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Analysis of Poem Ave Maria by Frank O'Hara
Ave Maria is one of O'Hara's 'movie' poems in which he exhorts the Mothers of America to let their kids go to the movie theater where they may experience the 'darker joys' of life.
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Analysis of George Herbert's Poem Love (III)
"Love (III)" is George Herbert's final short lyrical poem in his book "The Temple". It completes a spiritual exploration of what it is to be a Christian soul needing redemption. Using dialogue and simple language, Herbert creates a memorable scene. God is Love and welcomes all to eat at the table.
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What Is Iambic Pentameter?
Iambic pentameter is a term describing the metre (meter in the U.S.) in the line of any poem or verse drama dialogue written in English. An iamb is a foot, a poetic unit of an unstressed followed by a stressed syllable; five feet measure a pure 10-syllable line.
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Summary of William Shakespeare’s 'The Merchant of Venice'
The Merchant of Venice is a play about business, love, friendship and religious tension. It explores the morality involved in being human when relationships become stressed. It is a comedy but has some serious dialogue that can make us ponder morality.
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How Does Shakespeare Present Marriage in Measure for Measure?
William Shakespeare’s play Measure for Measure, a dark comedy, presents the traditional institution of marriage in an uncertain light, challenging the conventions of his time and posing serious questions that are relevant to today’s audience.
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Poetic Devices Used in John Donne’s 'The Good-Morrow'
John Donne’s ‘The Good Morrow’, a metaphysical love poem of three stanzas, employs several poetic devices that help build a convincing and intriguing exploration of love.
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What Is the Speaker's Attitude in Elizabeth Tollet's Poem 'Winter Song'?
In Tollet's 'Winter Song,' the speaker sets out to prove once and for all that her love will remain steadfast, no matter the circumstances she and her lover face.
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Analysis of Sonnet 11 by William Shakespeare
Sonnet 11 combines gentle persuasion with mild natural philosophy to try and convince the fair youth that he should have a child to preserve wisdom, beauty and increase. Nature has given him a bounteous gift so he should not waste time, but should as Nature's seal (her authentic symbol) print more.
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Shakespeare's Sonnet 10 Full Analysis
Sonnet 10 reveals for the first time a personal love-bond between the speaker and the fair youth. There's the usual harsh reproach but also a sincere plea for change, the speaker addressing the shameful attitude of the young man to love, life, marriage and having children to secure future beauty.
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Analysis of Sonnet 9 by William Shakespeare
Sonnet 9 directly challenges the fair youth to have children before he dies. One of Shakespeare's procreative sonnets (1-17), this is a powerful (almost painful) plea urging marriage, to set aside fear, suggesting lack of love for others and the world. A single question starts the quest for closure.
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Analysis of Poem Sonnet 8 by William Shakespeare
Sonnet 8, a procreation sonnet, uses musicality to highlight the discordant outcome for the fair youth should he remain single and not commit to life with harmony as a family man. Metaphor and personification help enhance the idea that solo means nothing, is bad, whilst togetherness is good.
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Analysis of Poem Sonnet 7 by William Shakespeare
Shakespeare's sonnet 7 urges the fair youth to produce a son to keep his beauty alive. This direct plea comes in the final couplet following twelve lines that relate metaphorically the rising and setting sun to the fortune of the fair youth.
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Analysis of Poem Sonnet 6 by William Shakespeare
Sonnet 6 pairs with sonnet 5 in further persuasion of the fair youth to procreate and so preserve his beauty. Distillation carries on, the essence kept in a vial, a vessel for futurity.
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Analysis of Sonnet 5 by William Shakespeare
Sonnet 5 (paired with Sonnet 6) focuses on the theme of time and its tyrannical effect on the seasons, turning summer into hideous winter. But though beauty can be lost, it, like the flower's distilled essence, can also survive and prevail.
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Summary and Analysis of Sonnet 4 by William Shakespeare
Shakespeare's sonnet 4 is addressed to the fair youth and clearly implores him not to waste his beauty but share it with others. Ideally through having children. Using the language of commodity and economics, the narrator asks four basic questions related to selfishness, goodness, abuse and fate.
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Analysis of Poem "America" by Richard Blanco
Richard Blanco's "America" focuses on cultural identity, family and traditional foods served at the table. Five stanzas in free verse explore the notion of what it is to be an American citizen having been brought up in a Hispanic culture.
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Analysis of Poem 'The Fly' by William Blake
'The Fly' is one of Blake's poems from 'Songs of Innocence and Experience', a book for both adults and children. Simple in structure, the tone is thoughtful and philosophical, and the reader has to decide if the fly is alive or dead, the speaker innocent or guilty.
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Analysis of Poem 'Philemon and Baucis' by Thom Gunn
In 'Philemon and Baucis', Gunn explores the loving relationship of two poor peasants who, having shown visiting gods Jupiter and Mercury great hospitality, request to be changed into trees as they die. The rest of the inhospitable township is drowned by flood.
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Poem Analysis: 'Immigrants in Our Own Land' by Jimmy Santiago Baca
'Immigrants in Our Own Land' focuses on identity and the hopes and dreams of Chicanos (Americans of Mexican descent) and mestizos (mixed-race Mexicans) who are 'living without a soul' in prison and society. Jimmy Santiago Baca based his poem on personal experience, an example of Pinto poetry.
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Poem Analysis: 'A Mother in a Refugee Camp' by Chinua Achebe
Chinua Achebe's 'A Mother in a Refugee Camp' focuses on the sad plight of a mother having to bury her son, carefully combing his hair before letting go of her loved one. Based on personal observations during the civil war between Biafra and Nigeria, the poem is a universal message to humanity.
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Analysis of Poem 'I think of thee' (Sonnet 29) by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
'I think of thee' is Sonnet 29 in 'Sonnets from the Portuguese', Barrett Browning's groundbreaking sonnets in Petrarchan form which follow her emotional changes in her relationship with Robert Browning. Metaphor and simile combine, as tree and vine, thoughts disappearing as the two become closer.
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Poem Analysis: 'Remains' by Simon Armitage
Armitage's colloquial dramatic monologue highlights the death of a looter, shot by a soldier, and the speaker is still affected by the incident. 'Remains' takes the reader into the soldier's mind, repeating, altering, questioning the act.
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Analysis of Poem 'The Man He Killed' by Thomas Hardy
Hardy's 'The Man He Killed' is a short, rhyming poem focusing on an ordinary man returned from war who killed another because 'he was my foe.' Without war, they may have been friends. This monologue raises questions of emotional responses to and moral implications of cold acts of killing in war.
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Analysis of Poem 'The Pulley' by George Herbert
George Herbert's metaphysical poem uses a conceit or extended metaphor, and synecdoche, to explore the relationship between God and humankind. We're drawn back to God eventually because of the burden of living, as one pulley rope lifts our weight. True spiritual rest, a jewel, God does not bestow.
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Analysis of Poem "Ceasefire" by Michael Longley
Ceasefire uses Homer's Iliad to reflect on responses to the Troubles in Northern Ireland (1960s -1998), Longley's birthplace.
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Analysis of Poem "Dusting" by Rita Dove
"Dusting" is a poem of memory and emotional cleansing. Get a deeper explanation of the themes and meaning.
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Poem Analysis: 'Naming Myself' by Barbara Kingsolver
Barbara Kingsolver's 'Naming Myself' focuses on identity, race, rights and heritage, all tied up in the family name. The poem highlights an incident in her family's history where her grandfather left a privileged home to marry a Cherokee woman. He had to change his name and reinvent himself.
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Analysis of Poem 'The Horses' by Edwin Muir
'The Horses' is Edwin Muir's post-apocalyptic poem where human and horse meet up again to begin life anew. The seven-day war is over, machines defunct, there is work to be done and the horses, symbols of spirit, have come to ignite fresh hope. Free verse narrative, simple language, profound story.
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Analysis of Poem 'Landscape with the Fall of Icarus' by William Carlos Williams
Short lines in short stanzas reflect the fall of the son who went too far. Williams based his poem on a 16th-century painting by Brueghel which depicts the mythological Icarus drowning in the sea whilst sailors, a shepherd, fisherman and farmer carry on life as normal. It's an example of ecphrasis.
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Analysis of Poem "Porphyria's Lover" by Robert Browning
'Porphyria's Lover' is a chilling dramatic monologue detailing the murder of a lover by a heartbroken and unstable partner. Read on to learn all about the poem!
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Analysis of "They shut me up in Prose" (F445A) by Emily Dickinson
"They shut me up in Prose" is another of Emily Dickinson's 'protest' poems, where in three short stanzas, she outlines why it is futile to put her in a closet as if she were a little girl. Her lively brain, like a bird, will continue creating poetry. No prose, no subservience for this genius.
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Analysis of Poem "i carry your heart with me (i carry it in" by E.E. Cummings
A full analysis and summary of "i carry your heart with me (i carry it in," a love sonnet from E.E.Cummings that is full of traditional love but also off the beaten track.
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Analysis of Poem "The Gift" by Li-Young Lee
Li-Young Lee's "The Gift" is an atmospheric poem that focuses on the relationship a child has with his father by contrasting two similar scenarios from his life.
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How to Help Your ESL/EFL Students Become Fluent in English
Becoming fluent in English is the goal of many ESL/EFL students. This article is based on the lessons I held in a TEFL class for mature students in Leeds, UK, and the one-to-one tutorials I guided in the Netherlands. Useful tips are provided throughout.
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Analysis of Poem "Directive" by Robert Frost
"Directive" by Robert Frost is hthe poet's "grail" poem—a single stanza that invites the reader on a journey into the work and life of the poet.
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Poem Analysis: 'Kubla Khan' by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
'Kubla Khan' is Coleridge's opium-inspired poem, full of exotic imagery and romantic symbolism. The poem essentially explores human will and poetic imagination, what can be achieved in nature and what can be imagined. Creative dream, remembered song, unusual rhyme scheme and structure.
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Analysis of Poem "Mock Orange" by Louise Glück
"Mock Orange" is Louise Glück's short, intense feminist poem that focuses on the effects of the love act between men and women. The mock orange plant mimics the real orange and becomes a metaphor for the falseness of sex, which the speaker hates because it is linked to the physical power of men.
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Analysis of Poem "Mont Blanc" by Percy Bysshe Shelley
"Mont Blanc" is Shelley's philosophical poem where he explores the idea that the human mind is part of the great flow of things, passive yet imaginatively aware of the awesome teaching power of nature. The atheist romantic uses metaphor and vivid imagery to bring platonic form as a faithful guide.
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Poem Analysis: 'The Highwayman' by Alfred Noyes
'The Highwayman' is a rhyming ballad telling of the romance, death and ghostly return of a gallant highwayman and a landlord's beautiful daughter Bess, idealised outsiders against the state. Betrayed by Tim, a jealous stableman, Bess sacrifices herself for her outlaw lover; he is shot by soldiers.
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Analysis of Poem 'Diving into the Wreck' by Adrienne Rich
'Diving into the Wreck' is Adrienne Rich's poem on women's rights and self-discovery. Using metaphor and imagery, the poet takes the reader down to the wreck, a symbol of the historical relationship between men and women.
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Analysis of Poem 'Sonnet 135' by William Shakespeare
'Sonnet 135,' Shakespeare's punning poem, plays on the words Will and will. Addressed to the Dark Lady, it is a sexually charged plea from a demanding lover.
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Analysis of Poem 'West-Running Brook' by Robert Frost
'West-Running Brook' takes the form of a dialogue between husband and wife, observing the movement of the brook as it flows west, contrarily. Frost uses metaphor in philosophy, exploring the relationships between individual reality and nature, consciousness and love, within time, truth and process.
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Poem Analysis: "Love Calls Us to the Things of This World" by Richard Wilbur
Whitewashing on a line billowing in the wind becomes a band of angels dancing. Wilbur's poem takes the reader from the mundane to the spiritual, the soul back down into the body, the free verse form allowing the metaphor to take off, the language bringing moments of dark tension and washed beauty.
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Analysis of Poem 'Half-Past Two' by U.A. Fanthorpe
U.A. Fanthorpe's 'Half-Past Two' focuses on a schoolboy's perception of time and routine after being detained by the teacher for doing something wrong. Using personification, poetic devices and compound words, Fanthorpe stretches out the boy's experience of isolation into the realm of fairy tales.
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Analysis of Poem 'In the Bazaars of Hyderabad' by Sarojini Naidu
Sarojini Naidu's 'In the Bazaars of Hyderabad' is a lyrical question-and-answer poem using iambic beat and full rhyme to develop an unusual, exotic atmosphere. This marketplace comes alive as the speaker meets different people, from merchants to flower-girls, all busy selling, creating and weaving.
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Analysis of "Trees" by Joyce Kilmer
Joyce Kilmer's "Trees" is a short, rhyming, romantic, and religious poem. It is one of the most popular, being well-known in the English-speaking world since it was published in 1913. Iambic pentameter, personification, full rhyme, and a certain child-like charm bordering on the sentimental.
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Analysis of Poem 'Wintering' by Sylvia Plath
'Wintering' is one of five poems in the Bee Sequence Sylvia Plath wrote shortly before her death. Vivid imagery and unique descriptive language combine as winter sets in and the bees slow down. Plath further explores identity and power, the will to survive, as the spirit wanes and spring inspires.
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Analysis of Poem 'The Bee Meeting' by Sylvia Plath
Written a few months before her tragic death, 'The Bee Meeting' is the first of five Bee Poems Sylvia Plath wrote focusing on mind, body and spirit. It explores the idea of vulnerability, fertility, identity and power.
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Analysis of Poem 'Easter 1916' by William Butler Yeats
'Easter 1916' focuses on the Easter Rising in Dublin, Ireland, when the Proclamation of the Republic was read by Patrick Pearse. W.B. Yeats's rhyming four-stanza poem is contradictory, yet ends up as a memorial.
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Analysis of Poem 'With Child' by Genevieve Taggard
Genevieve Taggard's 'With Child' focuses on pregnancy and the mother's feelings toward her baby growing inside. Based on her experiences, the contrast between the physical challenge and the emotional reaction is handled neatly.
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Analysis of Poem "That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection" by Gerard Manley Hopkins
This poem is an unusual sonnet created by Hopkins to express his Christian faith in the apocalyptic return of Christ. Using the Heraclitean theory of nature, always in flux, ever-changing, as a contrast to the fixed idea of cleansing and an afterlife.
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Poem Analysis: 'A Hot Noon in Malabar' by Kamala Das
'A Hot Noon in Malabar' focuses on alienation, identity and emotional longing. A poem of two halves reflecting the split in the mind of the speaker, far away from her family home, the place of good memories. Her present situation is dark and full of strangers on such a hot noon.
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Poem Analysis 'The Universe as Primal Scream' by Tracy K. Smith
'The Universe as Primal Scream' explores the emotional reaction we have when we hear children scream and cry. As humans, we're grounded in reality, yet what is our role in the bigger scheme of things? Are we insignificant? Are we helpless victims?
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Analysis of Poem 'Soonest Mended' by John Ashbery
'Soonest Mended' explores alienation, the process of fitting in and adjusting to society. Ashbery's poem questions, answers and evaluates how to stay true to oneself.
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An Analysis of "In Your Mind" by Carol Ann Duffy
"In Your Mind" is a poem that explores memory and imagination through the speaker's daydream. Someone is either bored at their work desk or consciously escaping their current situation by imagining another country. Using the impersonal pronoun "you," Duffy creates a slightly surreal detached tone.
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Summary and Analysis of 'Sonnet 59' by William Shakespeare
Shakespeare's 'Sonnet 59' explores the idea that beauty as newly embodied in 'the fair youth' stands the test of time. The speaker wants to know if his new feelings are valid by looking back through 500 courses of the sun. Based on a biblical text, 'there is no new thing under the sun.'
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Analysis of Poem 'Sonnet 19: When I Consider How My Light Is Spent' by John Milton
'When I Consider How My Light Is Spent' focuses on spiritual and creative strength and man's relationship with God. John Milton, totally blind by the spring of 1652, learns of accepted patience.
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Analysis of the Poem "Mother to Son" by Langston Hughes
"Mother to Son" is a short poem, monologue and extended metaphor. Life is a series of steps you have to keep climbing and never stop. This advice for life is given to a son by his mother.
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Poem Analysis: "The Tyger" by William Blake
William Blake's "The Tyger" is a metaphorical poem from his book "Songs of Innocence and Experience," also illustrated with his own inventive etchings. This article will explore a line-by-line explanation and summary of "The Tyger."
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Poem Analysis: 'Telephone Conversation' by Wole Soyinka
Wole Soyinka's 'Telephone Conversation' has racism as its main theme. Here's a stanza-by-stanza analysis of the influential poem.
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Poem Analysis: "Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes" by Billy Collins
Billy Collins' "Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes" is a controversial poem. It splits opinions, disgusting some, puzzling others and entertaining the rest. A free verse poem and an extended metaphor, it explores the idea of getting to know the deceased poet's work on an intimate level.
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Analysis of Poem 'Bridal Ballad' by Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe's 'Bridal Ballad' is a dark, romantic poem that focuses on a bride's inner feelings about her new marriage and her dead former lover who was killed in battle.
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An Analysis of the Poem "The Layers" by Stanley Kunitz
Stanley Kunitz's "The Layers" is a poem about change and being positive in life despite losses and setbacks. It is full of imagery and metaphor and has a meditative tone.
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A Summary and Analysis of the Poem "Bright Star" by John Keats
"Bright Star" is a sonnet written by Keats expressing his wish to remain as constant and 'stedfast' as the north star whilst also being in the company of Fanny Brawne, the love of his short life. The main themes are ideal love and remaining fixed yet in sweet unrest living forever with a lover.
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Analysis of Poem "Sonnet 3" by William Shakespeare
A summary and analysis of Shakespeare's "Sonnet 3," which focuses on the Fair Youth's beauty and the need for him to procreate and have a child in his own image.
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Analysis of the Poem "My Grandmother's House" by Kamala Das
"My Grandmother's House" is a short poem that focuses on love lost and drastic changes in circumstances. The first-person speaker tells of days past when she was loved in a different time and house, but now she is a beggar for love. It is a free verse poem with simile and internal rhyme.
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Analysis of Emily Dickinson's Poem "Further in Summer than the Birds"
Emily Dickinson's "Further in Summer than the Birds" focuses on nature—birds and insects specifically—and relates the latter to religious singing and ritual. She often does this to the natural world, finding a heaven on earth. Using tetrameter and trimeter, her words form a highly symbolic world.
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'The Bright Lights of Sarajevo' by Tony Harrison Poem Analysis
One of Harrison's Bosnian War poems, 'The Bright Lights of Sarajevo' highlights a pair of young lovers in that city under Serb attack. Written from the front line as sniper bullets and bombs killed and maimed.
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Analysis of Elizabeth Bishop's Poem 'Sleeping Standing Up'
'Sleeping Standing Up' is one of Elizabeth Bishop's dream poems, where she blurs the line between reality and the subconscious with metaphor, strong imagery and regular rhyme.
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Analysis of the Poem 'Night Sweat' by Robert Lowell
Lowell's 'Night Sweat' is a double sonnet with full rhyme and pentameter. A man faces angst and near anguish as he tries to come to grips with his inner child and get to the bottom of the creeping damp which rises over his white pajamas. Relief comes from his wife and child, love and a tidy room.
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Analysis of Poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" by Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevens meditates on the blackbird with a 13-part poem that invites the reader to look at the bird in different situations and altered states of mind. Is the world the same if the bird does different things? Stevens's imagination works its magic. It's nature poetry, but not as we know it.
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Analysis of Poem "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain" by Emily Dickinson
"I felt a Funeral, in my Brain" is one of Emily Dickinson's most popular poems. It's full of vivid, sometimes surreal imagery and takes the reader into dark and strange places. This is no ordinary funeral but a process of psychic transformation. Is this based on grief, guilt and sacrifice?
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Analysis of Poem "Lover's Infiniteness" by John Donne
"Lover's Infiniteness" explores in three stanzas the idea that, as humans, we are capable of giving all our love to another. Is it possible to completely love someone else, give and receive all, and sacrifice all for love's sake? Donne's arguments bring reason, emotion and the spiritual into play.
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Analysis of the Poem 'Since There's No Help' by Michael Drayton
Michael Drayton's Sonnet 61 from 'Idea's Mirror,' 'Since There's No Help,' focuses on the idea that a relationship can be ended with a clean, unemotional break, a shake of the hands and a kiss, and hey presto, no more pain and heartbreak.
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An Analysis of the Poem "Not Waving but Drowning" by Stevie Smith
Stevie Smith's best-known poem, "Not Waving but Drowning," focuses on society's conventions and the individual's isolation. Read on for a full poetic analysis of this work of art.
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Analysis of the Poem "To the Desert" by Benjamin Alire Saenz
"To the Desert" is a short free-verse poem using metaphor and allusion to highlight the spiritual quest undertaken by the speaker.
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Analysis of the Poem "As I Walked Out One Evening" by W. H. Auden
"As I Walked Out One Evening" is Auden's rhyming ballad about time, love and mortality. With allusions to a nursery rhyme, song and fairy tale, this poem also has vivid and sometimes surreal imagery.
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Analysis of "Love and Friendship" by Emily Brontë
Emily Brontë's "Love and Friendship" uses metaphor and simile to compare and contrast romantic love, the rose, and steady friendship, the holly. Love is something passionate and exciting but can fade, whereas friendship is more stable and evergreen, able to withstand seasonal changes.
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Analysis and Summary of "Ode on Melancholy" by John Keats
"Ode On Melancholy" is the shortest of the five odes Keats wrote. In it, the speaker warns of the dangers of melancholy and advises against going to Lethe (giving in to death or even suicide) but to accept that joy, pleasure and sadness are an integral part of a profound and deep-seated beauty.
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Analysis of Poem "Ode: Intimations of Immortality From Recollections of Early Childhood" by William Wordsworth
Wordsworth's "Ode Intimations of Immortality" focuses on an ideal childhood in which freshness and celestial light gave all things a blissful quality. The speaker, older and philosophic, explores the changes since the halcyon days, how the glory and the dream have gone, but truths that wake remain.
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Poem Analysis: "Friend" by Hone Tuwhare
Hone Tuwhare's "Friend" is a free-verse poem that details a memory of friendship between two children who played close to a symbolic tree. But the speaker, an adult, isn't so sure that those times were idyllic.
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Poem Analysis: "The Planners" by Boey Kim Cheng
This analysis and summary of Boey Kim Cheng's "The Planners" focuses on urban development and planning models. The rapid increase in building has erased history. Nature is on the run. Metaphor, personification, and irony add unease.
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Analysis of the Poem "Wants" by Philip Larkin
Larkin's short poem "Wants" is a sort of personal manifesto reflecting the poet's shyness and need to escape from the social scene, physical and sexual intimacy and life itself. There is existential angst in the parallelism as the poet explores individual exclusion versus social inclusion.
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Analysis of the Poem "Bogland" by Seamus Heaney
Heaney's "Bogland" focuses on Irish identity, history and the metaphorical—the peat bog as a depository and preserver of the past, including the Giant Irish Elk and butter. With layered tension and textured language, Heaney takes the reader in and down into the quiet, dangerous heart of his country.
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Analysis of the Poem "I Heard a Fly Buzz" by Emily Dickinson
One of Emily Dickinson's many poems about death takes the reader into the mind of someone dying or already dead yet able to communicate somehow. Unusual syntax, short, breathless phrasing, dashes galore and that suspension of reality Dickinson is so good at evoking. Ambiguous, rhyming, lyrical.
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Poem Analysis: 'Meeting at Night' by Robert Browning
Browning's 'Meeting at Night' is a short, compact, mysterious love poem, a sensual mini-drama full of rhyme and rhythm reflecting the waves of the sea and the relationship between lovers. Contrasts are strong, imagery highly visual, the movement within sensual—autobiographical or dream fiction?
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Holy Sonnet 10: John Donne’s “Death, be not proud” Analysis
"Death, be not proud" is one of John Donne's Holy Sonnets (10) or Divine Poems. Here, we analyze the sonnet line-by-line.
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Analysis of "Camouflaging the Chimera" by Yousef Komunyakaa
Yousef Komunyakaa's "Camouflaging the Chimera" focuses on the Vietnam War, the poet drawing on his own experiences as a reporter. With powerful imagery, short stanzas and gripping language, this poem is about how soldiers blend in with nature as they get set to spring an ambush on the Viet Cong.
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"Astrophil and Stella Sonnet 31" by Sir Philip Sidney
An analysis of Sir Philip Sidney's "Astrophil and Stella Sonnet 31." Using figurative language and rhetorical questioning, Sidney reveals the frustrated inner world of Astrophil, yearning for Stella's love.
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Poem Analysis: 'An Unknown Girl' by Moniza Alvi
Moniza Alvi's 'An Unknown Girl' focuses on identity. A girl in an Indian bazaar draws a henna peacock on the speaker's hand. For a few rupees, the speaker can gain new brown veins. But soon the design fades, and with it her identity.
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Analysis of Poem 'Once Upon a Time' by Gabriel Okara
This article offers a full analysis and summary of Gabriel Okara's 'Once Upon a Time', looking at how Western culture undermined African culture. A father tells his son how people once were genuine and honest and how he wants to relearn how to laugh, like his innocent son.
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Analysis of Poem 'My Skeleton' by Jane Hirshfield
Jane Hirshfield's 'My Skeleton' poem is an ode to the skeleton, that bony structure we humans cannot do without. The speaker addresses her bones and likens them to a mother holding a baby.
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Analysis of Poem 'Home Burial' by Robert Frost
Robert Frost's 'Home Burial' is a dramatic poem focusing on the reaction of a mother and father to the death of their young son. The subsequent burial carried out by the father causes friction between the parents and they cannot come to terms with the grief. Based on Frost's real-life loss of a son.
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Analysis of Poem 'Mowing' by Robert Frost
Robert Frost's sonnet 'Mowing' focuses on mowing grass with a scythe and how naturally working the land is rewarding. Imagery, metaphor and full rhyme combine, producing a classic Frost poem.
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Poem Analysis: 'Morning Song' by Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath's poem 'Morning Song' is from her book 'Ariel' and focuses on the female reaction to motherhood. Simile, metaphor and vivid imagery take the reader through the highs and lows of caring for a baby.
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Analysis of Poem 'Time's Fool' by Ruth Pitter
Ruth Pitter's 'Time's Fool is an eloquent rhyming poem that focuses on time and sense of place. The speaker compares the natural world with the domestic and the material with the spiritual, concluding that happiness is not reliant on excess but a shared sense of home and reasonable need.
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Analysis of the Poem 'Sonnet 154' by William Shakespeare
Shakespeare's 'Sonnet 154,' the final sonnet in the sequence, repeats the theme of 'Sonnet 153' and explores the erotic intensity set up between the Dark Lady, the fair youth and the poet. An expanded epigram, 'Sonnet 154' uses Latinised mythological Cupid and Diana in a classical scene.
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Analysis of the Poem 'Farmhand' by James K. Baxter
James K. Baxter's 'Farmhand' poem portrays a young farm worker who lacks social skills yet cannot suppress his instincts. Through it, Baxter explores what it is to be human.
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Poem Analysis: 'Waking in the Blue' by Robert Lowell
Robert Lowell's confessional poem 'Waking in the Blue' is about his time spent in the hospital being treated for manic attacks. It employs dark humor, observational detail, and cultural commentary in a conversational style.
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Analysis of the Poem 'Pike' by Ted Hughes
'Pike' is one of Ted Hughes's best-known animal poems. Brilliant imagery and insightful language make this a powerful tribute to what is, according to some, the freshwater shark.
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Analysis of the Poem 'Hunting Snake' by Judith Wright
Judith Wright's 'Hunting Snake' poem celebrates nature and innocence lost. It focuses on a snake pursuing its prey and the reaction of the witnesses, two people out walking.
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Analysis of the Poem 'The Waste Land' by T.S. Eliot
A summary and full analysis line by line of T.S. Eliot's 'The Waste Land,' one of the most influential modern poems. Inspired by the Grail legend, it is full of religion, occult symbolism and mythology.
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Analysis of the Poem 'Of Politics, & Art' by Norman Dubie
Norman Dubie's 'Of Politics, & Art' focuses on a childhood schoolroom scene from the past, a dying teacher and Herman Melville's book 'Moby Dick'. Dubie creates a dynamic atmosphere with a tragic story and vivid imagery, giving the reader much food for thought.
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Analysis of the Poem "How We Made a New Art on Old Ground" by Eavan Boland
Eavan Boland's "How We Made a New Art On Old Ground" explores the idea that new expressive language (a nature poem) can restore peace to the environment where a historic, violent battle took place. It's a meditation on two histories: human and natural. Art and language can heal and renew.
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Analysis of the Poem 'The Man With Night Sweats' by Thom Gunn
Thom Gunn's 'The Man With Night Sweats' is a powerful poem about a gay man dying of AIDS, which hit the gay community in a big way in the 1980s. Thom Gunn lost many friends. One of 17 elegies this poem is a sensitive and carefully handled exploration of what it is to face pain and inevitable demise.
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Poem Analysis: 'A Farewell' by William Wordsworth
'A Farewell' is Wordsworth's romantic poem about the garden at Dove Cottage, the home he shared with his sister. He left it to pick up his future wife, but he eventually returned. Nature's beauty and inspiration is the main theme.
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Poem Analysis: Sonnet 141 by William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare's Sonnet 141 focuses on the struggle between head and heart. Eight lines describe the mistress's imperfections and six lines explain why she is the cause of his sin, agony, and wretched being.
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Poem Analysis: 'War Photographer' by Carol Ann Duffy
Carol Ann Duffy's poem 'War Photographer' takes you into the mind of a person paid to capture images of human suffering. It wrestles with the moral ambiguity of being a passive witness to war.
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Analysis of Poem 'The Arrival of the Bee Box' by Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath's poem 'The Arrival of the Bee Box' is one of five bee poems she wrote focusing on identity, creativity and control. Plath searches for her true poetic self and her womanhood using metaphor and powerful imagery. Reality fuses with a dream-like narrative.
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Analysis of Poem 'Legal Alien' by Pat Mora
Pat Mora's 'Legal Alien' explores the tensions that exist for many Mexican Americans legally living in the USA but who aren't American citizens. They are caught between the two cultures but are also judged bilaterally. Speaking and writing both languages, their true identity is in question.
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Analysis of Poem "Ulysses" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
"Ulysses," a blank verse dramatic monologue, is Tennyson's poem of hope, positivity and inspiration. After losing his best friend, Arthur Hallam, who died suddenly whilst travelling, Tennyson wrote "Ulysses" in an attempt to regain his own life. To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
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Poem Analysis: "I Am Waiting" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
"I Am Waiting" is Ferlinghetti's poem of a hopeful "rebirth of wonder" for the USA and the world. The speaker, in limbo, waits for a different outcome with respect to war, peace, religion, God and a Grecian Urn.
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Analysis of 'Nothing's Changed' by Tatamkhulu Afrika
'Nothing's Changed' is a poem that burns with frustration and anger. A man goes back to District 6 in Cape Town, South Africa, and concludes that the blacks are still oppressed and poor despite the end of apartheid, a brutal system segregating whites and blacks.
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Poem Analysis: 'Childhood' by Frances Cornford
Frances Cornford's short poem 'Childhood' focuses on the thoughts of an adult looking back on an event which changed things for them as a child. With full rhyme and mostly iambic pentametre, it neatly sums up what it is to learn a life lesson about the old and being young.
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Poem Analysis: 'Climbing My Grandfather' (Andrew Waterhouse)
'Climbing My Grandfather' is an extended metaphor focusing on a young boy who 'climbs' his grandfather, a mountain of a man. Full of detail and climbing language, this single-stanza poem reflects the awe, wonder and risk a boy takes getting to know his grandfather.
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Analysis of Poem "Ruins of a Great House" by Derek Walcott
"Ruins of a Great House" is Walcott's poem on colonialism, power and decay. History, slavery and the English language combine to reveal a complex, ambivalent relationship between the speaker and the system that brought both cruelty and culture into the lives of once-free people of the Caribbean.
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Analysis of Poem "Spring and All" by William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams wrote "Spring and All" to back up his radical theory of poetics—basically the poem as a field of action—in which the here and now of things is portrayed through the imagination, written in the American grain. Life experience refreshed, impressions being the form.
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Analysis of Poem 'Death of a Naturalist' by Seamus Heaney
'Death of a Naturalist' is a blank verse poem that looks back on childhood, contrasting a boy's innocence with that of disillusionment in the perception of nature. The death is metaphorical: the boy loses his love of nature when fear invades his mind because of the menacing frogs 'cocked on sods'.
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Poem Analysis: "Sailing to Byzantium" by W.B.Yeats
"Sailing to Byzantium," in ottava rima form, is a symbolic spiritual search for Yeats, who was obsessed with Byzantium art and culture at a later age. It's a mix of the personal and the mythical.
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Analysis of the Poem "Praise Song for My Mother" by Grace Nichols
Grace Nichol's "Praise Song For My Mother" is a traditional African poem, usually spoken, to celebrate the lives of family members and elders. Full of symbolism and vivid imagery, it is a fitting tribute to an impressive mother.
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Analysis of Poem 'Tissue' by Imtiaz Dharker
Imtiaz Dharker's 'Tissue' focuses on the fragile life we humans lead, how our lives are stories written down on paper, lived within buildings made of paper; ultimately, we live in our skin, which is nothing but tissue. With religious allusion, metaphor and ambiguity, 'Tissue' alters things.
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Analysis of Poem 'Fra Lippo Lippi' by Robert Browning
Robert Browning's 'Fra Lippo Lippi' is a dramatic monologue in blank verse that focuses on the question of art—should it be realistic or ideal? Of the flesh or of the soul? A dilemma for Florentine painter and monk 'poor brother Lippo' whose down-to-earth voice brings 15th-century Florence to life.
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Analysis of Poem "Sunday Morning" by Wallace Stevens
"Sunday Morning," a poem in blank verse, focuses on the idea that traditional religious faith in the old gods has gone and needs to be replaced by a fresh new natural paganism. Stevens explores human belief in his own inimitable way. Vivid imagery, exotic language; where do truth and beauty reside?
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Poem Analysis: "The Soul selects her own Society" by Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson's "The Soul selects her own Society" is a short poem that focuses on selective inner needs and spiritual isolation. One of several poems featuring the soul—the poet's search for understanding and identity, with short lines, dashes, slant rhyme and mixed metaphor.
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Analysis of 'Sonnet 27' by William Shakespeare
Shakespeare's 'Sonnet 27' focuses on the mental anguish of the speaker who wants to sleep but cannot stop thinking of his lover. This sonnet concentrates on restlessness, obsession and the passions that emerge despite physical fatigue. The speaker's eyes are closed, yet the mental journey continues.
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Analysis of Poem 'Among School Children' by W.B. Yeats
W.B. Yeats as a 60-year-old official Irish senator in a schoolroom full of children has to redefine his outlook on love, labour and life. The poem explores how to reconcile past and present, love and pain, body and soul.
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Analysis of Poem 'the shoelace' by Charles Bukowski
'The shoelace' is Bukowski's real-life take on what can drive a man into the madhouse. Forget God, death, suicide and love; a mere shoelace snapping can do it. Tongue-in-cheek, packed with trivia, sharp, comic and crude observation, this poem is a rant, a riot, and a weird homage to small tragedies.
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Analysis of the Poem "The Writer" by Richard Wilbur
Wilbur's poem "The Writer" is an extended metaphor neatly combining a trapped bird and boat to figuratively show the writer's journey. The writer happens to be his daughter, who is busily tapping away on a typewriter as he listens knowingly. The struggle to create can be a life-or-death situation.
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Analysis of the Poem 'Punishment' by Seamus Heaney
Heaney's 'Punishment' poem explores the violent nature of human tribal revenge, comparing a young Iron Age body found in a peat bog with that of the 'betraying sisters' of the modern era in Northern Ireland.
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Analysis of the Poem 'The Good-Morrow' by John Donne
Donne's love poem, an aubade, contains a metaphysical conceit, an argument, and a figure of speech involving the imaginative use of unusual metaphor. 'The Good-Morrow' is about the unity of love, two hemispheres forming one globe, the speaker waking up wondering what the lovers did 'till we loved?'
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Poem Analysis: "Lady Lazarus" by Sylvia Plath
"Lady Lazarus," Sylvia Plath's regeneration poem, is an intense dramatic monologue that creates a myth of suicide, the need to die in order to be reborn. Beyond confessional, it is self-parody, art exhibition, and a naked tease.
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Analysis of Poem 'Exposure' by Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen's poem 'Exposure' explores the trauma and suffering soldiers experienced on a WW1 battlefield within 24 hours. Using personification, metaphor and pararhyme within a cyclic, repetitive structure, Owen creates a powerful atmosphere that challenges war propaganda and civilian ignorance.
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Analysis of the Poem "To a Skylark" by Percy Bysshe Shelley
"To a Skylark" praises the song and spirit of the lark as it rises from the ground and soars heavenward. Fine romantic lyrics explore the gap between humans and nature.
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Analysis of "Valentine" by Carol Ann Duffy
"Valentine" is an alternative love poem that explores the idea of love through metaphor and structure. No sugar-coated Valentine's gift from this speaker; an onion is preferred. An onion repels but is like the moon and has many layers. It also makes you cry. A poem of truth and pain.
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Analysis of the Poem "Thistles" by Ted Hughes
A short, sharp poem that likens thistles to warriors rooted in the soil where old Vikings lie. In free verse, Hughes' poem uses personification, simile and figurative language to portray thistles as weapons fighting on the battleground that is nature. Blood, violence, regeneration—typical Hughes.
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Analysis of the Poem 'Ode On A Grecian Urn' by John Keats
One of Keats' five odes, 'Ode On A Grecian Urn' explores the idea of beauty as truth through Keats' own 'negative capability' and the strength of the imagination. Pictures on an ancient urn inspire the speaker to question the transient nature of human happiness and love. Art endures but also teases.
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Poem Analysis: 'Variations on the Word Love' by Margaret Atwood
'Variations on the Word Love' is Margaret Atwood's two-stanza poem contrasting impersonal and personal expressions of love. Love has been exploited for commercial gain by the media and business; it has become a mere commodity. Love is wonder and pain. And falling in love still happens. Or does it?
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Analysis of "Mexicans Begin Jogging" by Gary Soto
Gary Soto's "Mexicans Begin Jogging" is an ironic poem that highlights the plight of Mexicans trying to make a living in the United States of America.
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Analysis of "Storm Fear" by Robert Frost
"Storm Fear" is a short poem using metaphor and strong imagery to explore mental isolation and the energy of a natural storm. But Frost's ambiguity means that the storm could represent something else: divine power? The human struggle against depression, fate, inner turmoil. Who is in control?
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Poem Analysis: 'Storm on the Island' by Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney's 'Storm on the Island' is a monologue poem in blank verse. The speaker describes how life is shaped by the storm, and how the architecture withstands such forces.
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Analysis of Poem "Out, Out—" by Robert Frost
Frost's poem "Out, Out—" is about life and death on a rural farm. In an idyllic setting, a young boy is working a buzz saw, but a fateful accident brings about his sad demise. Is his death insignificant? Who is responsible? Blank verse, deep imagery.
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Analysis of the Poem 'The Snow Man' by Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevens's 'The Snow Man' is a short poem that delights and puzzles, and 'resists the intelligence'. The setting is a bleak landscape of snow and evergreens; it's January, the speaker is thinking about the way ice and snow form on trees. He himself is nothing; he's the mind of winter.
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Poem Analysis: 'Sonnet 20' by William Shakespeare
Shakespeare's radical 'Sonnet 20' explores the sexuality of the fair youth, real or imagined, who has strong feminine characteristics but was made for women's pleasure. It's a unique sonnet with 14 lines of feminine endings. Here is the master mistress, a woman in a man's body, a transgender?
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Poem Analysis: 'The Emigree' by Carol Rumens
Carol Rumens' 'The Emigree' is a thoughtful poem about displacement and being forced to leave one's home country due to conflict. The speaker has fond memories of her country despite the reality of tyrants and war.
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Poem Analysis: 'Howl' by Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg's 'Howl' is an evocative poem in three parts: emotional, sexual, and religious, with social themes. 'Howl' inspired Bob Dylan, broke the rules and began the Beat revolution.
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Analysis of the Poem 'Blessing' by Imtiaz Dharker
'Blessing' is Imtiaz Dharker's short poem on the theme of water and poverty. It is a snapshot of life in the city slum, where children gather round a burst pipe as if it's a god. Simile, metaphor, personification and vivid imagery combine to produce a sensual poem highlighting how crucial water is.
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Analysis of the Poem 'Journey of the Magi' by T.S. Eliot
Full analysis and summary of T.S. Eliot's 'Journey of the Magi', a reflective, dramatic monologue that utilizes allusions, symbols and metaphors to produce a poem about birth, death, and spiritual and cultural renewal. There is no star, no mention of a Christ child.
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Analysis of the Poem 'The Death of Allegory' by Billy Collins
'The Death of Allegory' is a thoughtful free verse poem in which the speaker wonders about Renaissance allegory in the arts. Where have Truth, Chastity, Death gone? Allegory is symbolism sustained in a text or image. Billy Collins uses irony and modern objects and ideas to relate past and present.
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Analysis of Poem 'I, Too' by Langston Hughes
Hughes's poem 'I, Too' gives voice to the people so long treated as second-class citizens in their own country. Using metaphor within free verse, Hughes focuses on the rights of a speaker denied a seat at the table.
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Analysis of the Poem 'As Imperceptibly As Grief' by Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson's 'As Imperceptibly As Grief' is a subtle and melancholic study of summer passing, as a metaphor for life fading away. With varied meter, personification, full rhyme and slant rhyme, the language reflects the day ending. Seasons pass, and life transitions. Sad but beautiful.
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Poem Analysis: 'Dust of Snow' by Robert Frost
An analysis of Robert Frost's poem 'Dust of Snow.' A crow in a tree sends snow particles down onto the unhappy speaker. Frost uses ambiguous stressed keywords, rhyme, enjambment and symbolism.
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Poem Analysis: 'Byzantium' by W.B. Yeats
Full analysis and summary of 'Byzantium,' Yeats' great mystical poem. This poem's theme is that of the creative human soul and the spiritual struggle for purification. Based in Yeats's dream city Byzantium, where divine art, golden imagery and symbols create a unity of being.
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Analysis of Robert Pinsky's "Poem About People"
Robert Pinsky's "Poem About People" uses allusion and cultural shifts to focus on the self and what it means to be human. It begins simply with people watching, then moves on to societal issues and the idea of love and hate. All of this is filtered through the speaker's roaming mind.
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Analysis of the Poem "Testimonial" by Rita Dove
Rita Dove's "Testimonial" is a free-verse poem about learning, innocence, discovery, and responsibility. "The world called, and I answered" is a famous line that suggests there is a need for a positive response by all of us. By becoming conscious of the world, the speaker becomes self-aware.
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Analysis of the Poem 'So This Is Nebraska' by Ted Kooser
'So This Is Nebraska' is a finely tuned drive through a familiar home state on a warm summer's day. With keen description, personification and metaphor, the poem takes the reader into desolate farmland where a pickup truck reads clouds, mice and chickens rule, and time stands still.
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An Analysis of Poem "The Flea" by John Donne
John Donne's "The Flea" is an erotic metaphysical poem employing a conceit or extended argument. The male speaker wants to make love to a woman who resists. The lead role is the humble flea, which sucks the speaker first, then the woman. Their blood is mingled in the flea, a symbol of sexual union.
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An Analysis of William Carlos Williams' Poem "Pastoral"
"The Little Sparrows" (also titled "Pastoral") is a short poem set on a local American street. Sparrows, where an old man, dog dirt, a minister, and a pulpit are all compared. It's a thought-provoking study that deals with the tensions between real life and ideal thoughts. Short lines rule.
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Poem Analysis: 'Immigrant' by Fleur Adcock
Fleur Adcock's 'Immigrant' poem is a short, subtle exploration of how it feels to have a double identity. With measured lines of free verse, she uses birds and places as symbols to allow the reader access to her adopted world. The speaker is learning to live like a native, to be accepted.
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Poem Analysis: 'Considering the Snail' by Thom Gunn
Thom Gunn's 'Considering the Snail' is a close-up study of a determined snail as it moves through wet grass. The form of the poem mirrors the movement of the snail; enjambment and fluid rhythms take the reader along at a slow, sensual pace. A short exploration of willpower and progress.
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Analysis of Poem "Love's Philosophy" by Percy Bysshe Shelley
Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem is a simple yet profound plea to a young female for a kiss, for physical union. The speaker turns to nature to persuade her, where things mix and mingle naturally. Using personification, metaphor and pulsing rhythm, Shelley puts forward his dubious argument
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Analysis of Poem "Patrolling Barnegat" by Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman's "Patrolling Barnegat" uses long, driven lines to conjure up the spirit of a storm on the beach at Barnegat. A poem full of repeated, disturbing energy, the dynamic language takes the reader along headfirst into the elements. Someone else is out there; a patrol? Whitman's complex past?
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Analysis of Poem 'What Were They Like?' by Denise Levertov
Denise Levertov's protest poem has two parts. The first stanza asks six questions, and the second stanza answers them. The theme is war and the loss of a people and culture. When the USA became involved in the Vietnam War, many challenged the tactics and the loss of life.
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Poem Analysis: "My Last Duchess" by Robert Browning
Robert Browning's dramatic monologue is all about power and the psychology of possession. The curiously disturbing Duke of Ferrara, who is telling lies, or truths, to an emissary of the next family he will marry into, comments on his last duchess, now a painting on the wall. A satire on the elite?
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Analysis of the Poem "Island Man" by Grace Nichols
"Island Man" is a poem about cultural identity and explores the mind of a Caribbean man waking up in London. He still dreams of his life on the island of his birth. Grace Nichols uses metaphor, enjambment, and other poetic devices to juxtapose dull city life with ideal island life.
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Poem Analysis: 'The Peace of Wild Things' by Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry's short poem 'The Peace of Wild Things' sums up the human need for time spent in nature, away from stress, headline news and anxieties about the future. The main theme, that of human nature versus nature, is explored through allusion and simple language relating to stillness and calm.
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Analysis of Poem 'Gathering Leaves' by Robert Frost
Robert Frost's 'Gathering Leaves' is more than just an innocent poem about fallen autumn leaves. It questions the cycle of life and our role within it. Short quatrains with rhyme add up to an intriguing poem.
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Analysis of Poem 'Blackberry-Picking' by Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney's 'Blackberry-Picking' is all about childhood ideals versus adult realities and the passage of time. The first stanza outlines the joy of picking, that lust for the juicy fruit, whilst the second stanza contrasts the fate of the berries, their inevitable decay and loss of goodness.
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Analysis of Poem 'The Nails' by W.S. Merwin
W.S. Merwin's breakup poem combines vivid imagery, metaphor and unusual simile. The speaker seems caught between confusion and mental anguish and is attempting to work out just what went wrong. The repeated line, 'It isn't as simple as that', reflects the complex workings of the heart.
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Analysis of Poem 'She Walks in Beauty' by George Gordon, Lord Byron
'She Walks In Beauty' is a lyric poem by the archetypal romantic, Lord Byron. With full rhyme, alliteration and simile, written in iambic tetrameter, it explores the feelings of a speaker inspired by female beauty. Is beauty based on inner purity and goodness alone or a mix of light and dark?
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Analysis of 'Sonnet 130' by William Shakespeare
Shakespeare breaks with convention and creates a parody of tired Petrarchan ideals. His lover has wires for hairs, her lips are not red as coral, her breasts are dingy brown and her breath reeks. Praise beauty? Not in 'Sonnet 130'. Yet his love for her runs deeper?
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Analysis of "Presents From My Aunts in Pakistan" by Moniza Alvi
A poem about cultural identity and the confused feelings of a teenage girl who receives presents from her relatives in Pakistan. Moniza Alvi's poem is full of colour and detail and is a personal exploration of her feelings at that time. Metaphor, simile and contrasting language enliven this poem.
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Lineation: A Guide to the Line Break in Poetry
Line breaks are a fundamental aspect of poetry and can play a part in meaning, sound, rhythm and syntax. Knowing where and why a line has to be short or long can help both reader and poet. This guide to lineation gives many examples and explains the basics of enjambment, caesura and end stops.
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Analysis of Sonnet "When I have Fears" by John Keats
'When I have Fears that I may Cease To Be' is a sonnet by romantic John Keats. The speaker is fearful of the nothingness that awaits him before he's had time to fulfill his potential as a poet and lover and gain fame. Iambic pentameter dominates. Full end rhyme, metaphor and other literary devices.
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Analysis of Poem 'Saint Animal' by Chase Twichell
This article will provide a full analysis of 'Saint Animal', a poem inspired by Chase Twichell's study of Zen Buddhism. Through her poetry she seeks to understand the inner workings of the natural world and her own place within the greater scheme of things.
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Analysis of Poem 'Monet Refuses the Operation' by Lisel Mueller
Monet refused to have surgery on his cataracts when he was older. He argued for imaginative perception as opposed to scientific correction. Lisel Mueller captures the essence of the artist's vision in a free verse single stanza. Powerful imagery.
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Analysis of Poem 'Cozy Apologia' by Rita Dove
'Cozy Apologia' is Rita Dove's ironic take on a romantic relationship with her husband Fred. The speaker waits for a hurricane to hit and starts to daydream about her love and past acquaintances. Lyrical, fun and touching, this poem is a monologue on intimacy and time well spent.
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Poem Analysis: 'The Latin Deli: An Ars Poetica' by Judith Ortiz Cofer
'The Latin Deli: An Ars Poetica' focuses on latino/a American immigrants and the issue of homesickness. Using metaphor and other literary devices, Judith Ortiz Cofer explores the nature of cultural assimilation through the eyes of a shopkeeper. The emphasis is on food and poetical lists of items.
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Analysis of Poem "Stings" by Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath's free-verse poem "Stings" is one of five in her Bee Sequence, written during her break up with fellow poet Ted Hughes. Using powerful imagery focused on the hive, a metaphor for society, the poet explores her own identity in relation to the fated Queen Bee.
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Analysis of Poem "Filling Station" by Elizabeth Bishop
The poem begins with a critical outburst of disgust at the dirty little filling station but ends in relief and love, a sort of redemption being reached. With day-to-day language, keen observation and an eye for detail, the speaker absorbs the working scene, declaring a sense of wonder.
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Analysis of Poem 'At the Bomb Testing Site' by William Stafford
'At the Bomb Testing Site' is an anti-war poem that has no mention of war or politics. Instead, it focuses on a lizard and builds quiet suspense as this cold-blooded creature prepares for what could be an atomic blast.
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Shakespeare’s "Sonnet 15": Line-by-Line Analysis
"Sonnet 15" is one of Shakespeare’s most popular sonnets. This article examines the poem’s exploration of time vs. decay line-by-line.
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Analysis of Poem 'Two Scavengers in a Truck, Two Beautiful People in a Mercedes' by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Ferlinghetti's 'Two Scavengers in a Truck' is an immediate snapshot of a scene in San Francisco, where garbage men look down on a wealthy couple in their Mercedes at a red stoplight.
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Poem Analysis: 'maggie and milly and molly and may' by E.E. Cummings
'Maggie and milly and molly and may' is a short poem by E.E. Cummings. Full of varied rhythm and rhyme, it tells the story of four girls who go to the beach, each one relating to an object or creature they discover.
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Poem Analysis: 'Wild Peaches' by Elinor Wylie
Elinor Wylie's 'Wild Peaches' is a series of four traditional rhyming sonnets that convey the dreamy mind of the speaker as she contemplates escaping an upside-down world with her male companion. But is she convinced that a good life can be had out in the wilds? Musical lines carry subtle imagery.
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Poem Analysis: 'Plenty' by Isobel Dixon
Isobel Dixon's 'Plenty' is a poem that contrasts childhood past with adult present, poverty with comfort. Simile, hyperbole and assonance help make this a moving poem about family memories and love.
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Poem Analysis: 'Pretty' by Stevie Smith
Stevie Smith's ironic poem 'Pretty' uses strong imagery, unusual syntax and repeated language to question what it means for humans to think nature pretty.
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An Analysis of the Poem "Fire and Ice" by Robert Frost
Frost's "Fire and Ice" could have been inspired by "Dante's Inferno," Canto 32, wherein a fiery hell sinners are up to their necks in a lake of ice. Desire or hate?
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Analysis of Poem "The Trees," by Adrienne Rich
"The Trees," by Adrienne Rich, is about freedom. Using metaphor, simile, personification, and imagery, Rich creates double worlds, exploring the nature of change.
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Analysis of Poem 'The Song of the Old Mother' by W.B. Yeats
'The Song of the Old Mother' is a short, lyrical poem by Yeats, written during his Celtic Twilight years and is based on his love for Irish culture. With full rhyme and steady beat, it is also full of symbolism: the old mother, a metaphor for Ireland. It's musical and romantic.
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Poem Analysis: 'Mossbawn: Sunlight' by Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney's 'Mossbawn: Sunlight' is a dedicatory poem to his aunt Mary. With metaphor, assonance and rich language, the poem oozes love and evokes Heaney's childhood while also highlighting the present.
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Poem Analysis: 'This Room' by Imtiaz Dharker
'This Room' is an extended metaphor in free verse and contains personification, onomatopoeia and alliteration. The poem's theme is personal growth and reaching for the light when life is dark and unpredictable.
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Poem Analysis: 'Forgetfulness' by Billy Collins
'Forgetfulness', by Billy Collins, focuses on the gradual loss of memory we all experience. Using personification, metaphor and other figurative devices, the poem illustrates forgetfulness with wit, charm and comic elements.
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Analysis of the Poem 'Hawk Roosting' by Ted Hughes
'Hawk Roosting' is a powerful poem that focuses on a hawk as it sits overlooking its domain. Ted Hughes gives the hawk a human mind, personifies it, and explores the raptor's reason for existence. Contains raw, savage language. Some think the theme is political dominance, the hawk being a fascist.
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Analysis of Poem 'Love After Love' by Derek Walcott
Derek Walcott's 'Love After Love' focuses on loving the inner self, healing oneself following relationship breakdown. With metaphor, strong imagery and religious allusion the poem's speaker instructs the reader in the art of self-love. What change there can be when we accept the stranger needs love.
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Poem Analysis 'Indian Boarding School: The Runaways' by Louise Erdrich
Louise Erdrich's poem is based on the experiences of many Indian children who were taken from their tribal homes and 'educated' in boarding schools. They were not allowed to speak their native language, grow long hair or make contact with family. A poem about identity, roots and state oppression.
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Analysis of Poem 'Wild Nights' by Emily Dickinson
Erotic fantasy or religious experience? Emily Dickinson was known as the virgin recluse but 'Wild Nights' suggests that her passions ran deep and her yearnings for release were genuine enough. A poem about a liaison with God or a relationship with someone she knew? It's ambiguous and metaphorical.
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Analysis of Poem 'Prayer Before Birth' by Louis MacNiece
'Prayer Before Birth' is a poem Louis MacNeice wrote during World War Two. He was living in London, and German rocket bombs were landing. The speaker in the poem is an unborn child destined to be born into a violent, disturbed world. It's a powerful monologue addressed to God and humanity.
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Analysis of the Poem 'The Blue Bowl' by Jane Kenyon
A short, poignant poem from Jane Kenyon, 'The Blue Bowl' is about the burial of a cat and the emotional reaction to the world following the loss of a beloved pet. A poem to meditate on in the quiet, away from the bustling restlessness of modern life.
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Analysis of the Poem 'Litany' by Billy Collins
A poem written to flatter a loved one, a list of 'you are' lines that stretches to metaphorical overload. 'Litany' is tongue-in-cheek work from Billy Collins, an exercise in and parody of anaphora.
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Analysis of the Poem 'The Applicant' by Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath's satirical and sharp take on the social conventions that condition people to the 'market' that is marriage. Women are viewed as a product, objectified by men in stiff black suits.