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.