Self-Portrait is a poem published in Yun Dong-ju’s only collection of poetry, The Sky, the Wind, the Stars and Poetry. This collection, published after his death in 1948, includes 12 poems found posthumously as well as 19 poems he had… Read More ›
Month: July 2025
Analysis of Carlos Germán Belli’s Segregation
An early poem, Segregation represents Peruvian Carlos Germán Belli’s role as a nexus among the Latin American avant-gardes, the poetry of social concerns, and his own later, formally complex neoclassical verse. Belli uses short arte menor verses (fewer than eight… Read More ›
Analysis of Stefan George’s Secret Germany
This poem forms the central piece of George’s last volume, Das neue Reich (The Kingdom Come, 1928), and combines the poet’s central themes: autobiographical recollection, a fierce critique of modern society, the invocation of poetic ancestors and heroes, allusions to… Read More ›
Analysis of Aleksandr Blok’s The Scythians
The Scythians is Aleksandr Blok’s last significant poem, composed from and for a particular moment in history. It forms part of the “January Trilogy” of 1918, together with The Twelve and the essay The Intelligentsia and the Revolution. Revolutionary Russia… Read More ›
Analysis of Joyce Mansour’s Screams
Joyce Mansour’s first volume of verse, Cris (inarticulate expressions of pain, rage, or surprise; but also, cris de bataille, battle cries), brought her to the immediate attention of France’s literati—in particular to the attention of male surrealists who found in… Read More ›
Analysis of Tomas Tranströmer’s Schubertiana
Published in 1978, Schubertiana, a poem from Tomas Tranströmer’s eighth volume of poems, Sanningsbarriären (Truth Barriers), explores the ways in which music functions as an antidote to the fragmentation that often defines contemporary life. As typically happens in Tranströmer’s work,… Read More ›
Analysis of Derek Walcott’s The Schooner Flight
This quest poem fuses Derek Walcott’s highly metaphoric style with distinctly Caribbean Creole speech patterns. The narrator, a poet/sailor named Shabine, speaks English Creole, declaring, “Well, when I write / this poem, each phrase go be soaked in salt.” This… Read More ›
Analysis of Else Lasker-Schüler’s Say It Softly
Published in her volume My Miracles, Leise Sagen (“Say It Softly—”) embodies Lasker-Schüler’s greatest expressionist achievements. She combines extraordinary, unconventional imagery with simplicity of form to render love as both spirited frisson and melancholic surrender. The title, along with its… Read More ›
Analysis of Agostinho Neto’s Saturday in the Sand-Slums
This poignant and painful poem, one of Agostinho Neto’s longest, documents in stark detail the conditions of life for poor Africans in the shantytowns surrounding Angola’s capital city, Luanda. The poem Sabado nos musseques expresses the anxieties experienced by the… Read More ›