John Donne was the leading enthusiast of a style of poetry known as metaphysical poetry, which flourished in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. This specific type of poetry features elaborate conceits and surprising symbols, wrapped up in original, challenging language structures, w...

Dulce et Decorum Est, by Wilfred Owen, is one of those rare examples of poetry that, although relatively skimpy when it comes to symbolic meaning that probes deeper than the surface of the text, is so wonderfully written that it casts itself far above the status of an ordinary poem. It is not surpr...

THE FORMS OF POETRY Peter Abbs and John Richardson; 1990, Cambridge, CUP I was introduced to this book via its companion volume, The Forms of Narrative, which I was recommended by a teacher at my Phase One teaching practise school; I could just as easily have used this book for this exercise b...

"Thou Art Not Lovelier Than Lilacs" Edna St. Vincent Millay Born in Rockland, Maine in 1892, Edna St. Vincent Millay was one of three sisters, and had been gifted with the talent to write. When growing up she was an avid reader of St. Nicholas magazine, and it was through tha...

The Evolution of the Flightless Bird "How blessed were we, the Village of Stonington and all of us, to have been able to know and love James Ingram Merrill. To have the icon of American literature living here, acting just like one of us, an ordinary citizen, for forty-plus years, while touch...

Paul Laurence Dunbar's Past Had a Lasting Effect on his Future Paul Laurence Dunbar, the son of two former slaves, absorbed his mother's wisdom and stories told by his father. As one of the last of a generation to interact with actual slaves, he was able to use his father's story ...

Hilda Doolittle, more commonly known as H.D., like other modern poets of her time, sought out on the pursuit of unity and deep Truth in her poetry. She was a major skeptic, doubting the world as she knew it and questioning the inherited concepts that she and most others had been taught. Wondering ...

Emily Dickinson Emily Dickinson is considered by many to be one of the greatest American poets of her time. Throughout her career of writing, she produced about 1800 poems and thousands of letters that border on poetry in and of themselves (Kirkby 10). However, Emily Dickinson lived a very private...

World War One Social Commentary War is both a time of triumph and devastation. It is a time that can bring either tears of joy or tears of sorrow to a mother's eyes. War separates the men from the boys and that is why so many teenagers sought to fight for their country. They all fought...