920 Norwegian booksLike hanging a picture of Rimbaud on the lawnmowerlike pasting Tannu Tuva postage stamps all over the picket fencelike when Mrs Kindhead comes to collect for the Community Chestgrab her and tell her There are unfavorable omens in the sky!And when the mayor comes to get my vote tell himWhen are you going to stop people killing whales!And when the milkman comes leave him a note in the bottlePenguin dust, bring me penguin dust, I want penguin dust-
Yes if I should get married and it's Connecticut and snowand she gives birth to a child and I am sleepless, worn,up for nights, head bowed against a quiet window, the past behind me,finding myself in the most common of situations a trembling manknowledged with responsibility not twig-smear nor Roman coin soup-O what would that be like!Surely I'd give it for a nipple a rubber TacitusFor a rattle a bag of broken Bach recordsTack Della Francesca all over its cribSew the Greek alphabet on its bibAnd build for its playpen a roofless Parthenon
No, I doubt I'd be that kind of fatherNot rural not snow no quiet windowbut hot smelly tight New York Cityseven flights up, roaches and rats in the wallsa fat Reichian wife screeching over potatoes Get a job!And five nose running brats in love with BatmanAnd the neighbors all toothless and dry hairedlike those hag masses of the 18th centuryall wanting to come in and watch TVThe landlord wants his rentGrocery store Blue Cross Gas & Electric Knights of Columbusimpossible to lie back and dream Telephone snow, ghost parking-No! I should not get married! I should never get married!But-imagine if I were married to a beautiful sophisticated womantall and pale wearing an elegant black dress and long black glovesholding a cigarette holder in one hand and a highball in the otherand we lived high up in a penthouse with a huge windowfrom which we could see all of New York and even farther on clearer daysNo, can't imagine myself married to that pleasant prison dream-
O but what about love? I forget lovenot that I am incapable of loveIt's just that I see love as odd as wearing shoes-I never wanted to marry a girl who was like my motherAnd Ingrid Bergman was always impossibleAnd there's maybe a girl now but she's already marriedAnd I don't like men and-But there's got to be somebody!Because what if I'm 60 years old and not married,all alone in a furnished room with pee stains on my underwearand everybody else is married! All the universe married but me!
Ah, yet well I know that were a woman possible as I am possiblethen marriage would be possible-Like SHE in her lonely alien gaud waiting her Egyptian loverso i wait-bereft of 2,000 years and the bath of life.

3) “Howl” By Allen Ginsberg For Carl Solomon I I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machin- ery of night, who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz, who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tene- ment roofs illuminated, who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war, who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull, who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burn- ing their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall, who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York, who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their torsos night after night with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, al- cohol and cock and endless balls, incomparable blind; streets of shuddering cloud and lightning in the mind leaping toward poles of Canada & Paterson, illuminating all the mo- tionless world of Time between, Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops, storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brook- lyn, ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind, who chained themselves to subways for the endless ride from Battery to holy Bronx on benzedrine until the noise of wheels and children brought them down shuddering mouth-wracked and battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance in the drear light of Zoo, who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford's floated out and sat through the stale beer after noon in desolate Fugazzi's, listening to the crack of doom on the hydrogen jukebox, who talked continuously seventy hours from park to pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brook- lyn Bridge, lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills off Empire State out of the moon, yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars, whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days and nights with brilliant eyes, meat for the Synagogue cast on the pavement, who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic City Hall, suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grind- ings and migraines of China under junk-with- drawal in Newark's bleak furnished room, who wandered around and around at midnight in the railroad yard wondering where to go, and went, leaving no broken hearts, who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing through snow toward lonesome farms in grand- father night, who studied Plotinus Poe St. John of the Cross telep- athy and bop kabbalah because the cosmos in- stinctively vibrated at their feet in Kansas, who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking vis- ionary indian angels who were visionary indian angels, who thought they were only mad when Baltimore gleamed in supernatural ecstasy, who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Okla- homa on the impulse of winter midnight street light smalltown rain, who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston seeking jazz or sex or soup, and followed the brilliant Spaniard to converse about America and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship to Africa, who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving behind nothing but the shadow of dungarees and the lava and ash of poetry scattered in fire place Chicago, who reappeared on the West Coast investigating the F.B.I. in beards and shorts with big pacifist eyes sexy in their dark skin passing out incom- prehensible leaflets, who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism, who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union Square weeping and undressing while the sirens of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also wailed, who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked and trembling before the machinery of other skeletons, who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight in policecars for committing no crime but their own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication, who howled on their knees in the subway and were dragged off the roof waving genitals and manu- scripts, who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy, who blew and were blown by those human seraphim, the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean love, who balled in the morning in the evenings in rose gardens and the grass of public parks and cemeteries scattering their semen freely to whomever come who may, who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish Bath when the blond & naked angel came to pierce them with a sword, who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden threads of the craftsman's loom, who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of beer a sweetheart a package of cigarettes a can- dle and fell off the bed, and continued along the floor and down the hall and ended fainting on the wall with a vision of ultimate cunt and come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness, who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling in the sunset, and were red eyed in the morning but prepared to sweeten the snatch of the sun rise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked in the lake, who went out whoring through Colorado in myriad stolen night-cars, N.C., secret hero of these poems, cocksman and Adonis of Denver-joy to the memory of his innumerable lays of girls in empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses' rickety rows, on mountaintops in caves or with gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely pet- ticoat upliftings & especially secret gas-station solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys too, who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in dreams, woke on a sudden Manhattan, and picked themselves up out of basements hung over with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemploy- ment offices, who walked all night with their shoes full of blood on the snowbank docks waiting for a door in the East River to open to a room full of steamheat and opium, who created great suicidal dramas on the apartment cliff-banks of the Hudson under the wartime blue floodlight of the moon & their heads shall be crowned with laurel in oblivion, who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested the crab at the muddy bottom of the rivers of Bowery, who wept at the romance of the streets with their pushcarts full of onions and bad music, who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the bridge, and rose up to build harpsichords in their lofts, who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded by orange crates of theology, who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations which in the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish, who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht & tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable kingdom, who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for an egg, who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade, who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccess- fully, gave up and were forced to open antique stores where they thought they were growing old and cried, who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinis- ter intelligent editors, or were run down by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality, who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually hap- pened and walked away unknown and forgotten into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alley ways & firetrucks, not even one free beer, who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of the subway window, jumped in the filthy Pas- saic, leaped on negroes, cried all over the street, danced on broken wineglasses barefoot smashed phonograph records of nostalgic European 1930s German jazz finished the whiskey and threw up groaning into the bloody toilet, moans in their ears and the blast of colossal steam whistles, who barreled down the highways of the past journeying to each other's hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude watch or Birmingham jazz incarnation, who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had a vision to find out Eternity, who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who came back to Denver & waited in vain, who watched over Denver & brooded & loned in Denver and finally went away to find out the Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes, who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying for each other's salvation and light and breasts, until the soul illuminated its hair for a second, who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for impossible criminals with golden heads and the charm of reality in their hearts who sang sweet blues to Alcatraz, who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit, or Rocky Mount to tender Buddha or Tangiers to boys or Southern Pacific to the black locomotive or Harvard to Narcissus to Woodlawn to the daisychain or grave, who demanded sanity trials accusing the radio of hyp notism & were left with their insanity & their hands & a hung jury, who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism and subsequently presented themselves on the granite steps of the madhouse with shaven heads and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding in- stantaneous lobotomy, and who were given instead the concrete void of insulin Metrazol electricity hydrotherapy psycho- therapy occupational therapy pingpong & amnesia, who in humorless protest overturned only one symbolic pingpong table, resting briefly in catatonia, returning years later truly bald except for a wig of blood, and tears and fingers, to the visible mad man doom of the wards of the madtowns of the East, Pilgrim State's Rockland's and Greystone's foetid halls, bickering with the echoes of the soul, rock- ing and rolling in the midnight solitude-bench dolmen-realms of love, dream of life a night- mare, bodies turned to stone as heavy as the moon, with mother finally ******, and the last fantastic book flung out of the tenement window, and the last door closed at 4. A.M. and the last telephone slammed at the wall in reply and the last fur- nished room emptied down to the last piece of mental furniture, a yellow paper rose twisted on a wire hanger in the closet, and even that imaginary, nothing but a hopeful little bit of hallucination ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and now you're really in the total animal soup of time and who therefore ran through the icy streets obsessed with a sudden flash of the alchemy of the use of the ellipse the catalog the meter & the vibrat- ing plane, who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space through images juxtaposed, and trapped the archangel of the soul between 2 visual images and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun and dash of consciousness together jumping with sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna Deus to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before you speechless and intel- ligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet con- fessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm of thought in his naked and endless head, the madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown, yet putting down here what might be left to say in time come after death, and rose reincarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the suffering of America's naked mind for love into an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand years.

4) “After Making Love We Hear Footsteps.” By Galway Kinnel

For I can snore like a bullhorn1
or play loud music
or sit up talking with any reasonably sober Irishman
and Fergus will only sink deeper
into his dreamless sleep, which goes by all in one flash,
but let there be that heavy breathing
or a stifled come-cry anywhere in the house
and he will wrench himself awake
and make for it on the run—as now, we lie together,
after making love, quiet, touching along the length of our bodies,10
familiar touch of the long-married,
and he appears—in his baseball pajamas, it happens,
the neck opening so small he has to screw them on—
and flops down between us and hugs us and snuggles himself to sleep,
his face gleaming with satisfaction at being this very child.
In the half darkness we look at each other
and smile
and touch arms across this little, startlingly muscled body—
this one whom habit of memory propels to the ground of his making,
sleeper only the mortal sounds can sing awake,
this blessing love gives again into our arms.



5) “The Knowing” By Sharon Olds
Afterwards, when we have slept, paradise-comaed, and woken, we lie a long timelooking at each other.I do not know what he sees, but I seeeyes of surpassing tendernessand calm, a calm like the dignityof matter. I love the open oceanblue-gray-green of his iris, I lovethe curve of it against the white,that curve the site of what has caused meto come, when he's quite still, deepinside me. I have never seen a curvelike that, except the earth from outerspace. I don't know where he gothis kindness without self-regard,almost without self, and yet16he chose one woman, instead of the others.By knowing him, I get to knowthe purity of the animalwhich mates for life. Sometimes he is slightlysmiling, but mostly he just gazes at me gazing,his entire face lit. I loveto see it change if I cry--there is no worry,no pity, a graver radiance. If weare on our backs, side by side,with our faces turned fully to face each other,26I can hear a tear from my lower eyehit the sheet, as if it is an early day on earth,and then the upper eye's tearsbraid and sluice down through the lower eyebrowlike the invention of farming, irrigation, a non-nomadic people.I am so lucky that I can know him.This is the only way to know him.I am the only one who knows him.34When I wake again, he is still looking at me,35as if he is eternal. For an hourwe wake and doze, and slowly I know37that though we are sated, though we are hardlytouching, this is the coming the otherbrought us to the edge of--we are entering,deeper and deeper, gaze by gaze,this place beyond the other places,beyond the body itself, we are makinglove.44


6) “Morning “ By Frank O’Hara

I've got to tell you
how I love you always
I think of it on grey
mornings with death

in my mouth the tea5
is never hot enough
then and the cigarette
dry the maroon robe

chills me I need you9
and look out the window
at the noiseless snow

At night on the dock12
the buses glow like
clouds and I am lonely
thinking of flutes

I miss you always16
when I go to the beach
the sand is wet with
tears that seem mine19

although I never weep
and hold you in my
heart with a very real
humor you'd be proud of

the parking lot is
crowded and I stand
rattling my keys the car
is empty as a bicycle

what are you doing now
where did you eat your
lunch and were there
lots of anchovies it

is difficult to think
of you without me in
the sentence you depress
me when you are alone

Last night the stars
were numerous and today
snow is their calling
card I'll not be cordial

there is nothing that
distracts me music is
only a crossword puzzle
do you know how it is

when you are the only
passenger if there is a
place further from me
I beg you do not go


7) “The Elephant Is Slow To Mate” By D.H. Lawrence

The elephant, the huge old beast,1is slow to mate;he finds a female, they show no hastethey wait
for the sympathy in their vast shy hearts5slowly, slowly to rouseas they loiter along the river-bedsand drink and browse
and dash in panic through the brake9of forest with the herd,and sleep in massive silence, and waketogether, without a word.
So slowly the great hot elephant hearts13grow full of desire,and the great beasts mate in secret at last,hiding their fire.
Oldest they are and the wisest of beasts17so they know at lasthow to wait for the loneliest of feastsfor the full repast.
They do not snatch, they do not tear;21their massive bloodmoves as the moon-tides, near, more neartill they touch in flood.24

8) “What Do Women Want?” By Kim AddonizioI want a red dress.I want it flimsy and cheap,I want it too tight, I want to wear ituntil someone tears it off me.I want it sleeveless and backless,this dress, so no one has to guesswhat's underneath. I want to walk downthe street past Thrifty's and the hardware storewith all those keys glittering in the window,past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-olddoughnuts in their cafe, past the Guerra brothersslinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly,hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders.I want to walk like I'm the onlywoman on earth and I can have my pick.I want that red dress bad.I want it to confirm you worst fears about me,to show you how little I care about youor anything except whatI want. When I find it, I'll pull that garmentfrom its hanger like I'm choosing a bodyto carry me into this world, throughthe birth-cries and love-cries too,and I'll wear it like bones, like skin,it'll be the goddamneddress they bury me in.


Works Cited.


Addonizio, Kim. “What do Women want”<.">http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/what-do-women-want>.
Corso, Gregory. “Marriage” The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. Ed. Peter
Simon. New York: Norton & Company, 2006. 1807 - 1810.

Eliot, T. S. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. Ed. Peter Simon. New York: Norton & Company, 2006. 1340 - 1343.

Ginsberg, Allen. “Howl.” The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction.
Ed. Peter Simon. New York: Norton & Company, 2006. 1708—1713.

Kinnell, Galway “After Making Love We Hear Footsteps” The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. Ed. Peter Simon. New York: Norton & Company, 2006. 1742.

Lawrence, D.H. “The Elephant is Slow to Mate”

O’Hara, Frank. “Morning” <http://www.eliteskills.com/analysis_poetry/Morning_by_Frank_O_Hara_analysis.php.>

Olds, Sharon. “The Knowing”
<http://www.geocities.com/area51/neptune/9631/olds.html>

Sentimentality at the School of Confessional Poets

Sentimentality at the School of Confessional Poets

Poets of the Confessional School are easily inclined to fall into the trap of sentimentalism when they open up their heart to express their internal feelings. Some poets succumb to the temptation while some others survive over it. Sylvia Plath has certainly failed in the trap. Her life is deeply influenced by the close attachment she had with her deceased father. The sentimentality kicks in as she could not mentally accept to surrender to the reality that her father had already passed away. She is till emotional about her relationship with her father as if he is still walking around and alive. In her poem “Daddy” the second stanza captures her state of minds with the following terms:

“Daddy, I have to kill you
You died before I had time
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one grey toe
Big as a Frisco seal”

Plath who still addresses her father in the poem, reminds herself that he died too soon before she even had enough time to enjoy his presence. She is deeply attached to the memory of her father although she recognizes she should not fail to move forward with her life and let him rest in peace.
Anne Sexton on the other hand is an example of a poet who has avoided sentimentalism in her work. In her poem “The Truth the Dead Know”, she kept her emotions from derailing. This fact is demonstrated by her selected choice of language, which conveys to the reader the sense that she has finally accepted the reality of the deaths of her parents. The first stanza for example confirms that her poem is certainly composed by a mindset cleared from any outburst of excessive emotions:

“Gone, I saw and walk from church,
refusing the stiff procession to the grave,
letting the dead ride alone in the hearse.
It is June. I am tired of being brave.”

Brief Comparison of “Ave Maria” and “Howl” part I

Brief Comparison of “Ave Maria” by Frank O’Hara and “Howl” part I by Allen Ginsberg.

“Ave Maria” is written by Frank O’Hara, a poet member of the New York School. Its narrator addresses the mothers of America and advises them to be more open towards their growing kids, especially when it comes to encouraging them for frequent outdoor activities away from parental supervision.
“Howl” is written by Allen Ginsberg, a poet of the school of “Beats”. The part I of this poem describes the turmoil that various inhabitants of the world are going through while completing their mundane activities.
Both poems are in a free verse style without any directly recognizable rhyme or meter system. In addition, small case letters mark the beginning of all the verses, to the exception of their respective first lines.
The narrator of “Ave Maria” advocates strongly for the implementation of a new order in an American society deprived of the authoritarian parenting style. Thus, according to the narrator, the growing kids would supposedly benefit out of it. Lines 1 to 3 read:
“Mothers of America
let your kids go to the movies
get them out of the house so they won’t
know what you’re up to

Furthermore, lines 32 to 36 read:
“so don’t blame me if you won’t take this
advice
and the family breaks up
and your children grow old and blind in
front of a TV set
seeing
movies you wouldn’t let them see when
they were young.”

In the “Howl” of Allen Ginsberg, the narrator displays a strong influence of Walt Whitman writing style. In addition, he begins all his verses with small case letters, except the first verse. The narrator also insinuates implicitly for the gradual enrooting of a new order in an American society that tolerates any form of sexual language in literature.
For example, lines 37 read: “who left themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and
screamed with joy…”

And also line 41 reads:
“who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of beer a sweetheart…”

Contemporary poems and their ornamental ancestors.

Contemporary poems are as poetic as their ornamental ancestors.

Contemporary poems are characterized by their own originality, their intrinsic creativity and the presence of poetic elements just like classic poems.

In “an Elegy for W.C.W., the Lovely Man” by John Berryman, the similarity of sounds that constitute the end rhyme is noticeable. For example, in the third stanza, the end rhyme consists of the words ahead and read; down and crown as follow:

“Too many journey lie for him ahead,
too many galleys & page-proofs to be read,
he would like to lie down
in your sweet silence, to whom was not denied
the mysterious late excellence which is the crown
of our trials & our last bride”

In addition, a contemporary poem can use matter of sounds just like does a classic poem. For example in “The Waking”, the extreme use of the assonance is profusely exploited by Theodore Roethke. The vowel sound [A] for example is redundant in the lines 17 and 18:

“What falls away is always. And is near
I wake to sleep and take my walking slow”

Furthermore, contemporary poems are partitioned in tercet, quatrain, and recurrent stanza like the classic poems. Moreover, they sometimes adopt the free verse style, pioneered earlier by the school of “Imagism” which authorizes and validates the violation of the grammar rules and the use of fragmented sentences or words in Poetry. An example is in this second stanza of “I know a Man” by Robert Creeley where the word “said” is abbreviated to “sd” and where all lines begin with a small case letter:

“sd, which was not his
name, the darkness sur-
rounds us, what”.

“The Weary Blues” by Langston Hughes

“The Weary Blues”.

In the selection of this week, a poem that contains an excellent metaphor is “The Weary Blues” by Langston Hughes. I have enjoyed it and reread it so many times without quenching my thirst of reading it over and over again. The metaphor appears on line 10. But to better grasp its scope let’s reread from line 4 to line 10:
“Down on Lenox Avenue the other night
By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light
He did a lazy sway…
He did a lazy sway…
To the tune o’those Weary Blues.
With his ebony hands on each ivory key
He made that poor piano moan with melody.”(p.1430)

The verb moan usually makes me recall of a windy day when the air flows majestically among the branches of bowing trees and make the leaves produce various whistling sounds. But yet here, the narrator helps us witness how the different “ivory keys” of the piano work together to yield these magnificent sounds of the Weary Blues melody. This metaphor help powerfully the narrator prove the main point of the poem that a black person is simply a human being, with a soul and an identity and who can elegantly express his consciousness in his own style like any one else. The metaphor is in perfect alignment with the previous line where the narrator is stressing that the “ebony hands” of the black pianist are responsible for the melodious production in progress. Thus the metaphor has accomplished its expected role of exposing the inner gift of noble creativity and artistic talent of that particular black pianist who performed some times ago on Malcolm X Blvd, in Harlem.

Works Cited.
Hughes, Langston. The Weary Blues. The Norton Anthology of Poetry. Fifth Edition. Norton & Company. 2005: 1429-1430.

Influences in Poetry

Influences of Ezra Pound and Emily Dickinson respectively on E.E. Cummings and Dylan Thomas.

“In a Station of the Metro” Ezra Pound departs from the tradition of obeying the rules of syntax and establishes himself as one of the pioneers of the imagism. He has greatly influenced Cummings in his debuts in Poetry. For example, in “Anyone lived in a pretty how town” Cummings is appealed by the idea of writing his poems with no regard for the standard rules of syntax and grammar in Poetry. He goes further and deprives that poem with the privilege of a having a real title. Instead he uses line 1 as a cover up for a proxy title.
Cummings pursuit the departure from the tradition by eliminating the left margin and starting his lines with a small case letter instead of a capital letter. For example, line 13 reads serves as an illustration as follow:
“when by now and tree by leaf.”
Cummings put into practice the notion of parsimony in the use of words inherited from Pound. In line 36 for example he condenses words in a compact metaphor with the intention of representing the passage of time over the years.Line 36 reads:
“sun moon stars rain”

Emily Dickinson is another example of a poet of an early generation who has been influential among poets of the 20th century. She is a poet who has extensively written about a theme not very attractive, death. As we learned in the previous weeks, she devoted several elegant poems on that theme (for example, # 340, 479 and 591).

Dylan Thomas also expanded passionately around that same theme of death and the dying process in a manner that signals that he was exposed to the school of thought of Emily Dickinson who contemplates death and brings it to a courteous and non threatening position. Similarly Dylan Thomas contemplates death and stimulates the reader to dominate it. In “Do not go Gentle into that goodnight” Dylan Thomas encourages the reader to be valiant until the ultimate moment.

Poetic elements found in “Ars Poetica”

Poetic elements found in “Ars Poetica” by Archibald Macleish

Archibald Macleish in his poem “Ars Poetica” strives to convince his audience that a poem is another form of expression of the esthetic beauty, just like a masterpiece expresses with solemnity the emotional views of its artist and creator. Macleish uses plenty of similes to prove his point and make his case. Simile fits his needs in my opinion because it is a reliable shuttle that helps transport and communicate so successfully to the outside world the creator’s internal feelings and emotions. In poetry, a simile fills that function of bridge so well that it yields the same intense effect to the audience as the magic brush strokes of the skilled painter or the carving indents left on a hard medium by the tools of a gifted sculptor. Here below are few examples on how Macleish exploits the use of simile in his advantage:

Line 1 and 2 read:
“A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,”
After reaching the end of line 2, the reader is left with a virtual sensation of having touched a real fruit with the palms of the hands.

Line 5, and 6 read:
“Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
of casement ledges where the moss has grown”
After reaching the end of line 6, the reader is left with a visual sensation of being in a quiet environment, while observing stony ledges covered with growing green vegetation.

Line 7, and 8 read:
“A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds.”
I have enjoyed this simile a lot because Macleish uses only a few words, but the combination of their effects make me imagine flocks of birds flying and joyfully singing simultaneously.

In addition to the simile, Mcleash has also built his lines along a rhyme scheme he has elegantly developed as a testimony to prove his point that order and beauty should be embedded in any piece of poetical writing.
He uses slant rhymes with the following end of lines: mute and fruit; stone and grown; time and climbs; release and leaves; mind and time; grief and leaf; sea and be. Finally two examples of perfect rhyme have been added to beautify the work art: dumb and thumb; and wordless and motionless.

Compare and Contrast “Song of myself” by Walt Whitman

Anthony Ryder Sunday, October 07, 2007
English 2306


Compare and Contrast “Song of myself” by Walt Whitman
and “Ode to the West Wind” by Percy Bysshe Shelley.

“Song of Myself” by Walt Whitman is about a poet who rediscovers himself as a human being with a body and a soul. Beyond that it is also a story about the connection and the continuity reestablished between the poet and the entire creation of God. The journey of rediscovery starts with the narrator’s commemoration of the awareness of his own consciousness. Then it gradually elevates the meaning of his own being to his intimacy with his own soul and how much he feels and appreciates that intimacy. Then the narrator expands by arguing that his own body is made of parts that participate in the proclamation of the entire and serene creation of God.

The narrator realizes that he is not alone in this journey on earth because he is surrounded by his fellowmen, brothers and sisters with which he shares sentiments of love. He is also certainly surrounded by plants, and all the other non-living matters and he tries to prove in his deliberately lengthy poem that he identifies himself as an intrinsic component of everything around him. Death is then explained in this entire spectrum as a mean by which the narrator is ‘recycled’ and he integrates inside the other myriads of God’s creation.

“Ode to the West Wind” by Percy Bysshe Shelley is a poem that evolves around a theme of a wind blowing naturally during a day in Autumn. The poet who observes the phenomenon shares so eloquently to the reader his feelings on the effects of the wind to himself and to the dead leaves.

Whitman is a heavy user of symbolism as opposed to Shelley who is not as efficient as he is in the exploitation of this powerful device in poetry. In line 1, Whitman uses the word ‘myself’ as a symbol of all mankind as well as the entire creation of God. Line 1 reads:
“ I celebrate myself, and sing myself,”

The poet wants to reach out to the entire creation. But the symbolism presented in that introductory line of the poem is not straightforward in relating easily with the entire cosmos it meant to embrace. Fortunately, the reader gets back on track in line 3 and understands the symbolism of the whole universe behind the word “myself” only after examining the universal nature of atoms and thus the attempt at referring to the entire cosmos. Line 3 reads:

“For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”

Other examples of symbolism lie in line 99, 235, 497, 519, 523, 532, 542 and 552.
In line 99, a child asks the poet a question about the meaning of grass. The poet portrays ‘grass’ as a pure symbol of the child himself as he demonstrates it in line 105:

“Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation.”

In line 102, the poet refers to the same grass also as a symbol of God. Line 102 reads:

“Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord.”

The poet uses effectively these symbols to put an emphasis on the silent or unspoken cyclic transformation that ultimately unite him and all the other components of the creation. That transformation takes place through the process of life, death and through what could be understood as a permutation of the role played under the sun by humans, animals, plants and all the other existing matters of the cosmos. Lines 125 to 130 explain that concept in these terms:
“They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the
end to arrest it,
And ceas’d the moment life appear’d.
All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.”

Following up on his conversation with the child about the meaning of grass, Whitman does an awesome and effective job when he elaborates extensively and beautifully on the symbolism of grass and the interchangeability of the elements of the cosmic universe.

In the example below, Whitman explains that animals are also the symbol of the creation. From lines 235 we read:
“Oxen that rattle the yoke and chain or halt in the leafy shade, what is that you express in your eyes?
It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.”

Whitman considers that he is a symbol of the cosmos itself. In this regard, he succeeds in proving the point that he is a piece of the universe in several ways. He assimilates with the prisoners, the slaves, the thieves, and even the dwarfs!
From lines 508 we read:
“Through me many long dumb voices,
Voices of the interminable generations of prisoners and slaves,
Voices of the diseas’d and despairing and of thieves and dwarfs,
Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion,”

Whitman also views himself as a real symbol of the world of insects and animals. Line 515 reads:
“Fog in the air, beetles rolling balls of dung.”

In addition, he sees himself as a representative of non living matters such as stars. From line 512 we reads:

“And of the threads that connect the stars, and of wombs and of the
father-stuff,
And of the rights of them the others are down upon,”


Whitman finds symbols of creations in his own body parts. The narrator strives extensively to stress that several symbols of the creation are stuffed inside his anatomical body. Here are a few examples.
From line 519 we read:

“I do not press my fingers across my mouth,
I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the head and heart,”

From line 523 we read:

“Seeing, hearing, feeling are the miracles, and each part and tag of me
is a miracle
…
The scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer,
This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds.”

From line 532 we can read:

“You my rich blood! Your milky stream pale strippings of my life!
Breast that presses against other breasts it shall be you!
My brain it shall be your occult convolutions!”

From line 542 we read:

“Broad muscular fields, branches of live oak, loving lounger in my
winding paths, it shall be you!
Hands I have taken, face I have kiss’d, mortal I have ever touch’d,
it shall be you.”

In the following passages, Whitman makes a much greater effort than Shelley does in exploring the imagery device. Whitman allows the reader to visualize the group of swimming men described in his work, with water dripping from their bodies while being secretly watched through the blinds of a window of a nearby house located close to the shore, by a secret female admirer. The poet has recorded all that scenery with his eye balls and has translated that into his claim that the swimmers and the lady are all pieces of the same unified creation.
For example, from lines 202 to 204 we read:

“She owns the fine house by the rise of the bank,
She hides handsome and richly drest aft the blinds of the window.

Which of the young men does she like the best?”

and from lines 210 to 213 we read:

“The beards of the young men glisten’d with wet, it ran from their long hair,
Little streams pass’d all over their bodies.
An unseen hand also pass’d over their bodies,
it descended trembling from their temples and ribs.
The young men float on their backs, their white bellies bulge to the
sun, they do not ask who seizes fast to them.”

In contrast to Whitman, Shelley uses a more conventional and structured writing style that achieve to convince the skeptical reader in a timely fashion that Shelley conveys his message to the reader quicker than does Whitman. Shelley’s work is composed of five cantos each of which contains four triplets and a couplet. Each triplet is poetically written in a terza rima style, consisting of three lines of ten or eleven syllables each. In addition, each line is methodically written in a rhythm of iambic pentameter. From the first to the last line every syllable is rigorously synchronized by the contributions of the iambic pentameters, the terza rimas and the cantos. Certainly the poet, engulfed by the emotional intensity as he witnesses an harmonic wonder of mother’s nature unfolding in front of his naked eyes, did not find any better way other than to borrow this concordant cantos structure so he could capture and translate to the reader the depth of the lyric exaltation of his feelings. One example excerpt of Shelley’s 70 lines of iambic pentamers is in line 67 that reads as follow:

x / x / x / x / x /
A-shes and sparks, my words a-mong man-kind!

The symbol “x” represents an unstressed syllable, the symbol “/” represents a stressed syllable and each consecutive “x” and “/” form one iambic foot.
An example excerpt of one of Shelley’s 20 triplets of terza rima starts from line 57 and reads as follow:

“Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies.”

An example excerpt of one of Shelley’s five couplets is found at the bottom of the first canto. It reads as follow:

“Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and Preserver; hear, O hear!”

To the contrary of Whitman who advocates vehemently for the recognition of free verses, Shelley uses copiously the end of rhyme device in his poem, thus he succeeds in my opinion in sharing with the reader the sense of congruity he has discovered inside the phenomenon he is observing. At the same time, he spreads the end of rhyme devices in his entire poem just like pollens of flowers are dispersed by the wind, with certainly the intent of sharing with the reader the intensity of his euphoria and admiration about what he is witnessing.
For example, from lines 32 to 35 below, “bay” rhyme with “day” and “towers” rhyme with “flowers”:
“Beside a purnice isle in Baiae’s bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave’s intenser day,

All overgrown with azure moss and flowers”

Furthermore, Shelley brutally has opened up the first line of his poem with an easily noticeable alliteration that focuses on the alphabetical letter “w”. Certainly, he wants to appeal to the reader’s ear that a wind is blowing, better heard, a west wind is forcefully moving, or better emphasized, a wild west wind is in action. Line 1 reads as follow:

“O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,”

The use of the alliteration device help Shelley makes his case easier than the counterpart Whitman.
To his advantage, Shelley uses the metaphor device more than does Whitman. For example, in line 13, he uses a metaphor as he identifies the wind as a wild spirit. Line 13 read as follow:

“Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;”

In the last terza rima of the fourth canto, he exploits a metaphor device once again to share to the reader his intent of participating and being an intrinsic part of the phenomenon. He prays feverously so he could be carried away by the wind just like what he witnesses that happened to dead leaves, waves or clouds. Triplet 16 reads as follow:

“As thus with thee prayer in my sore need.
Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!”

Shelley uses the personification device when he compares the clouds to the angels of rain and lightning.
“Loose clouds like Earth’s decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,

Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread”


In his poem “Song of Myself”, Walt Whitman promotes the use of free verse as a new medium for expression among his contemporaries. To make his case about the unity of creation, Walt Whitman has focused profusely on the use of symbolism. Percy Shelley, however, has emphasized more on the use of figurative languages in his poem “Ode to the West Wind.” In addition, his poem could be consider a classical and inspiring example of the use of the iambic pentameter, the terza rima and finally the conta.


Works Cited.

Shelley, Percy. Ode to the West Wind. The Norton Anthology of Poetry. Fifth edition.
Norton & Company. 2005: 872.

Whitman, Walt. Song of Myself .The Norton Anthology of Poetry. Fifth edition.
Norton & Company. 2005: 1060-1066.

"Journey of the Magi." By T.S. Eliot

Anthony Ryder September 30, 2007
English 2306


“Journey of the Magi.” By T.S. Eliot

Eliot has composed “journey of the Magi” in a free verse style with lines of different length. In my opinion, he attaches an additional meaning in his choosing of the line breaking points. In the first, second and fifth lines of the first stanza, Eliot devotes seven syllables to each line to clarify the weather condition at the time the story is unfolding. For example, the fifth line reads:
“The very dead of winter…”

Eliot brings back to the reader the memory of a deadly weather during a typical worst and coldest winter season. But Eliot goes further in the third and fourth lines and informs the reader that, contrary to common sense, a long journey has already been decided. Despite the presence of the deadliest weather outside, a journey is nonetheless in progress. Lines 3 and 4 read as follow:
“For the Journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp.”

To emphasize on the seriousness and dangers brought by the decision of carrying out such a long trip during such a poor and life threatening atmospherical condition, Eliot increases the number of syllables to eight or ten.

The free verse nature of this poem is confirmed throughout this entire work, including in the fourth stanza where the line’s length ranges from one to 14 syllables. The most shocking is line 23 which contains only one syllable:
“This:…”

Certainly Eliot wanted to stress that the magi, after going through hardships in hostile towns or unfriendly villages in addition to battling the bad weather arrived finally at their ultimate destination. That one syllable written in the typical Imagist style serves to announce to the reader that the following line is about to disclose a huge surprise: the view of a newborn King that Eliot identifies with the word Birth written with a capital B.

Line 25 is the longest with 14 syllables. It reads:
“We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death.”

Eliot certainly wanted to create a sharp contrast between on the one hand the great number of births (-written with small letter b-) the magi and the reader have altogether heard or witnessed during their lifetimes. On the other hand there is this exceptional arrival of the newborn King. Thus, Eliot would opt to devote the longest line to the countless myriads of witnessed births of ordinary people.

Late 19th century and Poetry

The second half of the 19th century, was dominated in America by the recovery from the aftermath of the Civil War. At the same time, a much needed and new economic era began to surface and to grow up at a fast rate. It led to the introduction of the railroad industry and other manufacturing jobs that never existed before. The face of the American society and culture began to change drastically.

The emerging of this machine-driven industrialization began gradually to transform the face of the American society. It thus triggered the development of a new urban life and new revolutionary and social concepts that in turn led to changes in sciences and arts including in literature and poetry. In my view, two of the poets that best contributed to catapult the American poetry of the 19th century towards news horizons of Romanticism were the famous Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman. Their merits were that they have bravely departed from obeying the traditional rules of the ancient style of Poetry and adventured their work arts and thus the American Romanticism into this new oasis of cultural freedom and beauty. Whitman’s poetry does not abide by the rules neither of the traditional rhyme nor of the blank verse. Whitman poems seem to lack an internal structure when analyzed from a classical standpoint. They seem to lack a rhyme structure and they seem to be a descriptive poetry with a sort of run-on inside their lines or their stanzas.
For example, the excerpt below is extracted from “from song of myself”. It dangerously resembles a priori a simple compilation of lines. However, an extensive review of Walt Whitman reveals that he defines the artistic value of his masterpieces around a simple exposition of his ideas all elegantly staggered by category. The excerpt reads:


“Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, “I give them the same, I
receive them the same.”

Emily Dickinson has brought the American romanticism into a different school of poetry when compared to the works of Whitman and the others. Emily built her work around a structure that she likes: the ballad meter or ballad stanza, in trends of four lines each with a beautifully identified internal cadence of rhyme. Emily pushes the breakage away from the tradition even in her plain choice of themes for her poetry. Most of them oddly gravitate and expand on the concepts of suffering, death, life after death and immortality. For example in poem # 479 that we reviewed last week, Emily uses the ballad meter format (8 6 8 6) to juggle with death and immortality:

“Because I could not stop for Death
He kindly stopped for me
The Carriage held but just Ourselves
And Immortality…”

Emily Dickinson and the Romanticism Era

Emily Dickinson has been recognized as one of the greatest American poet of the 19th century. She tackled various themes in her poetical writings ranging from suffering to immortality. The typical usage of metaphor and her version of romanticism are original to her and her themes are centered on concepts that may look a priori odd to some readers. Her uncensored freedom of self expression allows her to embrace and expand on controversial topics. Her poetry depicts personas that had broken from the tradition of the main stream British romanticism as exemplified by Lord Byron or William Blake.

The proof of her liberated mind compared to her contemporaries pops up in some of her poems where the persona displays openly their libidinal tendencies. Two examples could be brought to justify this assumption: (my life had stood – a loaded gun # 764) and (wild nights – wild nights # 269).

While British romanticists contributed in the propagation of the Christian faith, Emily Dickinson engaged the personas of some of her poems in provocative and rebellious directions that openly reject the God of the Bible. The antiGod rhetoric could be detected through the speakers of (the bible is an antique volume # 1577) and of (Much madness is divinest sense# 620).

Furthermore, she dwells more than the other romanticist, on the notion of death and life after death as if her speakers wanted to teach the readers of being less aggressive and more contemplative about death. She wrote several poems that championed death and immortality. Among them, we could mention the following: (I felt a funeral, in my brain # 340); (because I could not stop for death # 479) and (I heard a fly buzz – when I die #591).

Emily Dickinson for the most part, wrote her poems in her own style although she was an author who lived during the Romanticism period.

Written After Swimming from Sestos to Abydos

Anthony Ryder
Introduction to Poetry

“Written After Swimming from Sestos to Abydos.” By Lord Byron.

Lord Byron, the author of this poetry lived from 1788 to 1824. He was reportedly born with a club foot. He grew up in a poor family in Aberdeen, UK. His first collection of poetry, “Hours of Idleness” was published in 1807. He was sexually hyperactive and contracted Sexually transmitted diseases. He was interested in the old Armenian culture and visited in 1816 St. Lazarus Island in Venice for that purpose. He published numerous works. His publications were reliable and they mostly reflect that he was a Romantic poet although at times, he wrote satiric papers. His masterpiece is believed to be “Don Juan” published in 1833. Several of his poems have made their way into musical inspirations for various symphonies. His audience was more general than specific because he was depicting his main character as an idealized and flawed main individual, which was talented, sexually virile and self destructive. He was inspired also by the Greek mythology and the Greek culture. For example he advocated for the return of the marbles of Parthenon to Greece. At the last stage of his life he suffered seizures that worsened until his death in 1824.

Poetic elements:

The diction is mixed casual and elevated. The emotional distance is captured intensely the following way in the last stanza:

He lost his labour, I my jest;
For he was drowned, and I’ve ague.

The use of resemblance in rhymes adds beauty to this poem and is compatible with the tone of this poem. The lines appear to be a combination of end-stopped and enjambed lines. They are broken into short statements for clarity. This poetry is written in closed form because several patterns could be detected in the poetry.

The Importance of the Natural World

The Importance of the Natural World.

This essay address the interpretations of the concept of nature as presented by the three romantics’ poets Blake, Wordsworth and Coleridge. Nature is essentially portrayed here as an example of God’s providential design. In the songs of innocence, Blake explains that children are naturally born with their packages of innocence, which guide them during the explorations of their childhood experiences. For example, the first stanza of “Holy Thursday I”, reads:

Twas on a Holy Thursday, their innocent faces clean,
The children, walking two and two, in red and blue and green,
Grey-headed beadles walk’d before, with wands as white snow,
Till into the high dome of Paul’s they like Thames’ waters flow.

Blake stresses the importance of this childhood innocence as God given because as the children grow older and navigate through the adulthood life experience (what he calls songs of experience), they have already lost their initial natural innocence. The dramatic loss of the human’s natural design is equally captured and described by the other romantic poets. For example , in the sonnet “London”, William Wordsworth describes how the childhood pure innocence is lost over the ages and replaced by the adult’s flawy aggressivity, and criminal behavior.

In “London” we read:

“…Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
Oh! Raise us up, return to us again;
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.”

The importance of the nature is clearly felt during the adulthood, after the loss of innocence and its replacement by bitter acts.

A letter of Introduction

My name is Anthony Baende Ryder. I was born and grew up in the Democratic Republic of Congo. I then migrated to the US in the early 90s. This is my second year at the University of Houston. My previous experiences with formal writing were obtained through the English Composition class I and II at Houston Community College.

I think that good writing is both a necessity and an art. It is a tool that is used to exchange messages and at the same time it could be made more enjoyable for the reader by simply respecting certain principles of literature and expression of artistic beauty. In my past experience, writing has been challenging to me in the sense that it usually takes me several revisions of my drafts to make me feel that I had ultimately matched what I initially felt or meant.

Here is my problem. On the one hand, we live in a society and a civilization dominated by speed and quality and summarized by the motto: the quicker the better. On the other hand only those among us who understand quickly and communicate well to others perform well in our society, the question becomes then how could one express his or her own idea quickly and in a convincing manner? It is my belief that parts of the answer lies in the knowledge of Poetry as a way of expression. Therefore, my expectation for this class is to become familiar with the rules that shape the art of Poetry.

Finally, as a hobby I like to maintain my self in a good physical shape through regular aerobic exercises.