I before e except after c, avoid omitting serial commas, and never EVER let a participle dangle. Those who choose to write are perhaps too familiar with these specific rules. Some are tedious, some are almost impossible to remember, yet all help the author to create lucid writing so her point may be established. For poetry, the case is no different. There are various forms to choose from, versatile meters to pace the reader, and the ability to layer information to gradually make a point. Some forms can be generous in what they allow the author to do, and in William Wordsworth’s “Nuns Fret Not” the author admits that forms can be restricting in meter, rhyme, and length. That does not mean however that he’s immobile, Wordsworth is able to fine-tune the rules and by doing so, demonstrates his main statement: Limits don’t necessarily need to be viewed in a negative light; if used correctly, limits can be both challenging and provide comfort instead of misery. Wordsworth shows the possibility of finding freedom within his poem by choosing to write within the Italian sonnet’s rules. What makes an Italian sonnet unique is the division and pattern of its rhyme scheme. It is usually structured in an ABBA, ABBA, CDE, CDE pattern, and broken into two main parts, the octave (the first eight lines) and the sestet (the final six). The meter of “Nuns” can be labeled as iambic pentameter, yet along with the meter, the poem differs from the norm in two more ways. The first difference is in the rhyme scheme. In a typical Italian sonnet, the sestet follows a CDE, CDE pattern, in “Nuns” however, it follows the pattern CDD, CCD. It’s minute, but adds emphases to the 13th line, which contains the poem’s second anomaly. All the poem’s lines have an ... ... middle of paper ... ... share this somber mood, “for their needs must be”, to read this poem and see that it’s indeed possible to live within restrictions (line 12). The author’s been able to handle the sonnet’s rules, and on top of that he notes that it isn’t all that bad. The rules add guidance to what he’s able to communicate to the reader, as well as give his language an acuteness that only a sonnet can provide. Without this structure the poem wouldn’t be as adroit, and the solace he’s trying to offer the reader wouldn’t be possible. By concurring to the Italian sonnet’s rules and exploiting the room he was left to utilize, not only does Wordsworth create a poem that is both coherent and clever, he leaves the reader with a sense of communion, that he isn’t alone in the world. A brief moment of solace is sometimes all one asks for, and “Nuns Fret Not” has shown us how it’s obtained.
“The Roman Baths at Nimes,” a sonnet, has a unique modified structure which resembeles the main purpose of the poem. Originally, a sonnet was structured as “one strong opening statement of eight lines, followed by a resolution to the emotional or intellectual question of the first part of the poem” (Strand 56). The contemporary sonnet comes in two forms, the Petrarchan and the Shakespearian. Both have fourteen lines but they differ in their rhyme scheme. Cole combines the elements from the original and Shakespearean sonnets to form a unique structure for his poem. He uses a modified rhyme scheme of aabcbcdedefghh, which very closely resembles the contemporary form of the Shakespearean sonnet (because of the final couplet rhyme hh) but not exactly. He incorporates the features of the antique sonnet by presenting his internal struggle in the first ten lines of the poem and in the final sentence, resolving the conflict.
...e speaker admits she is worried and confused when she says, “The sonnet is the story of a woman’s struggle to make choices regarding love.” (14) Her mind is disturbed from the trials of love.
A theme that prevails through this poem is the speaker's, or author's, realization of a specific concern. No matter what the author or speaker intends to generate through a work of literaturein general, it is up to the reder to truly decidee its meaning. Again and again in the realm of poetry there lies the possible nabilty for the reader to grasp whatever message the speaker has put forth. Ashbury's "Paradoxes and Oxymorons" demonstrates this theme by saying "The poem is you" - that is, to each his won interpretation. The reader must interpret for herself what a poem's purpose truly is, regardless of the speaker's intentions.
The poem being in sonnet form, is ironic as naturally sonnets are about love and its emotions, “In the park” however, highlights the absence of love within the protagonist and portrays a certain harshness of character emotion from change that has already taken place. The beginning of the poem presents the audience with a woman seamlessly trapped by domesticity, suffocated with motherhood and the role given to it by society. Her children “whine and bicker”, draw “aimless patterns in the dirt” - the patterns symbolising the woman’s life and showing her internal and honest thoughts. Bringing attention away from the so called ‘maternal love’, the second stanza links to the first by enjambment in which a person whom was once meaningful in her life as more of a romantic love, is now nothing but ‘someone’ who gives her just a ‘casual nod’. They converse in such a clichéd manner with language of no meaning or emotion using phrases such as “how nice” and “et cetera” which puts across the façade being held, the tone making it clear to the reader she regrets not being able to avoid it as she’s clearly ashamed and embarrassed of what she has become – of how motherhood has consumed her. This external superficial appearance being upheld continues in the last stanza as they both mouth hypocritical statements – the woman’s in particular completely juxtaposing her initial thoughts about her three children in the first stanza. The man enquires about the names and age of her children in whom he evidently has no interest in, and the woman replies with “It’s so sweet…to watch them grow”, her pride leading her to give her past lover a positive impression of her life trying to hide how consumed she really feels by her role and identity loss. The resolution of the poems form, “They have eaten me
"Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal [but] which the reader recognizes as his own." (Salvatore Quasimodo). There is something about the human spirit that causes us to rejoice in shared experience. We can connect on a deep level with our fellow man when we believe that somehow someone else understands us as they relate their own joys and hardships; and perhaps nowhere better is this relationship expressed than in that of the poet and his reader. For the current assignment I had the privilege (and challenge) of writing an imitation of William Shakespeare’s "Sonnet 87". This poem touched a place in my heart because I have actually given this sonnet to someone before as it then communicated my thoughts and feelings far better than I could. For this reason, Sonnet 87 was an easy choice for this project, although not quite so easy an undertaking as I endeavored to match Shakespeare’s structure and bring out his themes through similar word choice.
Five different situations are suggested in "Lines" each divided into separate sections. The first section details the landscape around the abbey, as Wordsworth remembers it from five years ago. The second section describes the five-year lapse between visits to the abbey, during which he has thought often of his experience there. The third section specifies Wordsworth's attempt to use nature to see inside his inner self. The fourth section shows Wordsworth exerting his efforts from the preceding stanza to the landscape, discovering and remembering the refined state of mind the abbey provided him with. In the final section, Wordsworth searches for a means by which he can carry the experiences with him and maintain himself and his love for nature. .
Edna St. Vincent Millay’s sonnet, “I, Being Born a Woman and Distressed,” serves as an excellent example of a multi-faceted piece. From one angle, it is simply a Petrarchan sonnet, written with a slight variation on rhyme scheme – but that variation, taken deeper, reveals new layers of meaning. Added to Millay’s choice of meter and end-stop, along with a background of Millay’s person, this sonnet seems not so “simple” after all.
The Petrarchan or Italian sonnet was one of Hopkins’s favorite forms of poetry and one that he employed frequently in his writing. Hopkins enjoyed the fusion of form and content, and the structure of an Italian sonnet perfectly lends itself to such a synthesis. An Italian sonnet is divided into two parts, the octave and the sestet. The first eight lines have an ABBAABBA rhyme scheme and the sestet concludes with CDCDCD. The content of an Italian sonnet is very specifically and thematically organized as is the content of Hopkins’s “Carrion Comfort.” The octave is divided into two quatrains, which present and then develop, respectively, a problem or situation on which the poem focuses. The sestet relates the answer or solution to the problem. The transition between the two sections of the poem can be easily identified through dramatic punctuation, or a distinct change in tone. The octave in “Carrion Comfort” powerfully illustrates intense suffering and despair experienced by the speaker. Hopkins masterfully depicts the transformation from the utter despair caused by this suffering to hope and reconciliation with God as he makes a transition into the sestet. Throughout the poem, Hopkins uses various poetic elements, such as th...
For example, in “The Rain”, the entire poem has lines that are enjambed, “Is it / that never the ease, / even the hardness, / of rain falling”(8-11). The phrase or idea talked about in one line does not end at the end of a line, it continues on for several lines and sometimes several stanzas. In addition to the poem “The Rain”, enjambment can be seen in the poem “For Love”. Examples of enjambment can be found frequently throughout this poem, but specifically from lines 15, to 18. The poem reads, “I wouldn 't either, but / what would I not / do, what prevention, what...”. The subject talked about in these three lines is not thoroughly explained in the lines given, as the poem continues it discusses different subjects that are also spread out through several lines, with no one line being about one subject. The meaning of what Creeley is trying to describe can only be found by reading several lines of the poem because of the way he structured his poems. In the article "Love and Frangibility: An Appreciation of Robert Creeley", Heather Mchugh EXPLAINS, “ First of all, he 's often miscast as a rebel against poetic forms, foot soldier in the resistance against prosodic refinement... I believe that Robert Creeley 's abstemious formality nourishes a luxury of readings”. Mchugh SAYS that the line structure that Creeley uses is
"Prose and Verse Criticism of Poetry." Representative Poetry On-line: Version 3.0. Ed. D. F. Theall. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Nov. 2009. .
William Wordsworth rejected all the traditional assumptions about the proper style, words, and subject matter for a poem during the Romanics period. When explaining his writing Wordsworth said, “There will be found in these volumes little of what is usually called poetry diction; I have taken as much pains to avoid it as others ordinarily take to produce it.” (Marshall) Because he took such a different approach to his writing, many people criticized his poems. Literary critic Harold Bloom said, “The fear of mortality haunts much of Wordsworth’s best poetry, especially in regard to the premature mortality of the Imagination and the loss of its creative joy.” Wordsworth does in fact express fear of mortality in the poems The World is too much with us, London, 1802, The Prelude, and Lines composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey.
She is known for creating radical novels, which stuck discord in many of its early readers, and writing highly respected sonnets. Similar to Behn, Smith also captures the inner thoughts of not just women, but all human beings in the sonnet “Written at the Close of Spring” and juxtaposes the beauty of the annual spring with the frailty of humanity. In the first stanza of this poem, the speaker uses imagery in order to help readers connect with the beauty and delicacy of spring flowers. In the second stanza, she calls to attention the fact that the spring flowers are dying and, to experience the beauty again, one will have to wait until next spring to enjoy them. In the third stanza, the poem’s focus changes from nature to humanity and asserts that as people age and begins to take part in, “tyrant passion, and corrosive care” (Line 11), youth becomes wasted. The speaker comes to the realization that once youth vanishes, it will forever, unlike the yearly revival of spring. The major fault of this sonnet is that it can be difficult to understand and has several different messages, some of which are not as strong or enlightening as
An element of poetry in William Wordsworth's poem, “It is a Beauteous Evening, Calm and Free” is Diction. His descriptive words such as, “beauteous” “calm”, “free”, “breathless”, “adoration”, “tranquility”, “thunder” and “solemn” are words that conjure up a powerful feeling in the readers mind.
Bender, Robert M., and Charles L. Squier, eds. The Sonnet: An Anthology. New York: Washington Square P, 1987.
Lackluster love is the subject postulated in both sonnets, Petrarch 90 and Shakespeare 130. This is a love that endures even after beauteous love has worn off, or in Petrarch, a love that never was. The Petrarchan sonnet utilizes fantasy to describe love. It depicts love that is exaggerated and unrealistic. Shakespeare’s sonnet, on the other hand, is very sarcastic but it is more realistic as compared to the Petrarch 90. Petrarchan sonnets, also called Italian sonnets were the first sonnets to be written, and they have remained the most common sonnets (Hollander 28). They were named after the Italian poet Petrarch. Its structure takes the form of two stanzas, the first one an octave, in that, it has eight lines, and the next stanza is a sestet, meaning that it has six lines. The rhyme scheme suits the Italian language, which has the feature of being rhyme rich, and it, can take the forms of abbaabba, cdcdcd, or cdecde. These sonnets present an answerable charge in the first stanza, and a turn in the sestet. The sestet is the counter argument of the octave.