Recent Posts - page 11
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Analysis of Federico García Lorca’s Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías
Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Mejías, considered Federico García Lorca’s masterpiece, describes the tragic death of Ignacio Sánchez Mejías, a famous bullfighter and García Lorca’s close friend. A professional torero who loved literature and music and wrote poetry, Sánchez Mejías retired… Read More ›
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The Poetry of Arun Kolatkar
Arun Kolatkar is considered one of the most influential writers of India’s post-independence period. A bilingual poet who wrote in English and Marathi, he is most famous for his two early volumes of poetry: Jejuri (1976) in English and Arun… Read More ›
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Analysis of Kōtarō Takamura’s Journey
Kōtarō Takamura’s 1914 book Dōtei (Journey) may be the single most important poetry collection to the development of 20th-century Japanese poetry. In Dōtei, Kōtarō Takamura showed himself to be the first Japanese poet to break effectively with traditional poetic convention…. Read More ›
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Analysis of Andrew Salkey’s Jamaica
Andrew Salkey’s long poem Jamaica bears the subtitle An Epic Poem, Exploring the Historical Foundations of Jamaican Society. Published in 1973, after more than two decades of work, Jamaica sprawls across centuries of Jamaican history and includes a wide range… Read More ›
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Analysis of Karin Boye’s I Want to Meet
I Want To Meet … Armed, upright and shielded in armourI went forth –but from fear was the coat of mail castand from shame. I want to throw down my weapons,sword and shield.All the stark hostilitywas my coldness. I have… Read More ›
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Analysis of Aimé Césaire’s It Is the Courage of Men Which Is Dislocated
In this unrhymed prose poem, Césaire develops the central image of torrential rain and its effects—both destructive and cathartic—on island cultures: “The rain, it’s the testy way here and now to strike out everything that exists, everything / that’s been… Read More ›
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Analysis of Anna de Noailles’s It is After the Moments
This poem by Anna de Noailles, from Les Forces éternelles (1921), explores themes of betrayal, isolation, and renewal. Its persona, or narrative voice, expresses frustration at finding oneself, after an implied moment of intimacy, alone beside a now somnolent lover…. Read More ›
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Analysis of Bernard Binlin Dadié’s I Thank God
This 13-line free-verse poem starts with gratitude, “I thank you, my God, / for having created me black,” and establishes a mood of celebration. The next line, a continuation of the initial thought, creates a startling counterpoint: “for making me… Read More ›
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Analysis of Constantine P. Cavafy’s Ithaka
“Ithaka” is Constantine Cavafy’s best-known poem, having won him his first international acclaim when T. S. Eliot published a translation of it in The Criterion in 1924. One of the few “second-person” poems Cavafy wrote (along with “The City” in… Read More ›
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Analysis of Niyi Osundare’s I Sing of Change
I Sing of Change— Niyi Osundare I singof the beauty of Athenswithout slaves of a world freeof kings and queensand other remnantsof an arbitrary past Of earthwith nosharp northor deep southwithout blind curtainsor iron walls of the endof warlords and… Read More ›
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Analysis of Kamala Das’s An Introduction
Easily the most candid of her self-confessional poems, An Introduction by Kamala Das, while seemingly simplistic, is an attempt to review her life in verse. This poem might well be said to have started a trend among Indian women poets… Read More ›
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Analysis of Constantine P. Cavafy’s In the Month of Athyr
Late antiquity and the Hellenistic era were two of Constantine Cavafy’s favorite historical periods, and he set a considerable number of his poems in them. Situated sometime during the first three centuries of Christianity, In the Month of Athyr (Εν… Read More ›
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Analysis of Anna Akhmatova’s In the Fortieth Year
This 1940 cycle of five poems is included in Poems and Long Poems (Stikhotvoreniya i poemy), published in 1979. The poem’s first appearance in the journal Leningrad (1946) was suppressed swiftly, and the publication led to the poem’s condemnation when… Read More ›
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Analysis of Edith Södergran’s Instinct
Instinct My body is a mystery. As long as the fragile lives you shall feel its power. I shall save the world. Therefore Eros’ blood runs in my lips and Eros’ gold in my tired locks. I need only to… Read More ›
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Analysis of Wisława Szymborska’s In Praise of Self-Deprecation
First published in A Large Number (Wielka liczba) in 1976, Wisława Szymborska’s In Praise of Self-Deprecation has been translated by many poets and has even been given slightly different titles, including In Praise of Feeling Bad about Yourself. It is… Read More ›
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Analysis of Lucian Blaga’s I do not crush the world’s corolla of wonders
I will not crush the world’s corolla of wonders I will not crush the world’s corolla of wonders and I will not kill with reason the mysteries I meet along my way in flowers, eyes, lips, and graves. The light… Read More ›
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Analysis of Andrei Voznesensky’s I Am Goya
“I Am Goya” (“Я – Гойя!”), composed in 1957, first appeared in Andrei Voznesensky’s debut collection, Mozaika (Mosaics), which was published in Vladimir, USSR, in 1960, when the poet was 27 years old. It is reputedly “one of the poet’s… Read More ›
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Analysis of Nazim Hikmet’s Human Landscapes from My Country
Nazim Hikmet’s five-book “epic novel in verse”—some 17,000 lines long—is a major work by Turkey’s most accomplished 20th-century poet. Memleketimden İnsan Manzaraları made a significant contribution to the traditions of the long poem and to the genre of verse committed… Read More ›
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Analysis of Jacques Dupin’s Hooks of the Idyll
Published first in 1967 in Jacques Dupin’s poetry volume Proximité du murmure (The Encroaching Murmur), Agrafes de l’idylle is constituted of slow, breathless, fragmentary sentences. Its title in the original French sounds a radical negation of writing: a cognate of… Read More ›
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Analysis of Buddhadeva Bose’s Hilsa
Buddhadeva Bose’s poetry is characterized by pointed images and a visibly meticulous arrangement of words and lines. What shines through most of Bose’s poems is not spontaneity or even literary pleasure, but the workings of a critical mind. The pleasure… Read More ›
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