INTRODUCTION TO POETRY

I have eatenthe plumsthat were inthe iceboxand whichyou were probablysavingfor breakfastForgive methey were deliciousso sweetand so coldStill I Rise, Maya AngelouMaya Angelou is one of the countrys most renowned African American poets and civil rights activists, whose poetry has given voice to many young womens struggles. This bold, proud poem is one of our favorites.You may write me down in historyWith your bitter, twisted lies,You may trod me in the very dirtBut still, like dust, Ill rise.Does my sassiness upset you?Why are you beset with gloom?Cause I walk like Ive got oil wellsPumping in my living room.Just like moons and like suns,With the certainty of tides,Just like hopes springing high,Still Ill rise.Did you want to see me broken?Bowed head and lowered eyes?Shoulders falling down like teardrops.Weakened by my soulful cries.Does my haughtiness offend you?Dont you take it awful hardCause I laugh like Ive got gold minesDiggin in my own back yard.You may shoot me with your words,You may cut me with your eyes,You may kill me with your hatefulness,But still, like air, Ill rise.Does my sexiness upset you?Does it come as a surpriseThat I dance like Ive got diamondsAt the meeting of my thighs?Out of the huts of historys shameI riseUp from a past thats rooted in painI riseIm a black ocean, leaping and wide,Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.Leaving behind nights of terror and fearI riseInto a daybreak thats wondrously clearI riseBringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,I am the dream and the hope of the slave.I riseI riseI rise.

The Red Wheelbarrow - William Carlos Williamsso much dependsupon

a red wheelbarrow

glazed with rainwater

beside the whitechickens.

Old Man with a Beard -Edward Lear There was an Old Man with a beard, Who said, 'It is just as I feared!Two Owls and a Hen, Four Larks and a Wren, Have all built their nests in my beard!' 'A good poet is someone who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times; a dozen or two dozen times and he is great.' Randall Jarell

'Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.' Shelley

'I could no more define poetry than a terrier can define a rat.' A.E. Housman'Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting.' Frost'If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.' Emily Dickinson'There are three things, after all, that a poem must reach: the eye, the ear, and what we may call the heart or the mind. It is most important of all to reach the heart of the reader.' Frost

A Poem must begin in delight and end in wisdom- Frost

Introduction to Poetry I ask them to take a poemand hold it up to the lightlike a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poemand watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poems roomand feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterskiacross the surface of a poemwaving at the authors name on the shore.

But all they want to dois tie the poem to a chair with ropeand torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hoseto find out what it really means.

The Red Wheelbarrow - William Carlos Williamsso much dependsupon

a red wheelbarrow

glazed with rainwater

beside the whitechickens.

Old Man with a Beard -Edward Lear There was an Old Man with a beard, Who said, 'It is just as I feared!Two Owls and a Hen, Four Larks and a Wren, Have all built their nests in my beard!' "Beauty is truth. Truth, Beauty.That is all ye know on Earth and all ye need to know."

What is Poetry?Grasping at the IndefinableBy Mark Flanagan, About.com GuideThere are as many definitions of poetry as there are poets. Wordsworth defined poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings;" Emily Dickinson said, "If I read a book and it makes my body so cold no fire ever can warm me, I know that is poetry;" and Dylan Thomas defined poetry this way: "Poetry is what makes me laugh or cry or yawn, what makes my toenails twinkle, what makes me want to do this or that or nothing."(Emily Dickinson once said that you know good poetry when you read it because "it takes off the top of your head". I think good poetry works its magic on everyone that way.)Poetry is a lot of things to a lot of people. Homer's epic,The Odyssey, described the wanderings of the adventurer, Odysseus, and has been called the greatest story ever told. During the English Renaissance, dramatic poets like John Milton, Christopher Marlowe, and of course Shakespeare gave us enough to fill textbooks, lecture halls, and universities. Poems from the romantic period include Goethe's Faust (1808), Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" and John Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn."Shall I go on? Because in order to do so, I would have to continue through 19th century Japanese poetry, early Americans that include Emily Dickinson and T.S. Eliot, postmodernism, experimentalists, slam...So what is poetry?Perhaps the characteristic most central to the definition of poetry is its unwillingness to be defined, labeled, or nailed down. But let's not let that stop us, shall we? It's about time someone wrestled poetry to the ground and slapped a sign on its back reading, "I'm poetry. Kick me here."Poetry is the chiseled marble of language; it's a paint-spattered canvas - but the poet uses words instead of paint, and the canvas is you. Poetic definitions of poetry kind of spiral in on themselves, however, like a dog eating itself from the tail up. Let's get nitty. Let's, in fact, get gritty. I believe we can render an accessible definition of poetry by simply looking at its form and its purpose:One of the most definable characteristics of the poetic form is economy of language. Poets are miserly and unrelentingly critical in the way they dole out words to a page. Carefully selecting words for conciseness and clarity is standard, even for writers of prose, but poets go well beyond this, considering a word's emotive qualities, its musical value, its spacing, and yes, even its spacial relationship to the page. The poet, through innovation in both word choice and form, seemingly rends significance from thin air.How am I doing so far? On to purpose: One may use prose to narrate, describe, argue, or define. There are equally numerous reasons for writing poetry. But poetry, unlike prose, often has an underlying and over-arching purpose that goes beyond the literal. Poetry is evocative. It typically evokes in the reader an intense emotion: joy, sorrow, anger, catharsis, love... Alternatively, poetry has the ability to surprise the reader with an Ah Ha! Experience -- revelation, insight, further understanding of elemental truth and beauty. Like Keats said:"Beauty is truth. Truth, Beauty.That is all ye know on Earth and all ye need to know."

How's that? Do we have a definition yet?Poetry is artistically rendering words in such a way as to evoke intense emotion or an Ah Ha! experience from the reader.Pretty unsatisfying, huh? Kind of leaves you feeling cheap, dirty, all hollow and empty inside like Chinese food.Don't do this. Don't shackle poetry with your definitions. Poetry is not a frail and cerebral old woman, you know. Poetry is stronger than you think. Poetry is imagination and will break those chains faster than you can say "Harlem Renaissance."To borrow a phrase, poetry is a riddle wrapped in an enigma swathed in a cardigan sweater... or something like that. It doesn't like your definitions and will shirk them at every turn. If you really want to know what poetry is, read it. Read it carefully. Pay attention. Read it out loud. Now read it again. There's your definition of poetry. Because defining poetry is like grasping at the wind - once you catch it, it's no longer wind.How to Read a PoemReading poetry well is part attitude and part technique. Curiosity is a useful attitude, especially when its free of preconceived ideas about what poetry is or should be. Effective technique directs your curiosity into asking questions, drawing you into a conversation with the poem.In Great Books programs, the goal of careful reading is often to take up a question of meaning, an interpretive question that has more than one answer. Since the form of a poem is part of its meaning (for example, features such as repetition and rhyme may amplify or extend the meaning of a word or idea, adding emphasis, texture, or dimension), we believe that questions about form and technique, about the observable features of a poem, provide an effective point of entry for interpretation. To ask some of these questions, youll need to develop a good ear for the musical qualities of language, particularly how sound and rhythm relate to meaning. This approach is one of many ways into a poem.Getting Started: Prior AssumptionsMost readers make three false assumptions when addressing an unfamiliar poem. The first is assuming that they should understand what they encounter on the first reading, and if they dont, that something is wrong with them or with the poem. The second is assuming that the poem is a kind of code, that each detail corresponds to one, and only one, thing, and unless they can crack this code, theyve missed the point. The third is assuming that the poem can mean anything readers want it to mean.William Carlos Williams wrote a verse addressed to his wife in the poem "January Morning,":All this was for you, old woman.I wanted to write a poemthat you would understand.For what good is it to meif you cant understand it? But you got to try hardWilliams admits in these lines that poetry is often difficult. He also suggests that a poet depends on the effort of a reader; somehow, a reader must "complete" what the poet has begun.This act of completion begins when you enter the imaginative play of a poem, bringing to it your experience and point of view. If a poem is "play" in the sense of a game or a sport, then you enjoy that it makes you work a little, that it makes you sweat a bit. Reading poetry is a challenge, but like so many other things, it takes practice, and your skills and insight improve as you progress.Literature is, and has always been, the sharing of experience, the pooling of human understanding about living, loving, and dying. Successful poems welcome you in, revealing ideas that may not have been foremost in the writers mind in the moment of composition. The best poetry has a magical qualitya sense of being more than the sum of its partsand even when its impossible to articulate this sense, this something more, the power of the poem is left undiminished.Poems speak to us in many ways. Though their forms may not always be direct or narrative, keep in mind that a real person formed the moment of the poem, and its wise to seek an understanding of that moment. Sometimes the job of the poem is to come closer to saying what cannot be said in other forms of writing, to suggest an experience, idea, or feeling that you can know but not entirely express in any direct or literal way. The techniques of word and line arrangement, sound and rhythm, add toand in some cases, multiplythe meaning of words to go beyond the literal, giving you an impression of an idea or feeling, an experience that you cant quite put into words but that you know is real.Reading a Poem AloudBefore you get very far with a poem, you have to read it. In fact, you can learn quite a few things just by looking at it. The title may give you some image or association to start with. Looking at the poems shape, you can see whether the lines are continuous or broken into groups (called stanzas), or how long the lines are, and so how dense, on a physical level, the poem is. You can also see whether it looks like the last poem you read by the same poet or even a poem by another poet. All of these are good qualities to notice, and they may lead you to a better understanding of the poem in the end.But sooner or later, youre going to have to read the poem, word by word. To begin, read the poem aloud. Read it more than once. Listen to your voice, to the sounds the words make. Do you notice any special effects? Do any of the words rhyme? Is there a cluster of sounds that seem the same or similar? Is there a section of the poem that seems to have a rhythm thats distinct from the rest of the poem? Dont worry about why the poem might use these effects. The first step is to hear whats going on. If you find your own voice distracting, have a friend read the poem to you.That said, it can still be uncomfortable to read aloud or to make more than one pass through a poem. Some of this attitude comes from the misconception that we should understand a poem after we first read it, while some stems from sheer embarrassment. Where could I possibly go to read aloud? What if my friends hear me?The LineWhat determines where a line stops in poetry? There is, of course, more than one answer to this question. Lines are often determined by meaning, sound and rhythm, breath, or typography. Poets may use several of these elements at the same time. Some poems are metrical in a strict sense. But what if the lines arent metrical? What if the lines are irregular?The relationship between meaning, sound, and movement intended by the poet is sometimes hard to recognize, but there is an interplay between the grammar of a line, the breath of a line, and the way lines are broken out in the poemthis is called lineation. For example, lines that end with punctuation, called end-stopped lines, are fairly simple. In that case, the punctuation and the lineation, and perhaps even breathing, coincide to make the reading familiar and even predictable. But lines that are not end-stopped present different challenges for readers because they either end with an incomplete phrase or sentence or they break before the first punctuation mark is reached. The most natural approach is to pay strict attention to the grammar and punctuation. Reading to the end of a phrase or sentence, even if it carries over one or several lines, is the best way to retain the grammatical sense of a poem.But lineation introduces another variable that some poets use to their advantage. Robert Creeley is perhaps best known for breaking lines across expected grammatical pauses. This technique often introduces secondary meaning, sometimes in ironic contrast with the actual meaning of the complete grammatical phrase. Consider these lines from Creeleys poem "The Language":Locate Ilove you some-where inteeth and eyes, biteit butReading the lines as written, as opposed to their grammatical relationship, yields some strange meanings. "Locate I" seems to indicate a search for identity, and indeed it may, but the next line, which continues with "love you some-," seems to make a diminishing statement about a relationship. On its own, "eyes bite" is very disturbing.Hearing Creeley read his poems can often be disquieting, because he pauses at the end of each line, and these pauses create a kind of tension or counterpoint in relation to the poems sentence structure. His halting, hesitant, breathless style is immediately recognizable, and it presents writers with new ideas about meaning, purely through lineation. But many poets who break lines disregarding grammatical units do so only for visual irony, something that may be lost in performance. Among metrical, free verse, and even experimental poets of today, there are those who do not interrupt grammatical sense when reading a poem aloud as much as they interrupt it in the poems typography. What to do as a reader? Try a variety of methods. Its fun to "Creeleyize" any poem, just to hear what the lineation is doing. But if the results seem to detract from the poems impact, in terms of its imagery or concept, drop the literal treatment of line breaks and read for grammar or visual image. Reading a poem several ways allows you to see further into the poem simply through repetition.

With poets who use techniques drawn from musicparticularly jazz, such as Michael S. Harper or Yusef Komunyakaaor poets like Walt Whitman who employ unusually long lines, there may be another guiding principle: breath. Some poets think of their words as music flowing from a horn; they think of phrases the way a saxophonist might. Poems composed in this way have varied line lengths but they have a musicality in their lineation and a naturalness to their performance. They may have a recognizable sense of measure, an equivalent duration between lines, or, for the sake of contrast, one rhythmic pattern or duration that gives way to successive variations.For some poems, visual impact may also be important. In "shaped poetry," as well as many other types of writing that are meant to be seen as a painting might be seen, the line is determined by its placement in space. Some visually oriented poets present real challenges in that the course of the poem may not be entirely clear. Visual choices presented by the poet may be confusing. Sometimes the arrangements of words on a page are intended to represent different voices in a dialogue, or even a more complex discourse on a subject. Overlapping and layering might be the poets intent, which no single voice can achieve. Its best to be aware that poems with multiple voices, or focuses exist and, again, looking for the inherent rules that determine the shape of the poem is the best approach.Remember that the use of these techniques, in any combination, pushes the words of the poem beyond their literal meanings. If you find more in a poem than the words alone convey, then something larger is at work, making the poem more than the sum of its parts.Starting the ConversationWe mentioned earlier that encountering a difficult poem is like a game or sport, say rock climbing, that makes you work a bit. The idea of finding handholds and footholds and ascending one bit at a time is apt. But some climbs are easier than others; some are very easy. You may enjoy an easy climb for a while, but you may also find that you want a bigger challenge. Reading poetry works the same way, and, fortunately, poets leave trails to help you look for the way "up" a poem. Youll have to do some work, hard work in some cases, but most of the time, the trails are there for you to discover.At the Great Books Foundation, we believe that the best way to discover and learn about a poem is through shared inquiry discussion. Although your first experience of the poem may be private and personal, we think talking about the poem is a natural and important next step. Beginning with a focus question about the poem, the discussion addresses various possible answers to the question, reshaping and clarifying it along the way. The discussion should remain grounded in the text as much as possible. Responses that move away from what is written into personal anecdotes or tangential leaps should be gently urged back into analyzing the text. The basis for shared inquiry is close reading. Good readers "dirty the text" with notes in the margins. They make the inquiry their own. We encourage you to write your own notes in this book.Talking Back to a PoemIt would be convenient if there were a short list of universal questions, ones that could be used anytime with any poem. In the absence of such a list, here are a few general questions that you might ask when approaching a poem for the first time:Who is the speaker?What circumstances gave rise to the poem?What situation is presented?Who or what is the audience?What is the tone?What form, if any, does the poem take?How is form related to content?Is sound an important, active element of the poem?Does the poem spring from an identifiable historical moment?Does the poem speak from a specific culture?Does the poem have its own vernacular?Does the poem use imagery to achieve a particular effect?What kind of figurative language, if any, does the poem use?If the poem is a question, what is the answer?If the poem is an answer, what is the question?What does the title suggest?Does the poem use unusual words or use words in an unusual way?You can fall back on these questions as needed, but experience suggests that since each poem is unique, such questions will not go the necessary distance. In many instances, knowing who the speaker is may not yield any useful information. There may be no identifiable occasion that inspired the poem. But poems do offer clues about where to start. Asking questions about the observable features of a poem will help you find a way in.Well now bring inquiry to bear on two very different poems, each of which presents its own challenges:

"The Red Wheelbarrow" by William Carlos WilliamsThe Red Wheelbarrow

so much dependsupon

a red wheelbarrow

glazed with rainwater

beside the whitechickens

- William Carlos Williams

This poem can be infuriating because on one hand it appears so guileless and simplistic. The problem is that you cant take anything for granted, not even simplicity.What are the first things you notice about the poem? Begin with what you know, or what you think you know. First, the poem is arranged in fairly consistent lines. The four units of the poem look somewhat alike. There is not any punctuation either. What was the poets intention? Was the shape an accident of the poets descriptive style? Was the lack of punctuation an oversight? Was the poet being careless or lazy? Was is that he just couldnt think of any better words? Why is this poem so well known, so respected, so well liked?Denise Levertov, in "Some Notes on Organic Form," says "there is a form in all things (and in our experience) which the poet can discover and reveal." But how does a poet make this discovery? One way is to pay close attention to the sound and movement of the first words or lines that begin the act of writing, in which the object, mood, and experience that give rise to the poem will often be expressed through tone and rhythm. Do the words work together to create euphony, dissonance, or something in between? What are the weights and inherent durations of words and lines? The poet who is sensitive to this emerging form can give it full play as writing continues.Robert Creeley, in "Notes Apropos 'Free Verse,'" uses the analogy of driving to explain his approach to organic form in writing: "The road, as it were, is creating itself momently in ones attention to it, there, visibly, in front of the car." He implies that there may be more around the bend or beyond the horizon; but, like drivers, poets can only arrive at that possibility through careful attention to what is immediately apparent. Poets must follow the words, like the road, as they come.When you read a poem, you must be both observant and patient. Look at the words and the lines as they emerge. What do you recognize? What looks or sounds interesting? Wait a little. Welcome surprises. As more of the poem reveals itself, you may find an exhilarating momentum, recognizable patterns, or a merging of form and content that will carry you along.So how does "The Red Wheelbarrow" unfold? A helpful exercise is to try to continue writing the poem yourself. Double the length, either by repeating the theme or by adding a new riff about the images of the first eight lines. This is an experiential way of discovering what is noticeable about the poem. You will likely write in two line stanzas or couplets. Most of the second lines of the couplets will consist of a single word. Many will have those words be nouns, or two-syllable words. Aha! So you have already begun to notice how the poem is put together.This brings us to the poems statement, its meaning. Many poems, especially nonnarrative poems, are difficultif not impossibleto paraphrase, especially after a first reading or a first listen. And expecting to find a meaning thats obvious is often frustrating, as it may be here. Why does so much depend? So much what?Artists often say that a work of art is about itself and something else. In this way, a poem can be an ars poetica, a statement by the poet about poetry, about his or her beliefs about what poetry is and about what it does. Asking how this poem might be an ars poetica is a great way to further understand both the poem and Williams as a poet. What does the poem demonstrate about poetry? Well, certainly the features of style and form come up again. But the statement that the poem makes, the credo it represents, is right there, too. Another way to ask the question might be, What does this poem value? Common things, clearly. The only objects in the poem are ordinary, enduring, and somehow essential. The scene is rural, perhaps a farm. The chickens are not symbolic; they are white chickens that exist beside equally plain things of the world: a utilitarian barrow that is not exalted, but left out in the rain. And not an apocalyptic rain but a slow drizzle. Why does Williams choose this image, this scene? Why does so much of the poem depend on things so ordinary? Do these concrete things suggest a larger, more abstract idea?It should be clear at this point that inquiry into earlier questions about form and technique have yielded larger questions of interpretation. So lets return for a moment to a question of form. All thats left from the list of first impressions is the lack of punctuation. How would the lack of stops anywhere in the poem reinforce the idea that ordinary things are of great importance? What does grammar accomplish in any text? For one thing, it helps determine beginnings and endings, and for another, it works with conjunctions to represent relationships among things, time, and ideas in the text. But in this poem, there is none of that. Why? Without the interruptions of commas and periods, the words flow together. They are not discrete parts but one whole unit, differentiated only by the space between couplet or stanza. But the pairing of lines seems to create a unity as well: four equal parts. So the "scene" is integrated further by the lack of any hierarchy imposed by punctuation. The grammar remains, of course.So the stanzas stand on the page as separate, but the lack of punctuation connects them. Thereby, a tension is created, an independence that somehow is connected. This is beginning to sound like the statement the poem is making: "so much" depends on these humble things. The great and small, apparently distinct objects (and the stanzas) are nonetheless interconnected. Form and content are joined in a dance to create meaning, as is so often the case in art.- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19883#sthash.BwDpyNaE.dpuf

"Diving into the Wreck" by Adrienne RichDiving into the WreckFirst having read the book of myths,and loaded the camera,and checked the edge of the knife-blade,I put onthe body-armor of black rubberthe absurd flippersthe grave and awkward mask.I am having to do thisnot like Cousteau with hisassiduous teamaboard the sun-flooded schoonerbut here alone.There is a ladder.The ladder is always therehanging innocentlyclose to the side of the schooner.We know what it is for,we who have used it.Otherwiseits a piece of maritime flosssome sundry equipment.

I go down.Rung after rung and stillthe oxygen immerses methe blue lightthe clear atomsof our human air.I go down.My flippers cripple me,I crawl like an insect down the ladderand there is no oneto tell me when the oceanwill begin.

First the air is blue and thenit is bluer and then green and thenblack I am blacking out and yetmy mask is powerfulit pumps my blood with powerthe sea is another storythe sea is not a question of powerI have to learn aloneto turn my body without forcein the deep element.

And now: it is easy to forgetwhat I came foramong so many who have alwayslived hereswaying their crenellated fansbetween the reefsand besidesyou breathe differently down here.

I came to explore the wreck.The words are purposes.The words are maps.I came to see the damage that was doneand the treasures that prevail.I stroke the beam of my lampslowly along the flankof something more permanentthan fish or weed

the thing I came for:the wreck and not the story of the wreckthe thing itself and not the myththe drowned face always staringtoward the sunthe evidence of damageworn by salt and sway into this threadbare beautythe ribs of the disastercurving their assertionamong the tentative haunters.

This is the place.And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hairstreams black, the merman in his armored bodyWe circle silentlyabout the wreckwe dive into the hold.I am she: I am he

whose drowned face sleeps with open eyeswhose breasts still bear the stresswhose silver, copper, vermeil cargo liesobscurely inside barrelshalf-wedged and left to rotwe are the half-destroyed instrumentsthat once held to a coursethe water-eaten logthe fouled compass

We are, I am, you areby cowardice or couragethe one who find our wayback to this scenecarrying a knife, a cameraa book of mythsin whichour names do not appear.

- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19884#sthash.NJmVWjS1.dpuf

What do you notice first? What about the title? Where Williamss title identified an object, which was then named in the poem as well, Rich titles her poem after an action. The title is dynamic, and so theres a good chance the poem will be too. What more does the title suggest? Along with mentioning Jacques Cousteau, the title connects an action with exploration and investigation. So now, what wreck? Is the poem an account of an adventure from some vacation cruise? How might you decide that the poem is a metaphor? The first line announces some kind of departure from the literal with "the book of myths." Archeologists may be informed by books of legend, but if Rich were referring to any such literal source, she would be more specific. There isnt a single "book of myths." Second, unlike Cousteau, this diver will go it alone. Given the cumbersome equipment and the importance of safety, this sounds unrealistic.So, if this poem is an extended metaphor, the next questions might concern the necessary preparations for the dive: the book, the camera, and the knife. What implications are present in these details? (This is a good general question.) The book suggests a history or previous stories about the "wreck," whatever it may be. The camera is a device for recording what is factually present, as opposed to what is purportedly present. And the knife suggests danger. The last two are consistent with an actual wreck.Something else you may notice reading through the poem several times is that the idea of being alone changes as the poem continues, but this change takes place in a rather unusual way. You might ask, therefore, what significance there is in the movement from "alone" to "among so many who have always lived here" to "We circle silently / about the wreck" to "I am she: I am he / whose drowned face sleeps," and finally, "We are, I am, you are / . . . the one who find our way / back. . . ."? By the end, the identity of the narrator is both one and many. Why?Usually, the movement from one to many would indicate that the speaker found a community, belonging, or companionship. But here, the shifting identity, which moves between one and many, and between male and female, isnt immediately comfortable. Whether, as Rich says, "by cowardice or courage," the exploration and discovery of new territory is still in a kind of uncertainty about identity, if not an identity crisis. At the end, the names (plural) of these explorers, "do not appear" in the book of myths, indicating both a past disenfranchisement of some sort and a future change, created through the exploration of the wreck.So, by asking questions without reference to biographical information, its possible to isolate two significant thematic elements of Richs poem, one of exploration and claiming territory, the other of transformation of identity, perhaps including gender identity. When looking at the date at the bottom of the poem, its tempting to ask how the poem connects to the more general history of the early 1970s, particularly to the womens movement and the cultural change of that era.However, it is not necessary to determine more specifically what the wreck might be. There is no need to reduce the poem to feminine identity and gender stereotypes, although clearly that element is present. There also is no need to limit the poem to a piece about artistic self-discovery. The poem doesnt have an "answer," and the result of personal inquiry or shared inquiry should only be to narrow and clarify some likely thematic possibilities, not to eliminate all conflict and ambiguity.Clearly there are further elements of the poem to question as well, such as the relationship between lineation (or form in general) and content. The oppositionor perhaps balance is the better wordof "damage" and "treasures that prevail" is another intriguing issue. In a lengthier discussion, these and other elements could be explored.- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19884#sthash.NJmVWjS1.dpufText and ContextSome people say that a poem is always an independent work of art and that readers can make full sense of it without having to use any source outside the poem itself. Others say that no text exists in a vacuum. However, the truth lies somewhere in between. Most poems are open to interpretation without the aid of historical context or knowledge about the authors life. In fact, its often best to approach a poem without the kind of preconceived ideas that can accompany this kind of information. Other poems, however, overtly political poems in particular, will benefit from some knowledge of the poets life and times. The amount of information needed to clearly understand depends on you and your encounter with the poem. Its possible, of course, even for someone with a deep background in poetry to be unaware of certain associations or implications in a poem. This is because poems are made of words that accumulate new meanings over time.Consider this situation, a true story, of a poet who found a "text" at the San Mateo coast in northern California. As she scrambled over rocks behind the beach, near the artichoke fields that separate the shore from the coast highway, she found a large smear of graffiti painted on the rocks, proclaiming "La Raza," a Chicano political slogan meaning "the struggle." She sat down and wrote a poem. Why? her poem asked. I understand, she wrote, why someone would write La Raza on the side of a building, or on public transport. There it would be seen and would shout its protest from the very foundations of the oppressive system. But why here, in nature, in beauty, so far from that political arena. Couldnt you leave the coast unspoiled? Then, one evening while reading the poem in Berkeley she got her answer. A man came up to her and asked her, "Do you want to know?" "I beg your pardon," she said. "Those fields," the man went on, "were where Chicanos had been virtually enslaved, beaten, and forced to live in squalor for decades." The landscape was not innocent of political struggle. The text was not out of place.Embrace AmbiguityHeres a tricky issue: the task is to grasp, to connect, to understand. But such a task is to some degree impossible, and most people want clarity. At the end of class, at the end of the day, we want revelation, a glimpse of the skyline through the lifting fog. Aesthetically, this is understandable. Some magic, some satisfaction, some "Ahhh!" is one of the rewards of any reading, and particularly the reading of poetry. But a poem that reveals itself completely in one or two readings will, over time, seem less of a poem than one that constantly reveals subtle recesses and previously unrecognized meanings.Heres a useful analogy. A life partner, a husband, a wifethese are people with whom we hope to constantly renew our love. Despite the routine, the drone of familiarity, the daily preparation of meals and doing of dishes, the conversations weve had before, we hope to find a sense of discovery, of surprise. The same is true of poems. The most magical and wonderful poems are ever renewing themselves, which is to say they remain ever mysterious.Too often we resist ambiguity. Perhaps our lives are changing so fast that we long for stability somewhere, and because most of the reading we do is for instruction or information, we prefer it without shades of gray. We want it to be predictable and easy to digest. And so difficult poetry is the ultimate torment.Some literary critics would link this as well to the power of seeing, to the relationship between subject and object. We wish the poem to be object so we can possess it through our "seeing" its internal workings. When it wont allow us to "objectify" it, we feel powerless.Torment, powerlessnessthese are the desired ends? Well, no. The issue is our reaction, how we shape our thoughts through words. We have to give up our material attitude, which makes us want to possess the poem. Maybe weve bought the book but we dont own the poem. We have to cultivate a new mindset, a new practice of enjoying the inconclusive.Embracing ambiguity is a much harder task for some than for others. Nothing scares some people like the idea (even the idea) of improvisation as a writing or analytical tool. Some actors hate being without a script; the same is true of some musicians. Ask even some excellent players to improvise and they start to sweat. Of course, actors and musicians will say that there is mystery in what they do with a script or a score, and it would be pointless to disagree. The point, after all, is that text is mysterious. Playing the same character night after night, an actor discovers something in the lines, some empathy for the character, that he or she had never felt before. Playing or listening to a song for the hundredth timeif it is a great songwill yield new interpretation and discovery. So it is with great poetry.Proem byOctavio Paz translated byEliot Weinberger

At times poetry is the vertigo of bodies and the vertigo of speech and the vertigo of death;the walk with eyes closed along the edge of the cliff, and the verbena in submarine gardens;the laughter that sets on fire the rules and the holy commandments;the descent of parachuting words onto the sands of the page;the despair that boards a paper boat and crosses,for forty nights and forty days, the night-sorrow sea and the day-sorrow desert;the idolatry of the self and the desecration of the self and the dissipation of the self;the beheading of epithets, the burial of mirrors;the recollection of pronouns freshly cut in the garden of Epicurus, and the garden of Netzahualcoyotl;the flute solo on the terrace of memory and the dance of flames in the cave of thought;the migrations of millions of verbs, wings and claws, seeds and hands;the nouns, bony and full of roots, planted on the waves of language;the love unseen and the love unheard and the love unsaid: the love in love.

Syllables seeds.- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/22523#sthash.wBrHbuTq.dpufIn A NutshellPoems aboutpoems aboutpoems!"Proem,"by Nobel-prize-winning poetOctavio Paz, was published in 1987 as the introductory poem to Paz'scollectionA Tree Within. More than that, it's a meditation on what poetry is, or what it can be. Paz relates poetry to everything from losing your balance to breakingcommandments. He finally lands on poetry as a living, organic creature.Of course, our man Paz wasn't just a poet. He was also a really important essayist and novelist. So it shouldn't be surprising that he was very interested in where the lines are betweenproseandpoetry. And like any good author, he wants to cross that line.So "Proem" is the result. It's a mix between poetry and prose, and uses prosaic (prose-like) methods to discuss what poetry reallyis. If that sounds dry and boring to you, well friends you just haven't read this poem! And really, if you had the choice between reading a whole book on thedefinition ofpoetry and an actual, reallife poemabout poetry, wouldn't you rather go with the poem? It's more fun and, let's face it, a lot shorter. So open those books and let's get down to business with "Proem." It'll be well worth it, weproemise. Get it? Promise? Proem? Anyone?Why Should I Care?Hmm a poem about a poem. Probably not the most pressing, urgent item on your list of things to do. You could be solvingworld hunger, curing the common cold, writing the great American novel, or even making agrilled cheesesandwich! So why would you want to read this example of navel-gazing at its egocentric finest?Well, let us tell you why! And, to match your to-do list, our arguments will come in list form (they're bulleted too!): First off, poetOctavio Pazwas one of the most important thinkers in literature in the twentieth centurynot just in Mexico; we're talking international, here! They gave the guy a Nobel Prize, for crying out loud. So whatever he has to say about poetry is probably pretty smart. This poem gives us a little tour through Latin American poetry history, all in the space of 14 lines. Nowthat'squicker than a whole school year. Have you ever felt, when reading or writing a poem, that language is more than just words on the page? That it has a life of its own? "Proem" zooms in on that feeling and lets you know you weren't justhallucinating. Or, if you were, Paz had the samehallucination.So there. Just try and top that list, why don't you?Proem SummaryAs we've staid elsewhere, this is a poem is aboutpoetry. But what exactly is it aboutpoetrythat makes it poem-worthy? Or, in this case, proem-worthy?Well, tobeginwith, the poem tries to capture what thefeelingofpoetryis, and decides on vertigo. Then it tells whatpoetrydoes: it breaks rules, puts words onto the empty page, and despairs through solitude.Finally, it tells whatpoetryis: it's self-aggrandizing, it's working with words, it's what brings us the illusions of what is real. And in the end,poetryis words: organic, growing, living words.Lines 1-6 SummaryGet out the microscope, because were going through this poem line-by-line.Line 1At times poetry is thevertigoof bodies and thevertigoof speech and thevertigoof death; In this opening line the speaker uses ametaphor, that feeling of not knowing which way is up or down that some people get when they get onto the roof of a tall building. The repetition of "thevertigo" three times at the beginning of each clause is an example ofanaphora, and is almost dizzying itself! And that overuse of "and"? In the poetry biz, that's something called polysendeton, where authors use conjunctions (like "and" or "but") repeatedly in the same sentence, usually unnecessarily. Here it gives the line an improvised feeling, as if the speaker were just thinking out loud, not editing and censoring himself.Line 2the walk with eyes closed along the edge of the cliff, and the verbena in submarine gardens; We're still talking about poetry here, and the dizziness continues! The speaker compares poetry to walking blindly along a cliff, and to the herb verbena in underwater gardens. The first part of the line is an extension of the metaphor begun in the first line, which compares poetry tovertigo. Watch your step! If there's anything that could give a Shmoopervertigo, it's walking with eyes closed along the edge of the cliff. The metaphor shifts, however, in the second clause. Here we go fromvertigoto verbena. This herb is sometimes said to have divine powers, but it sure doesn'tgrow underwater. The idea of this magical flower growing below the sea is an example ofsurrealism, a literary movement from the twentieth century that emphasized the importance of dreams and dreamlike images.Line 3the laughter that sets on fire the rules and the holycommandments; Jinkies! This metaphor is slippery! It's gone fromvertigoto verbena, and now it's comparing poetry to laughterbut not just any laughter. This is the rebellious kind of laughter you use when you're about to do something that isagainst the rules. Poetry is rebellion, according to this line. How could that be so? Is it because of "poeticlicense," which allows poets to creatively bend therules of grammar? An example of this can be found right in this line, in fact. Wouldn't it be more natural to say, "that sets the rules and the holycommandmentson fire"? The line inverts the natural word order of English, and breaks the rules of syntax using a poetic device called anastrophe, the inversion of the expected word order (beeteedubsYoda was really good at this, or should we say: good at this, Yoda was?). This line is especially cool because it doesn't just describe poetry's rule breaking; it demonstrates it!Line 4the descentofparachutingwords onto the sands of the page; And, surprise, surprise, we get another metaphor for poetry. Now poetry is described as a parachutist and the empty page as a desert where it lands. This is an example ofpersonification, because poetry becomes the little dude jumping out of the plane. What kind of image does this metaphor give us of the poet's work? It sounds almost random, just falling lazily out of the sky, rather than hard, deliberate work. This, combined with the conversational opening line gives the poem a spontaneous feel. The surrealists, by the way, were big fans of randomness, and would sometimesjuxtaposestrange, unexpected, or random images and objects together. Check out the "Shout-Outs" section to find out about another poet who was into parachutes.Lines 5-6the despair that boards a paper boat and crosses,for forty nights and forty days, the night-sorrow sea and the day-sorrow desert; Here poetry becomes despair, but it is a personified despair. This despair jumps on a little paper boat and crosses the sea and the wait, a minute the desert? More surrealist madness, folks! These images could come from a dream, right? Often the surrealists would use their dreams as inspiration for their art. This comparison of poetry and despair here makes it seem like despair is the motivation for the art. It isn't a depressed despair that just wants to stay under the covers and eatchocolate ice creamall day, though. It's a desperate despair that boards a ship and takes off to cross the sorrow and leave it behind. In a way, that is what poetry doesit puts our pain or despair into words. The reference to forty nights and forty days could be to Noah,who builtan ark and floated in the rain for forty days and nights, or to Jesus, who went out into the desert for forty days and nights to fast and be tempted by the devil. (See "Shout-Outs" for more on that.) And while we're talking about forty days and nights in the sea and the desert, check out thoseneologismsthat Paz invented by hyphenating night- and day- and sorrow. These new adjectives give the line a sing-songy rhythm, and also add to the dreaminess of the imagery. (For more on things like rhythm andstructure, go check out our "Form and Meter" section.)Line 7the idolatry of the self and the desecration of the self and the dissipation of the self; Not to be rude, but poets can be really egocentric. Don't worry, though. Paz is onto them! This line compares poetry idolatry, desecration, and dissipation of the self. All those ands are another example of our old pal polysendetonusing conjunctions (like "and" or "but") repeatedly in the same sentence. Also, the repetition of "of the self" at the end of each phrase is a technique known as epistrophe. So why all this repetition of selfhood? Well, because poetry is basically a self-absorbed art. The poet usually writes it alone, and the reader usually reads it alone. So it is, in a way, a self-glorifying art: the poet puts his whole self into the art. But then it's also the "desecration" of the self. This means using something sacred for a profane use. So the poem implies that the self is sacred (maybe that's why it's idolatrized right before it's desecrated), but that poetry brings it down to the nitty gritty, the real world. Finally, poetry is the dissipation of the self, or thedissolvingor vanishing of the self. Maybe because the poet puts himself into poetry, he loses himself, and disappears a little bit. This is all to say that poetry isvery self-absorbed.Line 8the beheading of epithets, the burial of mirrors; Here the poem compares poetry tocutting offepithets' heads (we didn't even know epithetshadheads) and burying mirrors. This is all a really indirect way of saying that poetry doesn't say things directly. Epithets are adjectives that go along with someone's name that tells you something intrinsic to their character, like Richard the Lion-Hearted or Charles the Bald. This linepersonifiesthe epithet, only to chop off its head (Epithet the Beheaded?), which means that poetry doesn't just name something for what it is. It uses metaphors or similes or all kinds of other figures to get its point across. It's the same thing with burying mirrors. Poetry doesn't just hold up an identical image of what it's describing. It adds other images and symbols to make us see whatever is being described not exactly as it is, like in aRealisticnovel, but in a different light. In fact, these lines do just that. They don't just say, "Poetry is a literary form that often employs rhyme and meter." Instead, they tell you that poetry is beheading epithets and burying mirrors. Clever how the form and the content work together there, eh?Line 9the recollection of pronouns freshly cut in the garden of Epicurus, and the garden of Netzahualcoyotl; Woah. Now we get some history lessons. Apparently, poetry is like something you can get out of a couple of famous gardens, Epicurus' and Netzahualcoyotl's. So who are those guys? Well, let us tell you: Epicurus was an ancient Greek philosopher who had a philosophy school called the Garden, and Netzahualcoyotl was the poet-king of the pre-Hispanic city-state Texcoco. His verses aboutflowers and plantsare so famous that Mexican schoolchildren memorize them to this day. (See "Shout-Outs"for more information.) So both of these philosophers used gardens as ametaphor, either in their teaching or their poetry, and Paz is following in their footsteps. He also makes a metaphor that compares that measly part of speech the pronounto flowersthat would be cut from a garden. Here words are something organic that grows with the help of a gardener, or a poet.Line 10theflute soloon the terrace of memory and thedanceof flames in the cave of thought; We're still comparing poetry to things, and this time it's a shadow puppet show! Poetry is like the memory of a flute's song, or theflickeringfire in a cave. Poetry is compared to other arts here, particularly music, as though the poet were writing down a piece of music he once heard. The philosophy theme stays strong, too, as the cave of thought is probably a reference to Plato's Cave, fromThe Republic(more on this in the "Shout-Outs" section). Poetry once again works as something that comes between us and the real world, softening it with metaphors but never being direct.Lines 11-12the migrations of millions of verbs, wings and claws, seeds and hands;the nouns, bony and full of roots, planted on the waves of language; And now poetry is taking over the world, like killer bees orfire ants. Head for the hills! It's compared to mass migrations of what could be birds or even people. The millions of verbs in this line, which make up the poetry migration, are first compared to birds in a metaphor (what else has wings and claws?), then to what is probably human beings, because of the hands. The visual image is pretty wild, and makes you think of a huge flock of birds flying south for the winter. The idea is that poetry is alive and part of the world, and that it is in motion. Even though it's just dry ink on a dry page, the images bring it to life. So verbs are on the move, migrating like birds, and the nouns are plants, staying put. It makes sense, right? Verbs = actions, nouns = things. The nouns' vegetable nature doesn't make them any less alive than the verbs though: they're rooted in language.Line 13the love unseen and the love unheard and the love unsaid: the love in love. And, you saw this coming, right? Poetry is L-O-V-E. Except that it's not your everyday, run-of-the-mill love. No! Poetry is for those guys who are too afraid to express their love, so it ends up being the love that isn'tisn't seen, isn't heard, and isn't said. It's written. The repetition of the words "the love" at the beginning of these four phrases is an example ofanaphoraand, you guessed it, all those "and"s demonstrate more use of our friend polysendeton. It kind of makes the sentence flow, like the poetic speaker is just high on love and can't stop going on and on and on about it. (See what we did there?)Line 14Syllables seeds. The poem's final line is a little bit mysterious, a sentence with no verb, more just a statement or definition: "Syllables seeds." This wraps up the whole organic, vegetation metaphor really nicely, as though the meaningless parts of words were the seeds from which the poet sows his garden. There are a couple of interesting poetic devices going on here. First of all, the repeated S sound is an example ofalliterationthat brings the poem to a close on a nice, wizard-like whisper. Secondly, this line is in italics, which sets it off from the rest of the poem as though it were indeed some sort ofmagic spell.

MirrorIn A NutshellTragic death runs inSylvia Plath's family. When she was just eight years old, her father died ofcomplications from diabetes, which could have been prevented if he had soughttreatmentearlier. Perhaps in part because of this death, Plath struggled withdepressionthroughout her life, which she ended herself in February of 1963, after she and her husband, poetTed Hughes, separated, leaving Plath to care for their two children.

Plath's poetry carries us into the mind of a woman surrounded by such tragedy yet her poems are as beautiful as they are dark.

The poem we're looking at here, "Mirror," was written in 1961, roughly two years before Plath's suicide. But it wasn't published for another ten years, when it appeared in Plath's bookCrossing the Water, whichTed Hughesarranged to have published posthumously.

It's tempting to read "Mirror" as a reflection of Plath's difficult life, but the poem hasmeritaside from its author's biographicalintrigues. This poem has a mind of glass sharp, clear, and unforgettable and would be compelling no matter who wrote it.Why Should I Care?Ever caught yourselflooking in the mirrora little too long, just staring at your own reflection?

In "Mirror,"Sylvia Plathgives us the point of view of themirror actually amirrorin the 1960s, a time whenthe meaning ofPlath's reflection, and women's reflections in general, were rapidly changing. The feminist movement was becoming more prominent just as Plath herself was beginning to experience motherhood and to enter middle age.

This poem lets us look out and see, through the silver and piercing eyes of amirror, an aging woman, and to see a time when the definition of what it meant to be a woman was changing.

But you don't have to be female to enjoy this poem. More than giving us this glimpse into a life and a historical time, this poem makes themirrorcome alive, swallowing the reader into its clear pool. This poem will make you wonder, the next time you look in themirror, what is rising up on its surface,comingtowards you.

Mirror SummaryThispoemis not a riddle, speaking with the voice of some mysterious "I" until the end, where the reader is shocked to find out that it's a mirror, and nota personspeaking. Instead, thepoemlets us know from thestartthat we're hearing from a mirror, with its title, "Mirror," and its first line, "I amsilverand exact."

The first stanza describesthe mirror, which seems to be like one of those people who doesn't tell white lies it's truthful and exact, but not cruel.

As the first stanza personifiesthe mirror, showing us some of its human characteristics, we also find out a little aboutthe mirror's life. Most of the time, it reflects a pink speckled wall, which could be found in any bathroom, but it also sees a lot of faces, and a lot of darkness.

Jump into thesecondstanza, and the stakes have changed.The mirror is no longer a mirror, but a lake, which also shows reflections. And we get to see a whole new character: a woman. We saw faces in the first stanza, but now we focus on one face in particular.

This woman, we find out, isn't very happy with her reflection in the lake, so she tries to find a kinder reflection under thelightof a candle or the moon. When the lake reflects her faithfully anyway, she cries and gets upset.

In the last two lines of thispoem, we see why this woman is so upset: in her watery reflection, her past is drowning, and a horrible future is rising to meet her.Stanza 1 SummaryGet out the microscope, because were going through this poem line-by-line.Line 1I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions. While "Sylvia" might sound a little bit like silver, we're pretty sure from this first-person declaration that Plath isn't the speaker in this poem. Instead, we have to think back to the title: what is silver and exact? Well, a mirror! We know mirrors don't talk but that just makes us more curious about what this mirror is going to say. We know from looking at them that mirrors are silver and give an exact reflection of what is in front of them. Thesecondpart of the line is not so simple. This mirror is telling us it has no preconceptions.The mirrordoesn't change what it shows you based on it's understanding of who you are, or whether you're having a bad day or a good day it just shows what it sees. So, while this mirror may be personified in the poem, it doesn't, like most people, let what it has seen before affect what it does in the present.Line 2Whatever I see, I swallow immediately. Now the personification becomes a little weirder. We can imagine a person who is exact, who has no preconceptions, but a person whoswallowseverything he sees now that's a stretch. To figure out this line, it helps to think of what mirrors do to everything they see they reflect it. Swallowing everything, then, is a metaphor for reflecting everything. The substitution of "swallowing" for "reflecting" makes this mirror seem human. It appears hungry to us, and a little unforgiving and scary. We certainly don't want to be swallowed by our mirrors. In terms of sound, therhythm ofthis lineswallowsthe reader right up; it's arranged to be sharp and deliberate, but reads like a riddle.Line 3Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike This line is giving us more information about howthe mirroris swallowing what it sees, while also confirming what we already know from the first line: thatthe mirroris exact and has no preconceptions. The first part of this line isn't too complicated we know that mirrors reflect things just as they are. But then we get to thesecondpart of the line, where we find out that whateverthe mirrorswallowsis "unmisted by love or dislike." Unmisted is yet another metaphor; here it means unchanged, but it gives us an image of an actual mist that could be but isn't cloudingwhatthe mirrorsees. Even more interesting, love and dislike are the things that cause this mist.The mirror, even though it's not human, knows that when humans love something, it appears more beautiful, and when we dislike something, it seems uglier. Butthe mirroris beyond all this. The vision-impairing mist of love or dislike does not apply tothe mirror, which shows things exactly as they are.Lines 4-5I am not cruel, only truthful The eye of a little god, four-cornered. Herethe mirrorseems to realize that it'scomingoff as a little harsh, because it just shows what it sees and takes nothing else in account. So it explains that it's not cruel, just truthful. Ifthe mirrorwere to lie to make what it reflected look worse than it already does, it would be considered cruel. Instead, it just shows what it sees, good or bad. We now get a dash connecting line 4 to line 5. A dash can mean many things (check out the poems ofEmily Dickinson), but here, it seems to denote a comment fromthe mirror, explaining the previous line further, while in the meantime giving us a pretty cool new way to think about a mirror. The mirror, in line 5, is comparing itself to the eye of a "little god." Indeed,the mirroris getting a little high and mighty here, saying that it's powerful. It's also saying something about what it thinks a god is like not cruel, but truthful. Notice that the word "god" isn't capitalized in this line: it could refer to any god, even one in the guise of a mirror. Finally, the note that the god's eye is "four-cornered" (square or rectangular) helps us complete in a concise and graceful way the image of the eye in the shape of a mirror.Line 6Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall. This line tells us in aroundaboutway whatthe mirroris facing: a wall. The line continues to personifythe mirror instead of facing it, or reflecting it,the mirror"meditates on" (or contemplates) the opposite wall. This implies thatthe mirror, an inanimate object, thinks.Lines 7-8It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so longI think it is a part of my heart. But itflickers. Now we find out more details about the opposite wall, which serves as the object of the mirror's meditation, or thoughts. The wall is speckled and pink. The color pink makes the wall seem feminine; this mirror is probably in a girl's bedroomor bathroom. Next,the mirrortells us about its connection to the wall. Using enjambment, a literary device where a thought is split between two lines,the mirrortells us that it has looked at this wall for so long that it feels like the wall is a part of its heart. It's a little cute thatthe mirrorfeels like what it's reflecting is a part of its heart. But then we remember thatthe mirror doesn't have this feeling for the person it often reflects, but rather for a boring pink wall. At the end of the eighth line, we see that the relationship between the wall andthe mirrorisn't as constant as we thought: the wallflickers.Line 9Faces and darkness separate us over and over. Here we see why the wallflickers because of faces and darkness. The faces come to look inthe mirror, and when they leave, they turn the light off, leavingthe mirrorto reflect nothing but the darkness. The way Plath has structured this line makes us think thatthe mirrormust be sad at this separation. If we didn't know any better, we'd think that these two lines were part of a love poem from person to her beloved, and not from a mirror to a wall.Stanza 2 SummaryLines 10-11Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me.Searching my reaches for what she really is. With the new stanza, our poem switches: we're now no longer hearing from amirror, but from a lake. Yet the speaker is conscious of this change it sets it up with the word "now." We're not quite sure what the lake looks like, but it must be pretty clear and still to show reflections like amirror. We wonder if the lake is as honest as themirror, and if it misses the pink speckled wall. Whether or not this lake is the same at heart as themirror, the poem moves on to show what the lake is reflecting: a woman. Because she's looking in a lake and not amirror, the woman must bend over to see the reflection of her face. But the woman isn't only trying to see the reflection of her face; she's hoping to see something deeper: what she really is. She's searching the reaches, or the depths, of the lake, perhaps looking not only into her reflection, but also into the waters beneath it.Lines 12-13Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.I see her back, and reflect it faithfully This woman is determined to find a way to reflect herself, to show something deeper than what is on the surface. After searching in the lake, she turns to face the moonlight and candles to try and see a different reflection. The lake calls candles and the moon liars, because theirlight canwarpsight, often hiding people's blemishes and making them appear more beautiful (candlelightdinnersand moonlight walks are romantic for a reason, after all). Here, wesee morehumancharacteristicsfrom the speaker the lake is calling other inanimate objects liars. Of course, none of these things can talk, much less talk trash about each other, but this lake is proud of its honesty, as we see further in line 13. When the woman is turned away, to look at the lying moon and candles, the lake is still there, reflecting her back, faithfully showing the truth.Line 14She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands. This line shows that the woman is anxious to find what she's looking for as the lake told us earlier, she is searching for what she really is. She's not satisfied with the lake at first glance, but eventually turns back to it. But the lake seems upset that the woman is rewarding it for its faithful reflection by becoming more distressed. She shows her distress by physically disturbing the lake; her tears drop into it, and her hands stir up the water that shows her reflection.Lines 15-16I am important to her. She comes and goes.Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness. This lake sure is proud, saying it's important to the woman it reflects. But remember, this speaker is supposed to be truthful and exact, so maybe it's right when it says that it's important to this woman. The lake even gives proof to back up how important it is it says the woman visits each morning, so that the lake then reflects the woman's face instead of the dark of the night. If this woman comes to lookat the lakeevery morning, well then maybe it is important to her.Lines 17-18In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old womanRises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish. Now, the water becomes not just a calmmirror, but terrifying. In these two lines, drowning and rising in the lake metaphorically describe aging. The woman has "drowned" a young girl in the lake but we don't think she has actually drowned anyone. Instead, the young girl who used to look into the lake is gone, having grown into a woman. Why does the speaker say the woman "drowned" her own youth in these waters? Perhaps because the woman has spent so much time peering into the lake and fretting about her reflection, or perhaps simply because time is passing. Also in the lake, an old woman rises up but again, we don't think this is an actual old woman in the lake. Instead, the woman's reflection is changing and aging. She sees herself growing into an old woman. This old woman is like a "terrible fish," which brings the lake metaphorfull circleand gives us a ghastly image of what this young woman has turned into: something as ugly as a fish. In thesefinallines, we understand what's so haunting and pressing about looking into this lake for the woman in the poem. In her own reflection in this lake, beautiful youth is sinking and terrible old age is rising. These two lines are like the punch line of the poem; it's not ajoke, and the lines aren't funny, but they deliver the message of the poem so sharply and suddenly it leaves you feeling a little out of breath, a little horrified.

"Mirror"SummaryIn this poem, a mirror describes its existence and its owner, who grows older as the mirror watches.The mirror first describes itself as silver and exact. It forms no judgments, instead merely swallowing what it sees and reflecting that image back without any alteration. The mirror is not cruel, only truthful. It considers itself a four-cornered eye of a god, which sees everything for what it is.Most of the time, the mirror looks across the empty room and meditates on the pink speckled wall across from it. It has looked at that wall for so long that it describes the wall as part of my heart. The image of the wall is interrupted only by people who enter to look at themselves and the darkness that comes with night.The mirror imagines itself as a lake. A woman looks into it, trying to discern who she really is by gazing at her reflection. Sometimes, the woman prefers to look at herself in candlelight or moonlight, but these are liars because they mask her true appearance. Only the mirror (existing here as lake) gives her a faithful representation of herself.Because of this honesty, the woman cries and wrings her hands. Nevertheless, she cannot refrain from visiting the mirror over and over again, every morning. Over the years, the woman has drowned a young girl in the mirror, and now sees in her reflection an old woman growing older by the day. This old woman rises toward her out of the mirror like a terrible fish.AnalysisIn this short but beloved poem, the narrator is a wall mirror in what is likely a woman's bedroom. The mirror is personified - that is, it is endowed with human traits. It is able to recognize monotony, commenting on the regularity of the wall that it reflects most of the time. Further, while it does not offer moral judgment, it is able to observe and understand its owner (the woman) as she grapples with the reality of aging.Compared to most of the others in Plath's oeuvre, this poem is not particularly difficult to analyze. Though the speaker is a mirror, the subjects are time and appearance. The woman struggles with the loss of her beauty, admitting each day that she is growing older. Though the woman occasionally deludes herself with the flattering "liars" candlelight and moonlight, she continually returns to the mirror for the truth. The woman needs the mirror to provide her with an objective, unadulterated reflection of self, even though it is often discomfiting, causing her "tears and an agitation of hands." The mirror is well aware of how important it is to the woman, which evokes the Greek myth of Narcissus, in which a young man grows so transfixed with his own reflection that he dies.Some critics have speculated that the woman is vexed by more than her changing physical appearance. They posit that the woman is observing her mind, her soul, and her psyche, stripped of any guile or obfuscation. By seeing her true self, she becomes aware of the distinction between her exterior and interior lives. In other words, she might be meditating on the distinction between a "false" outer self of appearance, and a "true" inner self. After Plath's 1963 suicide, many critics examined the writer's different facets, contrasting her put-together, polite, and decorous outer self with her raging, explosively-creative inner self. Perhaps Plath is exploring this dichotomy in "Mirror." The slippery and unnerving "fish" in the poem may represent that unavoidable, darker self that cannot help but challenge the socially acceptable self.The critic Jo Gill writes of "Mirror" that even as the mirror straightforwardly describes itself as "silver and exact," it feels compelled to immediately qualify itself. Gill writes, "as the poem unfolds we see that this hermetic antonym may be a deceptive facade masking the need for communion and dialogue." The mirror actually dominates and interprets its world, and thus has a lot more power than it seems to suggest. It does not merely reflect what it sees, but also shapes those images for our understanding. Gill notes that the poem is catoptric, meaning that it describes while it represents its own structure; this is down through the use of two nine-line stanzas which are both symmetrical, and indicative of opposition.The second stanza is significant because it, as Gill explains, "exposes...the woman's need of the mirror [and] the mirror's need of the woman." When the mirror has nothing but the wall to stare at, the world is truthful, objective, factual, and "exact," but when the woman comes into view, the world becomes messy, unsettling, complicated, emotional, and vivid. Thus, the mirror is "no longer a boundary but a limninal and penetrable space." It reflects more than an image - it reflects its own desires and understanding about the world.Overall, "Mirror" is a melancholy and even bitter poem that exemplifies the tensions between inner and outer selves, as well as indicates the preternaturally feminine "problem" of aging and losing one's beauty.

IfIf you can keep your head when all about youAre 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 DisasterAnd treat those two impostors just the same:.If you can bear to hear the truth you've spokenTwisted 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 winningsAnd 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 sinewTo serve your turn long after they are gone,And so hold on when there is nothing in youExcept 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 minuteWith 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!Rudyard KiplingInvictusOut of the night that covers me,Black as the Pit from pole to pole,I thank whatever gods may beFor my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstanceI have not winced nor cried aloud.Under the bludgeonings of chanceMy head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tearsLooms but the Horror of the shade,And yet the menace of the yearsFinds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,How charged with punishments the scroll.I am the master of my fate:I am the captain of my soul.William Ernest Henley

Summary of psalm of lifeLines 1-4

In the opening stanza, the speaker directly addresses the psalmist. He begins by dismissing the psalmist's sad poetry, and he rejects as dangerous the psalmist's notion that human life is a meaningless illusion. If one accepts the logic that life is just a dream, he cautions, one's soul will not merely sleep, but die. On the surface, human life may appear futile, but the speaker contends that it is actually this sense of hopelessness - and not human life itself - that is the illusion.Lines 5-8

Longfellow uses the second stanza to build on the ideas of the first. Because the soul lives eternally, the speaker reasons, life must be real. Note that in the first line there is a caesura, or break, after the word "real." This caesura forces the reader to pause, thereby emphasizing the idea that life is real. These lines are an allusion to the Bible's book of Genesis, where God says to the fallen Adam, "dust thouart,and unto dust shalt thou return." In Longfellow's poem, the speaker is asserting that although the mortal body will die, the soul is exempt from death.Lines 9-12

The third stanza introduces the central theme of the poem: the purpose of life is not to experience pleasure or sorrow, but "to act" - to perform the deeds that will improve the condition of mankind. Note that by this point in the poem, the speaker has ceased to address the psalmist; instead, he is directing his remarks to mankind in general, as is evidenced by his broadly inclusive use of the first person plural - "our" and "us."Lines 13-16

The fourth stanza begins with an allusion to a line from Seneca's workDe Brevitate vitae,which states"vita brevis est, ars longa,"or "Life is brief, art long." The idea here is that although a lifetime passes relatively quickly, it actually takes a long time to learn how to live well - to decipher the "art" of living. The speaker is suggesting with some urgency, then, that we should live as productive a life as possible, because death (of the human body, not the soul) is always imminent. Note the simile in line 15, which compares the human heartbeat to "muffled drums." On a literal level, of course, a heartbeat can sound like a drumbeat, but Longfellow extends this idea to suggest that our own hearts are measuring out the backbeat of a steady and irreversible journey toward death. Each beat of our hearts, Longfellow implies, carries us closer to death. If you read the stanza aloud, you will notice that, at this point, the trochaic rhythm is especially steady and even; it sounds as though a drum is beating in the background.Lines 17-20

These lines rely heavily on war imagery, as the march to the grave has been transformed to a march to battle. By comparing life to a "bivouac," a temporary campsite during a battle, the speaker reminds us again of the transience of human existence. He exhorts the reader - who, by implication, is a soldier - to become a hero in this battle and not merely march to his or her death like a cow forced to the slaughterhouse.Lines 21-24

In the sixth stanza, the speaker explains in detail how the reader can become a hero. He advises the reader not to hope for the future nor to worry about the past. Instead, in a return to the poem's central theme, he urges the reader to live actively in the present. The speaker emphasizes his imperative instruction that we "act" by repeating the word twice in line 23. Note how Longfellow draws our attention to the word "act" by manipulating the meter: not only does he insert a caesura between the two "acts," but, metrically, the two consecutive words are stressed, giving them added force.Lines 25-28

In the seventh stanza, the speaker asks the reader to consider past heroes. These "great men," the speaker indicates, should inspire us to live our lives so fully that we, too, will leave behind records of greatness when we die. Longfellow suggests the idea of a record of greatness by using a metaphor: "footprints on the sands of time." Even here, however, this metaphor ironically reminds us of the transient nature of life, since these footprints will eventually be washed away by the tide. Nonetheless, they may have a positive effect on the people who live after us.Lines 29-32

The "footprints" metaphor of the seventh stanza develops into the central conceit, or governing concept, of the eighth stanza. The speaker envisions a shipwrecked sailor who is lost at sea but observes these footprints in the sand. In this conceit, the sailor represents any discouraged or lonely individual who receives encouragement from the memory of the good deeds of others.Lines 33-36

The speaker concludes the poem by exhorting us to live active, courageous lives. He is urging the reader to strive continuously to accomplish good, useful deeds: these good deeds, it is suggested, give life meaning and purpose. The last word of the poem, "wait," has a few possible meanings; it can mean "to serve" others - in this case, by working or "laboring" diligently; it can mean "to be ready" for someone or some event; or it can mean to be "watchful" - to be on the lookout for good opportunities as well as to be on guard against unexpected events or dangers. The poem ends, then, as it began, with a word of caution and of hope.Karmanyevadi Karaste Maphaleshu Kadhachana- Bhagvad GitaI will drink Life to the leesHow dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnishd, not to shine in use! As tho to breathe were life! Life piled on life Were all too little, and of one to me Little remains: but every hour is saved From that eternal silence, something more, A bringer of new things; and vile it were For some three suns to store and hoard myself, And this gray spirit yearning in desire To follow knowledge like a sinking star, Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.Death closes all: but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done, Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Carpe Diem: Poems for Making the Most of Time"We are food for worms, lads," announces John Keating, the unorthodox English teacher played by Robin Williams in the 1989 filmDead Poets Society. "Believe it or not," he tells his students, "each and every one of us in this room is one day going to stop breathing, turn cold, and die."The rallying cry of their classroom is "carpe diem," popularized as "seize the day," although more literally translated as "pluck the day," referring to the gathering of moments like flowers, suggesting the ephemeral quality of life, as inRobert Herrick's "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time," which begs readers to live life to its full potential, singing of the fleeting nature of life itself:Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,Old Time is still a-flying;And this same flower that smiles todayTomorrow will be dying.The Latin phrasecarpe diemoriginated in the "Odes," a long series of poems composed by the Roman poetHoracein 65 B.C.E., in which he writes:Scale back your long hopes

to a short period. While wespeak, time is envious and

is running away from us.Seize the day, trustinglittle in the future.Various permutations of the phrase appear in other ancient works of verse, including the expression "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die," which is derived from the Biblical book of Isaiah. At the close of "De rosis nascentibus," a poem attributed to both Ausonius andVirgil, the phrase "collige, virgo, rosas" appears, meaning "gather, girl, the roses." The expression urges the young woman to enjoy life and the freedom of youth before it passes.Since Horace, poets have regularly adapted the sentiment ofcarpe diemas a means to several ends, most notably for procuring the affections of a beloved by pointing out the fleeting nature of life, as inAndrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress":Now let us sport us while we may,And now, like amorous birds of prey,Rather at once our time devourThan languish in his slow-chapt power.Other approaches tocarpe diemencourage the reader to transcend the mundane, recognize the power of each moment, however brief, and value possibility for as long as possibility exists. In "A Song On the End of the World," the poetCzeslaw Miloszasserts that the world has not yet ended, though "No one believes it is happening now," whileRainer Maria Rilke's poem "Archaic Torso of Apollo" famously ends with the directive "You must change your life."Emily Dickinson's poem "I tie my HatI crease my Shawl (443)" boasts that the reward of life is to "hold our Senses," and the French poetCharles Baudelaireoffers the advice to "Be Drunk," though not necessarily on alcohol: "Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk."Not allcarpe diempoems instruct, however. The poem "The Layers" byStanley Kunitzoffers advice through the poet's first hand experience:In a rising windthe manic dust of my friends,those who fell along the way,bitterly stings my face.Yet I turn, I turn,exulting somewhat,with my will intact to gowherever I need to go,and every stone on the roadprecious to me.In a similar manner, many contemporary poems offer reminders about life's overlooked pleasures, such as those found in the warm summer evening ofTony Hoagland's poem "Jet":We gaze into the nightas if remembering the bright unbroken planetwe once came from,to which we will neverbe permitted to return.We are amazed how hurt we are.We would give anything for what we have.Carpe diemremains an enduring rhetorical device in poetry because it is a sentiment that possesses an elasticity of meaning, suggesting both possibility and futility. Many poets have responded to the sentiment, engaging in poetic dialogues and arguments over its meaning and usefulness.Robert Frostbriefly considers the notion of living in the present in a poem appropriately titled "Carpe Diem." He concludes, however, that "The age-long theme is Age's" and ends the poem with his own sentiment, that one should seize tomorrow, not today:But bid life seize the present?It lives less in presentThan in the future always,And less in both togetherthan in the past. The presentIs too much for the senses,Too crowding, too confusingToo present to imagine.The existential dilemma suggested bycarpe diemincludes a sense of helplessness and senselessness, sentiments which are often expressed in a poet's resignation to a life filled with inexplicable losses and hardships. InGerard Manley Hopkins's poem "Spring and Fall: To a young child," the poet warns that "as the heart grows older / It will come to such sights colder." However,Walt Whitman's poem "O Me! O Life!" represents a refusal to acquiesce to such interpretations of existence. Whitman calls the reader to the present moment, and demands something meaningful be attempted:The question, O me! so sad, recurringWhat good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer.

That you are herethat life exists, and identity;That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.

Some other examples ofcarpe diempoems include:"We live in deeds" by Philip James Bailey"The City" byC. P. Cavafy"Are they Shadows that we See" by Samuel Daniel"Vitae Summa Brevis Spem Nos Vetat Incohare Longam" by Ernest Dowson"The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost"Youth's the Season Made for Joys" by John Gay"Catch What You Can" by Jean Garrigue"O Gather me the Rose" by William Ernest Henley"The Dead Do Not Want Us Dead" byJane Hirschfield"Flowering Vetch" byJane Hirshfield"Loveliest of Trees" by A. E. Housman"What the Living Do" by Marie Howe"Dreams" by Langston Hughes"Song: to Celia" by Ben Jonson"The Time Before Death" by Kabir, translated byRobert Bly"Otherwise" byJane Kenyon"The Still Life" byGalway Kinnell"If" by Rudyard Kipling"One Heart" byLi-Young Lee"Daphnis and Chloe" by Haniel Long"A Psalm of Life" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow"First Fig" by Edna St. Vincent Millay"You Can't Have It All" by Barbara Ras"O mistress mine, where are you roaming?" fromTwelth Nightby William Shakespeare"All the World's a Stage" by William Shakespeare"The Truly Great" byStephen Spender"Nic Dwa Razy (Nothing Twice)" by Wislawa Szymborska, translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh"Live blindly and upon the hour" by Trumbull Stickney"The One You Wanted to Be Is the One You Are" byJean Valentine"The First Angel" byJean Valentine"Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota" by James Wright- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20258#sthash.vjndh07x.dpuf

Poets on PoetryFamous quotations about poetry:'Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity.'William Wordsworth'A good poet is someone who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightening five or six times; a dozen or two dozen times and he is great.'Randall Jarrell'Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.'T.S.Eliot'Milton, Madam, was a genius that could cut a Colossus from a rock; but could not carve heads upon cherry-stones.'

(To Miss Hannah More, who had expressed a wonder that the poet who had writtenParadise Lostshould write such poor sonnets.)Samuel Johnson'Deprivation is for me what daffodils were for Wordsworth.'Philip Larkin'Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.'Percy Bysshe Shelley'Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.'Robert Frost'...nine-tenths of what passes as English poetry is the product of either careerism, or keeping one's hand in: a choice between vulgarity and banality.'Robert Graves'Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.'T.S.Eliot'Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people.'Adrian Mitchell'No man can read Hardy's poems collected but that his own life, and forgotten moments of it, will come back to him, in a flash here and an hour there. Have you a better test of true poetry?'Ezra Pound'I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is prose; words in their best order; - poetry; thebestwords in the best order.'S.T.Coleridge'Well, write poetry, for God's sake, it's the only thing that matters.'e. e. cummings'In my view a good poem is one in which the form of the verse and the joining of its parts seems light as a shallow river flowing over its sandy bed.'Basho(Translated by Lucien Stryk)'Use no superfluous word, no adjective, which does not reveal something. Don't use such an expression as 'dim land of peace.' It dulls the image. It mixes an abstraction with the concrete. It comes from the writer's not realising that the natural object is always theadequatesymbol. Go in fear of abstractions.'Ezra Pound'Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air.'Carl Sandburg'Poetry is simply the most b