Art characteristics that one must take the time to examine accurately for it to be understood, poetry reflects from all viewpoints. Literary concepts, for example the narrator, arrangement, method, attitude, expressions, tempo, figurative and sounds of language, as well as alliteration must be well-thought-out when writing poetry because complex ideas are brought to light when inspected. For instance, a fourteen line poem with a particular rhyme scheme at first reading looks like an ordinary poem and changes into a compound sonnet. “What lips my lips have kissed” contains a typical rhyme scheme of abbabba cdecde” structure and provides numerous examples of literary concepts. The poem possesses an excellent illustration of how literary concepts merge to make a complicated and expressive sonnet.
Millay includes literary concepts, such as the presence of a speaker, tone, vocabulary, sounds of language, figurative language, alliteration, and structure,
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The lapse separating the octave and the sestet also serve as a shift in the poem, after the break in the verse, it becomes deeply reflective and more remorseful. Together all of these literary concepts allow the reader to become the speaker in only fourteen lines of poetry.
Millay’s sonnet, “What lips my lips have kissed,” grows further involved and meaningful through the use of literary concepts. These profoundly dark and clouded sentiments highlighted in the demeanor of a speaker, the tone, sounds of language, vocabulary, figurative language, and structure used. These literary concepts would not have been as imperative as it is in delivering the speaker’s sentiments to the reader. Any artist who applies color, texture, medium, and space to bring their pieces of art to life in as much a poet must use these kinds of literary
Edna St. Vincent Millay’s sonnet, “What lips my lips have kissed and where and why”
Formally, the poem has thirteen short lines with different numbers of syllables and accents. The poem is unrhymed but engages such alliterations as “flat farm feet” (2) / “furrows” (3), “soil has seen” (10), and “weep for the waste” (12). All of the alliterated sounds are voiceless, which projects the current situation of the girls. The thirteen breath units of the poem divide into two clear sentences. With no stanza break in the poem, these sentences establish the language of the drama.
The entire poem including the first stanza, as scanned here, is octametre with mostly trochaic feet and some iams. The use of a longer line enables the poem to be more of a narration of the evening's events. Also, it enables Poe to use internal rhymes as shown in bold. The internal rhyme occurs in the first and third lines of each stanza. As one reads the poem you begin to expect the next rhyme pushing you along. The external rhyme of the "or" sound in Lenore and nevermore at then end of each stanza imitates the haunting nature of the narrator's thoughts. The internal rhyme along with the same external rhyme repeated at the end of each stanza and other literary devices such as alliteration and assonance and give the poem a driving chant-like sound. The musicality of the rhyme also helps one to memorize the poem. This helps keep the poem in your head after you've finished reading it, lingering in your thoughts just as the narrator's thoughts are haunting him. The rhyme also helps to produce a humming beat in the readers mind driving him on steadily..
In “What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why” Millay reminisces back to a time when she had one lover after another. She cries because she lost them all and instead of opening her heart to them and offering her love she remained closed off and simply enjoyed the physical connections. Edna St. Vincent Millay may have imagined a speaker for this poem but she makes it seem as if it is coming from her own personal experiences. Daniel Mark Epstein says that “the truth about her personal affairs was scarcely less fantastic than the rampant speculations; even now, historians find it difficult to separate Millay rumor from Millay fact.” The speaker is obviously at an older age now, and feels as if her youth was wasted. “What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why, I have forgotten,” is the first line in Millay’s sonnet. This line sets the tone and theme of the poem right away. She has been with many men in her younger years. Night after night, she remembers kissing them and being with them, but she admits to forgetting names, faces, locations, and even reason be...
The poem is separated into two sections by an empty line. The first section contains twelve lines, all of which contain iambic feet. However the number of feet varies in a specific pattern. The first two lines of the poem are in pentameter, followed by two lines in dimeter, two more lines in pentameter, four lines in dimeter, and finally two lines in pentameter. This pattern gives a visual affect to the reader. Because of the varied length of each line, the poem appears to be in the shape of a river with rapids, as it approaches the drop of a waterfall.
For the reader to grasp the concept that this sonnet is about writer’s block Sidney has to cement the idea that Astrophil is a writer. In this duality, being both the star lover and writer, we begin to see Stella as a metaphor for a writer’s work and audience. Opening the sonnet with a profession of love for Stella, the object of Astrophil’s affection, he is hurt that he does not have her love. In the view of a passionate writer it is as if some critic has said that you are or your work is inadequate and without their approval. In order to gain the critics or Stella’s love he w...
A sonnet is a fixed patterned poem that expresses a single, complete thought or idea. Sonnet comes from the Italian word “sonetto”, which means “little song”. Poem, on the other hand, is English writing that has figurative language, and written in separate lines that usually have a repeated rhyme, but don’t all the time. The main and interesting thing is that these two poems or sonnets admire and compare the beauty of a specific woman, with tone, repetition, imagery, and sense of sound.
The fact that there the poem has no stanza divides represents the long and painful road to sleep and the never ending fight with insomnia.
In relation to structure and style, the poem contains six stanzas of varying lengths. The first, second, and fourth stanzas
Though ballads and Sonnets are poems that can depict a picture of someone’s beloved, they can have many differences. For instance, a Ballad is a story in short stanzas such as a song would have, where as a sonnet typical, has a traditional structure of 14 lines employing several rhyme schemes and adheres to a tight thematic organization. Both Robert Burn’s ballad “The Red, Red, Rose, and William Shakespeare’s “of the Sonnet 130 “they express their significant other differently. However, “The Red, Red, Rose depicts the Falling in new love through that of a young man’s eyes, and Shakespeare’s sonnet 130 depicts a more realistic picture of the mistress he writes about; which leaves the reader to wonder if beauty is really in the eyes of the beholder.
..., D. E. (2009, November 7). The Sonnet, Subjectivity, and Gender. Retrieved October 11, 2011, from mit.edu: www.mit.edu/~shaslang/WGS/HendersonSSG.pdf
The construction of the poem is in regular four-line stanzas, of which the first two stanzas provide the exposition, setting the scene; the next three stanzas encompass the major action; and the final two stanzas present the poet's reflection on the meaning of her experience.
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
This sonnet is an anti-love poem that ironically shows how the fairness of a lady is contingent upon nature's blessings and her external manifestations. The Spenserian style brings unity to this sonnet, in that it's theme and rhyme is interwoven throughout, but the focus of her "fairness" is divided into an octave and a sestet. The first eight lines praise her physical features (hair, cheeks, smile), while the last six lines praise her internal features (words, spirit, heart). This sonnet intentionally hides the speaker's ridicule behind counterfeit love-language, using phrases like: "fair golden hairs" (line 1), and "rose in her red cheeks" (line 3), and "her eyes the fire of love does spark" (line 4). This traditional love language fills pages of literature and song, and has conventionally been used to praise the attributes of a lover; but this sonnet betrays such language by exhibiting a critique rather than commendation. This sonnet appears to praise the beauty of a lady but ironically ridicules her by declaring that her "fairness" is contingent upon nature, physical features, and displaying a gentle spirit, which hides her pride.
Sir Thomas Wyatt is credited as one of the first poets to bring the sonnet form into English literature, a form in which the speaker’s sincerity for, most commonly, a distant mysterious woman whom he loves, is believed to be the focal point of the poetry. From the selection of works which Wyatt wrote we can see many point in which the focal point is seemingly the earnestness of his love for his muse as authenticated by what he states in the poem itself. However, there is a sense of underlying meaning throughout his works which the reader must tease out themselves to see that that in fact is the focal point of his poetry.