Analysis of We Wear the Mask by Paul Laurence Dunbar

We Wear the Mask 

By Paul Laurence Dunbar 

We wear the mask that grins and lies,

It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—

This debt we pay to human guile;

With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,

And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over-wise,

In counting all our tears and sighs?

Nay, let them only see us, while

       We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries

To thee from tortured souls arise.

We sing, but oh the clay is vile

Beneath our feet, and long the mile;

But let the world dream otherwise,

       We wear the mask!

This poem is by the black poet Paul Laurence Dunbar who lived from 1876 to 1906.  His parents were slaves and he became internationally famous for his poetry which was often written in black dialect.  

He begins with the idea of wearing a mask.  The first line begins with alliteration in we wears, and goes on to say that the mask they wear are grins and lies.   The we isn't given but it can assumed to be black folk of the time given the context of the writer and the times.  The next line says it hides their cheeks and shades their eyes.  Here there's a deliberate invocation of a hidden persona behind a mask.  The poem goes on to say that the mask is worn with guile, and it's to guile that it's owed.   But behind the mask their hearts are bleeding, but their still smiling.  Somehow this mask is the face itself which they hide behind as they smile.   The fifth line is alliterative with mouth and myriad, and the conveyance of the mask is understood not just to be in facial expressions and gestures, but also in the myriad of subtleties the people behind the mask voice. 

The next stanza asks the question of why should the world be overly concerned about the tears and sighs of those wearing the mask.  It's a question given without an answer.  It could be resentment from those wearing the mask at the rest of the world seeing them in sorrow.  It could be the need to hide the pain of holding a lesser status before well-meaning but ignorant observers.  It could be both and more.  But the poet goes on to say that their observers should only see them while they wear the mask.

The next line reinforces the Christian piety of the narrative by pleading to  Christ about the truth of their disposition.   Saying outright that their pleas arise from tortured souls.   The narrative continues on to say that they keep the mask up while singing, but that the ground beneath their feet is odious and that their lives are dreary with the allusion of walking miles.   Still the narrative reiterates the idea that the mask is worn, despite all the hardship, and that the world sees those who wear the mask other than as they are. 

The last line of the last stanza follows the last line of the second stanza in the chorus of We wear the mask!

Analysis of There will Come Soft Rain by Sara Teasdale

There will Come Soft Rain

by Sara Teasdale 

There will come soft rain and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone. 

There will come soft rain is a poem that invokes a lot of the sentiments found in the environmental movement.  The poem begins with the eponymous line There will come soft rain.   Rain here carries the connotation of natural renewal.   Along with the nest line which sets up the simple AB rhyme scheme the poem gives an idea of spring.   The next couplet continues on with it's vivid descriptions of nature in spring invoking the music of frogs and plum trees blooming in white.  Both lines here draw their symmetry from their nine syllable counts along with the end rhyme.

The third stanza beautifies nature in the form of Robbins and introduces civilization to us in the form of low fence wires.  It becomes apparent after the first read through that the low fence wire here might be barbed wire, as the next stanza invokes a war in the past tense.  Here the birds are characterized as unconcerned with the  carnage wrought by a past war.  The solitude of nature here belies a further emptiness of civilization as if every human had died in a war.

The next stanza continues on from the perspective of nature in the form of trees and birds, and how they'd be utterly unconcerned about the extinction of mankind.

The last stanza finally states outright the visages of spring for what they are, a renewal in the form of blooming trees and birdsong along with spring rains.  It emphasizes the innocence of nature to one of it's own events, extinction.  In this case the extinction of mankind.

The poem is poignant in emphasizing to the reader that nature would carry on without us with nary a change in tune. That is the natural rythmns of life spring, summer, fall, and winter would carry on without a change.

Analysis of The Silken Tent by Robert Frost

The Silken Tent

By Robert Frost 

She is as in a field a silken tent
At midday when the sunny summer breeze
Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent,
So that in guys it gently sways at ease,
And its supporting central cedar pole,
That is its pinnacle to heavenward
And signifies the sureness of the soul,
Seems to owe naught to any single cord,
But strictly held by none, is loosely bound
By countless silken ties of love and thought
To every thing on earth the compass round,
And only by one's going slightly taut
In the capriciousness of summer air
Is of the slightest bondage made aware. 

The poem begins with a simile of the woman in question and a silken tent.  The second line goes on to place and deepen the context wherein she assumes the qualities of the tent, in this case midday amidst a summer breeze.  It lends itself to alliteration with the catchy phrase sunny summer breeze.  The third line of the poem has the interesting phrase and all it's ropes relent.  This is another bout of alliteration but there's also something subtle about the ideas of her ropes relenting.   Relent means to slacken or become less severe.  So there's some sense of freedom from tautness that a rope might impose upon her.   The next line uses an archaic seldom used meaning with guys which means a pinion holding down a rope for a tent.  Here the poem rhymes breeze with ease and will keep this ABAB rhyme scheme until the end rhyme composed of the last two lines.  The next line speaks of it's pinnacle which is the top of the tent swaying skyward.  The narration then explaines this part of the metaphor to mean the sureness of the soul.  We can take it to mean a sort of confidence or faith, which couples well with heavenward in the preceding line.

The next two lines posits that this sureness of the soul is not due any one rope,  and each is bound loosely.  These silken ties that hold her and bellow her up are finally characterized as love and thought, and they are countless in number.   Here the narration intimates that these strands oflove and thought tie her to each thing on earth.  The last three lines wrap it up nicely.   One silken line goes  taut in the whimsy of summer air and make evident as the slightest bondage.  

Analysis of love is a place by E.E. Cummings

love is a place

by E. E. Cummings

love is a place
& through this place of
love move
(with brightness of peace)
all places

yes is a world
& in this world of
yes live
(skilfully curled)
all worlds

Here is a short little poem by E.E. Cummings.  The poem stands out as an affirmation of life and love where the ideal qualities of life hold sway over the concrete. 

It starts off with the metaphor of love as a place.   The second line builds up anticipation about what will move through this place of love.  The third line love move is a near rhyme with the O in love being a short O and the O in move being a long O.  Here the two syllable line love move is one of those classic Cummings phrases that stand out apart from the pieces of the whole itself.  The fourth line continues in brackets and colors the places that move through love, that they move with brightness of peace.  And the last line of the first stanza explains that the places that move through love are all places.  So love is the stationary place and the actual physical locations  move through a place called  love, with brightness of peace. The poem isn't exactly sensible in this aspect on the first read through as idea of other places moving through love doesn't appear until the end. 

The second stanza begins with yes is a world.  It will follow the same pattern as the first stanza wherein an abstract concept will be given more concrete reality than reality itself.  In this case the world of yes.  The second line builds up to what lives within the world of yes, and the third line like as in the first stanza can be either taken alone in it's intensity to mean yes live, or as part of the whole in this case pertaining to what lives in the world of yes.  The fourth line of the second stanza remains symmetrical with the first and is bracketed.  It shades and colors how things live in the world of yes, which is skillfully curled.   And the final line states that all worlds live in the world of yes.

Analysis of the Laughing Heart by Charles Bukowski

"the laughing heart"

by Charles Bukowski

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

Here Bukowski writes for inspiration.  It begins with a bit of a platitude.  Your life is your life.  The meaning here is that your life is yours only.  No one else has possession of it.  The next line follows from it in that you shouldn't let what is yours get clubbed into dank submission.  That is, don't let the people and circumstances of life drag you down into submission.  The third line is about what it takes to avoid this situation.  You have to be on the watch, and if you do feel like you've been clubbed into submission you have to understand that there are ways out.  The poem isn't quite motivational, but more didactic in it's purpose.  It doesn't take for granted the circumstances of the reader, but assumes that life will greet the reader with oppositional forces.

The poem goes on to say that there is a light somewhere.   Here the traditional oppositions of light and darkness are brought into play.  Bukowski doesn't short the reader with empty promises of a plethora of light.  But instead candidly states that however little it may be, it's better than living in darkness.

The poem returns to the phrase, be on the watch.  Here he turns it into a watch for opportunity.  Invoking nameless deities as traditional masters of fate, and generous with their opportunities to bestow light and blessings.  But the reader has to acknowledge them and take these opportunities.

The narration again returns to the limitations of life, acknowledging them as a reality.  You can't beat death.  But you can beat death in life.  What does it mean to beat death in life.  It means to live a life where the inside isn't dead to the world perhaps.  Or perhaps it simply means that the reader has avoided concrete death in some particular way.

Once again the narration is practical in it's remedies for getting or avoiding getting clubbed into dank submission.  The more often you learn how to do it, the more light there will be in life.

The poem then reiterates the first line, your life is your life.  He then applies a turn on the phrase from Polonius line in Shakespeare "Know thyself".  For time immemorial poets and philosophers have urged readers to this point, and Bukowski is no different.  The twist that he puts in it here is that life is finite so you'd better know yourself while you have it.  He goes on to proceed in encomium to the reader, saying that they are marvelous and that the aforementioned deities who are interested in giving chances to the watchful wait to delight in the reader. 

Analysis of The Fascination of What's Difficult by William Butler Yeats

The Fascination of What’s Difficult

By William Butler Yeats

 

The fascination of what's difficult

Has dried the sap out of my veins, and rent

Spontaneous joy and natural content

Out of my heart. There's something ails our colt

That must, as if it had not holy blood

Nor on Olympus leaped from cloud to cloud,

Shiver under the lash, strain, sweat and jolt

As though it dragged road metal. My curse on plays

That have to be set up in fifty ways,

On the day's war with every knave and dolt,

Theatre business, management of men.

I swear before the dawn comes round again

I'll find the stable and pull out the bolt. 

The poem begins with a title drop.  The first line is also the title of the poem.   This is by no means a modern convention but is associated with a lot of modern poetry.  

The second line mentions that this fascination has dried the sap out of his veins.  Foregoing the enjambment that carries the same meaning, there's the sentiment that the vitality of the narrator is diminished by this fascination of his.  The third line which is part of an enjambement with the second laments the lack of spontaneity and the foregoing joy that is a part of it.  The rent here is as rendering or cutting apart. The natural content is the happiness that comes naturally and without excess artifice.  The continuous use of enjambment is perhaps ironic in it's artifice in expressing the poets frustration with necessary difficulty.  That is, the difficulty of modern poetry.  Yeats lived and worked during a period in which Romanticism was transitioning into modernism and there may be hints of the pain of adapting to the new paradigm.  

The poem goes on  to say that there is something of a sickness to our colt.  The following lines will characterize the colt as a being that might have the capacity to leap from cloud to cloud, as a pegasus might.  The characterization of aesthetic works might at one hand be likened to a pegasus ,but the narration characterizes it more as a horse carrying road metal.  It's possible that Yeats may be characterizing Romanticism as a pegasus, and the more modern movement as a horse designated to work and pull road metal, straining under the lash and sweat of the task.  

The poet then goes on to curse plays and the multiplicity of them.  Having to figure out every angle and the particulars of each part.  It may be that Yeats is simply criticizing the fact that directing plays and larger productions saps the life from the artist.  As Yeats was well known for his poetry, he was also a prolific dramatist of the stage.  He'll go on to criticize the theater in more depth.  

Here in the eleventh line the narration expresses an iconoclastic attitude to people, complaining of the little things that sap the life from him.  The poem ends on an upbeat in that the narrator makes an oath before the dawn returns that he'll "find the stable and pull out the bolt"  Here we can see that he's referring again to the colt that can be either pegasus or a horse laden with burdens.  The narrator vows again that before the next day comes around he'll engage in the creative process again, in order to let the horse fly. 

Analysis of The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner by Randall Jarrell

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

By Randall Jarrell

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

Here's a little bit on what Randall Jarrell described as a ball turret for those who aren't aware.

A ball turret was a Plexiglas sphere set into the belly of a B-17 or B-24, and inhabited by two .50 caliber machine guns and one man, a short small man. When this gunner tracked with his machine guns a fighter attacking his bomber from below, he revolved with the turret; hunched upside-down in his little sphere, he looked like the fetus in the womb. The fighters which attacked him were armed with cannon firing explosive shells. The hose was a steam hose.

Here the poet gives us an explanation of how the soldier in the ball turret looked like a  fetus in a womb.  This is the connecting thread for interpreting the poem.  The first line starts with the narrator, who we presume to be the ball turret gunner, talking about how he fell into the state from his mother's sleep.  Instead of falling into a womb he falls into the State.  During the time of World War II many people were drafted to fight.  Here it's easy to understand how the ball turret gunner could have fell into the hands of the state.

The second line alludes to hunching in the belly of the state.  Here we might see that the ball turret gunner is in the B-17 or B-24 and freezing in a fur lined coat.  The next line alludes to the height of the bombers as they flew towards their target.   Here loosed from the dreams of life the earth has.  But what are the dreams the earth has?  Dreams of a domesticated life perhaps, marriage, work, children and so forth.   However at this height these dreams have no hold on him.

The fourth line juxtaposes the nightmares and dreams of the former life.  The major juxtaposition being that he woke to a nightmare of fighters.   When one thinks of the bomber as a slow moving mother wherein the ball turret gunner is held like a fetus, and the bombers as marauders upon a helpless mother, one then understands the helplessness and nightmare of the situation.

The fifth and final line is post mortem, giving perspective to the narrative.  When I died, they washed me out of the turret with a hose.  The last line is completely concrete in it's depiction of his death and the lack of ceremony which with they wash him out of the turret.  Each line prior, had some figurative aspect to it, but the end consequences of the sally were completely concrete.  With death comes the loss of the figurative.