Recent Posts - page 12
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Analysis of Rolf Dieter Brinkmann’s Mourning on the Washing-Line in January
This poem from his best-known collection, written shortly before his death in 1975, depicts “a / freshly washed pair of / black tights” hanging on a wire “between two / bare trees.” The poem exemplifies many of Rolf Dieter Brinkmann’s… Read More ›
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Modernism and Poetry
Modernism, poetry and the term modernism, with or without capitalization, has inspired a vast literature of definition, commentary, and contentious discussion. Nuanced, scholarly distinctions dividing proto- or early modernism from high modernism and from spin-offs like Anglo-American modernism fill library… Read More ›
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Analysis of Ivan Lalić’s Mnemosyne: An Ode to Memory
The consequence of history—erasure—is a common theme in Ivan Lalić’s oeuvre. But instead of wallowing in what is lost, he focuses on the remains, which most often take the form of memory. As such, it is fitting that of all… Read More ›
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Analysis of Adonis’s A Mirror to Khalida
This poem is made up of five movements, each with a subtitle. It was published in 1968 in the collection Al-Masrah wa’l-Maraya (Theater and Mirrors), in which the poet attempts polyphonic lyricism. Adonis has always been preoccupied with the relationship… Read More ›
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Analysis of René Char’s The Meteor of August 13th
In several respects Le Météore du 13 août is typical of char’s work, particularly of the collection Furor and Mystery, in which it appeared in 1947. In general terms, the poem is a series of images that must be understood… Read More ›
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Analysis of Nicanor Parra’s Memories of Youth
Although Nicanor Parra characterizes his later works as “ecopoetry” (see Ecopoetics), his first volumes belong to an earlier movement, which he termed “antipoetry.” While the title of Parra’s second volume (Poemas y antipoemas) announced Parra’s new concept of the antipoem… Read More ›
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Analysis of Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill’s Marvellous Grass
Marvellous Grass There you were in your purple vestments half-way through the Mass, an ordained priest under your linen alb and chasuble and stole: and when you saw my face in the crowd for Holy Communion the consecrated host fell… Read More ›
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Analysis of Anja Utler’s marsyas, encircled
The long poem marsyas, umkreist (marsyas, encircled) from Anja Utler’s volume münden—entzüngeln (merging—untonguing, 2004) evokes and reinvents a mythological protagonist’s execution by gradual skinning. According to classical Greek mythology, the satyr and flute player Marsyas challenges the god Apollo to… Read More ›
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Analysis of César Vallejo’s A Man Walks by with a Loaf of Bread on His Shoulder
At a time when the arts in European capitals tended toward “art for art’s sake,” not realism or social concern, César Vallejo delineated the paradox of conscientious intellectuals whose life of the mind involves metaphysical concerns, while their daily lives… Read More ›
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Analysis of Thomas Kling’s Manhattan Mouthspace Two
During an unpublished conversation in Cologne, Germany, in 2003, two years before his premature death, Thomas Kling, who had visited New York City briefly a decade before and who planned to visit the United States for a series of poetry… Read More ›
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Analysis of Carlos Drummond de Andrade’s Looking for Poetry
In Looking for Poetry, from A rosa do povo (Rose of the People, 1945), Carlos Drummond de Andrade investigates the writing process through a succession of negations. As the title suggests, patience and the ability to respect poetry’s caprices are… Read More ›
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Analysis of José Emilio Pacheco’s A Linear Equation with This Single Unknown Quantity
This poem from José Emilio Pacheco’s volume Los trabajos del mar (The Labors of the Sea, 1978–83) describes urban pollution. Mexico City has only one river that has not been turned into a sewer and covered by concrete. That river,… Read More ›
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Analysis of Louis Aragon’s The Lilacs and the Roses
Louis Aragon’s collection Le Crève-cœur (Heartbreak, 1941) contains 22 poems written between October 1939 and October 1940, the last nine of which express the heartbreak caused by the calamity of the German invasion of France and the subsequent occupation. The… Read More ›
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Analysis of Juana de Ibarbourou’s Life-Hook
“Life-Hook” (“Vida-garfio”), called “Clinging to Life” in another translation, from Juana de Ibarbourou’s first poetry collection, Las lenguas de diamante (1919), shows themes and modes of expression that recur in her popular early work. The playful, almost flirtatious attitude of… Read More ›
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Analysis of Shushanik Kurghinian’s Let Us Unite
One of Kurghinian’s famous poems calling women to solidarity in their struggle against oppression, Let Us Unite was first published in the volume Ringing of the Dawn. In this poem, Kurghinian tries to raise women’s self-consciousness to defy the patriarchal… Read More ›
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Analysis of Léopold Sédar Senghor’s Letter to a Poet
Published in his first collection of poetry, Chants d’ombre (Songs of Darkness or Shadow Songs), “Letter to a Poet” is a short praise poem by Léopold Sédar Senghor to Martinican poet and statesman Aimé Césaire, to whom the piece is… Read More ›
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Analysis of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet
Many readers have called Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet life-altering, and many writers of all ages have felt as moved as the original recipient must have been by reading these letters. The 10 letters have been called… Read More ›
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Mahmoud Darwish’s Lesson from the KamaSutra
Mahmoud Darwish’s poetry partakes of different cultural and mythological traditions. We find in his poems allusions to seminal texts from ancient Greece, Mesopotamia, pre-Islamic Arabia, Persia, and India. In this poem, the title is taken from an Indian classic on… Read More ›
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Analysis of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Leda
Leda And when the god possessed the swan, from need, and found it beautiful, that terrified him. Wholly shocked, he disappeared inside it, but his trickery drove him toward his deed before he could explore what that life must have… Read More ›
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Analysis of Edoardo Sanguineti’s Last Walk
This poem by Edoardo Sanguineti was originally published as part of the proceedings of a conference in 1982 devoted to the Italian poet Giovanni Pascoli, one of the founders of modern Italian poetry, known for his innovative and musical verses… Read More ›
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