“A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning”

John Donne, a 17th-century writer, politician, lawyer, and priest, wrote "A Valediction: Forbidding
Mourning" on the occasion of parting from his wife, Anne More Donne, in 1611. Donne was
going on a diplomatic mission to France, leaving his wife behind in England. A "valediction" is a
farewell speech. This poem cautions against grief about separation, and affirms the special,
particular love the speaker and his lover share. Like most of Donne's poems, it was not
published until after his death.

Poetic Devices

End rhyme: refers to rhymes that occur in the final words of lines of poetry.

Slant Rhyme: Traditionally, slant rhyme referred to a type of rhyme in which two words located
at the end of a line of poetry themselves end in similar—but not identical—consonant sounds.
For instance, the words "pact" and slicked" could be slant rhymed. The term has expanded over
time to include additional types of similar sounds. More precisely, slant rhyme today now
includes words whose last syllables contain assonance ("unpack" and "detach") as well as
words whose last syllables contain final consonants that have consonance ("country" and
"contra").

Conceit: a fanciful metaphor, especially a highly elaborate or extended metaphor in which an

unlikely, far-fetched, or strained comparison is made between two things.

Personification: type of figurative language in which non-human things are described as having
human attributes, as in the sentence, "The rain poured down on the wedding guests, indifferent
to their plans." Describing the rain as "indifferent" is an example of personification, because rain
can't be "indifferent," nor can it feel any other human emotion. However, saying that the rain
feels indifferent poetically emphasizes the cruel timing of the rain. Personification can help
writers to create more vivid descriptions, to make readers see the world in new ways, and to
more powerfully capture the human experience of the world (since people really do often
interpret the non-human entities of the world as having human traits).

Metaphor: a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the
other. The comparison in a metaphor can be stated explicitly, as in the sentence "Love is a
battlefield." Other times, the writer may make this equation between two things implicitly, as in,
"He was wounded by love." The comparisons created by metaphor are not meant to be taken
literally. Rather, metaphors are figurative—they create meaning beyond the literal meanings of
their words. For instance, these examples are, of course, not saying that love is actually a field
of battle or that the person actually got a physical injury from love. Instead, they capture how
love can be painful, a struggle, even a showdown between opponents, and—as many good
metaphors do—through their comparison they make description more vivid, more relatable, or
reveal new ways of seeing the world.
Simile: a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison,
similes most often use the connecting words "like" or "as," but can also use other words that
indicate an explicit comparison. Eleanor Roosevelt's line, "A woman is like a teabag—you never
know how strong she is until she gets in hot water," is an example of simile. Roosevelt
compares two unlike things, women and teabags, to describe how women reveal the full extent
of their strength in tough situations.

Hyperbole: a figure of speech in which a writer or speaker exaggerates for the sake of
emphasis. Hyperbolic statements are usually quite obvious exaggerations intended to
emphasize a point, rather than be taken literally. For example, in the hyperbolic statement, "My
backpack weighs a ton," the speaker doesn't actually think the backpack weighs a ton, nor does
he or she intend the listener to think so. The backpack-wearer simply wants to communicate,
through the use of hyperbole, that he or she is carrying a very heavy load.

Alliteration: a figure of speech in which the same sound repeats in a group of words, such as the
“b” sound in: “Bob brought the box of bricks to the basement.” The repeating sound must occur
either in the first letter of each word, or in the stressed syllables of those words.

End-stopped line is a line of poetry in which a sentence or phrase comes to a conclusion at the
end of the line. For example, the poet C.P. Cavafy uses end-stopped lines in his poem "Ithaka"
when he writes "Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey. / Without her you wouldn't have set out.
/ She has nothing left to give you now." If a line of poetry contains a complete phrase whose
meaning doesn't change in light of what follows, it is considered to be end-stopped. However, an
end-stopped line is often the end of a longer sentence that stretches across several lines.

Enjambment is the continuation of a sentence or clause across a line break. For example, the
poet John Donne uses enjambment in his poem "The Good-Morrow" when he continues the
opening sentence across the line break between the first and second lines: "I wonder, by my
troth, what thou and I / Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?"

Diacope: a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is repeated with a small number of
intervening words. The first line of Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, "Happy families are all alike;
every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way," is an example of diacope.

Apostrophe: clear audience. The poet addresses or speaks to something.

Paradox: is a figure of speech that seems to contradict itself, but which, upon further
examination, contains some kernel of truth or reason. Oscar Wilde's famous declaration that
"Life is much too important to be taken seriously" is a paradox. At first it seems contradictory
because important things are meant to be taken seriously, but Wilde's paradoxical suggestion is
that, the more important something is, the more important it is not to take it seriously.

"The Sun Rising"

is a poem written by the English poet John Donne. Donne wrote a wide range of social satire,
sermons, holy sonnets, elegies, and love poems throughout his lifetime, and he is perhaps best
known for the similarities between his erotic poetry and his religious poetry. Much of his work,
including "The Sun Rising," was published after his death in the 1633 collection Songs and
Sonnets. In "The Sun Rising," the speaker orders the sun to warm his bed so that he and his
lover can stay there all day instead of getting up to go to work. The poem's playful use of
language and extended metaphor exemplifies Donne's style across his work, erotic and
religious alike.

This poem does not take any specific, established form, but it does have formal similarities with
various versions of the sonnet. Whereas a sonnet has 14 lines, this poem has 30, which are
divided into three stanzas of 10 lines each. However, like most sonnets, the predominant meter
of the poem is iambic pentameter. The rhyme scheme is also a hybrid of Italian and English
sonnet rhyme schemes.

Poetic Devices

An extended metaphor is a metaphor that unfolds across multiple lines or even paragraphs of a
text, making use of multiple interrelated metaphors within an overarching one. So while "life is a
highway" is a simple metaphor, it becomes an extended metaphor when you say: "Life is a
highway that takes us through green pastures, vast deserts, and rocky mountains. Sometimes
your car breaks down or you run out of gas, and sometimes you get lost. Friends are the
roadmaps that help you get where you're going." Now you've spread the idea of "life = highway"
across multiple sentences and related ideas, and created an extended metaphor.

Personification

Cacophony: a combination of words that sound harsh or unpleasant together, usually because
they pack a lot of percussive or "explosive" consonants (like T, P, or K) into relatively little space.
For instance, the protagonist of the children's book Tikki Tikki Tembo has a very long, very
cacophonous name: Tikki Tikki Tembo No Sarimbo Hari Kari Bushkie Perry Pem Do Hai Kai
Pom Pom Nikki No Meeno Dom Barako.

Euphony is the combining of words that sound pleasant together or are easy to pronounce,
usually because they contain lots of consonants with soft or muffled sounds (like L, M, N, and R)
instead of consonants with harsh, percussive sounds (like T, P, and K). Other factors, like rhyme
and rhythm, can also be used to create euphony. An example of euphony is the end of
Shakespeare's famous "Sonnet 18," which goes "So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
/ So long lives this, and this gives life to thee."

Enjambment

Caesura: a pause that occurs within a line of poetry, usually marked by some form of
punctuation such as a period, comma, ellipsis, or dash. A caesura doesn't have to be placed in
the exact middle of a line of poetry. It can be placed anywhere after the first word and before the
last word of a line. In the following line from the prologue of Romeo and Juliet, the comma after
"Verona" marks a caesura: "In fair Verona, where we lay our scene."

Alliteration

Apostrophe

A rhetorical question is a figure of speech in which a question is asked for a reason other than
to get an answer—most commonly, it's asked to make a persuasive point. For example, if a
person asks, "How many times do I have to tell you not to eat my dessert?" he or she does not
want to know the exact number of times the request will need to be repeated. Rather, the
speaker's goal is to emphasize his or her growing frustration and—ideally—change the
dessert-thief's behavior.

An aphorism is a saying that concisely expresses a moral principle or an observation about the
world, presenting it as a general or universal truth. The Rolling Stones are responsible for
penning one of the most catchy aphorisms of all time: "You can't always get what you want."
Aphorisms are often (though not always) witty or humorous, and they're used everywhere, from
philosophical texts and great works of literature, to pop songs and everyday conversation.

A syllogism is a three-part logical argument, based on deductive reasoning, in which two

premises are combined to arrive at a conclusion. So long as the premises of the syllogism are
true and the syllogism is correctly structured, the conclusion will be true. An example of a
syllogism is "All mammals are animals. All elephants are mammals. Therefore, all elephants are
animals." In a syllogism, the more general premise is called the major premise ("All mammals
are animals"). The more specific premise is called the minor premise ("All elephants are
mammals"). The conclusion joins the logic of the two premises ("Therefore, all elephants are
animals").

Aphorismus is a type of figure of speech that calls into question the way a word is used.
Aphorismus is used not to question the meaning of a word, but whether it is actually appropriate
to use that word in a particular situation. For instance, in Shakespeare's Richard II, King Richard
asks "How can you say to me I am a king?" as a way of expressing that, although he is
technically a king, he doesn't feel he actually possesses the qualities of a king and that therefore
perhaps the word should not apply to him.

An asyndeton (sometimes called asyndetism) is a figure of speech in which coordinating

conjunctions—words such as "and", "or", and "but" that join other words or clauses in a
sentence into relationships of equal importance—are omitted. The use of asyndeton can speed
up the rhythm of a phrase, make it more memorable or urgent, or offer other stylistic effects. For
instance, take the sentence: "I expect my dog to chew my pillows, my cat to claw my furniture."
Here, the writer omits the "and" from between "pillows" and "my". This omission transforms the
sentence from one that merely states what the pets often do, to one that implies exasperation
as well as a fatalistic sense that the pets' actions are inevitable and unchangeable.

Diacope

Anaphora

“Sonnet 73”
was written by the English poet and playwright William Shakespeare. Though it was likely
written in the 1590s, it was not published until 1609. Like many of Shakespeare’s first 126
sonnets, it is a love poem that is usually understood to address a young man. The poem uses
natural metaphors of decline and decay to grapple with the onset of old age, and ultimately
suggests that the inevitability of death makes love all the stronger during the lovers’ lifetimes.
Like Shakespeare’s other sonnets, it departs from the earlier, Italian sonnet structure and rhyme
scheme and follows the Shakespearean sonnet form.

Poetic Devices:
Anaphora
Apostrophe
Alliteration
Assonance is a figure of speech in which the same vowel sound repeats within a group of
words. An example of assonance is: "Who gave Newt and Scooter the blue tuna? It was too
soon!"

Consonance is a figure of speech in which the same consonant sound repeats within a group of
words. An example of consonance is: "Traffic figures, on July Fourth, to be tough."

Enjambment
Extended metaphor
Imagery
Irony
Paradox
Personification

“Sonnet 20”
is a poem by the Renaissance playwright and poet William Shakespeare. The poem belongs to
a sequence of Shakespeare's sonnets addressing an unidentified “fair youth”—a young man for
whom the speaker of the poems expresses love and attraction. In this particular sonnet, the
speaker praises the fair youth for his beauty, which encompasses both feminine and masculine
qualities. While acknowledging that this fair youth may continue to have physical relationships
with women, the speaker affirms the depth of the love between the youth and himself. “Sonnet
20” was included in a collection of Shakespeare’s sonnets first published in 1609.

Anaphora
Juxtaposition
Metaphor
Personification
Caesura
Enjambment
End-Stopped line
Alliteration
Consonance
Assonance
Repetition
Polyptoton is a figure of speech that involves the repetition of words derived from the same root
(such as "blood" and "bleed"). For instance, the question, "Who shall watch the watchmen?" is
an example of polyptoton because it includes both "watch" and "watchmen."
A pun is a figure of speech that plays with words that have multiple meanings, or that plays with
words that sound similar but mean different things. The comic novelist Douglas Adams uses
both types of pun when he writes: "You can tune a guitar, but you can't tuna fish. Unless of
course, you play bass." In the first sentence, Adams puns on the similar sounds of "tune a" and
"tuna," while in the second he puns on the two meanings of the word "bass"—the musical
instrument, and the fish.

Historical Context of The Rape of the Lock

Pope’s age was one marked by a number of significant political, social, and economic changes.
After the deposition of Britain’s last Catholic monarch, James II, and the passage of the Test
Acts, anti-Catholic feeling was running high. Pope satirizes the Protestant distaste for Catholic
practices over the course of “The Rape of the Lock.” It is also worth noting that the early 18th
century saw the rise of early industrialization and the spread of British colonial power further
across the globe, both facts reflected in the poem’s preoccupation with objects. The beginning
of industrialized mass production meant owning more “stuff” was suddenly more affordable than
it had ever been, and Pope mocks Belinda’s almost senseless number of possessions. The
expansion of the British Empire meant exotic objects (such as the coffee and china Pope
mentions) were suddenly within reach, and an absurd version of this trend also features in the
poem.

Brief Biography of Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope was born into a Catholic family at the end of the 17th century, only a few short
months after the forced abdication of Britain’s last Catholic monarch, James II. Pope felt the full
effects of anti-Catholic sentiment during his early life, as the Test Acts (a series of laws designed
to inhibit the prosperity of Catholic families at the time) prevented his family from living within 10
miles of London and prevented him from attending a university. Instead, Pope was largely
self-taught, teaching himself French, Italian, Latin, and Greek, and even reading Homer at an
early age. By 1709, he had published a number of his poems entitled Pastorals in Jacob
Tonson’s popular collection Poetic Miscellanies, and by 1711 he had published “An Essay on
Criticism.” This essay was particularly well received and gained him a number of admirers with
considerable literary clout, including Richard Steele and Joseph Addison, with whom he began
collaborating on The Spectator, a landmark daily publication. Following the success of “The
Rape of the Lock,” in 1717 he published a folio of his work with two new additions, “Verses to
the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady” and “Eloisa to Abelard.” Pope’s greatest satirical work, The
Dunciad, first appeared in 1728 and the final version was printed in 1743. This mock-heroic
mercilessly pokes fun at his contemporaries, and although it was originally published
anonymously, Pope’s distinctive wit meant it the authorship was no secret, reaffirming his
position as one of the foremost satirists of his day. It is also worth noting that aside from his own
literary creations, Pope was greatly interested in translation and editing. From 1715 to 1720,
Pope published various editions of his translation of Homer’s Iliad and published his translation
of the Odyssey in 1726, shortly after the 1725 publication of his edition of the complete works of
Shakespeare, which made a number of significant editorial changes and was heavily critiqued.
Towards the end of his life, however, Pope’s literary output began to decline, and he wrote little
after 1738. Having always been a sickly child, Pope’s final years were marked by a severe
decline in health, and he died shortly after his 56th birthday.

Small Summary of Beginning:

At the opening of the poem, Belinda, a beautiful and wealthy young woman is asleep. Ariel, her
guardian sylph, watches over her and sends her a dream which highlights what the role of the
sylph is—namely to protect virtuous young women, though at times he makes the whole thing
sound a tad sinister by suggesting that sylphs might control the action of mortals or get them
into trouble. He is worried that some disaster is close at hand, though he is not sure what form it
will take. He instead warns her through the dream to “beware of man.” Belinda then awakes and
begins dressing herself for a day of social engagements. With the help of her maid Betty and
that of her attendant sylphs, Belinda then completes the elaborate process of beautifying
herself.
"The Chimney Sweeper" is a poem by English visionary William Blake, published in Songs of
Innocence and Experience (1794). It is the companion to a poem of the same name that
appears in the earlier Innocence collection, and works as a kind of update on the plight of the
chimney sweeper—a young boy forced to do the horrible work of cleaning chimneys. Unlike in
the first poem, this sweep can take no solace in organized religion—he is too experienced for
that. He is so covered in soot that he is barely recognizable, and explains to the reader that
society has oppressed and exploited the natural joyfulness of his youth.

Poetic Devices

Metonymy is a type of figurative language in which an object or concept is referred to not by its
own name, but instead by the name of something closely associated with it. For example, in
"Wall Street prefers lower taxes," the New York City street that was the original home of the New
York Stock Exchange stands in for (or is a "metonym" for) the entire American financial industry.

Consonance is a figure of speech in which the same consonant sound repeats within a group of
words. An example of consonance is: "Traffic figures, on July Fourth, to be tough."

Epizeuxis is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is repeated in immediate succession,

with no intervening words. In the play Hamlet, when Hamlet responds to a question about what
he's reading by saying "Words, words, words," that's an example of epizeuxis.

Assonance is a figure of speech in which the same vowel sound repeats within a group of
words. An example of assonance is: "Who gave Newt and Scooter the blue tuna? It was too
soon!"

Alliteration

A trochee is a two-syllable metrical pattern in poetry in which a stressed syllable is followed by

an unstressed syllable. The word "poet" is a trochee, with the stressed syllable of "po" followed
by the unstressed syllable, “et”: Po-et.

An anapest is a three-syllable metrical pattern in poetry in which two unstressed syllables are
followed by a stressed syllable. The word "understand" is an anapest, with the unstressed
syllables of "un" and "der" followed by the stressed syllable, “stand”: Un-der-stand.

Polyptoton

Refrain - In a poem or song, a refrain is a line or group of lines that regularly repeat, usually at
the end of a stanza in a poem or at the end of a verse in a song. In a speech or other prose
writing, a refrain can refer to any phrase that repeats a number of times within the text.

Polysyndeton is a figure of speech in which coordinating conjunctions—words such as "and,"

"or," and "but" that join other words or clauses in a sentence into relationships of equal
importance—are used several times in close succession, particularly where conjunctions would
normally not be present at all. For instance, the following sentence contains polysyndeton: "We
ate roast beef and squash and biscuits and potatoes and corn and cheese and cherry pie."

Paradox

When my mother died..

"The Chimney Sweeper" is a poem by William Blake, published in his 1789 collection Songs of
Innocence. The poem is told from the perspective of a young chimney sweep, a boy who has
been sold into labor by his father. The sweep meets a new recruit to the chimney sweeping
gang named Tom Dacre, who arrives terrified. After the speaker tries to reassure Tom, Tom
dreams of an angel who sets the chimney sweeps free, allowing them to play in green fields and
then ascend to heaven. This dream seems to suggest that if the boys are obedient workers,
they'll get into heaven. Implicitly, though, the poem takes issue with this idea, suggesting that it's
a form of indoctrination for the Church. The companion poem of the same title, published in
Songs of Experience, makes this position—that promises of heavenly salvation are simply a
means to exploit child labor—crystal clear.

Sibilance
Consonance
Caesura
Imagery
End stop
Assonance
Enjambment (especially end stops that could be interpreted as enjambment)
Epiziuxes
Simile
Think about what each stanza is about (events)

“The World is Too Much with Us”

“The world is too much with us” is a sonnet by William Wordsworth, published in 1807, is one of
the central figures of the English Romantic movement. The poem laments the withering
connection between humankind and nature, blaming industrial society for replacing that
connection with material pursuits. Wordsworth wrote the poem during the First Industrial
Revolution, a period of technological and mechanical innovation spanning the mid 18th to early
19th centuries that thoroughly transformed British life.

As an Italian sonnet, the poem's form dictates that it begin with a problem, or “proposition,” and
it does so pretty clearly in its opening statement: “The world is too much with us.” (This is also
used as its title, though it should be noted that the poem was first published without a title at all).
This problem, however, doesn’t have an obvious meaning when considered on its own.

Whereas the "turn" in other Italian sonnets might be relatively subtle, this apostrophe signals
loud and clear that the poem is changing in some important way. One of those changes is the
switch to the first-person singular perspective (that is, "I"). Another is the shift from description
and complaint to wishful thinking. The apostrophe, with its monosyllables, hard consonants, and
exclamation mark, is itself a change. Appearing smack dab in the middle of the line, it is
impossible to ignore.

Themes: nature/ materialism/ loss, the individual vs society,

Poetic Devices:
Casesura
End stopped
Iambic pentameter
Metonymy
Personification
Simile
Metaphor
Apostrophe
Anaphora
Assonance
Alliteration
Consonance

“Ozymandias” is a sonnet written by the English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley
wrote “Ozymandias” in 1817 as part of a poetry contest with a friend and had it published in The
Examinerin 1818 under the pen name Glirastes. The title “Ozymandias” refers to an alternate
name of the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II. In the poem, Shelley describes a crumbling
statue of Ozymandias as a way to portray the transience of political power and to praise art’s
ability to preserve the past. Although the poem is a 14-line sonnet, it breaks from the typical
sonnet tradition in both its form and rhyme scheme, a tactic that reflects Shelley’s interest in
challenging conventions, both political and poetic.

Themes:
Transience of power
The power of art
Man versus nature

Symbols:
Sand
Statue

Poetic Devices:
Enjambment
Caesura
Alliteration
Sibilant
Irony

“Bright Star” is a sonnet by the British Romantic poet John Keats. Written in 1818 or 1819, the
poem is a passionate declaration of undying, constant love. The speaker wants to be
“stedfast”—constant and unchanging—like the “bright star” described in the poem’s first eight
lines. But, unlike the “bright star,” the speaker does not want to be isolated or distant from
human life: instead, the speaker wants to spend eternity locked in a passionate embrace with
his or her lover. The speaker fantasizes about this unchanging love—but it's not clear whether it
can actually be achieved in real life. As the speaker acknowledges in the poem's final line, his or
her fantasy is fragile, threatened by the death and change that eventually overwhelms all human
beings.

Themes: love,

Poetic Devices:
Apostrophe
Personification
Simile
Metaphor
Extended metaphor
Repetition (epizeuxis, parallelism, and diacope)
Enjambment
End-stop
Caesura
Alliteration
Assonance
Consonance
"Ode on a Grecian Urn" was written by the influential English poet John Keats in 1819. It is a
complex, mysterious poem with a disarmingly simple set-up: an undefined speaker looks at a
Grecian urn, which is decorated with evocative images of rustic and rural life in ancient Greece.
These scenes fascinate, mystify, and excite the speaker in equal measure—they seem to have
captured life in its fullness, yet are frozen in time. The speaker's response shifts through
different moods, and ultimately the urn provokes questions more than it provides answers. The
poem's ending has been and remains the subject of varied interpretation. The urn seems to tell
the speaker—and, in turn, the reader—that truth and beauty are one and the same. Keats wrote
this poem in a great burst of creativity that also produced his other famous odes (e.g. "Ode to a
Nightingale"). Though this poem was not well-received in Keats' day, it has gone on to become
one of the most celebrated in the English language.

As the title suggests, this poem is an ode. The ode is a verse form which dates back to Ancient
Greece. Keats's choice of form, then, fits perfectly with the object of contemplation—a verse
form that harks back to an ancient world to match with an object made in the same era.

In its original form, the ode was often celebratory; this ode is markedly different in tone,
however. Likewise, Keats's poem does not fit into the more traditional formats originally
established for odes (the Homeric and Pindaric). Keats developed his ode form because he felt
that the other established forms did not quite fit what he wanted his poems to do. This poem is
an inquiry and interrogation which the sonnet, for example, would not be able to accommodate.
The ode form allows for a more prolonged examination of the urn, and gives space to raise
doubts and questions.
One other point worth noting is that odes, in the classical era, were generally sung and/or
accompanied by music and dance. Music features in the images of the urn, but the poem is
characterized by the "quietness" and "silence" with which the urn responds to the speaker.

Symbols:
Music
Nature
Apostrophe
Alliteration
Anaphora
Assonance
Caesura
Chiasmus is a figure of speech in which the grammar of one phrase is inverted in the following
phrase, such that two key concepts from the original phrase reappear in the second phrase in
inverted order. The sentence "She has all my love; my heart belongs to her," is an example of
chiasmus.

An asyndeton (sometimes called asyndetism) is a figure of speech in which coordinating

conjunctions—words such as "and", "or", and "but" that join other words or clauses in a
sentence into relationships of equal importance—are omitted. The use of asyndeton can speed
up the rhythm of a phrase, make it more memorable or urgent, or offer other stylistic effects. For
instance, take the sentence: "I expect my dog to chew my pillows, my cat to claw my furniture."
Here, the writer omits the "and" from between "pillows" and "my". This omission transforms the
sentence from one that merely states what the pets often do, to one that implies exasperation
as well as a fatalistic sense that the pets' actions are inevitable and unchangeable.
Consonance
Paradox
Personification
Epizeuxis

“My Last Duchess” is a dramatic monologue written by Victorian poet Robert Browning in 1842.
In the poem, the Duke of Ferrara uses a painting of his former wife as a conversation piece. The
Duke speaks about his former wife's perceived inadequacies to a representative of the family of
his bride-to-be, revealing his obsession with controlling others in the process. Browning uses
this compelling psychological portrait of a despicable character to critique the objectification of
women and abuses of power.
This is an example of a dramatic monologue so think about this as you analyze the poem.

Themes: Objectification of Women, Social status/art/elitism, control and manipulation

Poetic Devices:
Enjambment
Caesura
Sibilance
Metaphor
Foreshadowing
Polyptoton
Personification

"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" was first published by American/British poet T. S. Eliot in
1915; Eliot later included it as the title poem in his landmark 1917 collection Prufrock and Other
Observations. The poem is a dramatic monologue whose brooding speaker relays the anxieties
and preoccupations of his inner life, as well as his romantic hesitations and regrets. It is
considered one of the defining works of modernism, a literary movement that saw writers
experimenting with form and digging into the alienation, isolation, and confusion of life at the
turn of the 20th century.

Epigraph:
S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma percioche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.

Translation:
"If I believed that my reply were made
To one who to the world would e'er return,
This flame without more flickering would stand still;
But inasmuch as never from this depth
Did any one return, if I hear true,
Without the fear of infamy I answer,” from La Divina Commedia: L’Inferno Canto 27 lines
61-66)

Themes: Anxiety/inaction/indecision, Desire, communication, disappointment, modernity,

alienation

Poetic Devices:
Allusion
Caesura
End stopped line
Refrain
Alliteration
Consonance
Enjambment
Metaphor
Personification
Simile
Anaphora
Apostrophe
Epizeuxis
Asyndeton An asyndeton (sometimes called asyndetism) is a figure of speech in which
coordinating conjunctions—words such as "and", "or", and "but" that join other words or clauses
in a sentence into relationships of equal importance—are omitted. The use of asyndeton can
speed up the rhythm of a phrase, make it more memorable or urgent, or offer other stylistic
effects. For instance, take the sentence: "I expect my dog to chew my pillows, my cat to claw my
furniture." Here, the writer omits the "and" from between "pillows" and "my". This omission
transforms the sentence from one that merely states what the pets often do, to one that implies
exasperation as well as a fatalistic sense that the pets' actions are inevitable and unchangeable.

Polysyndeton is a figure of speech in which coordinating conjunctions—words such as "and,"

"or," and "but" that join other words or clauses in a sentence into relationships of equal
importance—are used several times in close succession, particularly where conjunctions would
normally not be present at all. For instance, the following sentence contains polysyndeton: "We
ate roast beef and squash and biscuits and potatoes and corn and cheese and cherry pie."

Assonace

"Dover Beach" is the most celebrated poem by Matthew Arnold, a writer and educator of the
Victorian era. The poem expresses a crisis of faith, with the speaker acknowledging the
diminished standing of Christianity, which the speaker sees as being unable to withstand the
rising tide of scientific discovery. New research and intellectual inquiry cast doubt on
humankind's central and special role in the universe. The speaker in the poem senses this
change almost subconsciously, seeing and hearing it in the sea that the speaker is looking out
upon. In its expression of alienation, doubt, and melancholy, the poem is often interpreted as a
remarkably forward-thinking precursor to 20th century crises of faith—like Existentialism and
Absurdism. In essence, the poem is an inquiry into what it means to be alive.

Themes: Loss/Faith/certainty, nature/alientation, love

Devices:
Alliteration
Anaphora
Apostrophe
Assonance
Allusion
Consonance
Caesura
Enjambment
Metaphor
Simile
End Stopped
Absurdism is the philosophical theory that the universe is irrational and meaningless. It states
that trying to find meaning leads people into a conflict with the world. This conflict can be
between rationalman and an irrational universe, between intention and outcome, or between
subjective assessment and objective worth, but the precise definition of the term is disputed.
Absurdism claims that the world as a whole is absurd. It differs in this regard from the less
global thesis that some particular situations, persons, or phases in life are absurd. (think about
Waiting for Godot)

Existentialism is a form of philosophical inquiry that explores the issue of human existence.[1][2]
Existentialist philosophers explore questions related to the meaning, purpose, and value of
human existence. Common concepts in existentialist thought include existential crisis, dread,
and anxiety in the face of an absurd world and free will, as well as authenticity, courage, and
virtue.[3]

Emily Dickinson's "Much Madness is divinest Sense" argues that many of the things people
consider "madness" are actually perfectly sane —and that the reverse is also true: many of the
things that people consider normal are, in fact, totally mad. People thus need to have a
"discerning Eye"—that is, the ability to think clearly, fairly, and independently of the crowd.
Society's norms, habits, and power structures are held in place mostly because they're agreed
to by an unthinking "Majority" whose views, the poem implies, deserve to be challenged. The
poem was likely written around 1862, but, like the vast majority of Dickinson's poetry, wasn't
published until after her death.
Themes: Madness and Conformity
Devices: Alliteration, Consonance, Caesura, Paradox, metaphor, Synecdoche
Antimetabole is a figure of speech in which a phrase is repeated, but with the order of words
reversed. John F. Kennedy's words, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you
can do for your country," is a famous example of antimetabole.

Emily Dickinson wrote "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain" in 1861, the beginning of what is regarded
as her most creative period. The poem employs Dickinson's characteristic use of metaphor and
rather experimental form to explore themes of madness, despair, and the irrational nature of the
universe. Dickinson depicts an unnerving series of events based around a "funeral" that unfolds
within the speaker. Starting out deep within the speaker's mind, the poem gradually expands to
probe cosmic mysteries whose answers only come in the form of silence.

Themes: Madness, Despair, irrational universe

Devices:
Conceit
Metaphor
Simile
Epizeuxis
Anaphora
Assonance
Consonance
Alliteration
Caesura
Polysyndeton
Repetition
Stream of Conscious
Parallelism
Enjambment
Antithesis

"Safe in their Alabaster Chambers" is American poet Emily Dickinson's reflection on the
all-conquering power of death. Observing the dead lying "safe" in their marble tombs while the
stars spin above them and nations rise and fall, the poem's speaker notes that the dead aren't
disturbed one whit by anything the living are up to. And because the living will all one day be
dead, their squabbling doesn't seem to count for much, either. Death, here, is both a conqueror
and a comforter. Unlike most of Dickinson's work, this poem was published in her lifetime
(though in a different version): it first appeared in a newspaper, the Springfield Daily Republican,
in 1862.
Themes: Power and Consolations of Death
Devices: Metaphor, Simile, Parallelism, Metonymy, Alliteration, Assonance, Consonance

“Mending Wall” is a poem by the American poet Robert Frost. It was published in 1914, as the
first entry in Frost’s second book of poems, North of Boston. The poem is set in rural New
England, where Frost lived at the time—and takes its impetus from the rhythms and rituals of life
there. The poem describes how the speaker and a neighbor meet to rebuild a stone wall
between their properties—a ritual repeated every spring. This ritual raises some important
questions over the course of the poem, as the speaker considers the purpose of borders
between people and the value of human work.

Themes: Borders, Value of Work, Change and Modernity,

Symbols: Frost, Spring, Fences, Cows, Darkness
Devices: Enjambment, End-Stopped, Caesura, Refrain, Allusion (one is to Thoreau), Metaphor,
Simile, Polyptoton

Epanalepsis is a figure of speech in which the beginning of a clause or sentence is repeated at

the end of that same clause or sentence, with words intervening. The sentence "The king is
dead, long live the king!" is an example of epanalepsis.

"Out, Out" is a poem by American poet Robert Frost, published in Frost's 1916 collection
Mountain Interval and based on a true incident that happened to Frost's friend's son. The poem
is set in rural Vermont, where a young boy cutting wood with a buzz saw is called in for "supper"
by his sister. But just as he turns to come in, the saw suddenly makes contact with his hand,
causing an outpouring of blood that ultimately proves fatal. This tragedy, a young boy losing his
life in such a wasteful and shocking way, implicitly questions the value of life itself. Indeed, the
narrator's matter-of-fact presentation of the boy's final moments, and the way in which everyone
soon goes back to their daily business, suggests that death is a mundane fact of daily life.

Themes: Life and Death, Humans and Technology

Devices: Personification, Alliteration, Allusion, Asyndeton, Caesura, Consonance, End-Stopped,
Enjambment, repetition, simile, Assonace

"The Unknown Citizen" was written by the British poet W. H. Auden, not long after he moved to
America in 1939. The poem is a kind of satirical elegy written in praise of a man who has
recently died and who lived what the government has deemed an exemplary life. This life, really,
seems to have been perfectly ho-hum—exemplary only insofar as this man never did anything
to question or deviate from society's expectations. On the one hand, the poem implicitly
critiques the standardization of modern life, suggesting that people risks losing sight of what it
means to be an individual when they focus exclusively on the same status symbols and markers
of achievement (like having the right job, the right number of kids, the right car, and so forth).
The poem also builds a frightening picture of a world ruled by total conformity and state
oppression, in which a bureaucratic government dictates and spies on its citizens' daily lives.
Themes: Oppression/Surveillance/State, standardization and Conformity
Devices: Alliteration, Allusion, Caesura, End-Stopped Line, Enjambment, Irony, Rhetorical
Questions

"Let America Be America Again" is a poem written by Langston Hughes in 1935 and published
the following year. Hughes wrote the poem while riding a train from New York City to Ohio and
reflecting on his life as a struggling writer during the Great Depression. In the poem, Hughes
describes his own disillusionment with the American Dream and suggests that the United States
has failed to fulfill its promise of freedom and equality for all people. The poem initially follows a
traditional rhyme scheme before giving way to free verseand delving into the speaker's
unconventional attitudes towards the American Dream.

Themes: Oppression, Failure of the American Dream, Greed/Class/Labor

Devices: Imagery, Metaphor, Repetition, Diacope, Polyptoton, Anaphora, Enjambment, Allusion,
Personification, Rhetorical Question, Caesura, Alliteration, Assonace

Think about the form: Part of it resembles a sonnet, but it finishes off in free verse. Is there a
rhyme scheme? Where?

"The Second Coming" is one of W.B. Yeats's most famous poems. Written in 1919 soon after
the end of World War I, it describes a deeply mysterious and powerful alternative to the
Christian idea of the Second Coming—Jesus's prophesied return to the Earth as a savior
announcing the Kingdom of Heaven. The poem's first stanza describes a world of chaos,
confusion, and pain. The second, longer stanza imagines the speaker receiving a vision of the
future, but this vision replaces Jesus's heroic return with what seems to be the arrival of a
grotesque beast. With its distinct imagery and vivid description of society's collapse, "The
Second Coming" is also one of Yeats's most quoted poems.

Themes: Civilization/Chaos/Control, Morality/Christianity

Devices: Alliteration, Allusion, Antithesis, Anaphora, Assonance, Caesura, Consonance,

Enjambment

Epistrophe is a figure of speech in which one or more words repeat at the end of successive
phrases, clauses, or sentences. In his Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln urged the
American people to ensure that, "government of the people, by the people, for the people,shall
not perish from the earth." His repetition of "the people" at the end of each clause is an example
of epistrophe.

Metaphor, Rhetorical question, Diacope

"Dulce et Decorum Est" is a poem by the English poet Wilfred Owen. Like most of Owen's work,
it was written between August 1917 and September 1918, while he was fighting in World War 1.
Owen is known for his wrenching descriptions of suffering in war. In "Dulce et Decorum Est," he
illustrates the brutal everyday struggle of a company of soldiers, focuses on the story of one
soldier's agonizing death, and discusses the trauma that this event left behind. He uses a
quotation from the Roman poet Horace to highlight the difference between the glorious image of
war (spread by those not actually fighting in it) and war's horrifying reality.

Themes: The Horrors and Trauma of War, Glorification of War

Devices: Allusion, Simile, Metaphor, Consonance, Enjambment, repetition, Apostrophe,
Hyperbole, Imagery, Oxymoron

"The Red Wheelbarrow," first published in 1923, is one of American poet William Carlos
Williams's most famous poems, despite being rather cryptic: it consists of a single sentence
describing a red wheelbarrow, wet with rain, sitting beside some chickens. The only other
information given is vague, and when speaker says that "so much depends upon" this
wheelbarrow, the reader likely wonders, "What depends it, exactly?" An example of Imagist
poetry, "The Red Wheelbarrow" focuses above all on conveying a precise depiction of, well, an
image. However, this does not suggest that the poem lacks meaning. From the attention paid to
the image of the wheelbarrow, it is possible that the speaker is observing and appreciating the
everyday necessity of manual labor—or even commenting on humankind's relationship with
nature.

Themes: Perception, reality, nature, agriculture, simplicity

Devices: Enjambment, Assonance, extended metaphor, juxtaposition, Imagery, Consonance

‘If I Could Tell You,’ a villanelle by W.H. Auden, delves into time’s role in life, emphasizing
learning from mistakes and the futility of worrying about the uncontrollable.
‘If I Could Tell You’ by W.H. Auden is a six stanza villanelle poem. A villanelle, also known as a
villanesque, is a nineteen-line poem that is divided into five tercets, or sets of three lines, and
one concluding quatrain, or set of four lines. There is a very consistent rhyme scheme that the
most form conscious poets conform to.
There should, if one is following the poem exactly, be two refrains in the text. This is a kind of
repetition in which an entire line is reused. In the case of the villanelle, the first and third lines of
the first stanza are repeated, alternatively, in the next five. In ‘If I Could Tell You’ the repeated
lines are “Time will say nothing but I told you so” and “If I could tell you I would let you know”.

“My Papa’s Waltz” was written by the American poet Theodore Roethke. It
was first published in 1942, then collected in his book The Lost Son and Other
Poems in 1948. At first glance, the poem describes a charming family scene:
a father and son dance together in the kitchen, roughhousing and romping
around. But the speaker supplies a number of hints that things aren’t quite as
happy as they seem. The poem subtly reflects on the tension between fathers
and sons—tension that in turn may suggest undercurrents of violence.
Themes: Father, sons, masculinity
Devices: Enjambment, end stop, alliteration, assonance, consonance, simile,
extended metaphor

Within ‘In the Waiting Room’ Bishop explores themes associated with
coming of age, adulthood, perceptions, and fear. These are seen
through the main character’s confrontation with her inevitable
adulthood, her desire to escape it, and her fear of what it’s going to
mean to become like the adults around her. ‘In the Waiting Room’ is a
narrative poem, meaning it tells a specific story. This is the case with a
great deal of Bishop’s most popular poetry and allows her to create a
realistic and relatable environment for the events to play out in.

“Still I Rise” is a poem by the American civil rights activist and writer Maya
Angelou. One of Angelou's most acclaimed works, the poem was published in
Angelou’s third poetry collection And Still I Rise in 1978. Broadly speaking, the
poem is an assertion of the dignity and resilience of marginalized people in
the face of oppression. Because Angelou often wrote about blackness and
black womanhood, "Still I Rise" can also be read more specifically as a
critique of anti-black racism.

Themes: Defiance in the face of oppression, black and beauty and power
Devices: metaphor, simile, rhetorical question, repetition, caesura,
enjambment, alliteration, consonance, assonance,

“A Story” (1990) by Li-Young Lee (1957-present) explores a father and son relationship. The
poem picks up on the nuances of a close and caring relationship riddled with doubt and the
knowledge that the child will inevitably grow and outgrow the father. Although it explores the
theme of a father and son relationship, it is a piece that speaks to the nature of many types of
relationships and how growing up can sometimes mean growing apart.

“We Real Cool” is a poem by Gwendolyn Brooks, first published in her 1960
collection The Bean Eaters. The poem describes a group of teenagers
hanging out outside of a pool hall. It imagines these teenagers as rebels who
proudly defy convention and authority—and who will likely pay for their
behavior with their lives. The poem isn't overly pessimistic, however, and also
suggests that such youthful rebellion may not be entirely in vain. It's possible
to read the poem as a warning against self-destructive behavior, and also as a
celebration of people who risk their lives to challenge authority.