“Wish for a Young Wife”, by Theodore Roethke, may seem to be more than just a simple epithalamium, for the way the poet presents his writing compels the reader to question his true intentions. Nevertheless, although it is easy for the reader to trip down this path, a closer reading, in which one pays particular attention to aspects such the poem's imagery, rhyme scheme, meter, and parallelism, allows them to acknowledge that as the poet appreciates his wife and elaborates on what he wants for her, it is in fact the ambiguity of the poem that doubles the effect of his sincerity and love for his young wife.
What is intriguing to note is that the poet does not gradually build a sense of obscurity in his reader, but instead, promptly begins with the imagery in the first line of the poem, “My lizard, my lively wither.” Evidently, the word “lizard” is bound to catch the reader's eye, as it is quite unusual for a writer to use a reptile when describing someone in an intimate, love poem. On top of that, it is preceded by the word “my”, as if the poet is envious of his wife's beauty and charm. Regardless, the most common terminology used to describe a reptile is that they are dark, mysterious, slimy, and cold, which forces the reader to question the poet's actual meaning. With this in mind, the reader could conclude that perhaps the speaker holds a grudge against his wife's beauty, because he thinks that there are other men in this world who deserve her more than him. What probably builds this sense of obscurity is that the title of the poem completely opposes this thought. Even before reading the poem, one could make the obvious assumption of placing it under the category of love. Nevertheless, once the words “my lizard” are read, t...
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... I am no one.” In both instances, the clause “when I am” is repeated, indicating that as the poem nears its end, the poet is finally inclined to mention himself. What is interesting to note is that throughout the rest of the poem, he speaks endlessly about his lover. Yet the words that he spares for himself provide a negative connotation of him, making it seem as if he intentionally did it to honor this woman, by positioning himself below her.
The poem “Wish for a Young Wife” by Theodore Roethke is simply a unique epithalamium. Although its title forces the reader to assume that it is a love poem, one does not has to read much further before they are tangled in Roethke's web of obscurity. Ultimately, this poem asks very little of its reader, discouraging one to dig too deep into it. Rather, to completely grasp its message, one only has to float on its surface.
The article “A Letter To My Younger Self” written by Terrance Thomas is made to motivate readers, especially teenagers that share similar concerns and emotions as the author’s younger self. By writing a letter to his younger self, Terrance created a motivational and melancholic tone. The style of writing is, therefore, informal with a poetic touch to it. The article is written to motivate readers which results in it to have a motivational and melancholic tone. “Those moments of fear, inadequacy, and vulnerability that you have been running from, are the moments that will shape you.”.
Summary and Response to Barbara Kingsolver’s “Called Home” In “Called Home”, the first chapter of the book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year in Food Life, Barbara Kingsolver presents her concerns about America's lack of food knowledge, sustainable practices, and food culture. Kingsolver introduces her argument for the benefits of adopting a local food culture by using statistics, witty anecdotal evidence, and logic to appeal to a wide casual reading audience. Her friendly tone and trenchant criticism of America's current food practices combine to deliver a convincing argument that a food culture would improve conditions concerning health and sustainability.
The major themes of the poem reflect the poet's own inner life and his struggle with the loss of his father. Through this complicated and intricate poem the inner feelings of the poet are made manifest through the speaker's tone towards the father. The exchange between father and son represents a magical moment in the speaker's childhood: dancing the waltz with his father. In the second stanza, the poet comments “My mother's countenance / could not unfrown itself (Roethke 7-8).” Here the poet seems to regret the fact that he hoarded his father's time after a long day at work, when his father could have been s...
Brockmeier’s short story represents a damaged marriage between a husband and a wife simply due to a different set of values and interests. Brockmeier reveals that there is a limit to love; husbands and wives will only go so far to continually show love for each other. Furthermore, he reveals that love can change as everything in this ever changing world does. More importantly, Brockmeier exposes the harshness and truth behind marriage and the detrimental effects on the people in the family that are involved. In the end, loving people forever seems too good to be true as affairs and divorces continually occur in the lives of numerous couples in society. However, Brockmeier encourages couples to face problems head on and to keep moving forward in a relationship. In the end, marriage is not a necessity needed to live life fully.
...saying that marriage is a gamble, and that women risk failure by becoming married. Laux speaks to the women with the idyllic views of matrimony and she may be trying to issue a warning to them, or to teach them a lesson about how she feels. This is important to the narrator especially as she repeats the word “again” in the question she asks at the end of the poem. The juxtaposition of the free bird to the housewife constricted to a cluttered room is an important image and helps the reader see the differences between the two. Laux’s metaphor for the female condition is made clear by the end of the poem and is an attempt to make the reader question what the narrator has that women all over the world are so eager to partake in.
“To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time” by Rober Herrick and Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” have many similarities and differences. The tone of the speakers, the audience each poem is directed to, and the theme make up some of the literary elements that help fit this description.
I have elected to analyze seven poems spoken by a child to its parent. Despite a wide variety of sentiments, all share one theme: the deep and complicated love between child and parent.
Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain is her own story that she wrote about during the Great War otherwise known as World War One. The main theme of her story is the struggles that she had to face, whether it dealt with her family, or her personal goals such as attending college or the world that she was surrounded by. On page 17 Brittain stated that "When the Great War broke out, it came to me not as a superlative tragedy, but as an interruption of the most exasperating kind to my personal plans." Another important aspect of Vera's goals was the aspiration and ambition that she had, that aspiration allowed her to move forward in her life.
A common practice when faced with a difficult choice, self-examination, is the centerpiece of two popular poems: Gregory Corso’s Marriage and T. S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Both poems are dramatic monologues in which the speakers address the similar situations that they find themselves in. While the speaker of Eliot’s poem has a nervous and bashful approach in his attempts at romance, the hesitant postmodern speaker in Corso’s poem makes use of sarcasm to attack the institution of marriage. When these two monologues given by similar personas are analyzed together the result is a dialogue which discusses two distinguishing views on the ideas of romance and love.
BIOGRAPHY: According to the entry « Eudora Welty » found on Wikipedia, Eudora Alice Welty was an American author and photographer, well-known for working on the South American theme. She began higher education at the University of Wisconsin, then went to New York, where she studied at Columbia University until 1931. Unable to find a job on the East Coast because of unemployment due to the Great Depression, she went back to her her native city Jackson, Mississippi. She started to publish short stories in magazines from 1936 and rapidly acquired notoriety as a short story writer, managing to carefully describe the culture and the racial issues of the South. Each publication of her short stories collections was considered as a literary event. In 1956, her novel The Pounder Heart, adapted by Joseph A. Fields and Jerome Chodorov, achieved great success on Broadway. In 1975, her enchanting novel The Robber Bridegroom became a musical. In 1973, Eudora Welty received the Pulitzer Prize for her novel The Optimist’s Daughter. Three years earlier, she published a collection of photographs that she had taken herself in the years 1930 and 1940, One Time, one Place: Mississippi in the Depression: a work intending to depict the harsh living conditions in Mississippi during the Great Depression. In 1984, at the request of Harvard University Press, she put on paper a lecture that she gave the year before to the students: the work became a bestseller. She died of pneumonia in 2001.
At a glance, the poem seems simplistic – a detailed observance of nature followed by an invitation to wash a “dear friend’s” hair. Yet this short poem highlights Bishop’s best poetic qualities, including her deliberate choice in diction, and her emotional restraint. Bishop progresses along with the reader to unfold the feelings of both sadness and joy involved in loving a person that will eventually age and pass away. The poem focuses on the intersection of love and death, an intersection that goes beyond gender and sexuality to make a far-reaching statement about the nature of being
In the late nineteen forties, Theodore Roethke emerged with a poem that has been the source of much debate. "My Papa's Waltz," is an account of a relationship between son and father. Alas, many readers who are exposed to this piece fail to note the love present in the connection of the characters. In an attempt to illuminate the author's true intention several factors must be examined. After several examinations of Roethke's poem as well as learning of his childhood it is evident that this poem does not suggest an abusive environment, but is an appreciative account of the love and playfulness between the characters. Therefore, a successful interpretation of this poem will look beyond the four stanzas and study not only the history of the writing, but the life of the poet.
Authors use poetry to creatively present attitudes and opinions. “A Man’s Requirements,” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and “A Letter to Her Husband, Absent upon Public Employment” are two poems with distinct attitudes about love that contain different literary approaches. In both of the poems, love is addressed from a different perspective, producing the difference in expectation and presentation, but both suggest the women are subservient in the relationships.
“Spinster” by Sylvia Plath is a poem that consists of a persona, who in other words serves as a “second self” for the author and conveys her innermost feelings. The poem was written in 1956, the same year as Plath’s marriage to Ted Hughes, who was also a poet. The title suggests that the persona is one who is not fond of marriage and the normal rituals of courtship as a spinster is an unmarried woman, typically an older woman who is beyond the usual age of marriage and may never marry. The persona of the poem is a woman who dislikes disorder and chaos and finds relationships to be as unpredictable as the season of spring, in which there is no sense of uniformity. In this poem, Plath not only uses a persona to disclose her feelings, but also juxtaposes the seasons and their order (or lack thereof) and relates them to the order that comes with solitude and the disorder that is attributed with relationships. She accomplishes this through her use of formal diction, which ties into both the meticulous structure and develops the visual imagery.
He wants it to be told that to write poetry is just as difficult as his attempt to court Maud. It is extremely difficult to produce a beautiful poem, as it is difficult to fall in love. Many people think that writing poetry is not hard work, as falling in love seems to be easy for some people. To make, “sweet sounds together” as in a po...