A Favourite Stanza of Poetry
Choose a favourite stanza and share it here. Explain why you like it and point out any poetic devices like simile or metaphor or rhyme. Bring a copy to class on Friday.
If you have no personal favourites, try to find one at the links below. Remember to choose something that reflects good practice (as in our top ten list from today).
Weekly Poems at Slate.com
Canadian Poetry Online (list of poets by name with links to poems)
Poetry Daily (a new poem every day)
27 comments:
The butter melts out of habit,
you know the toast isn’t even warm.
And the waitress and the man in the plaid shirt,
play out the same old scene they’ve played so many times before.
And I’m watching some stumble home in the morning,
from a bar on the East side of town.
And the coffee is just water dressed in brown.
From - Out of Habit - by Ani DiFranco
I like this stanza as it creates a setting . I can picture myself here and see the images created by the writer. She takes simple everyday things and paints a picture with words. The poetic device Ani uses other than rhyming scheme, is concrete language to create something abstract where she subverts the ordinary.
And anyway they didn't count the years.
They counted nets, pods, sheds, and axes.
Time, so generous toward any petty star in the sky,
offered them a nearly empty hand
and quickly took it back, as if the effort were too much.
One step more, two steps more
along the glittering river
that sprang from darkness and vanished into darkness.
Wislawa Szymborska from "Our Ancestors Short Lives"
Here Symborska uses imagery, personification and metaphor. Her words are mostly concrete and sensory. I particularly love the image of time offering "a nearly empty hand," especially as compared to that offered to "any petty star."
-A favourite stanza of poetry:
Beautiful, also, is the sun.
Beautiful, also, are the souls of my people.
-from my people by Langston Hughes.
I like this stanza because the way Langston uses metaphor, the sun, to describe “his people's soul.” I also think he uses the sun as a metaphor because it brightens up for everyone in spite of different backgrounds.
The tears I cry are bitter and warm.
They flow with life but take no form
I Cry because my heart is torn.
I find it difficult to carry on.
If I had an ear to confide in,
I would cry among my treasured friend,
but who do you know that stops that long,
to help another carry on.
From – I Cry by Tupac Shakur
Shakur uses alliteration, metaphor, rhyme scheme and juxtaposition. I really like this stanza because it describes the emotion of sadness very well. When he says “I find it difficult to carry on” it reminded me of some of my experiences with the tough times. I feel that this is a poem that can relate to anybody.
The stanza I have chosen was written by Russian poet Alexander Pushkin in 1826.
To My Nanny
Dear doting sweetheart of my childhood,
Companion of my austere fate!
In the lone house deep in the wild wood
How patiently for me you wait.
Alone beside your window sitting
You wait for me and blame the clock,
While, in your wrinkled hands, your knitting
Fitfully falters to a stop.
Beyond the crumbling gates the pine trees
Shadow the road you watch so well.
Nameless forebodings, dark anxieties
Oppress your heart. You cannot tell
What visions haunt you: Now you seem to see...
(Translated from Russian by Avril Pyman)
Here Pushkin uses rhyme, imagery and personification. This stanza is filled with the words of love and tenderness about the author’s nanny who replaced his mother and raised him with patience and kindness. The most touching expression “Nameless forebodings, dark anxieties oppress your heart” fully describes the mood of the old loving woman. Her waiting is endless, and her love is eternal.
Those bottles we throw
to the ocean hold a message
for us (lean your ear to my mouth,
The siren sang). Man's alchemy
burns sand to glass, the seas
turn glass to sand.
John Oughton from “Sand and Glass”
In the poem “Sand and Glass”, Oughton uses imagery, personification and metaphor through concrete words. There must be a message hidden in the metaphor of sea, sand and glass. I assume that the bottles thrown into the ocean “hold a message”, and symbolize the importance of time.
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red ;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare
–William Shakespeare (Sonnet 130)
For me this is one of a kind. Shakespeare compares his mistress’s flaws to the beauties of nature and he makes obvious that she can’t compare or stand up to them. The poet does not falsely compare his mistress by implying she is perfect therefore his love for her is not superficial. He uses AB-AB/CD-CD rhyme scheme and similes. This type of poem is called a sonnet and it follows its own different structure. It has ten syllables per line and the last two lines contradict the first three quatrain.
But just to make the sport more scarey
We played at the game of adversary
And hid ourselves in mysteries
Swathed in our separate histories.
From Time out by Linda M. Sttit
I love this stanza as it rhymes perfectly. Sttit uses assonance and metaphor. She adds a concrete word to each of the sentence so that it is more detailed. I believe the game that she is describing about is hide and seek.
Nude woman, dark woman,
Ripe fruit of the dark flesh, somber ecstasies of black wine, mouth that causes my mouth to sing;
Savanna of pure horizons, savanna trembling under the fervent caresses of the East wind,
Carved tom-tom, tense tom-tom, grumbling under the fingers of the conqueror,
Your low contralto voice is the song of the lover.
"Femme Noire" by Leopold Sédar Senghor (Translated from French to English)
In this stanza, I enjoy the personification, the metaphor and the imagery used by Senghor. He uses words of love and admiration toward the woman. An inspiring stanza dedicated to a beloved one.
There was an Old Man with a nose,
Who said, "If you choose to suppose,
That my nose is too long,
You are certainly wrong!"
That remarkable Man with a nose.
By Edward Lear
This humorous poem is a limerick. It was popularized by Edward Lear. This kind of poetry has one stanza with five lines usually rhyming with one another. First, second and fifth lines contain three beats and rhyming; lines three and four have two beats and rhyming. When my sons were the kids, the book of limericks was our favorite, and now limericks are nostalgic reminiscence of my sons’ childhood.
Here are three different interpretations from Russian to English the same stanza from the poem, "To ***", Alexandr S Pushkin, 1825.
I still remember that amazing moment
You have appeared before my sight
As though a brief and fleeting omen,
Pure phantom in enchanting light.
A magic moment I remember:
I raised my eyes and you were there,
A fleeting vision, the quintessence
Of all that`s beautiful and rare.
The wondrous moment I remember
When you appeared in a flash.
From Michelangelo to Rembrandt
You are an angel in the flesh.
Being a romantic, I love this poem. The author uses rhyme, simile, and metaphor. Pushkin describes the first meeting between the poet and his lover comparing her with a divine and heavenly angel. Love for a poet is a deep, sincere, and magic feeling.
Look! This is love
Look! This is love -- to fly toward the heavens,
To tear a hundred veils in every wink,
To tear a hundred veils at the beginning,
To travel in the end without a foot,
By Rumi
Rumi uses sensory and concrete words to express a unique meaning of love in short lines.Imagery and alliteration is used to create a miraculous image of love;assonance and alliteration make it more smooth and beautiful.
Human beings are members of a whole,
In creation of one essence and soul.
If one member is afflicted with pain,
Other members uneasy will remain.
If you have no sympathy for human pain,
The name of human you cannot retain.
Saadi wrote it in the 13th century, and the English translation of it is graced at the top of the entrance to the Hall of Nations in the UN building in New York.
Metaphor and aphorism are used to explain how humanity in its real essence is, and that it is not just by looking like human. The analogy of one essence and soul to human society, and how as human they should have solidarity with each other, can not be described any better as in the above stanza.
Scarlet lips as red as a rose,
perfect hips in a seductive pose.
on the outside this is what I may be,
but what about looking at the heart within me.
Within Me by Kathleen Sheppard
Here Sheppard uses metaphor, simile and rhyme, letting the reader to create a vivid picture of what the poem is talking about. I like this stanza because it shows with concrete words that beauty is not always on the outside, but what is inside is really the most important value.
Find slippers when you wake up,
Find paper, find pen,
Can't find work inside the workshop,
.............Find the moon again.
Look inside an outer pocket,
Look where, look when
The seasons to their credit
.............Find the moon again.
You'll miss it if you fail to fail,
Lose it when you win,
Won't do the things others will,
.............So find the moon again.
Find it where you never found it,
Far from the refrain,
Further than rhyme can spit,
.............There's the moon again.
And again find something hardly handsome—
But complicated, plain,
No more than half of wholesome
.............In the moon again.
And when you find it turn away,
Don't try to explain
How loss is gain, night day,
.............Find the moon again.
"Find the Moon Again" By Joshua Weiner
Moon is always a good subject for a poetry, no matter the poet is from east or west. Every stanza of this poem ended with "the moon again" repeatedly, and the last three stanzas rhyme strictly. these made this poem get a sense of rhythm. Personally, I like "You'll miss it if you fail to fail, Lose it when you win", good philosophy.
Each of our heads leans to each
as if teased with an urge to touch,
faces bronze like candlelit coins.
The Wedding Photograph over Our Bed
By Gary Hyland
I love this stanza because Hyland explains his or his wife's lovely romantic wedding picture. In this stanza, “our heads leans to each” I can see clearly the image full of love, emotions and affection. He uses simile “candlelit coins” rhyme and sensory word in this stanza.
Depression
I come by it honestly,
an heirloom passed
from my father
and grandmother before me.
In the bed by the window
she stares at the ceiling,
pills untouched on the dresser.
Cancer uncurls in her brain.
She says she feels nothing,
the heavy deadness
which also weighs me down.
Don't worry, love, depression comes
and then goes. Soon
It will be over.
She says this to me.
And to herself.
By Alison Pick
The theme of this poem is depression and how it is passed down like "an heirloom". This poem illustrates good imagery of the effects of depression, using the metaphor like "Cancer uncurls in her brain." This poem uses mainly concrete words to describe feelings and senses. I did like the ending because it gives the reader a chance to see depression from different perspectives, the person affected, the caregiver and the writer.
The Ynagtze flows east
Washing away
A thousand ages of great men
West of the ramparts
People say
Are the fables Red Cliffs of young Chou of the Three Kingdoms
Rebellious rocks pierce the sky
Frightening waves rip the bank
The backwash churns vast snowy swells
River and mountains like a painting
how many heroes passed them, once ...
Su Shi from Nien nu chiao
In the poem “Three kingdoms” uses imagery, “Rebellious rocks” and “Frightening waves” uses personification , describe the spectacular scene, and lets us see the scene of battlefield in history. “Painting” uses simile. I love the last part “heros passed” ,because it inspires deep reverence for the heros.
They say candy man candy man spit me a dream
blow a chunk of the levy out and spit me a stream
knock a man house down and build a casin'
a two thousand dollar government check from FEM'
i swam down shits creek and came up clean
with a new lease on life like Andy Dufresne
Jay Electronica From "Exhibit A"
Jay Electronica talks about a character I like from a movie called "Shawshank Redemption". This poem also talks about the hardships within the life of a normal man. He uses rhyme scheme, simile and imagery in this stanza.
TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
THE ROAD NOT TAKEN by: Robert Frost (1874-1963)
In some point of our life, decision making is very though. We must be conservative in choosing which path we must trudge so that we cannot take the wrong way for which in some ways there is no turning back. Frost used concrete words, imagery and rhymes in this poem.
The stanza I have chosen was written by Robert Frost (1874-1963).
The Road Not Taken
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
“The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost is about the decision that a person made in life that will make great difference for his life. He chooses the road not taken by most other travelers. In the future, he will tell others about the choice he made. He will sigh either with relief that he made the right choice or with regret that he made the wrong choice. Whether right or wrong, he has to accept the reality because he doesn’t let anyone keep him from doing what he wants to do.
Here Frost uses rhyme, metaphor and concrete words to help readers to enjoy what the poem is talking about. Furthermore, “Poets’ strength is the ability to see what other people see every day in a new way” and express it in such a way that makes the readers feel differently.
I hate you, rubber souls, you seem
to stretch to fit any regime.
They’ll give a yawning smile, stretched wide,
and, like an octopus, they’ll draw you tight.
A rubber man is an elusive rogue:
a fist gets sucked into the bog.
The rubber editor is scared of script,
the author is bogged down in it.
A rubber office I used to know
where «yes» was stretched to courteous «no».
I pity you, elastic crank,
as if erased, your past is blank.
You have erased many a passion, many a thought,
but you were happy and excited, were you not?...
Above the waist you are a cowardly man,
an ace of spade, and an unlucky one...
“RUBBER SOULS” by Andrey Voznesensky (translated from Russian)
I like the way Voznesensky describes this type of people. He uses concrete words and images, metaphors and hyperboles. I love the comparison with eraser: "as if erased, your past is blank." It is easy to feel his contempt to spineless “rubber” hypocrites in the literary world.
On one of your better days
you told us your dream, Milton: resting your rage,
left the Americans and the millionaires
conspiring together (as they always did),
closing a branch plant (as they always would),
cheating the workers (as they always will)—
let them get on with it. Your bellowing frenzy
died like a mad typhoon. It was your own voice
smiled gently at your dream.
There were elephants in that dream,
lurking and hiding among the bushes
round the Garden City Dairy. Elephants leaving
little obscure notes
on leaves. But oh, what fires
burned in your reddened eyes!
Saying Goodbye to Milton Acorn
Francis Edward Sparshott
I liked this stanza because it gives a realization of himself.
The way he uses hyperboles is very interesting to me. I like what he wrote "It was your own voice
smiled gently at your dream." it feels like its him he's talking about!
Fish Dish
Give a man a fish to make a dish
And you will feed him for a day
But teach a man how to fish
And help keep his hunger away.
By: Shahriar Shahriari
In this short poem, I felt that it had captured the essence of life & partakes in the evolution of man. In comparison to the man being given the fish with really no means and knowledge of how to catch a fish- but in actuality if you teach a man how to fish, he will have an unlimited wealth of food. Then of course when the fish run out he'll need to learn something else.
"Fear is a negative thought in your mind. Supplant it with a constructive thought. Fear has killed millions. Confidence is greater than fear. Nothing is more powerful than faith in God and the good."
- Dr Joseph Murphy
Joseph Murphy is my favourite author. I have read many of his books. I like this stanza because it reminds me to have faith and trust in myself. As a human being, I always want to have control over all aspects of my life such as health, finances and relationships. Sometimes things just do not work and that is when I need to inspire myself.
“Fear gas killed millions”.
Dr. Joseph Murphy has used metaphor. Fear does not kill people. Fear is destructive thinking and fear never solves any problems.
I do not regret, and I do not shed tears,
All, like haze off apple-trees, must pass.
Turning gold, I'm fading, it appears,
I will not be young again, alas...
"No Regrets" by Sergei Yesenin
I read this poem in grade 9 in Russian; that's the only poem I remembered and found in English version. In this poem he uses mostly rhyme, simile and imegery. Although, The tone of this stanza is pitiful when he says "I will not not be young again, alas", the essense is about not regreting.
Culloden Moor.
(Seen in Autumn Rain.)
Full of grief, the low winds sweep
O'er the sorrow-haunted ground;
Dark the woods where night rains weep,
Dark the hills that watch around.
Tell me, can the joy of spring
Ever make this sadness flee,Make the woods with music ring,
And the streamlet laugh for glee?
When the summer moor is lit
With the pale fire of the broom,
And through green the shadows flit,
Still shall mirth give place to gloom?
This poem was originally done in the 1700 and translated from Gaelic. Some of the techniques it uses are imagery, metaphor and allitaration.
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