Observations and Analysis
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“The Wreck of the Deutschland.” G.M. Hopkins. “A monumental work of literature.” Post Two of Two.
“Widely considered a masterpiece and one of the greatest, most innovative poems in the English language. ” AI Overviews. *** *** Since the…
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“Heaven-Haven: A Nun Takes the Veil.” Gerard Manley Hopkins. How to Deconstruct.
Proposed here as a thematic companion to Bishop’s “Sonnet (1928).” 1 *** *** It is so revealing to…
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“Sonnet (1928).” Elizabeth Bishop. Sensory Immersion . How to Deconstruct.
This is a purely personal post, motivated both by my admiration for 20th c. American poet Elizabeth Bishop and the association with…
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“There is a garden, ” Thomas Campion, Words and People at Play. How to Deconstruct.
Since poets are wordsmiths, it should come as no surprise that sometimes the “playing” with words becomes a major focus. This is…
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“Preludes.” T.S. Eliot. How to Deconstruct These Tonal Pieces.
A prelude in music and art is an isolated, introductory fragment that announces a theme but goes no further than announcement, as…
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*No Rack* & *This World.* Dickinson. How to Deconstruct Both. The Freedom of Thought.
No Rack can torture me (384) and This World is not Conclusion (373) *** *** The poem consists of four 4-line stanzas…
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“In Memoriam A.H.H.” Tennyson. How to Deconstruct One of the Greatest Elegies in English Poetry. (Long.)
*** In Memoriam A. H. H. is a long elegy–a poem of serious reflection, typically a lament for the dead–by Alfred, Lord…
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“Musee des Beaux Arts.” Auden. How to Deconstruct Auden’s Poem about Life’s Transience.
Museum of Fine Arts. Landscape with the Fall of Icarus *** W. H. Auden wrote Musée des Beaux Arts in December 1938…
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“The Good Morrow” and “Batter My Heart”. John Donne. Love of Man. Love of God. How to Deconstruct.
Metaphysical Poetry at Its Best. *** Metaphysical poetry is a 17th-century genre, pioneered by John Donne, characterized by highly intellectual, witty, and philosophical exploration…
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*Byzantium.* W.B. Yeats. How to Deconstruct Yeats’s Challenging Poem.
*** Byzantium was an ancient Greek city in classical antiquity that became known as Constantinople in late antiquity and Istanbul in modern times. The poem consists of five 8-line stanzas (octave or octet), with…
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“Love Song: I and Thou.” Alan Dugan. How to Deconstruct Dugan’s Extended Metaphor.
I have included Love Song as a post because it is a terrific example of an extended metaphor. *** Nothing is plumb,…
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“Dover Beach.” Matthew Arnold. How to Deconstruct the Poet’s Lament about Crisis of Faith. 19th C.
When everything began to change. *** This poem is particularly fascinating today since it symbolically represents a gradual great shift in thinking…
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“Terence, this is stupid stuff.” Housman. Deconstructing Housman’s Poem in Defense of “Dark” Poetry.
*** Terence is the poet-persona Housman uses to represent himself in his collected poems, Shropshire Lad. (1898) The poem consists of four…
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“The Sunne Rising.” John Donne. How to Deconstruct Donne’s Devices.
Figurative language at its best. . *** Metaphysical Poetry is a 17th-century genre, pioneered by John Donne, and characterized by ingenious, witty, and philosophical…
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“Home Burial.” Robert Frost. How to Deconstruct.
Death and the Dissolution of a Marriage. Home Burial is written as a dramatic dialogue between a husband and wife, with an…
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“There Was a Child Went Forth”-Whitman. How to Deconstruct.
Also, the poem and this blog. . *** This poem could be a kind of anthem for this blog, which began as…
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“Journey of the Magi.” T.S. Eliot. How to Deconstruct Eliot’s Poem.
*** In Christianity, the Biblical Magi (singular: magus), also known as the Three Wise Men, Three Kings, and Three Magi are distinguished foreigners who visit Jesus after his birth, bearing gifts of gold, frankincense,…
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“Ode to a Grecian Urn.” Keats. How to Deconstruct Keats’s Famous Poem.
With Its Controversial Last Lines. I have avoided blogging this poem because of the controversial last two lines: there is a great…
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Amuse Bouche. Gerard Manley Hopkins.
*** *** Spring and Fall to a young child . Márgarét, áre you gríeving Over Goldengrove unleaving? Leáves like the things of…
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“A Refusal to Mourn…” Dylan Thomas. How to Deconstruct Thomas’s Poem. An Argument against Conventional Elegies.
A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London *** A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire,…
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“Ode: Intimations of Immortality.” Wordsworth. How to Deconstruct. Long.
“from Recollections of Early Childhood“ *** Wordsworth chose to begin Intimations with an epigraph1, a poem he had written previously and which…
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“Sailing to Byzantium.” Yeats. How to Deconstruct This Somewhat Esoteric Poem.
*** The poem is a series of four octets (eight line stanzas), with the rhyme scheme abababcc, in iambic pentameter.1 I That…
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*There’s been a Death.* Emily Dickinson. How to Deconstruct. An Analysis.
*** There’s been a Death consists of six quatrains (4-line stanzas), with a loose rhyme scheme, abcb, and alternating meters of iambic…
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*The Hollow Men.* T.S. Eliot. How to Deconstruct. A World of Despair.
*** Prefatory epigraphs1 to the poem: The Hollow Men was written in 1925, six years after the end of World War I,…
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*I heard a fly buzz.* (591) Emily Dickinson. How to Deconstruct.
*** The poem consists of four quatrains (four-line stanzas) with rhyme scheme abcb, the “b” lines being examples of slant or inexact…
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“Song of Myself,” from “Leaves of Grass.” Whitman. How to Deconstruct Whitman’s Poem to Self and the Universe. Long.
*** From Whitman’s Preface to Leaves of Grass: *** *** Part 1. The first line of Leaves of Grass defines the entire…
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“Of Modern Poetry.” Wallace Stevens. 20th C. How to Deconstruct Stevens’ Poem. A Manifesto of Modern Poetry.
*** The poem of the mind in the act of finding What will suffice. It has not always had To find: the…
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“Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey.” Wordsworth. How to Appreciate One of the Greatest Romantic Poems. (Long)
On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798. English Romanticism (c. 1790–1850) was a literary, artistic, and intellectual…
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“When to the sessions of sweet silent thought.” Shakespeare. How to Deconstruct Shakespeare’s Sonnet 30. Love as Cure for Loss.
Sonnet 30 is a Shakespearean Sonnet in format: 14 lines consisting of 3 quatrains (4-line stanzas) and a couplet (2-line stanza)–though not…
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“To be or not to be.” Shakespeare. Deconstructing Hamlet’s Famous Soliloquy. On the Brink.
*** Context: Act 3, Scene 1: Hamlet is distraught over his father’s death at the hand of his uncle, and his mother’s…
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“Constantly Risking Absurdity.” Ferlinghetti. How to Deconstruct Ferlinghetti’s Poem. Poet as Highwire Artist.
*** Lawrence Ferlinghetti was born in 1919. He was famous as a poet, a publisher of poetry, and a bookseller—he was the…
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“Prologue to Canterbury Tales.” Chaucer. How to Deconstruct Original Version.
In Middle English. The Canterbury Tales is a collection of 24 stories written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and…
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“Spring.” G. M. Hopkins. How to Deconstruct Hopkins’ Poem. Master of Words and Images.
*** Spring is a fourteen line poem in a Petrarchan/Italian Sonnet format of an octet (eight line stanza) and a sestet (six…
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“My Last Duchess.” Robert Browning. How to Deconstruct Browning’s poem. A Master of Monologue. 19th c.
Lucrezia de’ Medici (1545-1561). An example of 16th c. Italian portraiture. *** My Last Duchess is in the form of a monologue,…
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“After great pain.” Dickinson. How to Deconstruct Dickinson’s Poem.
After great pain, a formal feeling comes -(372) *** After great pain, a formal feeling comes – The Nerves sit ceremonious, like…
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Sonnets 63, 64, 65. How to Deconstruct Three of Shakespeare’s Passing of Time Poems.
“Against my love shall be,” When I have seen Time’s fell hand defaced,” “Since brass, nor stone.” *** *** Although not intended…
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“Among School Children.” W. B. Yeats. How to Deconstruct Yeats’s Poem. A Rumination on Aging and the Passage of Time.
*** Since there are autobiographical elements in this poem–civil service, school inspections, elusive lover–I am going to treat the speaker as being…
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“The Caged Skylark.” Gerard Manley Hopkins. How to Deconstruct Hopkins’ Poem.
, The Caged Skylark is a Petrarchan Sonnet in format: 14 lines consisting of 1 octet (8-line stanza) and 1 sestet(6-line stanza), with…
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“West Running Brook.” Robert Frost. How to Interpret Frost’s Moving, Intimate Poem. A Dialogue.
West Running Brook is included in this blog not because it is difficult to interpret, but because it is a wonderfully insightful…
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“Ulysses”: How to Interpret Tennyson’s Poem.
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. . Tennyson’s poem is a contemplative rumination by Ulysses after the Trojan…
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“The Dead.” An Analysis of James Joyce’s Great Short Story.
Often cited as one of the best short stories. James Joyce’s short story, The Dead, is from the collection, Dubliners. It is…
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“Tir’d with all these.” How to Deconstruct Shakespeare’s Sonnet 66.
A poignant, personal lamentation. “for restful death I cry.” For anyone who feels that Shakespeare is some remote poet/playwright, removed from us…
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“Dulce et Decorum Est.” How to Interpret Wilfred Owen’s Powerful Anti-War Poem.
Beauty and Barbarism. . The poetry of war can be paradoxical: horror portrayed through the beauty of expression. One of the most…
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“I felt a Funeral, in my Brain.”: How to Interpret Emily Dickenson’s Poem.
Mental collapse. A profound example of Emily Dickenson’s gift for intensity in poetry, delineating a mental breakdown. *** I felt a Funeral,…
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“The Second Coming.” How to Deconstruct Yeats’s Poem. Apocalypse Now.
Yeats’s poetry can be a challenge: it is often highly allusive and can contain references to Yeats’s personal vision of time and…
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“Th’ expense of spirit in a waste of shame.” How to Deconstruct Shakespeare’s Sonnet 129. The lure of lust.
*** This is, of course, a Shakespearean or Elizabethan Sonnet, 14 lines consisting of three quatrains (4-line stanzas) and a couplet (2-line…
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“That time of year thou mayst in me behold.” How to Deconstruct Shakepeare’s Sonnet 73: Aging.
*** Sonnet 73, That time of year thou mayst in me behold, is one of the first 126 sonnets by Shakeseare which…
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“When, in Disgrace.” How to Deconstruct Shakepeare’s Sonnet 29.
When, in Disgrace is one of the first 126 sonnets by Shakeseare which are usually attributed to a “fair youth,” not a…
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“Huckleberry Finn.” Mark Twain. Exploring Why This Is the Great American Novel.
Mark Twain: A book of mine in which a sound heart & a deformed conscience come into collision & conscience suffers defeat.…
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“A Woman’s Face.” How to View Shakespeare’s Complex “Homoeroticism” – Sonnet 20
(A Botticelli Youth) Readers are often surprised, if not shocked, to learn that Shakespeare’s first 126 sonnets–including some of the most famous…
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“L’Inferno.” A Primer on How to Approach Dante’s “The Divine Comedy.”
Wikipedia: L’Inferno , Italian for Hell, is the first part of the Italian writer Dante Alighieri’s 14th-century narrative poem, The Divine Comedy, L’Inferno followed by Purgatorio and Paradiso.…
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Romeo and Juliet Sonnet. How to Analyze Shakespeare’s Poem. The Look of Love.
It often comes as a surprise to first-time readers of Romeo and Juliet that the play is written in iambic pentameter verse,…
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How to View Roads Not Taken. The Use of Misperceptions in Literature
As humans, we are largely constrained by language in efforts to communicate with one another. Obviously, this is a minefield. Do I…
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“Death of a Salesman.” How to Appreciate Arthur Miller’s Monumental Play. An Analysis.
Death of a Salesman is a 1949 stage play written by the American playwright Arthur Miller. The play premiered on Broadway on February 10, 1949, running for 742 performances.…
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“The Windhover.” How to Deconstruct Gerard Manley Hopkins’ Poem. The Poem as Epiphany. 19thC.
The Windhover is, even for Hopkins, an extraordinary and breathtaking display of wordplay, rhythm, imagery, and extended metaphor. The density of the…
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“Carrion Comfort.” How to Deconstruct Gerard Manley Hopkins’ Poem. Despair as Genius. 19thC.
In another post, How to Deconstruct Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “No worst….” & Commentary: Despair, we introduced the poems known as Hopkins’ “The…
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How to Understand the Perceptual Differences between Neurotypicals(fn) and Autistics.
“O wad some Power the giftie gie us / To see oursels as ithers see us!” For those of us who are…
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“I cannot live with You.” How to Deconstruct Emily Dickinson’s Poem. 19thC. Deeply moving.
There are some aspects of Dickinson’s life with which you may be familiar. She spent most of her life in seclusion in…
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“Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” How to Deconstruct T.S. Eliot’s Great Poem. 20thC.
A Classroom Discussion We are going to close out the seminar with two great poems of the Twentieth Century, one by T.S.…
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“Song of Myself.” Walt Whitman. How to Recognize Key Elements in 19th C. American Poetry.
A Classroom Discussion Walt Whitman is probably the one poet, besides Shakespeare, that you all have heard of. That is a testimony…
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“Ode to a Nightingale,” and others. How to Recognize Key Elements in 19thC. British Poetry. Byron, Shelley, Keats. “She Walks in Beauty.” “Apostrophe to the Ocean.” “Summer and Winter.” “Ozymandias.” “Solitude.”
On to the triumvirate–Byron, Shelley, Keats (that’s only my term, by the way), starting with Byron. She Walks in Beauty She walks…
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“Kubla Khan.” “Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” Coleridge. How to Recognize Key Elements in 19th C. British Poetry.
Coleridge, in addition to being a poet, was a literary critic, philosopher, and theologian. Famous for launching the Romantic Movement, along with…
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“The World Is Too Much with Us.” Wordsworth. How to Recognize Key Elements in 19th C. British Poetry.
A Classroom Discussion After Blake, the Romantic period goes into full swing. It’s an intense, but short life, usually with the dates…
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“The Lamb.” “The Tyger.” “London.” “The Chimney Sweep.” Blake. How to Recognize Key Elements in 18/19thC. British Poetry.
A Classroom Discussion The pendulum is going to swing from reason to emotion once again. From Neo-Classical to Romantic. But there is…
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“Sound and Sense.” Pope. How to Recognize Key Elements in 18th C. British Poetry.
A Classroom Discussion From the Sixteenth Century to the Nineteenth Century we can see a kind of seesawing in conceptions of what…
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“Paradise Lost” and others. Milton. “Out upon it.” “To Althea.” “To Lucasta.” Lovelace, Suckling.” How to Recognize Key Elements in 17th C. British Poetry.
……Lovelace ………………………..Suckling …………………………..Milton *** A Classroom Discussion The Seventeenth Century in England was one of turmoil, in large part due to a…
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“A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning.” “The Flea.” John Donne. How to Recognize Key Elements in 17th C. British Poetry.
John Donne *** We start our survey with the English Poetry of the Seventeenth Century. We could start our study with Shakespeare,…
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Poetry Explained. Clearly! 21-How to Recognize What Works; What Doesn’t
If you have read all or some of the previous nineteen posts, hopefully you now can tell the difference at least between…
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“Ode to a Nightingale.” Keats. How to “Read” Keats’s Sublime Poem. 19th C.
. John Keats was the quintessential “Romantic” (of, characterized by, or suggestive of an idealized view of reality) Poet of the nineteenth century:…
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Poetry Explained. Clearly! 20-How to Easily Recognize Tone
After the prescriptive forms we have examined so far, Tone is much more subjective. It is the poet’s attitude or approach to…
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The Sonnet. Poetry Explained. Clearly! 18-How to Recognize Poetic Forms.
Probably the most familiar of the poetic forms in English is the Sonnet. In Post 4, an informal approach to poetry: 4-stanza, we…
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The Ode. Poetry Explained. Clearly! 17-How to Recognize Poetic Forms.
The Ballad is another form that relies on repeating rhymes and meters, echoing its musical roots in the Old French balade, a…
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Limerick, Haiku, etc. Poetry Explained. Clearly! 16-How to Recognize Poetic Forms.
In addition to meter (or no meter), figures of speech, and imagery, a poet can consider form to enhance their intent. A…
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“Pied Beauty.” Gerard Manley Hopkins. How to Deconstruct Hopkins’s Famous Poem.
*** Classroom Discussion Glory be to God for dappled things — For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; For rose-moles…
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“Orchard.” “Spring.” Imagery. Poetry Explained. Clearly! 14-How to Appreciate Imagery.
The figurative language elements we have discussed so far are more or less tools that poets use to further their intent. They…
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“Nothing Gold Can Stay.” “You’re right.” Allusion Poetry Explained. Clearly! 13-How to Understand Allusions.
Our final rhetorical device is allusion, from Latin, “alludere,” “to sport with,” in poetry an indirect reference to a piece of knowledge exterior…
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“Naming of Parts.” Henry Reed. Irony. Poetry Explained-Clearly! How to Deconstruct Reed’s Satirical Poem.
An eloquent and ironically lyrical contrast of war-machinery and natural beauty forms the content of Henry Reed’s free verse poem, “The Naming…
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“Formal Application.” “Batter My Heart.” Poetry Explained. Clearly! 11-How to Understand Paradox and Irony.
(Note: Sometimes the rhetorical devices examined in these recent posts are more generally referred to in the study of poetry as figures…
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“Ozymandias.” Shelley. How to Deconstruct Shelley’s Great Sonnet. 19thC.
Ozymandias By Percy Bysshe Shelley I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in…
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“Apostrophe to the Ocean.” Poetry Explained. Clearly! 8: How to Recognize Personification, Apostrophe, Hyperbole.
The next three figures are used so frequently in poetry and in everyday speech that we are scarcely aware of them. The…
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“Hope is the thing with feathers.” Dickenson. Poetry Explained. Clearly! 7-How to Understand Simile and Metaphor.
Since language is a way of expressing ourselves, it should not be a surprise that we have developed “tools” by which to…
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“Willy Pennington.” Edgar Lee Masters. Poetry Explained. Clearly! 6-How to Easily Recognize Free Verse.
Around the middle of the 19th century, poets began to feel that poetry is not determined by rhyme and meter, but by…
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“No worst there is none.” Gerard Manley Hopkins. How to Deconstruct Hopkins’ Harrowing Poem. Despair.
In contrast to the glorious and uplifting ending of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem, “The Grandeur of God,”” that was discussed in a…
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Rhyme. Poetry Explained. Clearly! 3-How to Easily Recognize Rhyme.
Classroom Discussion In the Introduction, I talked about the “nuts and bolts of poetry,” that is, the elements that make a poem,…
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“God’s Grandeur.” Gerard Manley Hopkins. How to Deconstruct Hopkins’ Glorious Poem. 20th C.
In three previous posts, Poetry Explained. Clearly! 2-How to Easily Recognize Meter and Scansion. Poetry Explained. Clearly! 3-How to Easily Recognize Rhyme.…
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Stanzas. Poetry Explained. Clearly! 4-How to Easily Recognize Stanzas.
In Poetry Explained. Clearly! 2-How to Easily Recognize Meter and Scansion. we scanned the first four lines of a Dickinson poem and…
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Meter and Scansion. Poetry Explained. Clearly! 2-How to Easily Recognize Meter and Scansion.
In the Introduction, I talked about the “nuts and bolts of poetry,” that is, the elements that make a poem, well, a…
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Poetry Explained. Clearly! 1.2- Introduction/Purpose. How to Better Understand What Makes a Poem a Poem.
Welcome to “Poetry Explained. Clearly!” To collaborate in what we are about to explore together only requires that you care about poetry.…
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Autism. Toward a Better Understanding of Autism, A Spectrum (ASD)
*** A not unusual moment in time. My Mom made me go to a wedding reception. I try to explain to her…
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A Poetry Lesson. Poetry Explained-Clearly! 1.1-Poetry in the Classroom. A Poetry Lesson.
Imagery *** Classroom Discussion This post is a lengthy remembering of an actual lesson I taught in my Poetry class, an advanced…
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Teaching Basics. Exploring an Optimistic View of Teaching Basics
One Person’s Opinion “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.” A common expression that I have been hearing my whole life.…
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Bullying. Toward an Understanding of Bullying. A Message of Hope.
Prey and Predator *** (Note: this is a painful post on a painful subject.) *** I’m short. I’m skinny. I have weak…
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Perception 2. Toward an Understanding of What Makes Us Unique. Profile/Diversity
Hello again. On this blog we will be exploring topics related to personal perceptions (which means, of course, pretty much everything, just…
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Perception 1. Toward a Better Understanding How We Are Transformed.
Welcome. The neurons in the image above symbolize my concept of a blog: two minds in contact, and through that contact effectively…
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