Why Are Your Poem 's So Dark?" written by Linda Pastan, answers the question of why poet 's always seem to write about the darkness of the world. Pastan 's purpose is to stand up for the poets who are criticized for writing dark poems. She wants to let people know that poets write about the reality of the world, with all the injustices that taken place in the world. The world is a dark place, so choose poets write about what they see in the world. In the first two lines of the poem the speaker established his or her tone, and justifies why poet 's write in such gloomy manner. The first two lines of the poem asks, "Isn 't the moon dark too, most of the time?" (line 1-2). This question prepares the readers to expect an argument to come from …show more content…
However, the rhetorical question that immediately follows the title, "Isn 't the moon dark too, most of the time?" presents a different story; turning the attention back onto the reader (lines 1-2). Also in the seventh stanza when the speaker states yet another rhetorical question, "Why are you sad so often?" the reader will start question, why they were even pondering, why poems were so dark (line 14). Pastan does this in order to make her theme stand out, the reason poems are so dark is due to the fact that poets write about the world, which happens to be a dark place. The theme is also supported by the structure of the poem as well. Pastan 's poem is a short 16 line poem, organized into 8 couplets, this structure causes Pastan 's sentences to be cut up into short telegraphic lines with no more than five words to each line, "Ask the moon. Ask what it has witnessed" (lines 15-16). These coupled lines are quick, sharpe and to the point, drawing attentions to Pastan 's message: poets do not intentionally write about dark phenomenons, they just see dark events in the world and feel the need to write about
The first two lines of the poem set the mood of fear and gloom which is constant throughout the remainder of the poem. The word choice of "black" to describe the speaker's face can convey several messages (502). The most obvious meaning ...
As a matter of fact, the poem title is a metaphor which translates to ‘get over Melbourne’. This metaphor is used to express the poet’s message to Australian society to break out of this nationalistic, lazy and self-centred lifestyle. The “Moon” in the title can also be seen as a symbol of a figurative person, whom poet talks to and argues with as the poet is isolated himself. Even so the poet does not describe the physical characteristics of the ‘Moon’ or society, the poet’s pessimistic descriptions create an image of a Chinese migrant with a particular reminiscence for his home. The repetition of the “Moon over Melbourne” phrase, emphasises the importance of the message to society. This attention given to the phrase creates a dominating sense that the poet’s experiences within Melbourne are disapproving of the new foreign values’. “A young one just 200 seconds old, with a man-made light that is not only cold”, with a twist of rhyme the poet relates to a child being raised from this man-made or this cold artificial society, the in poet’s perspective this is Australia which mimic’s the natural light in the place of China, the poet’s
First of alll, the poem is divided into nine stanzas, where each one has four lines. In addition to that, one can spot a few enjambements for instance (l.9-10). This stylistic device has the function to support the flow of the poem. Furthermore, it is crucial to take a look at the choice of words, when analysing the language.
From the very first word of the poem, there is a command coming from an unnamed speaker. This establishes a sense of authority and gives the speaker a dominant position where they are dictating the poem to the reader rather than a collaborative interacti...
The death camp was a terrible place where people where killed. Hitler is who created the death camp for Jews. The death camp was used for extermination on Jews. This occurred on 1939 – 1945. The death camps were in the country of Europe. Hitler did all this because he didn’t like Jews and the religions. The book Night is a autobiography written by Elie Wiesel. The poem called First they came for the communist written by Martin Neimoller is a autobiography.
The poet begins by describing the scene to paint a picture in the reader’s mind and elaborates on how the sky and the ground work in harmony. This is almost a story like layout with a beginning a complication and an ending. Thus the poem has a story like feel to it. At first it may not be clear why the poem is broken up into three- five line stanzas. The poet deliberately used this line stanzas as the most appropriate way to separate scenes and emotions to create a story like format.
I do not know how without being culpably particular I can give my Reader a more exact notion of the style in which I wished these poems to be written, than by informing him that I have at all times endeavored to look steadily at my subject; consequently, I hope that there is in these Poems little falsehood of description, and my ideas are expressed in language fitted to their respective importance. Something I must have gained by this practice, as it is friendly to one property of all good poetry, namely, good sense; but it has necessarily cut me off from a large portion of phrases and figures of speech which from father to son have long been regarded as the common inheritance of Poets.
11. Dodd, David. Light and Dark in the Lyrics of Robert Hunter. (Thematic Essay) http://arts.ucsc.edu/gdead/agdl/light.html 1997
This essay is anchored on the goal of looking closer and scrutinizing the said poem. It is divided into subheadings for the discussion of the analysis of each of the poem’s stanzas.
“In this poem, the night represents his destination — the poet’s own inner life, possibly self-knowledge. The poet, then, feels at least partially alienated from himself in much the same way that the night promotes a feeling of alienation from other people” (Kidd 2). Therefore, the reader can assume this rest of the poem is going to be about the narrator getting to know his place in this world while he is on a night stroll. The second line of stanza one states “I have walked out in rain –and back in rain” (Frost 157). His repetition of going in the rain twice emphasizes his miserable condition on this dark, rainy night. Nonetheless, he embraces nature and continues on with his walk past “the furthest city light” which tells the reader that he is now in complete darkness. Stanza two focuses primarily on his relationship with society. The narrator is casually walking in the city at night and sees the “saddest city lane” and
Did I Miss Anything? is a poem written by a Canadian poet and academic Tom Wayman. Being a teacher, he creates a piece of literature, where he considers the answers given by a teacher on one and the same question asked by a student, who frequently misses a class. So, there are two speakers present in it – a teacher and a student. The first one is fully presented in the poem and the second one exists only in the title of it. The speakers immediately place the reader in the appropriate setting, where the actions of a poem take place – a regular classroom. Moreover, the speakers unfolds the main theme of the poem – a hardship of being a teacher, the importance of education and laziness, indifference and careless attitudes of a student towards studying.
Not only does Robert Frost cherish nature, but he also has a love for darkness in this piece. The darkness signifies the loss of something and the dark soul. The speaker was a child in a home, but that home is no longer there. Robert Frost uses words such as night, dim, unlit place, and sad to talk about the darkness.
The relationship of the speaker to his surroundings is introduced into the main narrative in the opening of the poem, and is specific to when this occurrence is taking place, “At midnight, in the month of June”. June is the month in which the summer solstice takes place, in the Pagan culture of this time “Midsummer was thought to be a time of magic, when evil spirits were said to appear. The pagans often wore protective garlands of herbs and flowers.” (chiff.com) Today this concoction is used by modern herbalists as a mood stabilizer. Midnight is also known as the witching hour when ghosts are considered to have their most power. Black magic is also thought to be infallible at this hour as well. The speaker of the poem describes himself as standing beneath the moon, this sublunary expulsion is pertinent to the narrative of the poem, and he is admitting his mortality in this line. The moon is personified in the fourth line “Exhales from her out her golden rim”, which is ...
“I sometimes speak from the last thing that happened to me. I got asked today if I think up poems. Do I think them up? How do I get the right one? Well, it is the hardest thing in the world to tell. But I don’t think up poems. I pick up a lot of things I thought of to make a poem; that is a lot of scattered thoughts through the days that are handy for the poem-that’s about all. That’s where the thinking comes in.”
From this quote, it shows how the rest of the poem was going to be dark and dim. At the time Poe had written this poem, he had already faced a lot of tragedy throughout his life. it was easy to see how the poem actually reflected a lot about Poe the troubles he faced in...