I read Rainer Maria Rilke's work, Letters to a Young Poet, in the tenth grade, and it had an incredible impact on my understanding of poetry as a vocation. The letters were written by Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke, one of my favorite poets, to a young admirer.
In the letters, Rilke gives the young poet advice on what it means to be a poet. I still turn to his advice when I am feeling frustrated or adrift in my own efforts to write. Rilke urges young poets to:
- structure their lives so that writing remains at the center (easier said than done)
- to be patient during the process of writing
- not to worry about fame or what other people think of one's poetry
- to be attentive to the world
- to value poetry's difficulty
He said, 'People have... oriented all their solutions toward the easy and toward the easiest side of the easy; but it is clear that we must hold to what is difficult; everything alive holds to it' (53).
A poem that I have been studying recently is Assisi by Norman McCaig, which I found very interesting to read because it made a statement which relates to our world today even though the poem was wrote about thirty or forty years ago. The poem has lots of ideas including effective figures of speech, good choice of words, important images and irony. The statement that McCaig makes is, where ever there is great wealth it always exists along side great poverty.
Letters to a Young Poet “Letter One”, written by Rainer Maria Rilke, is a letter written by Rilke which contains advice for the aforementioned poet in the title of the piece. The reason for Rilke writing this piece was that a young, inexperienced poet sent Rilke a letter along with the poet’s own poems, which were called “My Soul” and “To Leopardi.” Rilke informs the poet that he is not comfortable with giving criticism, saying that “Nothing touches a work of art so little as words of criticism,” (p. 5). Instead of giving criticism, Rilke advises the poet on what first steps he should take in order to pursue a serious career in writing literature.
Examine the different ways in which Shakespeare presents the attitude towards marriage in the play, ‘The Taming of the Shrew.’
Confucius compares education to the sculpting of marble. He said, "Just as the sculptor is to the marble, so is education to the soul. It releases it. For only educated men are free men." I see college as an irreplaceable time in my life when I can begin my journey to find the freedom that Confucius so eloquently describes. While in college, I want my education to bring me face to face with the awesome power of the human spirit and the human mind working together to achieve the beautiful and the revolutionary.
Helen Keller was born on June 27th, 1880 in Tuscumbia, Alabama. She was a bright infant, interested in everything around her, and imitating adults at a very young age. In February of 1882, she was struck with an illness which left her deaf and blind. For several years, Helen had very little communication with the rest of the world, except for a few signs which she used with her family. When she was six, her parents wanted desperately to do something to help their strong-willed, half-wild, child. They were far from any deaf or blind schools, and doubted that anyone would come to the little town to educate their deaf and blind child. They heard of a doctor in Baltimore who had helped many seemingly hopeless cases of blindness, but when he examined Helen, there was nothing he could do for her. However, he referred them to Dr. Alexander Graham Bell who recommended Anne Sullivan to teach Helen.
find a wife. "I come to wives it wealthy in Padua; If wealthy, then happily in
Franz Kappus, a 19-year old student, wanted to solicit a career advice and a literary critique for the poems he had written (“Rainer Maria Rilke: Letters to a Young Poet” 1). Kappus solicited the advice and critique of Rainer Maria Rilke, a pioneer Austrian poet (“Rainer Maria Rilke: Letters to a Young Poet” 1). Rilke wrote ten letters in order to provide assistance to the needs of Kappus. These letters were in Rilke’s work, entitled, “Letters to a Young Poet.”
During the Shakespearean era, obeying husbands and fathers was looked at so highly that it matched obeying the King of England; the uppermost pedestal was reserved for the Shakespearean man. Gender roles lead to the development of self-individualism which divided the men from the women by establishing a deep distrust of women into the men along with an authoritative dominance, and in hand locked women into a permanent submissive position. One of the most oppressed groups throughout history has been women, which were socially, economically, educationally and religiously oppressed during the time period of Shakespearean society. Social normality and political views has been throughout time, arguably the most extreme oppression enforcement over social outcaste subgroups. Society also held a strong grip on artists and the creative messages of the work that artist deliver to the world, which can depict a sometimes hidden, or subtle dropping of opinions of the hard hitting issues at hand during the present time period. Shakespeare is deemed as one of the greatest known writer’s in English history, not only because he was tremendously attentive towards the Elizabethan era and the diverse struggles that haunted the streets of England in everyday life’s routine, but because he did more than just take notice, as he acted upon the travesties he observed by weaving the representation of the world he came to know through his artwork, leaving the world with irreplaceable pieces of literature and insightful history of Shakespearean society.
of the men who desired Bianca needed somebody to marry Kate, as it was customary
Appearing to be sentimental and a reflection of the discoveries in Rilke’s life journey, the language of the poem is very soothing and humble due to life experience. In addition, the structure has been chosen to give the readers time to meticulously ponder between and after each punctuation and stanza. As the first line in the first stanza commences, the speaker
Over the past 400 or so years since Shakespeare wrote _The Taming of the Shrew_, many writers, painters, musicians and directors have adapted and reformed this play of control and subjugation into timeless pieces of art. In _10 Things I Hate About You_ and Kiss Me Kate from two very different times in the twentieth century, and paintings of Katherina and Bianca from the late nineteenth century, the creators of these adaptations have chosen to focus on the role of the two main female characters in the play. The ideas surrounding these women have changed through the years, from Katherina and Bianca simply being young women who deviated from the norm of Shakespeare’s time to women who embody feminist ideals and stereotypes of the more modern world.
Let’s start this essay honestly, shall we? When I’ve received the letter that said that I may have the probability to join such a prestigious group, filled with so many intelligent people; I was honestly baffled, by this, I imply that I wouldn’t consider myself to be the ‘perfect scholar’ for this selective club. But, who am I kidding? I’m not even a scholar! What I am is a 5’3 girl surrounded by her unorganized life, a mind filled with procrastination, and with a homemade meal of stress with a pinch of anxiety, in other words, an average American teenager. I’ve presumably just named a few qualities that other students may have used in their own essay’s, right? I, on the other hand, believe that these qualities are not truly needed; their like sprinkles on ice cream, unnecessary, but aesthetically
inspiration to many writers of today and will be for years to come. There is no better way, to sum up the life of Robert Frost than one of his quotes, "A poem begins in delight and ends in
Growing up I played many sports, but when I got to high school there were around two hundred other kids just like me. In my freshman year alone there were two hundred kids on the football team, seventy-five trying out for the baseball team, and around sixty kids trying out for the basketball team. With so many kids doing the same thing as I was, I struggled to find my own identity and my own personality. During my freshman year, I was the second-string outside linebacker on the freshman football team and was never given the chance to stand out on the field. After my freshman year, I decided to take another route. Without sports in my life, I was forced to try to find a new identity for myself. I joined many clubs like Student Council and DECCA, but I wound up having the same problem as I did in football.
..."hard" to endure. He acknowledges that obedience exists as an "easy yoke" which suggests that God does not make extraordinarily difficult demands and following God's demands appears as a relatively "easy task."