Author Archives
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Analysis of Bob Kaufman’s Poems
As presented in Bob Kaufman’s (April 18, 1925 – January 12, 1986) Solitudes Crowded with Loneliness, “Abomunist Manifesto” is a sequence of eleven parts. The title plays on The Communist Manifesto (1850) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, but in… Read More ›
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Analysis of Anselm Hollo’s Poems
Anselm Hollo’s (12 April 1934 – 29 January 2013) poetry has a light and airy appearance, with short and sometimes abrupt lines of verse arranged sparingly on the page. While spare, the poems often demonstrate remarkable depth, and while often… Read More ›
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Analysis of Thom Gunn’s Poems
Thom Gunn (29 August 1929 – 25 April 2004) first achieved notoriety in England, as part of what was called the Movement, an unofficial tag applied to some poets of the 1950’s who were, in Gunn’s words, “eschewing Modernism, and… Read More ›
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Analysis of Jack Gilbert’s Poems
Jack Gilbert lived outside literary circles, often abroad, in solitude or in the company of a woman whom he loved. He found these conditions necessary to be able to concentrate on being alive and to discover the fresh perceptions that… Read More ›
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Analysis of Allen Ginsberg’s Poems
“Howl,” the poem that carried Allen Ginsberg (June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) into public consciousness as a symbol of the avant-garde artist and as the designer of a verse style for a postwar generation seeking its own voice,… Read More ›
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Analysis of Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s Poems
Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s (born March 24, 1919) poetry may be looked on as a kind of travelog in which he has subjectively recorded choice experiences or montages from experience, often in a jazzlike or free-associative manner. For Ferlinghetti, “reality” itself becomes… Read More ›
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Analysis of Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago
Considered by many the greatest Russian novel of the 20th century, Boris Pasternak’s (1890-1960) Doctor Zhivago is certainly the most famous fictional treatment of the defining moments of modern Russian history at the outset of the 20th century, inviting a… Read More ›
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Analysis of V. S. Naipaul’s A Bend in the River
A Bend in the River is V. S. Naipaul’s (17 August 1932 – 11 August 2018) masterwork of displacement and dispossession, a summary statement from a distinguished writing career documenting what John Updike has called “one of the contemporary world’s… Read More ›
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Analysis of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard
It is, as a rule, when a critic does not wish to commit himself or to trouble himself, that he refers to atmosphere. And, given time, something might be said in greater detail of the causes which produced this atmosphere—the… Read More ›
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Analysis of Euripides’ Medea
When Medea, commonly regarded as Euripides’ masterpiece, was first per-formed at Athens’s Great Dionysia, Euripides was awarded the third (and last) prize, behind Sophocles and Euphorion. It is not difficult to understand why. Euripides violates its audience’s most cherished gender… Read More ›
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Analysis of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde
Written between 1381 and 1386, Troilus is regarded by some as Chaucer’s finest work; Pearsall implies that Chaucer himself treated it as such, ‘quite self consciously and deliberately’ (Pearsall 1992: 170) and indeed Chaucer makes large claims for it in… Read More ›
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Analysis of Alexander Pope’s Imitations of Horace
The Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot offers an autobiographical image of the platform from which the critique of society in Epistles to Several Persons is launched; but in his poetry of the 1730s Pope increasingly utilised the Roman satirist Horace as… Read More ›
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Analysis of John Milton’s Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost is a poetic rewriting of the book of Genesis. It tells the story of the fall of Satan and his compatriots, the creation of man, and, most significantly, of man’s act of disobedience and its consequences: paradise was… Read More ›
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Analysis of Robert Duncan’s Poems
Of the many metaphors that Robert Duncan (January 7, 1919 – February 3, 1988) applied to his poetry—and very few poets have been so perceptive and articulate about their own practice—those dealing with limits, boundaries, and margins are numerous and… Read More ›
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Analysis of Diane di Prima’s Poems
Diane di Prima’s (born August 6, 1934) poetry falls into two clearly distinguished chronological and thematic categories. Her works from 1957 to 1975 are suffused with the idiom of the Beat generation, the language of the hipster and personal rebellion…. Read More ›
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Analysis of Gregory Corso’s Poems
Two strains pervade the poetry of Gregory Corso (March 26, 1930 – January 17, 2001): the Dionysian force of emotion and spontaneity, and a preoccupation with death. From Corso’s early poems to his later work, one finds the recurring persona… Read More ›
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Analysis of Charles Bukowski’s Poems
Living on the periphery of society, Charles Bukowski (August 16, 1920 – March 9, 1994) forged a brutally honest poetic voice. The futility and senselessness of most human endeavor conjoined with the desperation and essential solitude of the individual are… Read More ›
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Analysis of Richard Brautigan’s Poems
Richard Brautigan’s (January 30, 1935 – ca. September 16, 1984) poems are usually brief, often humorous, sometimes childlike in their innocence, and decidedly antipoetic. Much of his poetry sounds like prose, in the same way that the prose of his… Read More ›
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Analysis of Paul Blackburn’s Poems
Because Paul Blackburn (November 24, 1926 – September 13, 1971) is a poet of immediate observation and spontaneous response, his poetry thrives on particular places. His work, however, is not rooted in a specific geographical location that is transformed into… Read More ›
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Imagism in Poetry
Imagism is a term associated with an eclectic group of English and American poets working between 1912 and 1917, among them some of the most important writers in English of the first half of the 20th century: Ezra Pound, Amy… Read More ›
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