Presentation on a Short Poem Written by T. S. Eliot-Cousin Nancy
First, let me talk something about T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot is considered to be one of the most prominent poets,
critics and playwrights of his time and his works are said to have
promoted to "reshape modern literature". He was born in 1888 in St.
Louis Missouri and studied at Harvard and Oxford. It was at Harvard
where he met his guide Ezra Pound, and under the encouragement of
Pound, Eliot expands his writing abilities and publish his first poem:
the love song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Eliot became an Englandcitizen in
1925 and received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1948. In 1965, he
died in London, and his ashes were interred at the church of East
Coker, England, the home of his ancestor, and also the name of second
of Four Quartets, on the memorial tablet are inscribed: in my
beginning is my end, in my end is my beginning, famous line in this
poem.
His most famous work included some poems, the waste land, 1922, Ash
Wednesday, 1930, Four Quartets, 1936, some plays: murder in the
cathedral, 1935, the cocktail party, 1950, and some essays including
tradition and the individual talent, 1917, the use of poetry and the
use of criticism, 1933, etc. the further I want to mentioned here is
his old possum's book of practical cats, a group of lively and
humorous poems, which was later adapted, and became a famous Broadway
musical: Cats. It is these poems that bring me into the world of
Eliot, and I think this kind of works can also make him more
accessible.
Now we come into the poem itself.
The poet use 2/3 of his poem to portray an image of a modern girl,
c...
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..." rebellion?
"The barren New Englandhills" with "upon the glazen shelves kept
watch"
Q:if we considered the New Englandhills as the symbol of the
traditional culture, why is it barren? And why are shelves glazed?
Maybe a kind of objective observation here, since the shelves of
Nancy's family are really glazed, or we can say that the tradition is
well kept, though antique, locked away in the shelves.
(The need for an "impersonal" or objective poetry in which the life of
the writer is dissolved into his art) In the title of the volume,
"observation" indicated the writing technique, the purpose of the
poems, and also the attitude of the poet, he observe, like an
objective spectator, observing everything, forever observing, includes
himself in the observation, and wrote down what he observed into his
poems.
Who she is as a poet, feminist or not, her experiences where what she wrote about and how she connected with the world and how she got away from her life as the, “middle aged witch,” or house wife. With the Double “I”, the tone and repeation, and who she was as a person, house wife, and poet. The very end of each stanza in “Her Kind”, “I have been her kind,”(7) isn’t just there. This is where she can connect with both her madness as the witch, adultress, and a housewife, with the “kind” she real was, a woman who writes.
In romantic words, the poet expresses how much she does think of love. She state it clear that she will not trade love for peace in times of anguish.
The poem starts with the line, “This girlchild was born as usual,” which suggests that as soon as a girl is born, society already expects her to learn the role she will soon play in when she hits puberty (1). Thus, showing why we are given dolls as little girls to illustrate how we should act and appear according to society. After we learn all the roles we will soon take part in, “the magic of puberty,” hits and girls immediately begin applying the ideals to their own lives (5). As if this attempt to conform is not enough we have other people telling us we are not to perfect. “You have a great big nose and fat legs,” says a classmate to the girl (6). This type of pressure can slowly but surely destroy even the little confidence women do have in themselves.
In the preceding poem, one can see the artistic style come through her composition. The best representation of that particular idea comes from the author Donald Thackrey when he says:
Despite the beauty described in the first few stanzas of the poem, it was the feeling of doubt and pondering that approached at the end of the poem that truly was the most thought provoking. Instead of just writing of beauty, Poets must realize that they may be leading people to false ideals, and in doing so that they may actually be causing individuals to believe in something that is nothing more than a dream. This realization makes the image of the questioning poet by far the most important in the piece.
The influential roles of women in the story also have important effects on the whole poem. It is them that press the senses of love, family care, devotion, and other ethical attitudes on the progression of the story. In this poem the Poet has created a sort of “catalogue of women” in which he accurately creates and disting...
The speaker begins the poem an ethereal tone masking the violent nature of her subject matter. The poem is set in the Elysian Fields, a paradise where the souls of the heroic and virtuous were sent (cite). Through her use of the words “dreamed”, “sweet women”, “blossoms” and
In the early 20th century, many writers such as T.S. Eliot (Thomas Stearns Eliot) and Langston Hughes wrote what scholars of today consider, modern poetry. Writers in that time period had their own ideas of what modern poetry should be and many of them claimed that they wrote modern work. According to T.S. Eliot’s essay, “From Tradition”, modern poetry must consist of a “tradition[al] matter of much wider significance . . . if [one] want[s] it [he] must obtain it by great labour . . . no poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists’ (550). In another term, tradition only comes within the artist or the art itself; therefore, it should be universally monumental to the past. And, Langston Hughes argues that African-Americans should embrace and appreciate their own artistic virtues; he wishes to break away from the Euro-centric tradition and in hopes of creating a new blueprint for the African-American-Negro.
The verbose use of imagery in this poem is really what makes everything flow in this poem. As this poem is written in open form, the imagery of this writing is what makes this poem poetic and stand out to you. Marisa de los Santos begins her poem with “Its here in a student’s journal, a blue confession in smudged, erasable ink: ‘I can’t stop hoping/ I’ll wake up, suddenly beautiful’” (1-3). Even from the first lines of this story you can already picture this young girl sitting at her desk, doodling on her college ruled paper. It automatically hooks you into the poem, delving deeper and deeper as she goes along. She entices you into reading more as she writes, daring you to imagine the most perfect woman in the world, “cobalt-eyed, hair puddling/ like cognac,” (5-6). This may not be the ideal image of every person, but from the inten...
of the difficulty in acceptance. In the first few stanzas the poet creates the impression that she
result it has on people. In all three poems the last line of the poems
This entire poem talk about how beauty fades with time. Thus, like any carpe diem poetry, one is urged to cherish time. In this case, beauty is associated with time and the narrator believes that both should be cherished with the same intensity. There is a tone of urgency to find physical love, as the narrator only addresses physical beauty, which fades. He wants the girl to learn to be "desired" and "admired" while she is still beautiful.
I found that throughout this poem there was much symbolism within it. Identifying that it was written in first person form showed that this poem relates to the author on a personal basis, and that it was probably written to symbolize his life. But when talking about people’s lives, you can conclude that people’s lives are generally and individually very diffe...
The poem Girl is a Prose poem because it does not rhyme, have lines, and it lacks the traditional form of poetry. The advice and commands spoken in one long, unending breath create a smothering sense of duty and even oppression that stifles real, two-way communication. The daughter uses the few opportunities she has to speak to protect herself from her mother’s belief that she’ll grow older to become a “slut,” suggesting that the daughter has already begun to resent her mother. At the same time, however, Kincaid uses the run-on sentence structure to make the mother’s wisdom and experience of
"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. .