Poetry by Robert Creeley: Similarities and Differences Robert Creeley, a famous American poet, lived from 1926 to 2005. Creeley was normally associated as a Black Mountain poet because that is where he taught, and spent most of his career. Throughout his life, Creeley wrote many different pieces of poetry. Four great poems by Robert Creeley are, “For Love”, “Oh No”, “The Mirror”, and “The Rain”. The poem “For Love”,was written by Creeley for his wife. In this poem Creeley explains, the love someone has for another person, and how complicated it is making his life because the person doesn’t know how to explain their love. “Oh No” is a poem that is literally about a selfish person who ended up in hell, but this poem has a deeper meaning. Part …show more content…
For example, in “The Rain”, the entire poem has lines that are enjambed, “Is it / that never the ease, / even the hardness, / of rain falling”(8-11). The phrase or idea talked about in one line does not end at the end of a line, it continues on for several lines and sometimes several stanzas. In addition to the poem “The Rain”, enjambment can be seen in the poem “For Love”. Examples of enjambment can be found frequently throughout this poem, but specifically from lines 15, to 18. The poem reads, “I wouldn 't either, but / what would I not / do, what prevention, what...”. The subject talked about in these three lines is not thoroughly explained in the lines given, as the poem continues it discusses different subjects that are also spread out through several lines, with no one line being about one subject. The meaning of what Creeley is trying to describe can only be found by reading several lines of the poem because of the way he structured his poems. In the article "Love and Frangibility: An Appreciation of Robert Creeley", Heather Mchugh EXPLAINS, “ First of all, he 's often miscast as a rebel against poetic forms, foot soldier in the resistance against prosodic refinement... I believe that Robert Creeley 's abstemious formality nourishes a luxury of readings”. Mchugh SAYS that the line structure that Creeley uses is …show more content…
Terry Bacon wrote in his article, "Closure in Robert Creeley 's Poetry", “The extent of the reader 's own experiences will to a large degree determine the extent to which those perceptions are meaningful.” Bacon reveals that each of Creeley’s poems have a deeper meaning than just the words on the page, and each person can interpret the meaning of each poem differently depending on the experiences that person has already encountered. In Creeley’s poem “The Rain” , it TALKS about the rain being persistent, and a person being insisted upon. The person is looking for something like the rain, insistent,or else the person will be uneasy. The person wants a love like the rain. The rain that the poem is talking about is often associated with the want for intimacy. So the meaning in this poem is the person in the poem is longing for a persistent love, one that is always there, like the sound of the rain is persistent. “Oh No” also has a different meaning hidden in it. This poem is about a person finding a specific place, and when it is found a chair will be given to the person to sit by themselves. All of the person 's friends will be there smiling, all of them also sitting in their places. The hidden story behind this poem is that the author is trying to sweet talk the person into a seat, but the seat is not about in a happy place. By having the title “Oh No”, it
Other common poetic elements that are found in The Lover Not Taken, but also shared with Frost's poem are enjambment, irony, and hyperbole. Blanche uses enjambment in almost every other line, keeping the reader on their toes at all times, so as not to miss a line, or pause. Instances of enjambment can be found in the first stanza at the end of lines one, three, five, and carrying over to the second stanza on line seven. Irony is most evident at the end of The Lover Not Taken when the narrator took the fast way home, "and phoned the blond." Her decision is so unexpected because most women would stand by their man and hope to never let lust surpass love. This leaves the reader very surprised when the narrator definitely chooses the road less traveled.
In Tim Seibles' poem, The Case, he reviews the problematic situations of how white people are naturally born with an unfair privilege. Throughout the poem, he goes into detail about how colored people become uncomfortable when they realize that their skin color is different. Not only does it affect them in an everyday aspect, but also in emotional ways as well. He starts off with stating how white people are beautiful and continues on with how people enjoy their presence. Then he transitions into how people of color actually feel when they encounter a white person. After, he ends with the accusation of the white people in today's world that are still racist and hateful towards people of color.
Poems are unique in that there are no set rules for how they are formatted (Kirszner & Mandell, 2012). Poems may rhyme, or not. They can be presented in a narrative or lyrical format. The use of proper punctuation can be omitted such as periods, commas, or question marks (Kirszner & Mandell, 2012). The use of punctuation or lack there of, brings into play the use of enjambment, which is another term for what is commonly known in poetry as run-on lines (Kirszner & Mandell, 2012). If a poem is considered more proper and the author wants the reader to clearly understand how a line in the poem is read, the use of punctuation such as commas and periods are used to stress this point. This style is commonly known as end-stopped lines. (Kirszner
The poem “Always Something More Beautiful” by Stephen Dunn is certainly about running a race, but the speaker is also arguing that pursuing something beautiful can help guide us through life. Through the title, we can see that we should constantly look for more beautiful things in life. The poem begins with the speaker describing his experience before a race. He uses words like “best” and “love.” The tone is extremely enthusiastic. In the first line, he talks about coming to the starting place. This can be a metaphor for beginning our lifelong journey. The speaker also implies that we need to approach it with a positive attitude. In the next few lines, the speaker indicates being tested in excellence
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.
To that end, the overall structure of the poem has relied heavily on both enjambment and juxtaposition to establish and maintain the contrast. At first read, the impact of enjambment is easily lost, but upon closer inspection, the significant created through each interruption becomes evident. Notably, every usage of enjambment, which occurs at the end of nearly every line, emphasizes an idea, whether it be the person at fault for “your / mistakes” (1-2) or the truth that “the world / doesn’t need” (2-3) a poet’s misery. Another instance of enjambment serves to transition the poem’s focus from the first poet to the thrush, emphasizing how, even as the poet “[drips] with despair all afternoon,” the thrush, “still, / on a green branch… [sings] / of the perfect, stone-hard beauty of everything” (14-18). In this case, the effect created by the enjambment of “still” emphasizes the juxtaposition of the two scenes. The desired effect, of course, is to depict the songbird as the better of the two, and, to that end, the structure fulfills its purpose
Some people are born into this world without as many chances to get a better position in life. This can affect the people born into a lower class for the entirety of their life. In the poem “Saturday’s Child,” Countee Cullen uses imagery, personification, and similes to suggest the differences between people that are born into poverty and those that are born into an upper class part of society. Throughout this poem Cullen speaks about how the different social classes affect people; he does this with a pessimistic tone throughout the entirety of the poem.
"Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal [but] which the reader recognizes as his own." (Salvatore Quasimodo). There is something about the human spirit that causes us to rejoice in shared experience. We can connect on a deep level with our fellow man when we believe that somehow someone else understands us as they relate their own joys and hardships; and perhaps nowhere better is this relationship expressed than in that of the poet and his reader. For the current assignment I had the privilege (and challenge) of writing an imitation of William Shakespeare’s "Sonnet 87". This poem touched a place in my heart because I have actually given this sonnet to someone before as it then communicated my thoughts and feelings far better than I could. For this reason, Sonnet 87 was an easy choice for this project, although not quite so easy an undertaking as I endeavored to match Shakespeare’s structure and bring out his themes through similar word choice.
Australian poets Bruce Dawe and Gwen Harwood explore ideas and emotions in their poems through vivid and aural poetic techniques, the poets also use symbolism to allow the readers to relate to the text. In Dawes “Homecoming”, the poet explores the ideas in the text using language techniques such as irony, paradox and visual imagery to construct his attitude towards war and the effect. While in Gwen Harwood’s, “The violets”, she uses prevailing imagery and mood to emphasize fertility and growth. Contrastingly, In Bruce daws, “Life cycle”, the poet uses the idea of sport to symbolise and represent religion with the use of clichés and juxtaposition to convey his ideas of religion, myths and Christianity in the language use, similarly Harwood poem
I have noticed that the kids were singing in a call and response pattern, where the leader sings a line and the other kids chants along repeatedly. It was really difficult to find who the leader of the group was, but the leader’s has very clear projection and energetic voice. This is related to what we have experienced with Ysaye Barnwell in many ways; First, we learnt the lyrics of the song through call and response, then we kept on repeating the lines over and over again. Second, she then added complex rhythmic patterns and movements just like the kids when they repeated the lines and starting jumping up and down together. I have noticed that the pitch level is mainly in the higher register and they sang together in unison. The quality of
The first stanza describes the depth of despair that the speaker is feeling, without further explanation on its causes. The short length of the lines add a sense of incompleteness and hesitance the speaker feels towards his/ her emotions. This is successful in sparking the interest of the readers, as it makes the readers wonder about the events that lead to these emotions. The second and third stanza describe the agony the speaker is in, and the long lines work to add a sense of longing and the outpouring emotion the speaker is struggling with. The last stanza, again structured with short lines, finally reveals the speaker 's innermost desire to "make love" to the person the speaker is in love
In Havisham she portrays love as something that can almost break a person. For example the persona says she “spent days in bed cawing nooooo at the wall”. The use of the elongation of ‘no’ conveys the persona’s despair and sadness, as it has been used to express the dismay and sorrow of the persona. This is again reinforced by the elongation of ‘no’. being elongated it puts emphatic stress on the word, which strengthens the notion that the persona has been affected greatly by her disappointing love life. Furthermore, the use of the verb “cawing” links to a crow, which is symbolic for death and sometimes evil, so the fact the persona is “cawing” could mean that death has occurred, maybe in herself or the death of her love/love life. In addition this physical and detrimental effect of love is seen in the persona’s confusion “who did this to me”. This suggests that the persona has been dwelling on losing her love so long that she no longer knows who to blame. This identity crisis also shows that the persona needs someone to blame to start to feel some comfort in what has happened to her. Overall this creates sympathy for the persona through the use of Duffy’s bitter tones in this poem. This is strengthen by the fact that this woman has been affected in such a way by a disappointing love life that she is breaking down physically and mentally, which, again, creates sympathy for the persona and
As one character closes the door on a relationship in one poem another character on yearns for one in another poem.
Analysis of Leroi Jones' A Poem Some People Will Have To Understand There is an implied threat in "A Poem Some People Will Have To Understand" by Leroi Jones. Ostensibly, there is no intimidation. The poem is confessional, even reflective; the theme is one of mutability and change. However, there is something frightening and ominous in Jones1 vision, which he creates through attention to word choice and structure. Jones' warning is immediately evident in the title through his manipulation of words.
In this poem the writer uses a technique called Enjambment. In most cases Enjambment can show anger, desperation or frustration...