In order to discover the wonders of the ocean, one must dive deep into the vast, blue waters of the sea. Poet Dreamer urges readers to dive into these water. By combining metaphor, imagery, and symbolism, the poet portrays that like the wondrous ocean, everyone has a secret world inside them. Dreame...

The readings "Letter to a Young Poet" by Ranier Maria Rilke and Hermann Hesse's "Siddhartha," do much to advance their readers' understanding of the question "What is the Good Life?" Taken together, they suggest a certain path to attaining the Good Life that is centered around th...

Maya Angelou's poem "Phenomenal Woman" is a response to the abusive events experienced by the writer, which is displayed through the image and tone of the poem. Instead of feeling ashamed and blaming herself, she used the experience as motivation to gain hope. Her poem illustrates the...

I found it difficult to understand most of Walt Whitman's poems as I do to most poems in general. So I narrowed them down to two of the poems that I liked. In the first poem I read, "Song of Myself", Whitman jumps from topic to topic in almost every other line. The poem gave me a problem unde...

"Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town" is a poem written by E.E. Cummings that uses a play with words to show the live of the everyday person in a town. Cummings uses the word anyone to describe a man and the word no one to describe a woman. While writing about the lives of these people in t...

'Hotel Room, Twelfth Floor' is a very thought provoking poem that the poet, Norman Macaig successfully identifies what he believes is wrong with human nature. In this poem the poet describes how he views one of the largest cities in the world, New York. He believes that mans evolution in ...

Racism is a major issue in America. Racism is still present today; even those would not consider himself or herself racist have used some sort of racist remark or gesture. Racism does not only affect a person with more or less melanin, but can also affect people with different religious backgrounds ...

?With the start of the modernization process and the capitalist era, people become alienated and question their existence. Many things which we can describe as "old school" changed with the advance of industrialization and its derivations: the modernization and capitalism. As they advance, the react...

Whereas someone once claimed, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder," famous twentieth century poet, Robert Frost, proved it. Regardless of whether it was "The Road Not Taken," "Home Burial," or "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," it is clear that Robert F...

In his poem "Grass", Carl Sandburg emphasizes the need to remember the people who have died in war for the cause of freedom and chastises those who go about their daily lives taking their freedom for granted. The straightforward statements in the poem portray the author's disappointment of those who...

These two poems, "Children's Camp" by Dorothy Livesay and "Childhood is the Kingdom Where Nobody Dies" by Edna St. Vincent Millay show two very different views of childhood, or adulthood. "Children's Camp" talks about the joys of childhood that are lost as children grow up. Millay's poem does the ...

William Wordsworth, William Blake and Samuel Taylor Coleridge were three of the most important figures in British Romantic poetry in the early 19th century. As much as they all fulfilled the definition of romanticism as individual poets, their poetry contrasted with each other. The ways that each ...

This poem by Robert Louthan is a metaphor in itself, written in blank verse. It is written in a very conversational rhythm, as if talking to the reader. Most of the words used are common enough to be in the vocabulary of a person with an eighth grade education, so the audience is not just the well e...

One need only turn on the evening news to get a sense of the tragic state of world affairs, especially during times of war. Yet even before the invention of television or print photography, war and killing were integral parts of the human social and political experience. Edwin Brock captures a v...

John Milton's "When I consider how my light is spent" chronicles the poet's spiritual journey as well as his struggle with physical blindness. Light conveys a dual meaning in this sonnet: it signifies Milton's eyesight and symbolizes spiritual "light." Moreover, "light" also refers to the poet's ...

Christina Rossetti's sonnet "In an artist's studio" almost seems to describe Renoir paintings, many of which contain the same female face. However, Rossetti's poem is rich with metaphorical undertones that suggest deeper themes of beauty, truth, and illusion. An artist paints the same face over ...

William Wordsworth's romantic worldview is conveyed in "The world is too much with us," a sonnet which expresses Wordsworth's dissatisfaction with materialism. As it is an Italian-style sonnet, "The world is too much with us" contains fourteen lines written in iambic pentameter with an ABBAABBA ...

A monk becomes the brunt of vehement anger in Robert Browning's poem "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister." Using sarcastic remarks and cruel metaphors, the speaker directs his diatribe directly to Brother Lawrence, criticizing him for being impious, lustful, and greedy and comparing him to a swi...

Robert Browning's poem "My Last Duchess" conveys a Duke's feelings toward his deceased wife. The Duke addresses his feelings to her lifelike portrait on the wall, which contains enough of her essence and personality to invoke an emotional response in the speaker. Furthermore, the Duke's reaction...

In Digging we have three characters: the author (the son), his father, and grandfather. The author is clearly making a comparison of his way of life and his fathers' way of life. He talks more about his father and grandfather than he does about himself but his subject is clearly stated that h...

Response to Emily Dickinson, Selections from " The Complete Poems" I found Emily Dickinson to be a wonderful poet. Her way with words is astounding and timeless. To be so full of creative energy to write thousands of poems is almost incomprehensible. Although we covered several poems d...

Literary Essay I have heard some people say Robert Frost's poem "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening" may be about contemplating suicide, perhaps it may simply be about what its title indicates. There is plenty of room to interpret the poem in either way For instance, in the ...

"The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd" by Sir Walter Raleigh, is a reply to the poem written by Christopher Marlowe entitled "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love." These two poems are uniform as well as diverse in several ways. They are written with an invariable writing style, yet they have very dif...

Some psychologists say that we all have a love-hate relationship with our parents. It seems I can relate to this claim very well. I feel like I am in a constant battle with my feelings for my parents. One minute I am happy with them and then in a flash I can become so upset or angry with them. This ...

Since everyone knows that William Blake was Virgina Woolf's son, it should come as no suprise that they share a postmodern sensibility. In Blake's poem, "The Sick Rose," the rose is a symbol for a tree. The worm which infects the rose symbolizes a plague of locusts that comes to kill the rose/tree...