Grant Voth provides details about Anna Akhmatova’s Requiem, which was created during 1935 to 1961. The collection could not be written because for a period of time Akhmatova was prohibited to write or publish poetry. Therefore, Requiem were memorized and remembered by Akhmatova and her novelist friend Lydia Chukovskaya. Eventually, the collection was published after Stalin’s death. Requiem is composed of ten poems, dedicated to the women who waited outside of a prison, hoping to see their fathers, brothers, husbands, or sons (who had been taken away by the secret police in Russia for being suspected of revolting against Stalin). The first poem describes Akhmatova’s husband being arrested and her suffering. The second and third poems illustrate
Alan Shapiro was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on February 18th, 1952. He is the son of Harold and Marilyn Shapiro. Growing up Shapiro was a part of a Jewish household. Shapiro received his education at Brandies University. While attending Brandies University he discovered that his one and only passion was for the astounding art of poetry and he found an escape from all the devastating disasters he encountered in his youth (Garbett). Shapiro is also now an educator at Stanford University and he has also worked at Northwestern University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. As Shapiro conveys in many of his works after researching Shapiro’s life it is known Shapiro’s brother and sister both died of cancer while Shapiro was very young, and these events highly contribute to Shapiro’s work as a poet. The memoir that Shapiro wrote which was entitled Vigil is about the tragic death of his sister due to the unfortunate events of being diagnosed with breast cancer. As it is well known Shapiro’s poems are very tragic and sorrowfully oriented it is no fault to say that different people happen to react and cope with death in different ways and Shapiro expresses his sadnes...
“Those Winter Sundays” tells of Robert Hayden’s father and the cold mornings his father endures to keep his family warm in the winters. In “Digging” Heaney is sitting in the window watching his father do hard manual labor, which has taken a toll on his body. In “My Father as a Guitar” Espada goes to the doctors office with his father and is sitting in the office with his dad when the doctor tells him he has to take pain killers and to stop working because his body was growing old and weak. The authors of the poems all look at their fathers the same; they look at them with much respect and gratitude. All three poems tell of the hard work the dads have to do to keep their family fed and clothed. “The landlord, here a symbol of all the mainstream social institutions that hold authority over the working class” (Constantakis.) Espada’s father is growing old and his health is deteriorating quickly but his ability to stop working is not in his own hands, “I can’t the landlord won’t let me” (774.) “He is separated from the homeland, and his life in the United States is far from welcoming” (Constantakis.) Espada’s Grandmother dies in Puerto Rico and the family learns this by a lett...
Anna Avalon was very talented. Not only had she been part of a circus and known how to use a trapeze, but she was able to rescue her daughter from a house that was on fire, by using her talent and her expertise to lunge toward the roof of the house and hang upside down by her feet attached to the gutter. By doing this she was able to crawl in through the window and save her daughter.
Sylvia Plath a highly acclaimed twentieth century American poet whose writings were mostly influenced by her life experiences. Her father died shortly after her eighth birthday and her first documented attempt at suicide was in her early twenties. She was married at age twenty-three and when she discovered her husband was having an affair she left him with their two children. Her depression and the abandonment she felt as a child and as a woman is what inspires most of her works. Daddy is a major decision point where Plath decides to overcome her father’s death by telling him she will no longer allow his memory to control her.
A character’s attempt to recapture the past is important in many poems and stories. " Fifth Grade Autobiography" by Rita Dove, succeeds at recapturing the poet's past. The poem's speaker is a the author and the addresse is the audience. The subject of the poem is one of remembrance. The tone is childlike, innocent and sadness and the theme is reminiscent. We discover the poet is describing a particular memory that shows reverence and longing for her grandfather, who is dead at the time she writes the poem. Dove recaptures memories as a child on a particular day and her interaction with her brother and grandparents especially her grandfather with great detail. The author recaptures the memory in the poem by looking at an old photo and describing, the things that were taking time at the place of the picture not exactly what is pticutred..
after her husband and children, they were treated as second class citizens with few rights.
Kate Chopin wrote in a period of time where women were standing up for there right. In other words, women’s curiosity grew more and more while she was taking away there liberties, the more they take away the more the curiosity grew. Kate Chopin was born in 1851 in Catherine O’Flaherty, she was a marry woman with six children and later widow. She stared writing novels, which was offensive to men, that’s why she never had a chance to publish them, after later she finally did. Chopin wrote a lot of fictional stories which help change the point or view of women in society. One of the novels called The Awakening written in 1899, a story of adultery and sexuality which was badly criticizes by other readers of how she portrayed women in the novels. No thought later in the time she was recognizing by the feminist scholar lecture. The next story called The Storm, probably publish at the same time as the novel The Awakening, which in reality she did not intended to publish. The novel The Storm talks about a woman that committed adultery which ones occur, no one got hurt at the end.
Chekhov reminds the readers that Anna is young compared to Gurov. Chekhov’s novel states, “As he went to bed he reminded himself that only a short time ago she had been a schoolgirl, like his own daughter” (3). The images of Anna being a schoolgirl not too long ago, when Gurov has a daughter of similar age, brings the sense of abnormality between the relationship of Gurov and Anna. It’s hard to imagine such a huge difference in lovers especially in the strict culture of Russia in the late 19th century where these occasions were unthought-of. The uncomforting thought of the difference in age goes back to differ the meanings of love and romance in the novel because against all odds and differences, Anna and Gurov hide away from these obvious facts. The thought of love in this culture is between a man and woman of similar age. According to Chekhov’s novel, “He was sick of his children, sick of the bank, felt not the slightest desire to go anywhere or talk about anything” (9). Chekhov’s description of sickness reveals that Gurov has a huge moment of denial, denial of family and denial of age. This denial of age, helps Gurov cope with the oddities of their relationship, the oddities of the love they had with the characteristics of a romance. Gurov was trying to change the definition of their relationship on his own mental terms. While Gurov was trying to bring out a spontaneous, younger
...veral similarities between the two poems. Both versions contain immense irony concerning why the woman looks back. The reasoning in both Akhmatova’s and Szymborska’s poems contradict themselves. As mentioned several times earlier the same impression is left upon the reader for the most part, although each version could be interpreted by the reader several different ways, just as they could be explicated differently in comparison to each other. The title is interestingly identical for both poems, despite the immense differences otherwise. Tone is also a prevalent similarity, as when looked at side by side the same tone exists, even though there are many other factors that effect this element. In conclusion, “Lot’s Wife'; is a poem that contains many messages, as achieved differently by different authors. The elements of poetry work hand in hand and are all contingent upon one another to achieve the desired result. Each of the versions of “Lot’s Wife'; that have been
When Anna Close is first introduced in the novel, As We Are Now she is referred to as Mrs. Close. From what I gather, this was to represent a sort of formality between her and Caro because they were not yet acquainted. Not only this, but it also seems that it was Harriet and Rose's way of manipulating Caro to fear the worst out of Harriet's replacement. Caro knew better than to expect someone who would actually care for her, because of this she was surprised beyond belief when she met Anna.
She was the third of five children, her two sisters died during infancy, and her half-brothers died in their early twenties. Kate was five when her father, thus having a string relationship with her mother. She later had six kids with Oscar Chopin; he died leaving Kate to raise the children by herself. Her work, more specifically her book titled The Awakening, spoke true about women, but these truths challenged the image of women in her time. Critics in her time have gave her flak for her writing and ideas, making her novels forgotten after her death. Luckily decades later her work has been rediscovered and given the praise it
Kate Chopin’s early life was characterized by a lack of male role models in her life, at a young age she lost her father and two brothers and moved in with her great-grandmother, grandmother and mother whom all were widows. All of these were strong, independent women and so Chopin hardly ever experienced male subjugation towards females which was the usually the case for women in the current society. Years later she married Oscar Chopin and had six children but still never fulfill a conventional role of wife or mother, she was able to enjoy privileges that other women didn’t have. Despite Chopin’s unusual background, her works reflect the struggles faced by the majority of women with great insight and consequently, this allows us to see how
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was born August 12, 1831 in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine. Her father was Colonel Peter von Hahn and her mother was Helena Andreyevna von Hahn. Colonel von Hahn was a military man fighting in Poland when Helena was born. Her mother, often hurt by her husband’s absence and wrote about the turmoil of being a woman in her time. She published 8 novels by the time she faced an untimely death at the age of 27 as a highly regarded novelist. Helena’s mother knew from the time she was born that she was no average child. (3, 4, 5, 6)
Confessional poetry of women poets of the then 1950s and 1960s opens a new vista for them to express their ‘self’ and to foreground their identity. These poets feel the need for self-affirmation because of their experience of marginalization in society. They found all the experiences are gendered in the 1950s and 1960s patriarchal society and so they also develop a gendered image of their ‘self’ in their confessional poetry. At the time when Sexton and Plath were children, the authoritarian figure within the nuclear family was the father and so he was the representative of society’s rule. Hence, the delineation of the Electra complex in their confessional poetry is one of the approaches of scratching their gendered ‘self’ because through the Electra complex the poets inscribe the female sexuality into the text. So, “with their autobiographical works, they write themselves into the canon and represent and deconstruct cultural images and linguistic codes of ‘woman’ and suggest alternative modes of self and identity” (Carmen
“Confessional poetry” was commenced in 1959. Confessional poetry is a style of poetry when a poet has become confessional in their writings. Plath had a very confessional tone in her poetry. In her confessional poetry she succeeded to create a strong understanding with her readers. “Confessional poetry has become so valuable, because it speaks from the heart”(Pipos). Sylvia Plath combined many of her personal life experiences and situations she was going through as foundations to her writing. Confessional poetry can be confessional in many ways, depending on the poets personality and preferences. Sylvia Plath used the intimacy of the poetry in her