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. 

Analysis of She Tells her Love While Half-Asleep by Robert Graves

She Tells her Love While Half-Asleep

By Robert Graves

She tells her love while half asleep,
In the dark hours,
With half-words whispered low:
As Earth stirs in her winter sleep
And puts out grass and flowers
Despite the snow,
Despite the falling snow.

This is a short poem by Robert Graves, a British poet during the Victorian Era.  It begins with the title of the poem.  There's eight syllables in the first line.  The second line has half the first.  Creating a nice symmetry in rhythm and tempo.  The third line has six syllables and has a clipped tone due to the compound half-words.   The there's an alliterative duo in words and whispered. The fourth line parallels the sleep of the unnamed woman with that of the earth, sexing the earth as female.  While the woman whispers her love during her sleep, the earth is paralleling this by putting out grass and flowers during it's winter sleep.  The miracle of all this is that it's doing this during the snow. We can extrapolate if we take the metaphor of the sleeping woman as mother earth putting out grass and flowers despite the snow, that there is something akin to snow falling in the life of the half-asleep woman.  It's only hinted at, but what it is doesn't seem to be important to the narrative.  Only that there is a hint of it, and only that she yet tells her love while half asleep despite whatever the snow in her life may be.

Analysis of Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

By Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.   

His house is in the village though;   

He will not see me stopping here   

To watch his woods fill up with snow.   

My little horse must think it queer   

To stop without a farmhouse near   

Between the woods and frozen lake   

The darkest evening of the year.   

He gives his harness bells a shake   

To ask if there is some mistake.   

The only other sound’s the sweep   

Of easy wind and downy flake.   

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,   

But I have promises to keep,   

And miles to go before I sleep,   

And miles to go before I sleep.

 A classic and well known poem by Robert Frost.  The rhyme scheme here is an AABA pattern with the B from the prior stanza becoming the A of the following stanza.  All of this leads to very lyric and sonorous transitions from one stanza to the next.  The last stanza is a little different and we'll address that when we get there.

The first line begins with an repetition of the word W in Whose woods, but it's not a straightforward alliteration as the W in Whose is silent.  The first stanza has eight syllables per line.  The second line begins in the same pattern as the first starting with alliteration, this time voiced.  The subject of the stanza is vague.  The vagueness of the lines are something that will carry through to the rest of the poem.  One gets a sense of trespassing,  His house is in the village though/he will not see me stopping here.   There's also the sense of being carried away by natural beauty.  To watch his woods fill up with snow.  

 The second stanza anthropomorphizes his horse, giving it the quality of thought.  Here the old use of the word queer as strange finds use.   Again the narrator reiterates the distance from any civilization in this woods.  To stop without a farmhouse near.  Even the horse has been domesticated to accept civilization, and here away from civilization the narrator is reflecting on  the woods and frozen lake, watching the snow fall.  The cold of the environment is evident in the narrators allusive reference to the winter solstice, the day when the suns light is at it's nadir.

The third stanza begins with the horse trying to shake the narrator out of his reverie, again thinking something must be wrong.  But again the narrator's attention returns to the sound and sweep of the easy wind and downy flake.

The last stanza of the poem switches up the rhyme scheme for repetition in the B slot.  The repetition of the word sleep here gives us insight into the almost hypnotic trance the narration conveys in watching the falling snow in that landscape.  The first line of the last stanza alliterated dark and deep.  Here the narrator makes it plain that civilization still has a hold on him with promises to keep.  The idea of a deathwish  is hinted at.  Yet the pull of civilization here found in the horse pulls the narrator along.  He has miles to go before he sleeps.  

Analysis of On the Fire Suicides of the Buddhists by Charles Bukowski

On The Fire Suicides Of The Buddhists

 by Charles Bukowski

"They only burn themselves to reach Paradise"
                                       - Mne. Nhu

original courage is good,
motivation be damned,
and if you say they are trained
to feel no pain,
are they
guaranteed this?
is it still not possible
to die for somebody else?

you sophisticates
who lay back and
make statements of explanation,
I have seen the red rose burning
and this means more.

Madame Nhu was the first lady of the Diem regime.  As the title suggests, the quote refers to the self immolation of the Buddhists.  Her words are meant to illustrate that the motives of the Buddhists who committed the fire suicides during the Vietnam war were selfish.  The context of the poem is political in nature, and occurred during something called the Buddhist crisis in Vietnam. 

In the first two lines the narration lauds the courage of the fire suicides.   The most widely known suicide by Thich Quan Duc, was captured on video.   Here the narrator sidesteps the criticism directed towards the Buddhists by Madame Nhu.  He doesn't refute the idea that there may be selfishness involved.  The motivation doesn't really matter, the courage and originality of the act is is commendable.  The two lines fit into a six syllable schema by the way.

The middle of the stanza questions perhaps further criticisms leveled by Nhu as to the pain the Buddhists feel during self-immolation. The questioning of Nhu's rhetoric isn't styled as contempt or hatred, it's merely curious doubt.  Are they / guaranteed this?  It leaves it up to the reader what that might mean if they're not, with the further question on the possibility of dying for someone else.  The split between the Are they and guaranteed this?  seems to imply that the gravity of Nhu's argument revolves around what's beneficial to her.  They are the ones that have to worry about the agony involved with self-immolation.  


The last part of the stanza is a question to no one in particular, what does it mean to live in a world where altruism and self sacrifice exists?  The poem doesn't answer these questions, but merely brings them up for the reader to think about.  

The last stanza is a critique of the sophisticates who explain phenomena such as the self-immolation of Thich Quan Duc in terms that redound to their own benefit.  The second line of the stanza is subtle in it's criticism using the words lay back.  That is to say people who refuse to be moved by these sorts of acts.   The narration goes on to state that he's seen these things happen with his own eyes, and that the gravity of what he's perceived means more than the commentary on it.  That is to say, the narrator has touched experience with his own mind through his perceptions.  Not through the lens of commentary by the people such as Madame Nhu who have a stake in twisting perceptions around the event.  It means more than any commentary that self-serving sophisticates might make up to explain the event to themselves or others. 

Analysis of She by Theodore Roethke

She

by Theodore Roethke

My lady laughs, delighting in what is.
If she but sighs, a bird puts out its tongue.
She makes space lonely with a lovely song.
She lilts a low soft language, and I hear
Down long sea-chambers of the inner ear.

We sing together; we sing mouth to mouth.
The garden is a river flowing south.
She cries out loud the soul's own secret joy;
She dances, and the ground bears her away.
She knows the speech of light, and makes it plain
A lively thing can come to life again.

I feel her presence in the common day,
In that slow dark that widens every eye.
She moves as water moves, and comes to me,
Stayed by what was, and pulled by what would be. 

Much like I Knew a Woman, the first line is divided into two phrases per line.  The first phrase is four syllables, while the second is six making the line ten counts.  This is also similar to I knew a woman.  The first phrase is alliterative in lady laughs.  

The second line is a similar formula with the same syllables per phrase as the first(4/6).  This creates both an interlinear asymmetry and a rhythm based on twos. This is appropriate for a poem based on the relationship between a man and a woman.  The second line also continues the alliteration of the first line with she and sighs, and continues to eschew this device for the second phrase.  

The third line breaks the phrasing and pattern and refers to her making space lonely with a lovely song.  Here the loneliness is the bittersweet loneliness of love, hinted at with the word lovely.  The alliterative aspects from the first phrases of the preceding lines are present here again, and becomes almost homo-phonic with the words lonely and lovely.  

The fourth line continues the ten beat measure, but inverts the pattern with the first phrase holding seven syllables while the last holds three.  The alliterative aspect of the former lines is continued with low and language.  

The fifth line is another single phrase in which the line consists of ten unbroken syllables. 

The sixth line turns on the phrase mouth to mouth, where it's normally a common idiom for breath resuscitation, here it can mean kissing or singing.  In any case the breath they supply each other is salving in practice.   The idiom itself also continues the consonance introduced in the prior stanza.  The whole of the stanza will maintain 10 beats per line.

The second line of the second stanza contains a direct metaphor where one thing is said to be another.  Rivers and gardens have been common themes is love poetry for quite some time.  Although a philosopher and not a poet, since the time of Heraclitus rivers have also held a meaning of passing time.  He famously said that "No one looks at the same river twice".  Gardens are common as a way of conveying fruitful bounty, indeed the garden is the biblical metaphor for heaven on earth in the manner of the Garden of Eden.  In the Greek of biblical times, to know someone meant to copulate with them, and the tree of knowledge would be the tree of copulation in some interpretations.  So what does it mean that the garden is a river?   Well the garden still conveys lustre and bounty, while the river though beautiful primarily conveys time passing.  The direction of the river is South, if her body is a garden and it flows south that may be a euphemistic expression of sexual desire.  The third line reinforces and hints at this interpretation as well.


The fourth line of the second stanza depicts her as dancing, but instead of moving, the world moves instead.  This is conveyed in a concrete sense, but the meaning of moving someone's world is perhaps still implicit in the line. The poem is careful to both convey and hide the heaviness of sexual passion in it's lines.  The inferences derived from the verbiage are all highly allusive and bear out on a more thorough analysis.  While the rhythm and superficial content paint a footloose and fancy free environment on a surface level.

The first line of the third stanza follows the same rhythm set out earlier in the poem. Here the narrator involves a paradox.  Although She is anything but common, he still feels her presence in the common day.   The second line will elaborate further and what happens commonly will take on new significance.   She widens his eyes, as the slow dark of the common day does so to each pupil.  So She does to him.  The last lines convey her languid grace with a simile to water.  The last two lines have a rhyme scheme to tie things up nicely with me and be. Here the narration again involves itself in the beloved as a subject of time.  Stayed by what was, being the pasts effect on her, and pulled by what would be being the futures' effect on her. 

Analysis of I Am Vertical by Sylvia Plath

I Am Vertical

by Sylvia Plath

But I would rather be horizontal.
I am not a tree with my root in the soil
Sucking up minerals and motherly love
So that each March I may gleam into leaf,
Nor am I the beauty of a garden bed
Attracting my share of Ahs and spectacularly painted,
Unknowing I must soon unpetal.
Compared with me, a tree is immortal
And a flower-head not tall, but more startling,
And I want the one's longevity and the other's daring.

Tonight, in the infinitesimal light of the stars,
The trees and the flowers have been strewing their cool odors.
I walk among them, but none of them are noticing.
Sometimes I think that when I am sleeping
I must most perfectly resemble them --
Thoughts gone dim.
It is more natural to me, lying down.
Then the sky and I are in open conversation,
And I shall be useful when I lie down finally:
Then the trees may touch me for once, and the flowers have time for me.

Today's poem is by Sylvia Plath, again a writer of feminist poetry.  The first line of the poem is stylistic in that it continues directly from the title.   If one isn't paying attention to the title of poem it can be a little disorienting.

The first line is in direct opposition to the title.  Here we can take vertical to mean standing up, and horizontal to mean lying down.   Here the narrator makes her yearning to lie down evident.  She begins by making her comparison to other upright and vertical life in the forms of flora.  

The second line begins a long description of the things she isn't.  She isn't a tree rooted in the ground.  The third line mentions that the tree sucks up minerals and motherly love.  Here we can guess that motherly love in this line alludes to mother earth.  The fourth line is particular in it's admiration of the tree.  The tree doesn't just sprout leaves, it gleams them, they shine.  The fifth line continues in the vein of what she isn't.  Here she mentions that she isn't a garden bed.  The sixth line directly sexes the garden bed as female by means of it's depiction of attracting ahs and depicting it as painted.

Paradoxically the seventh line uses metaphor as the narrator imagines herself as a flower bed for this line.  She's using empathetic imagination to put herself in the place of a garden bed that's ignorant to it's own transience.

The next few lines return to the trees and flowers.  The tree is immortal and the flower-head startling.  The last line of the stanza is an admission of her longing to be as long lived as the tree and as daring as the flower-head.

The next stanza paints for us a depiction of a setting beneath the stars.  Here again the trees and stars are sexed in their effusion of cool odors.   She talks about how she walks among them but they pay no attention to her.  She sees them as asleep.  If one takes the sexing of the flora a little further and sees them as people one begins to see a little bit more sorrow in the poem.  The narrator confesses that when she's sleeping she's most like these people she admires.  Ms.  Plath was well known to have suffered from depression and this sort of wistful musing is something perfectly in keeping with that little expression of sorrow.  She sees her nature more authentic when she's lying down.  The juxtaposition here is that the trees and flowers are more natural standing upright with their thoughts gone dim.  The subdued nature of the narrative seems to be hiding a sharper and more cutting pain than is outright evident in the text.  It redounds to Ms. Plath's talent that she could allude to this sort of pain without becoming lost in it, while expressing the softer side of it.

Here the next line brings us back to the setting, a starry night, where the narrator lies down and let's herself be in conversation with the sky.  The penultimate lines reveal her sorrow in a soft light, but still hint at the depression that plagues her.  She thinks of her usefulness as being complete when she dies and decomposes.  Then she may feed these plants and trees with her body.  Then the trees may touch me for once.  This brings us back to the first stanza where the trees suck up minerals and motherly love.  Here the narrator would be letting the trees gain nourishment from her, her motherly love.  Then also the flowers would be spending time with her as well. 

 

Analysis of I Knew a Woman by Theodore Roethke

I Knew a Woman

By Theodore Roethke

I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,

When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;   

Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:   

The shapes a bright container can contain!

Of her choice virtues only gods should speak,

Or English poets who grew up on Greek

(I’d have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek).

How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin,   

She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and Stand;   

She taught me Touch, that undulant white skin;   

I nibbled meekly from her proffered hand;   

She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake,

Coming behind her for her pretty sake

(But what prodigious mowing we did make).

Love likes a gander, and adores a goose:

Her full lips pursed, the errant note to seize;

She played it quick, she played it light and loose;   

My eyes, they dazzled at her flowing knees;   

Her several parts could keep a pure repose,   

Or one hip quiver with a mobile nose

(She moved in circles, and those circles moved).

Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay:   

I’m martyr to a motion not my own;

What’s freedom for? To know eternity.

I swear she cast a shadow white as stone.   

But who would count eternity in days?

These old bones live to learn her wanton ways:   

(I measure time by how a body sways).

 Appropriately enough, a poem about a dancer is all about rhythm.  The poem is very loose with it's rhyme structure, but is a little more stringent with it's syllable count. The first line is divided into two five syllable phrases:  I knew a woman(5), and lovely in her bones(5).  Line two follows the same five syllable structure creating a rhythm to the poem that is dropped on the third line in the second phrase.  The second phrase she moved more ways than one, could be taken to refer both to the titular woman, and to the poem itself as it breaks it's five syllable repetition with an extra syllable.  In the next line since there are no commas the two five syllable phrases will be melded into singular lines.  Of her choice virtues only gods should speak(10)  The poem is particular not in lauding her beauty, but her capacity to be lovely.  The first stanza has so far only made mention of her body in a non-sexual and figurative capacity.  Lovely in her bones, bright container, and choice virtues.

The second stanza keeps the ten syllable structure, but modifies it by splitting it into two phrases, one of six and another of four.   The topic of the poem turns on how she teaches the narrator to dance.  The narrator in turn is showing off his rhythmic virtuosity by keeping variations of rhythm yet maintained within a repeating structure similar to a dance.

The poem becomes explicit in the second line of the second stanza concerning the relationship between the narrator and the eponymous woman.  She taught him how to dance.  This may also be taken figuratively as how to love as well.  A trope(turn in greek)  is also a poetical device used to turn the meaning of a phrase.  Here the narrator may be attributing his capacity to write good poetry to her as well.

The stanza itself has several little parts in it worth noting.  A rake in 18th century English was short for Hellrake or a profligate and dissolute man.  Here contrasted with the sickle that he calls her.   All this is short for making hay.  Making hay means using an opportunity while it lasts.  There is also the proverbial roll in the hay.

The third stanza begins with a goose and a gander.  Gander here has the dual meaning of both a male goose and a good long look.  That is to say, love likes long adoring looks.  Gander and geese go together.  With the line her full lips pursed we get the idea of the dancer straining to catch an errant note.  Here errant means to go astray.

The fourth and final stanza comes back to making hay.  Letting moments come and making the best of them.  The second line of the fourth stanza has a little alliteration in it.  Here the narrator makes a flippant remark about his willingness to die for the motions she makes.  The closing lines are a couplet with an end rhyme of ways and sways.  The poem comments on how she has wanton ways.  Which comments on how the dancers immodesty is a virtue in the narrator's eyes. 

Analysis of If by Rudyard Kipling

If

By Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you   

    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

    But make allowance for their doubting too;   

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   

    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

    And treat those two impostors just the same;   

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

    And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   

    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

    If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   

    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

The rhythm and emphasis of the poem alternates between the emphasized beginning of the lines in If and end rhyme.  Deftly moving back and forth between the two devices and making the voice of the poem distinct.  The poem also tends to progress in double lines consisting of a hypothetical and an exhortation to perfect conduct in said situation. 

The first line begins with the eponymous If.   The poem is a classic Victorian homage to courage and a stiff upper lip.  The subject of the first line is the readers head, or their sensibilities figuratively speaking.  The second line is a chastisement to others who ARE losing their sensibilities and blaming the reader for their troubles.  

The third line begins with If again, the fourth line encourages generosity of spirit and reason for those who doubt the reader.  Although the reader is encouraged to maintain trust in themselves when all men doubt him, the next line encourages him not to be mean spirited or spiteful to those who do doubt him.  

The fifth line is also an exhortation to keep alert and not become tired by waiting.

The sixth and seventh lines are also about keeping degrading situations from degrading the readers character.  They're about maintaining dignity in the face of hatred and lies.  The way this is done is by not falling into the faults that others are leveling at you, which in this case are hatred and lies.

The eight and closing line of the stanza is encouragement not to let pride get the better of you.  Even if you can manage to not hold contempt for those who doubt you, to lie to those who lie about you, to hate those who hate you, you shouldn't act as though you were wiser or holier than thou.

The ninth line and beginning of the next stanza begins with If again and focuses on the more inward aspects of experiences of tribulation.  One should have dreams, but not let dreams rule over them.

The tenth line is an exhortation not to be carried away by the world of ideas and couples nicely in semantic meaning with the ninth.  Although one should be able to think, one should not be ruled by their capacity to think.

The eleventh  and twelfth line reminds us that these virtues are only tested in adversity.  When one triumphs or fails one shouldn't let these circumstances dictate ones behavior.

The thirteenth and fourteenth deals again with enduring the trials of lies and deceit concerning the truth or beliefs of the reader.  When the readers words get twisted by another to take advantage of a third party.

The fifteenth and sixteenth lines deal with the aftermath of disaster and how one should be able to pick oneself up and keep building up the things that concern them.  Again this is in keeping with Victorian stoic values.

The seventeenth and eighteenth talk about heaping all your winnings as if in a gamble.  To some degree stoics had a fatalistic perspective regarding chance and fate.  If life deals you a bad hand, it's your duty to respond to it as gracefully as possible.

The nineteenth and twentieth urges the reader not to complain about life, even when one has lost everything else, one shouldn't lose ones composure.

The twenty-first and twenty-second talks about how at times one must also push beyond the boundaries of physical endurance.  Even when they are gone.  This could be a either a veiled reference to old age or simply an allusion to giving your all.

The twenty-third and fourth lines talk again about utter loss, here the poem is going beyond material loss mentioned in the beginning of the stanza and continues past even the physical and enters the psychological realm.  The realm of the mind in contention with the limitations of the body.  When the body has nothing left, the mind must urge it on.

The twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth lines begin a new stanza.  Here the two part schema of the lines go over briefly the different aspects of life tested.  Starting with the vicissitudes of social life.  The capacity to deal with people of the highest and lowest standing within society.

The twenty-seventh and eighth lines speak of family and private life with friends and acquaintances.  Here each man should count, and family and friends as well as enemies should be interacted with in such a manner as no personal harm comes to oneself.  This is perhaps the most striking of stoic Victorian attitudes.  That one should be inured to emotional hurt in ones personal life is in keeping with the idea that one must have dominion over their own composure and dignity.

Twenty-nine and thirty bring us back to the last part of the third stanza which conveys itself by physical tests of endurance.  Although there's a good argument that Kipling wrote these lines to be conveyed in a figurative sense, he still returns in summary to them at the end of the poem.

Thirty-one and thirty-two wrap up the answer to all the Ifs that have preceded throughout the poem.  There's been many tests of character and endurance mentioned and exhortations to the proper conduct and response befitting a man in each.  Here at the end of the poem the narrator goes on to say that any person capable of meeting these challenges in such a way possesses the entirety of the world.  Here it's the figurative sense of ones own world, and the deportment necessary to be a part of and in possession of the larger world.  The poem ends on a note that the above question and responses are what it takes to be a man.