Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s sonnet 38 "First time he kissed me, he but only kissed" dramatizes the speaker’s elated feelings after the first three kisses shared with her belovèd: the first was on her hand with which she writes, the second was on her forehead, and third on her lips.
In sonnet 37 "Pardon, oh, pardon, that my soul should make," the speaker dramatically begs forgiveness for not immediately recognizing the true worth and commitment of her belovèd.
In sonnet 50 "How heavy do I journey on the way," the grieving speaker laments the battle between body and soul—the dualism that even his art cannot surmount in times of trials and tribulation, descending into woe.
In sonnet 36 "When we met first and loved," the speaker reveals her inability to fully accept the love relationship that is growing with her belovèd suitor. She is constantly trying to prevent her heart from being broken, in case the relationship fails to reach it full potential.
Exploring possible future losses through abandonment by his muse, the poet/speaker admonishes that procurer of inspiration that he will do whatever it takes to secure his heart and mind against any possible future loss of poetic motivation.
Wendell Berry's "How to Be a Poet" features a subtitle, alerting the reader that the poem exists primarily for the poet's sake, essentially to jog his memory. However, because the advice—or commands, as they appear—are so well crafted, they remain excellent guidelines for any poet.
The speaker in Robert Graves' "Not Dead" remembers his son who died in war; his tribute resurrects the young man as a spiritual reality.
In Elizabeth Barrett Browning's sonnet 35 "If I leave all for thee, wilt thou exchange," the poet's speaker questions her belovèd to receive assurance of his love as a shelter from her anxiety as she prepares to leave her childhood home.
Rich’s "Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers" is a propagandistic attack on the "patriarchy"—favored target of feminist ire. It employs hints that the aunt has suffered as a marital victim through a life that contrasts with the free, fearless tigers the aunt has embroidered on a screen of needlework.
Poetaster Charles Bernstein calls for poems that are "bad for you." He has written "The Ballad of the Girly Man," a fine example of poem that is definitely not good for you and is terrible for the world of literary art.
In Louise Glück's poem "Siren" the narrator is a woman who fell in love with a married man. Her narration unveils some frightening thought processes.
Charles Simic's "My Shoes" is a festering piece of doggerel, sounding like a postmodern poetry workshop assignment. We will look at the poem using the medium of that oh-so-serious poetry workshop where trivia and nonsense are certain to prevail.
Barbara Guest holds a prominent place among poetasters such as Robert Bly, Pablo Neruda, Charles Bernstein, Elizabeth Alexander, Richard Blanco, and Margaret Atwood. Her piece "Red Lilies" flames out from the first singed line, snuffing itself out with a pilot light going out on the stove.
From 1993 to 1995, Rita Dove served in the position of United States poet laureate. She is a winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and she currently serves as the Henry Hoyns Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Virginia.
Adrienne Rich's "Diving into the Wreck" dramatizes the speaker’s metaphorical journey to explore the nature of a contrived, non-existent catastrophe. The speaker begins with a major historical and literary error: that there exists only one book of myths.
Returning to the melancholy character in sonnet 34 "With the same heart, I said, I’ll answer thee," as she has so often maintained, the speaker contrasts her light-hearted childhood's response with her serious maturity.
In Shakespeare sonnet 48, the speaker explores the nature of sham artists and the effects of fraud on an audience. He implies that the lack of interest in the genuine will lead to disdain for his own art, and he foreshadows the rise of an era lacking interest in and disdaining truth.
In sonnet 33 "Yes, call me by my pet-name! let me hear," the speaker relives a happy event of her childhood after her belovèd calls her by her childhood nickname. She is taking every opportunity to experience joyful feelings, after suffering through deep melancholy for most of her life.
These four tasty breakfasts offer a delicious start to any day. These recipes are vegan but can easily be turned into lacto-ovo vegetarian versions with a few simple substitutions.
Employing the Christian iconic mother figure, the song "Mary's Prayer" offers a marvelous corroboration of concepts between Christianity, taught by Jesus the Christ and Yoga, taught by Bhagavan Krishna.
The speaker in sonnet 32 "The first time that the sun rose on thine oath" finds her confidence first expanding and then shrinking again on her journey through her adventure to love.
Sonnet 47 "Betwixt mine eye and heart a league is took" dramatizes the unity of eye and heart, resulting in a fusion, satisfying as it enhances the sensibilities of the artist. Artistic enhancement remains his coveted goal as he presses on in his creative endeavors to become a profound sonneteer.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning's speaker in sonnet 31 "Thou comest! all is said without a word" continues to explore her self-doubt, as she seems to be reverting to her old melancholy ways of thinking.
In the Shakespeare sonnet 46 "Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war," the always perceptive speaker is exploring, examining, and then dramatically revealing the inherent conflict between the two human sensibilities: the aesthetic sense or "eye" and the pure feeling or "heart."
Rudyard Kipling's poem "Tomlinson" dramatizes the spiritual concept of "Karma," the principle that human beings, because of their actions, reap what they sow. Kipling’s poem is influenced by the Christian parallel to Karma, by having the soul judged only for heaven or hell.
The theme of Countée Cullen's "The Wise" ironically dramatizes the notion that in death one becomes immune to the trammels of earthly duality. The speaker’s observation and analysis offer an eerie take on an equally eerie subject.
The speaker in Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnet 30 "I see thine image through my tears to-night" is indulging herself in doubts as she contemplates the thought that her belovèd is little more than a fantasy.
James Weldon Johnson's funeral oration, "Go Down Death," offers one the most beautiful and heartfelt expressions of the soul's journey through life.
As the speaker of sonnet 45 "The other two, slight air and purging fire" contemplates the status of his creativity, he is musing on the admixture of the four elements of earth, water, fire, and air and how the lighter qualities of air and fire play on his moods and attitudes.
In addition to poetry, James Weldon Johnson also composed many songs that have become popular. His bluesy poem/song "Sence You Went Away" features a southern dialect and captures the melancholy that surrounds the individual who has lost a loved one.
Walt Whitman's American sonnet demonstrates the power of the verb form known as the present participle, as his speaker dramatizes the activity of a severe storm at sea.
In sonnet 44 "If the dull substance of my flesh were thought," the ever-profound, thinking speaker is contemplating the meaning of space and distance from his muse, as he dramatizes the differences between flesh and thought.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning's speaker in sonnet 29 "I think of thee!—my thoughts do twine and bud" allows her thoughts to create a tether that is ultimately unnecessary for two lovers who share such a unique bond.
In Elizabeth Barrett Browning's sonnet 28 "My letters! all dead paper, mute and white!," the speaker reacts to each stage of the growing love relationship, while she is looking through a bundle of love letters.
The speaker in Rudyard Kipling's "Helen All Alone" is addressing the issue of temptation, and he professes relief at the end that he did not give in to it.
The speaker in Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s sonnet 27 "My own Belovèd, who hast lifted me" alludes to the Greek mythological Asphodel Meadows to dramatize her life's transformation after meeting her belovèd.
Rudyard Kipling's "The Female of the Species" dramatizes the notion that females in all species, often thought to be demure and soft, are actually more iron-willed than their counterpart.
Shakespeare Sonnet 43 "When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see" finds the speaker musing on the transformative powers of his poetic muse. She can turn night into day, while ordinary vision fails to inspire.
Rudyard Kipling's "The Gods of the Copybook Headings" dramatizes humanity's imprudent notions, measuring them against the wisdom of the ages as found in an important learning tool for students. The criticism is as relevant today as it was in Kipling's own time of writing.
Rudyard Kipling is often referred to as a British poet laureate, but he turned down that honor as well as the knighthood after having those awards offered to him in 1907. He did accept the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907; he was the first English writer to be awarded that honor.
In Sonnet 26 "I lived with visions for my company," Elizabeth Barrett Browning's speaker is dramatizing the difference between her early, private fantasy world and her new world of reality as now occasioned by her belovèd, accomplished suitor.
Bret Harte, in "Mrs. Judge Jenkins," attempts to mock the wisdom of a far superior poet, which results only in embarrassment. The rhetorical device "straw man" functions as an ugly feature of this piece, resulting in Harte’s failed effort to be very clever.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's short poem "Days" has been the target of much critical attention, which focuses on the ambiguity in the employment of the term "hypocritic."
John Greenleaf Whittier's "Maud Muller" dramatizes the melancholy caused by the human heart's proclivity for suffering over the thought of "what might have been."
Elizabeth Barrett Browning's speaker revisits her former sorrow to contrast her earlier "heavy heart" with the light heartedness she now enjoys because of her belovèd fiancé.
As a grieving father, Ralph Waldo Emerson composed his most famous poem "Threnody," offering it as a tribute to his son Waldo, who succumbed to scarlet fever at the tender age of five.
The speaker in John Greenleaf Whittier Whittier's "Barbara Frietchie" offers a tribute to the patriotism of an elderly woman. Whittier based his long, narrative poem on a legend that had been spreading before, during, and after the American Civil War (1861–1865).
The speaker in Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnet 24 "Let the world's sharpness, like a clasping knife" compares the negative attitudes of others to a "clasping knife" that she will simply close up to rid her love of danger and damage.
Bidding the "proud world" adieu, the speaker in Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Good-Bye" puts forth his announcement as a critique of certain aspects of worldliness that he has come to disdain and now is happy to relinquish in favor of retiring to his paradisiacal home in a sylvan setting.
The speaker in sonnet 42 "That thou hast her, it is not all my grief" is contemplating the unified nature of art and artist, as he addresses his talent, personifying it as a lover who has tried to pursue his mistress, the poem. His conclusion offers him the comfort he continues to seek.
Dylan Thomas might have fashioned his "Fern Hill" through influence of John Greenleaf Whittier's "The Barefoot Boy"; both dramatize memories of boyhood. Whittier's nostalgic speaker offers a special nod to summer.
Gwendolyn Brooks’ "The Mother" reveals the psychological damage the speaker has suffered after undergoing an unspecified number of elective pregnancy terminations. As the speaker grows more and more maudlin, her situation becomes more and more intense for her readers/listeners.
In sonnet 41 "Those pretty wrongs that liberty commits," the speaker is addressing his poem, dramatizing the differences between true poetic qualities and poetic license to create. He also declares his unity with his art, as he makes a promise to his future readers to remain genuine and honest.
Reading John Greenleaf Whittier's long poem "Snow-Bound: A Winter Idyl" can become addictive. Some readers admit to reading the poem every year when snow hits. You might want to have a cup of hot chocolate as you enjoy John Greenleaf Whittier’s description of all that snow.
Classic American poet John Greenleaf Whittier never married nor produced offspring, but he lived a full life, filled with political activism, working to abolish slavery, editing political and literary publications, and creating some of the most widely read poetry in the American canon.
In her American-Innovative sonnet, Gwendolyn Brooks creates a speaker who muses on the love relationship between the two people who form the "old yellow pair," living simply in quiet dignity. "We Real Cool" dramatizes a glimpse at the pathos of young juvenile delinquents.
The speaker in Dylan Thomas’ "Fern Hill" is looking back with nostalgia to a time in his life that formed his personality and likely resulted in his creative ability to sing his dramatic creations about his experiences.
Shakespeare sonnet 40 "Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all" continues the hiatus from unity taken by the speaker that he declared in sonnet 39, but instead of praising the poem, he appears to be chiding it.
Who created the lines, "Home is the sailor from the sea, / The hunter from the hill," and/or "Home is the sailor, home from the sea, / And the hunter home from the hill?" Same poet or not?
In Gwendolyn Brooks' poem "Gay Chaps at the Bar," the speaker employs a restaurant metaphor to report how he and his buddies knew how to have a good time during the war. They became aware of how to be as rowdy as "good taste" would allow.
In sonnet 39 "O! how thy worth with manners may I sing," the speaker is dramatizing a division between himself and his poem, in order to think lovingly about the value of the poem without slipping into solipsism.
In Gwendolyn Brooks' "a song in the front yard," a young, immature girl laments that her mother wants to keep her from having fun. But her notions of "fun" and what is appropriate may be compromised.
In Gwendolyn Brooks' "the sonnet-ballad," the speaker is a young lady who is deeply suffering because her lover is going off to fight in a war. Brooks' American-Innovative sonnet offers a unique form for a unique emotional expression.
Robert Frost's "A Girl's Garden" dramatizes a little tale often told by the speaker's neighbor, who enjoys narrating her little story about her experience in growing and nurturing a garden as a young girl.
In Robert Frost’s "God’s Garden," the speaker employs an extended allusion to the Garden of Eden story from the biblical lore of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Through symbolic uses of "gold" and "stars," the speaker demonstrates his thoughts on humankind’s descent into depravity.
In sonnet 38 "How can my Muse want subject to invent," the speaker is delineating a fine distinction between his talent and his "Muse" and essentially manages to create a useful tenth muse, not to add to the original nine Muses in "The Theogony" but to work to preserve his own poetic legacy.
The speaker is responding to a sweet love letter from her dear belovèd fiancé. She concludes that instead of desiring the deliverance by death of her woes, she can remain an earth resident because of the love that has healed her melancholy.
In sonnet 37 "As a decrepit father takes delight," the speaker is addressing his poem. He is exploring the ways in which his art, particularly his poetry creation, enriches his life. His sonnets enhance his joy in life and afford him pride of accomplishment, somewhat as a child would do.
Traditionally, sonnets 18-126 are classified as being addressed to a "young man." There is no person in this sequence, however, and the speaker continues to explore the many aspects of his writing talent.
The speaker of Shakespeare sonnet 36 "Let me confess that we two must be twain" is again addressing his poem, dramatizing the unique duality of unity and separation, as the artist experiences those two phenomena.
In sonnet 35 "No more be griev’d at that which thou hast done," the speaker is addressing his writer’s block which includes the failure of his muse to inspire him, but he realizes that along with the positive, always comes the negative, and this thought sets him on a tranquil path.
The four characters from Edgar Lee Masters’ "Spoon River Anthology"—"Serepta Mason," "Amanda Barker," "Constance Hately," and "Chase Henry"— offer very specific complaints against others in the town who affected their lives in deleterious ways.
Canada's outstanding poet David Solway offers a lush scene of communicating plant and animal residents of a garden in spring in his poem simply titled "The Garden."
The speaker in Langston Hughes' "Night Funeral in Harlem" wonders how this poor dead boy's friends and relatives are able to afford such a lavish funeral. But he finally admits that the tears shed by the mourners are the feature that made the deceased’s funeral "grand."
Langston Hughes wrote "Goodbye, Christ" in 1931. It was published in the statist publication called "The Negro Worker" in 1932, but Hughes later withdrew it from publication.
Shakespeare sonnet 34 "Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day" dramatizes its subject, extending a metaphor of weather with sun and clouds and with the troughs and crests that appear in the always evolving tumult of the speaker’s writing ability.
The speaker in Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s sonnet 22 "When our two souls stand up erect and strong" from "Sonnets from the Portuguese" contrasts the heaven created by the soul force of the lovers with the contrary state of worldly existence.
Sonnet 33 offers an extended metaphor, dramatizing the phenomenon of clouds hiding the sun. The sun represents the speaker’s muse; the clouds are lulls in inspiration, as the writer faces another bout of writer’s block, but still manages to pull off a brilliant little drama, despite that malady.
Ever since the 18th century, when Edward Jenner experimented with formulating a preventative for small pox, controversy has surrounded the use of vaccines. Vaccines have become a multi-billion dollar enterprise, and vaccine manufacturers now control most of the information about their product.
In sonnet 32 "If thou survive my well-contented day," the speaker waxes humbler than usual about his poems even as he colorfully personifies a sonnet, giving it the ability to read. He is musing on the future of his body of work, speculating about its ability to remain relevant in a changing world.
In addition to being a poet, José Rizal is remembered and celebrated as a national hero to the people of the Philippines.
In Shakespeare sonnet 31 "Thy bosom is endeared with all hearts," the speaker is dramatizing the importance and function of his poetry: through his creative writing talent, his friends and lovers whom he thought dead remain alive in his poem.
From Spoon River Anthology, Edgar Lee Masters' "Cassius Huffier" is written in the American sonnet tradition: reversing the Petrarchan octave and sestet, while revealing the depravity of the speaker.
Sonnet 30 "When to the sessions of sweet silent thought" is one of "The Muse Sonnets," thought to be addressed to a young man, but no person is ever addressed in this group. The "dear friend" does not refer to a person but to the speaker’s talent. He is addressing his ability to create poetry.
E. A. Brininstool’s "Christmas Week in Sagebrush" dramatizes the activities offered in the little town of Sagebrush as the cow pokes, their families, and friends do some shopping and spending.
Poet Ben Okri attempts to pay tribute to the presidency of Barack Obama. The poet’s efforts are stymied by the fact that Obama accomplished nothing of value for his country but actually left its citizens worse off financially, ethically, and spiritually.
S. Omar Barker's Christmas poem dramatizes a tale about three lonesome cowboys camped far out on the prairie. Because they are so far from home, they hanker to be celebrating Christmas in the tradition way.
The legendary hero, Pecos Bill, gargling with nitroglycerin and chewing on habanero peppers, saved Christmas one year. Accompanied by his horse, Widow Maker, Pecos Bill performs his extreme acts throughout cowboy folklore.
S. Omar Barker’s Christmas poem "A Cowboy’s Christmas Prayer" features a humble cowpoke, who is not accustomed to praying but is offering his heart-felt supplication at Christmas time. As he prays, he reveals the qualities and issues of his life that are most important to him.
Ben Okri's "They Say" offers a technically brilliant drama that underscores the power of the soul in the face of devastating danger and impending death.
A "hard-bitten ol' cowpoke" experiences a mystical experience that changes his heart in the Christmas ballad. He will carry his new change of heart into his daily cow poking life as he honors "the Great Trail Boss in the Sky."
Representing the fifth epitaph in Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology is the character named Robert Fulton Tanner, who compares his life to a rat caught in a trap.
The super-human talented speaker, being quite human, sometimes suffers feelings of defeat, but when he thinks about his poetry, he realizes how fortunate he is to have such a talent and to be able to create the little dramas that grace his life and the lives of those who read his works.
The speaker in Shakespeare sonnet 28 "How can I then return in happy plight" is suffering writer’s block and complaining that day and night seem to be conspiring to keep him from fulfilling his belovèd writing duties. He is emphasizing that his mind is constantly focused on his issue.
The speaker in Barrett Browning’s sonnet 21 "Say over again, and yet once over again" is becoming habituated to hearing her beloved suitor tell her that he loves her. Thus she acquires the audacity to demand of him that he express to her repeatedly those beautiful, majestic words.
The speaker of this thematic group of Shakespeare sonnets "The Muse Sonnets" discovers that even when he is exhausted from a hard day’s work, his mind is wide-awake thinking about and planning the details of his next poem.
The poetry-focused Fugitive-Agrarian Literary Movement grew out of informal meetings held by English professors at Vanderbilt University, John Crowe Ransom and Walter Clyde Curry, meeting with a group of their undergraduate students to discuss the art of poetry.
If you believe that a poem "can mean anything you want it to mean," let me show you the fallacy of that notion. While some poems may be open to more than one interpretation, that does not mean that all interpretations are accurate. Without understanding, appreciation is impossible.
Allen Tate's "Ode on the Confederate Dead" features a dazzling stretch of stark imagery and frenzied musing that confounds even the speaker himself as he speaks.
While much less known than the poetry of Whitman or Dickinson, Henry Timrod's poems were well received during his lifetime; he was honored with the unofficial title "Poet Laureate of the Confederacy"—recently rediscovered through the plagiarism of Bob Dylan.
Sonnet 20 "Beloved, my Beloved, when I think" from Sonnets from the Portuguese finds the speaker in a pensive mood, dramatizing her awe at the difference a year has made in her life.
The speaker in sonnet 26, "Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage," acknowledges his duty to write poems. His talent is his Lord, and he promises to perform his duty without becoming boastful.
The three sonnets included here are the opening poems from my forthcoming collection, titled "Murmurs from Paradise." Each sonnet is inspired by a prose-poem in Paramahansa Yogananda’s "Whisper from Eternity."
The two lovers exchange locks of hair, and the speaker makes a ceremony of the exchange as she again emphasizes the royalty of her lover's station and talent.
The speaker in sonnet 25 claims that only unconditional love is worth cherishing—fame and status are fleeting, but love will continue to give joy and gladness. Once again, the speaker is honoring his talent because the love he speaks of is not limited to that of another human being.
Without ever mentioning the Ku Klux Klan directly, the speaker recalls a cross-burning in the yard of her family home. The eerie incident is described in an understated style with emphasis on nothing actually happening. Yet the family recalls this event every year.
Countée Cullen's speaker in the poem "Incident" dramatizes an event in the life of a young boy that ruined his memory of his visit to the city of Baltimore.
The poet has created a speaker whose baby son gets a wild-eyed stare that can look "through the ceiling of the room, and beyond," leading the father to suspect that he might have a budding poet to contend with.
Gwendolyn Brooks' versanelle offers a minimalist character sketch of three people whom the speaker disdains, and the vacant lot symbolizes her glee at being "all done" with them.
A. E. Housman's "Loveliest of trees," often interpreted as a carpe diem poem, actually offers a plan to increase his enjoyment of loveliness, not just grasp it for a brief span of time, an idea seldom, if ever, expressed in the carpe diem genre.
The speaker in sonnet 24 "Mine eye hath play’d the painter and hath stell’d" compares the art of poetry to the art of painting, revealing the importance of heartfelt love, not mere ornamentation, in the creation of art.
Jane Kenyon's speaker in the poem "The Blue Bowl" is dramatizing the special relationship that a couple enjoyed with their recently deceased pet cat.
The speaker in Auden’s "Doggerel by a Senior Citizen" is a man of certain age, warning listeners that what he is about to spew is doggerel. But the claim is made in ironic jest; what the "doggerelist" is about to spew is the bitter truth, or at least in his humble opinion, about societal progress.
Roughly in order of origin, the five major world religions are Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Each major religion has many branches or denominations, focusing on certain aspects of the main religion. This article features a brief overview of each of the five major religions.
Climate change alarmist Al Gore joked to his publisher that W. B. Yeats had penned the so-called poem "One thin September soon" in Gore's latest book; sadly, the publisher seemed to fall for it, before Gore admitted to scribbling it.
The wildly famous show tune "Memory" by Andrew Lloyd Webber was inspired by T. S. Eliot's "Rhapsody on a Windy Night" and "Preludes." This article focuses on the former, which features a speaker whose rant exemplifies the very definition of a lunatic.
The speaker in sonnet 23 "As an unperfect actor on the stage" reveals that human failures have caused his lack of skill in professing love; thus, he hopes his writing skill will properly portray his heart.
Having traveled 200 miles away from her home to attend a sick woman, the speaker in "Christmas Away from Home" by the late Jane Kenyon becomes homesick.
Alberta K. Johnson is a character in Langston Hughes' twelve-poem set called "Madam to You." In this poem, she has herself some name cards printed.
From her early childhood, Teresa de Cepeda remained a deeply spiritual soul. She gave generously to others who were less fortunate than she. Her life-long activity was dedicated to spending much time in meditation and prayer.
The speaker in sonnet 22 "My glass shall not persuade me I am old" asserts that despite his death, his talent for creating poems will cause them to retain his love, inspiring future generations. Confidently, he asserts that his little dramas will continue to inspire all those who encounter them.
In sonnet 18 "I never gave a lock of hair away" from Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s "Sonnets from the Portuguese," the speaker dramatizes the simple act of giving a lock of her hair to her belovèd.
Hiram R. Revels, first black U. S. senator, had to endure three days of debate as Democrats tried to deny him the seat to which he had been elected.
This deeply flawed piece "The Hymn of a Fat Woman" displays the ignorance of a speaker, trying to excuse her own corpulence by demeaning slender women saints. It belongs to a fairly recent academic trend of creating new classes of victims in order to erect new areas of study.
The theme of sonnet 21 "So is it not with me as with that Muse" from the thematic group "Muse Sonnets" is similar to other sonnets that offer praise while portraying a realistic description of the belovèd, instead of the exaggerations that amount to untruths.
In sonnet 17 "My poet, thou canst touch on all the notes," the poet’s always melancholy speaker muses on the art of poetics in her relationship with her poet/lover. She considers her role in his art and how they might in future employ imagination to continue to be creatively productive.
My original song "The Paper Mill Bridge Song" was inspired by the beautiful Whitewater River in Indiana and its relationship to the beautiful relationship I have enjoyed for over half a century with my inspiring, creative husband, native of the little town of Brookville, Indiana.
The Graveyard Whistler continues with his enthusiasm for his finds in "flash fiction." He is adding ten more brief stories to the mix. Enjoy!
They had kids. Their kids were their dogs. Their kids may be strange; they had never asked for a dog.
The famous Hakuin koan featuring the phrase "sound of the one hand" is often misquoted as "the sound of one hand clapping," resulting in an absurdity that renders the koan logically—thus spiritually—useless.
The Graveyard Whistler's literary journey now finds him delving into the phenomenon known as "flash fiction." He also reveals that he is in possession of a literary treasure trove bestowed upon him by a professor who curated a lit site, until he decided to leave academia and go into law.
In the Shakespearean sonnet 20 "A woman’s face with Nature’s own hand painted," the speaker is again addressing his poem, likening it to a woman’s charms but finding it less fickle and more capable of consistently shielding love.
In his poem "The Negro Soldiers," Roscoe C. Jamison creates a speaker who celebrates the bravery of the African American soldiers who fought and died in World War I.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s" Christmas Bells" is a widely anthologized poem that celebrates the winter holiday. It features a phrase associated famously with the Christmas season in its chant, "Of peace on earth / Good-will to men."
Adrienne Rich's poem "Living in Sin" is one of American literature's finest pieces in free verse. Its theme of disillusionment plays out in colorful sense imagery. This little drama remains one of this poet’s best poetic efforts.
Literary letters have always been a marvelous find in literature. The Graveyard Whistler found this series of letters and although they do not address his main interest in irony, they do offer an interesting take on some of life's most intriguing conflicts.
The speaker in my original poem "Greeting the Divine Reality as Bliss" is offering a description of the qualities and movements of the Bliss-Being, as that entity has been presented to her awareness. She ultimately surrenders her own human will to that of the Divine Reality.
Robert Frost’s poem, "A Soldier," expresses an insightful view regarding the meaning of a soldier's duty; its form is the blending of the English and Italian sonnet.
Langston Hughes became the most influential poet of the Harlem Renaissance. His works focus primarily on the lives of the everyday working man or woman. He wanted to bring attention to those hard-working folks whose lives were under-appreciated.
From that great treasure trove of the former Web site called "Stone Gulch Literary Arts," the feature offered here is a one act play.
Audre Lorde’s "Father Son and Holy Ghost" celebrates memories of a belovèd father, who has died and who served as a rôle model for moral behavior. The speaker’s devotion becomes palpable as she relives special features of her father and her reaction to them.
The Graveyard Whistler has found a new story with a complex of irony. He is rethinking his profession as literary sleuth. Captivated by the stories he finds, he remains conflicted about continuing with literature. Maybe he will give up and become a lawyer.
A poetic retelling of the story about Noah and the Ark, this dramatic poem is one of Johnson’s seven sermons in verse from his collection, God’s Trombones. At certain points in the story, the narrator offers his own interpretations, embellishing the tale and adding further interesting features.
The story of Sylvin is older than time, flowing more surely than the rapid river of the mind. It is a story of longing and waiting, and then waiting and enduring, and then lingering long enough to reach a cherished Love that beckons from all corners of the heart, mind, and soul.
In sonnet 19 "Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion’s paws," the speaker is personifying and challenging Time to devastate his art as he does all living creatures as they age; then the speaker declares an affirms that Time cannot commit that crime against his art.
EXCERPT: "Nightmares had started robbing Krystal Dickson of sleep, rendering her listless and so scatter-brained that she had mislaid the files for the divorce proceedings of an important client. Now she had to call that client and ask her to reschedule an appointment to recapture the information."
Lawrence Ferlinghetti's poem "In Goya's Greatest Scenes We Seem to See," the speaker employs extended hyperbole to compare the suffering of humanity today with an earlier time.
The speaker in Langston Hughes' "Cross" laments having been born to biracial parents, a white father and a black mother. But the poem merely dramatizes stereotypes, and that reliance limits its achievement. This poem fails to exemplify the true achievement of this poet.
Although Lawrence Ferlinghetti never considered himself a Beat poet, he is almost always labeled such by those who write about him. He possessed some of the Beat sensibilities but remained much more traditional in many ways.
My original poem "Ron’s Chariots of the Blood" was motivated by an email message my husband Ron sent me about his dream featuring his galavanting into poetry criticism. Ron is a very skillful landscape artist, who appreciates poetry but acknowledges his limitations regarding poetry criticism.
My suite of original poems focuses on love in various human institutions and socially constructed departments, as it gleans and crystalizes the heart of each observed sense of reality.
My original poem, "Love’s Dwelling," features five stanzas, each offering a scenic discourse involving love. Its message follows a path that dramatizes and defines the nature of true, substantive love, the stuff and basis of all spiritual striving. Spirit itself creates and sustains love.
In my American-Innovative sonnet, I create a speaker on the spiritual path who finds obstacles in her way. She is aware that she must introspect to learn what is causing each obstruction. This poem dramatizes the speaker's desire for her goal of enlightenment and liberation.
The gates of Hell await the malingerers and the goldbricks. Shunning forward-looking counsel brings all nasty rough beasts to the unwise brain that pokes around in the lots of evil. Better just to move on—quickly!
Seemingly meant to elucidate the history of women's lives, Eavan Boland's poem denigrates those lives through ahistorical, revisionist inaccuracies. This piece exemplifies the failure that often results when an incompetent thinker attempts to address a political issue in a poem.
Betty Sue commits a crime: how will she redeem herself in the eyes of Martha, her best friend, and Sally, her colorful mother?
What will happen to Sharm? Is she doomed? Where is she going, walking these dark hallways?
Comparing her life to a stairway in an extended metaphor in Langston Hughes’ "Mother to Son," a mother encourages her son to face life, despite its difficulties.
In Agi Mishol’s "Woman Martyr," the poet creates a speaker who is dramatizing the grotesque act of a twenty-year-old woman faking pregnancy, hiding a bomb in her skirt, entering a bakery, and exploding herself into an imagined martyrdom.
The speaker in Rita Dove's "My Mother Enters the Work Force" dramatizes the irony of all the "work" her mother did before she "entered the work force."
Yehuda Amichai’s "Near the Wall of a House" portrays a speaker, who is dramatizing a scene through a divine realization begun in humble circumstances.
As a professor, poet, translator, and critic, Rachel Tzvia Back offers insight into the world of modern poetry. An award-winning translator, she contributes to the understanding and appreciation of the important, contemporary Hebrew poets that enrich the world literary canon.
Gerald Stern's poem "I Who Lifted a Car" plays with reconstituted clichés and expressions that demonstrate the ruination of a body and mind plummeting into dementia.
The speaker in Emily Dickinson’s "Garland for Queens, may be" is paying tribute to the beautiful flower, the rose. The treatment of this "Rose" contrasts greatly with the treatment of the "Little Rose" in Dickinson’s "Nobody knows this little Rose."
Thomas Hardy, one of England's finest and most noted poets/novelists, declared Walter de la Mare's mysterious poem "The Listeners" to be the finest poem of the twentieth century.
Shakespeare sonnet 18 "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day" is one of the bard’s most widely anthologized—and most widely misunderstood—sonnets. There is no person in this sonnet: the speaker is not comparing/contrasting the beauty of nature and the beauty of a paramour.
Anne Sexton’s "Music Swims Back to Me" dramatizes certain selected experiences of a woman in a mental institution. She chooses certain bizarre events to elucidate her experience, as she seems to have forgotten what exactly happened and why.
Holiday meals, especially Thanksgiving dinner, and sage seem to go together. But any dinner may offer an occasion to enjoy that sage flavor. Just whip up a batch of sage dressing to accompany your favorite flavors. For a quick snack or breakfast treat, put together an avocado breakfast sandwich.
Emily Dickinson loved flowers, as well as all other creatures of nature. he rose became a symbol for her, signifying beauty and the evanescence of all natural beings. From a lament for a single rose, she begins to muse on the relationship of the Divine to His creation, including her own creations.
In Anne Sexton's poem "Her Kind" the speaker creates three caricatures, dramatizing through colorful imagery an identity akin to that seen through fun-house mirrors. Despite the nature of these kinds of women, the speaker finds no shame in professing that she is also that kind of woman.
Sonnet 17 "Who will believe my verse in time to come" is the last sonnet in the "Marriage Sonnets" sequence; the speaker makes a final plea to the young man, urging him to marry and produce offspring—this time for the sake of the speaker’s own veracity.
Anne Sexton’s poem "Courage" states a claim, supplying examples to support the claim, by focusing on events from each stage of life that required a courageous act or behavior.
Edna St. Vincent Millay's speaker in sonnet I "Thou art not lovelier than lilacs,—no" uses rich irony and alludes to the King Mithradites legend to assuage her overwhelming passion for beauty.
The speaker in Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnet 16 "And yet, because thou overcomest so" finally capitulates to the all consuming love that she has tried to deny herself, allowing herself only a speck of doubt.
Shakespeare Marriage Sonnet 16 "But wherefore do not you a mightier way" likens the young man's struggle with time to that of war. Time is like a bloody tyrant engaging one on the battlefield of life.
Lucinda Robertson returns to school to complete a master’s degree. She encounters a fellow student who seemed so interesting and sensually attractive but turns out to be full of a bizarre kind of deceit.
Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach" laments the loss of religious faith during a time of progress in science and industry. He is sorrowful that this loss may not bode well for the future of humanity.
Beginning poets should be required to take a vow equivalent of the medical "Hippocratic Oath." If poets could be held to a standard of excellence, less doggerel would plague the literary world.
James Weldon Johnson's speaker dramatizes his amazement that slaves could have produced a genre of music that would uplift an oppressed class of people from debasement to spiritual attunement.
Possibly the most famous dramatic monologue in the English language, "My Last Duchess" features a character based roughly on a real Duke, Alfonso II, Duke of Ferrara.
The speaker in sonnet 15 "Accuse me not, beseech thee, that I wear" concentrates on her ambiguous facial expressions that have yet to catch up with her overflowing heart. She finds it difficult to be happy after being sad for most of her life.
The speaker in Dickinson's poem "I'll tell you how the Sun rose" is dramatizing what she knows about the sunrise but then hazards only a dramatic guess about sunset. Her choice for the target of her knowledge transforms the simple of act sunrise into a symbol.
The speaker of William Carlos Williams' Petrarchan sonnet dramatizes the transforming power of poetry. Employing a form which the poet had long held in contempt, he, nevertheless, has crafted a unique piece that remains pleasant and satisfying to the mind and heart of poetry lovers.
William Carlos Williams created his poetry influenced by his famous motto: "No ideas but in things." He disliked highly allusive poetry as exemplified by T. S. Eliot; Williams is considered an Imagist poet.
A postmodernist misreading of Theodore Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz" has rendered the achievement and meaning of the poem a blur of inaccuracy, taking terms out of context and inserting claims not present in the poem. A rather literal poem, it engages an extended, ironic metaphor of the gentle waltz.
In a unique mystical voice, Emily Dickinson's speaker is dramatizing a number of the many ways in which Mother Nature takes care of her children. Dickinson’s keep observation and knowledge of science allowed her the ability to skillfully create her little dramas about her surroundings.
In marriage sonnet 15 from the classic Shakespeare 154-sonnet sequence, the speaker employs a "Time" metaphor again within the when-then structure to persuade the young man that his only hope for deliverance from the decrepitude of old age is to produce offspring.
Maya Angelou's "Touched by an Angel" offers some inspiring, lovely words, but the piece lacks the crystalline, poetic qualities that transform a philosophical statement into a poem.
The speaker in Holy Sonnet XIX makes a most fervent declaration regarding his spiritual striving for deliverance into the arms of the Ultimate Reality. He offers a confession and sincere statement of continued seeking for the mind-set of "fear" or loving respect that his Heavenly Father will accept.
The speaker in Holy Sonnet XVIII speculates about the church of Christ: if it will continue with grace, how it may remain comprehensible to Christ's followers. The teachings of Christ, His church, and body of His followers form a unity represented in this sonnet as the "spouse" of Christ.
In marriage sonnet 14 "Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck", the speaker says he does not have the power to predict the future by gazing at the stars in the sky, but the eyes of the young man tell all he needs to know.
The speaker in John Donne’s Holy Sonnet XVII "Since she whom I loved hath paid her last debt" begins by exploring his feelings for his late wife as the motivation for seeking the Heavenly Father’s will.
The speaker of Emily Dickinson's oddly punctuated poem "'Why do I love' You, Sir?" uses logic to demonstrate the reasoning that leads the created soul to experience love for its Creator.
The speaker employs a legal metaphor to pray that his legacy will ultimately be sufficient to cleanse his soul to allow it eternal rest in the arms of the Divine.
Lady Susanne took her tea after Oliver had swept off the veranda. While sitting in her favorite old Victorian chair, sipping delicately from her favorite old Victorian tea cup . . .
The speaker of Paul Laurence Dunbar's "Sympathy" metaphorically elucidates, through the employment of a "caged bird," the stifling condition of a human soul encased in a human body.
Emily Dickinson famously referred to her and her family's vision as "seeing New Englandly." For her speaker in "The Robin's my Criterion for Tune," that kind of vision has no negative nuance of provinciality.
The speaker in Emily Dickinson's "A Light exists in Spring" is striving to portray a certain kind of light that "exists [only] in Spring" or very near spring.
"I loathed my mother; she was constantly buzzing over petty details."
The speaker in William Blake's "The Chimney Sweeper" offers a drama depicting the misery of children yoked into squalid labor conditions in 18th century London. Despite its correct politically motivated social commentary, the piece loses it status as a polished poem through failed execution.