Fair Phyllis is a song or poem written in the 16th century by John Farmer, in this poem he tells the tale of a relationship between a shepherdess and her lover, in which is told by the song and in history has been presented with the Italian practice of “word art”. This beautiful song is very special in the format of the piece, it is sung in a cappella, meaning that many voices work in harmony to create the song, while the work itself is first monophonic, then for the last part it become homophonic switching off between one person singing and then many at different paces and tones. At the beginning of the song where it is monophonic the highest voice is reinforced by the other voices, while in the latter half of the song when it changes to
Discuss how intertextuality allows Dobson’s poetry to resonate across time and place. In a society determined to identify and correct every one of the never ending inequalities and injustices of life, Rosemary Dobson provides an alternate perspective. Dobson’s poetry creates the concept of equal opportunity. This is the idea that in fact, everyone on Earth that has ever existed has been born into their lives with an equal and proportionate chance at achieving success and happiness, within their given circumstances.
In 1942 Virginia Woolf read a paper to the Women’s Service League about "The Angel in the House." For Woolf, this "Angel" represented the voice in the back of the mind of a woman that was saying, "Never let anybody guess that you have a mind of your own" (1346). During Woolf’s time a woman was not supposed to write critically. Rather, a woman was supposed to "be sympathetic; be tender; flatter; deceive; use all the arts and wiles of her sex." Woolf writes of the need to "kill" this angel. She says, "Had I not killed her, she would have killed me" (1346). Thankfully today it is no longer considered improper for a woman to write critically and truthfully, but Lucille Clifton has her own "angel to kill" in some of her poetry. Clifton is a woman artist who uses her past experiences and those of her ancestors to write her poetry. Clifton uses the ideas of light and foxes to convey the joy she finds in being a woman poet, as well as the fear that an artist sometimes feels when first struck with an idea for a poem.
Rosemary Dobson's Poetry "Rosemary Dobson seems intent on presenting a view of life as bleak and generally uninteresting In the poems by Rosemary Dobson it generally presents the view of life as bleak. " The Tiger" is an example of this. This also reinforces the limitations on her poetic inspirations. The idea is presented by the effective use of imagery, tone, sound devices and the temporary progression. However, the poem by no means is uninteresting due to the use of these techniques.
Phillis Wheatley was an African-born slave in the last quarter of the eighteenth-century in New England. She was born in West Africa and brought to America on the slave ship Phillis. She was, however, much more than chattel-she was a poet. Phillis was the first African American to have a book published. In a time when women were not expected to be able to read or write, and when teaching an African American to be literate was frowned upon, Phillis Wheatley became educated in Latin and English literature. The education of Phillis Wheatley was, for the most part, for the intent of training "a servant and would-be companion for domestic utility," in which they undoubtedly succeeded. However, they "got an intellectual adornment" who, with her knowledge of the poems of Alexander Pope, the "Puritanical whiteness of her thoughts," and ability to write poems, soon became a celebrity among Boston?s social elite (Richmond 18,19).
Patricia Young’s poem Boys is a representation of implied heteronormacy in society. Young uses tropes and schemes such as allusion, metaphors and irony to convey the ways in which heterosexuality is pushed onto children from a young age. Poetry such as Boys is a common and effective medium to draw attention to the way society produces heteronormativity through gendered discourses that are typically used to understand sex. Boys does an excellent job at drawing its readers to the conclusion that it is an ironic poem trying to emphasize the over-excessive ways in which we express heterosexuality in daily life.
Comparing The Passionate Shepherd to His Love and Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd. and the stark contrast of the treatment of an identical theme, that of love within the framework of pastoral life. I intend to look at each poem separately to give my interpretation of the poet's intentions and then discuss their techniques and how the chosen techniques affect the portal of an identical theme. The poem The Passionate Shepherd to His Love appears to be about the Elizabethan courtly ideal of living with the barest necessities, like.
The poet Galway Kinnell has a very lighthearted and playful tone in this poem. The speaker also expresses his feelings about his child joining his lover and him in the bed after they have made love. The poem dramatizes the mixed feelings the speaker has in the poem. The speaker feels the need to speak out now because he wants to share his feelings with possibly new parents. The audience of this poem could be new parents. This poem takes place in the speaker’s bedroom after he and his lover is almost caught in the act of making love. The time of day may be night time, since in the poem it mentions darkness. The speaker explains to us what happens while he and his partner tries to makes love in this poem, their child comes into
Gates, Henry Louis Jr. Foreword. The Collected Works of Phillis Wheatley. Ed. John C. Shields. New York: Oxford UP, 1988. xi.
The first glance at the poem Janet Waking by John Crowe Ransom, I notice that the title tells of a girl waking from her sleep. I was greatly intrigued as to why a poem would revolve around such a simple title. In the first stanza, it references a hen, suggesting that it will play a significant role in the poem and that Janet lives in a farm. The poem goes on to describe Janet’s morning by giving her parents a morning kiss, then the death of her beloved hen from a drone’s poison.
“Southern History” is about what the speaker learned in her classroom, a misrepresented and distorted view of slavery. Natasha Trethewey draws from personal experience to write this poem. I imagine she is the only black student in a classroom with predominantly white students, which already puts her at a disposition, as it is 1966. The teacher, presumably white, tells the class that “before the war, they (the slaves) were happy...quoting our textbook”(1-2). Natasha is aware of these lies; however, she doesn’t speak out against this injustice, as she is powerless. The rhyming couplet at the end encompasses the theme of being inferior, and connects the words lie and I together, which illustrates the guilt the speaker feels.
Why are women writers just beginning to be discovered? When doing a survey of literature, we learn about many different writers, however the large majority of these writers are men. We sparsely hear of women, but a few are anthologized alongside men, some including: Emily Dickenson, The Bronte sisters, and Anne Bradstreet. However, as of late, more women writers and more works are being discovered. After blowing the dirt off old volumes, diary entries, court documents, and other things to get an idea of what and how women were writing. Among their digging, they came across works by a woman named Elizabeth Singer Rowe. When researching, it became evident that her history is especially interesting because of the extensive efforts of people later in her life to try and cover up her early writing history. After researching her she has become one of the better known women authors from the 18th century. However, to her detriment, she has been classified as a pious poet. This representation is ultimately unfair to her talent, as she was so much more than a pious poet; she was a talented writer who used that talent to write in many different forms as well as subject matters, “Her poetry is both highly experimental and impressively aware of what other writers had done and were doing…” (Backscheider).
Finally the coal mine war ended in 1933, many dead bodies were buried of innocent people, with many untold stories. The emotions Diane fisher used in her lyrical poetry can be relate to any of the culture, not only to the people of West Virginia. It’s a responsibility of the poet to give his readers entertainment, but at the same time the information about what they are talking. She did a great job in this. She not only told us the situation of miserable people, but also helped us to heard the untold stories.
Somebody Somewhere offers a rear glimpse of the world of autism—from within. Australian born Donna Williams was diagnosed as psychotic at the tender age two, later as deaf, and ultimately as autistic; “Autism had had me in its cage for as long as I had ever known” (p. 5). In her book she describes her escape from “my” world, into “the” world. She talks about “picking up the pieces after a war” and “learning how to build somewhere out of nowhere and a somebody out of a nobody” (p. xi); yet she has something for everyone: “within each of us there is a stranger (or strangers) lurking in the shadows of our subconscious minds” (ibid). The author
If one were to look at the life of Stephen Spender briefly they would think that he was a bizarre maybe even troubled man. However, if you look deeply into his life you will see beyond the strangeness. Stephen was indeed a unique man that lived a complicated life to which created his uniqueness that we see demonstrated through his poetry. While most people tend to avoid unintentional controversy, Stephen Spender wrote many poems which most of us would feel as controversial. His goal however was not to start controversy but to stand up for the rights of all people and the rights for us to all express ourselves freely.
There are a number of reasons why the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop appeals to modern readers. The descriptive, vibrant language of Bishop transcends through time to appeal to every reader in all of her poems. What I admire the most about Elizabeth’s poetry is its combination of detailed, imaginative description and intriguing insight. She closely observes and vividly describes the world around her particularly like how Bishop’s poetry changes everyday scenes to vivid imagery. Bishop has a keen eye for detail, she transforms the visual images she observes into poetic language that creates clear images in the reader’s mind. This gives her poetry a powerful, visual quality, drawing the reader into the world she describes. She deals with a number of themes including death,loss,childhood,domesticity and the resilience of the human spirit also admire her ability to write a poem from a child’s point of view, so the poem can be seen through the eyes of a child. Bishop’s poems are rooted in personal experience, but have a genuine universal appeal.