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Kenneth Slessor

Do you give yourself to me utterly,
Body and no-body, flesh and no-flesh,
Not as a fugitive, blindly or bitterly,
But as a child might, with no other wish?
Yes, utterly.

Then I shall bear you down my estuary,
Carry you and ferry you to burial mysteriously,
Take you and receive you,
Consume you, engulf you,
In the huge cave, my belly lave you
With hunger waves continually.

And you shall cling and clamber there
And slumber there, in that dumb chamber,
Beat with my blood's beat, heart my heart move
Blindly in bones that ride above you,
Delve in my flesh, dissolved and bedded,
Throught viewless valves embodied so --

Till daylight, the expulsion and awakening,
The riving and the driving forth,
Life with remorseless forceps beckoning --
Pangs and betrayal of harsh birth.

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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Rhian Gallagher

Medalled, ribboned chests, an effort
carried through them, the war
still going on inside their heads,
gathered up for roll call.

Where all the flowers had gone
came a quiet of ash,
line after line after line.

As if the grainy footage played above the leafy street
my father lifted me onto his shoulders to see.

My uncles looked to the back of the one in front,
marching to the heart-beat drum.

At end of Mass the bugle rose,
life unto life, a single breath
took flight into the bird-light zone.

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Born in Northamptonshire, England, on August 9, 1631, John Dryden came from a landowning family with connections to Parliament and the Church of England. He studied as a King's Scholar at the prestigious Westminster School of London, where he later sent two of his own children. There, Dryden was trained in the art of rhetorical argument, which remained a strong influence on the poet's writing and critical thought throughout his life.

Dryden published his first poem in 1649. He enrolled at Trinity College in Cambridge the following year, where he likely studied the classics, rhetoric, and mathematics. He obtained his BA in 1654, graduating first in his class. In June of that year, Dryden's father died.

After graduation, Dryden found work with Oliver Cromwell's Secretary of State, John Thurloe, marking a radical shift in the poet's political views. Alongside Puritan poets John Milton and Andrew Marvell, Dryden was present at Cromwell's funeral in 1658, and one year later published his first important poem, Heroic Stanzas, eulogizing the leader.

In 1660, Dryden celebrated the regime of King Charles II with Astraea Redux, a royalist panegyric in praise of the new king. In that poem, Dryden apologizes for his allegiance with the Cromwellian government. Though Samuel Johnson excused Dryden for this, writing in his Lives of the Poets (1779) that "if he changed, he changed with the nation," he also notes that the earlier work was "not totally forgotten" and in fact "rased [sic] him enemies."

Despite this, Dryden quickly established himself after the Restoration as the leading poet and literary critic of his day. He published To His Sacred Majesty: A Panegyric on his Coronation (1662), and To My Lord Chancellor (1662), possibly to court aristocratic patrons. That year, Dryden was proposed for membership in the Royal Society, and was elected an early fellow. In 1663, he married Lady Elizabeth, the royalist sister of Sir Robert Howard.

Following the death of William Davenant in April 1668, Dryden became the first official poet laureate of England, conferred by a letters patent from the king. The royal office carried the responsibility of composing occasional works in celebration of public events. Dryden, having exhibited that particular dexterity with his earlier panegyrics, was a natural choice. Though the position was most often held for life (until 1999), Dryden was the lone exception. He was dismissed by William III and Mary II in 1688 after he refused to swear an oath of allegiance, remaining loyal to James II.

As a playwright, Dryden published The Wild Gallant in 1663. Though it was not financially successful, he was commissioned to produce three plays for the King's Company, in which he later became a shareholder. His best known dramatic works are Marriage á la Mode (1672) and All for Love (1678), which was written in blank verse.

When the bubonic plague swept through London in 1665, Dryden moved to Wiltshire where he wrote Of Dramatick Poesie (1668). The longest of his critical works, the piece takes the form of a dialogue among characters debating and defending international dramatic works and practices. In 1678, Dryden wrote Mac Flecknoe (1682), a work of satiric verse attacking Thomas Shadwell, one of Dryden's prominent contemporaries, for his "offenses against literature." Other works of satire, a genre for which Dryden has received significant praise, include Absalom and Achitophel (1681) and The Medal (1682).

Though his early work was reminiscent of the late metaphysical work of Abraham Cowley, Dryden developed a style closer to natural speech which remained the dominant poetic mode for more than a century. He is credited with standardizing the heroic couplet in English poetry by applying it as a convention in a range of works, including satires, religious pieces, fables, epigrams, prologues, and plays.

Dryden died on May 1, 1700, and was initially buried in St. Anne's Cemetery. In 1710, he was moved to the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey, where a memorial has been erected.

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John Dryden - Born on August 9, 1631, John Dryden was the leading poet and literary critic of his day and he served as the first official Poet Laureate of England

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John Dryden

Farewell, ungrateful traitor,
Farewell, my purjured swain,
Let never injured creature
Believe a man again.
THe pleasure of posessing
Surpasses all expressing,
But tis' too short a blessing,
And love too long a pain.

'Tis easy to decieve us
In pity of your pain,
But when we love you leave us
To rail at you in vain.
Before we have described it
There is no bliss beside it,
But she that once has tried it
Will never love again.

The passion you pretended
Was only to obtain,
But when the charm is ended
The charmer you disdain.
Your love by ours we measure
Till we have lost our treasure,
But dying is a pleasure,
When living is a pain.

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Kimly and Alyssa on the style and context of Emily Dickinson's poetry as well as some great tips for analysing

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Kimly and Alyssa on the style and context of Emily Dickinson's poetry as well as some great tips for analysing

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Emily Dickinson

I years had been from Home
And now before the Door
I dared not enter, lest a Face
I never saw before

Stare stolid into mine
And ask my business there-
"My business but a Life I left
Was such remaining there?"

I leaned upon the Awe-
I lingered with Before-
The Second like an Ocean rolled
And broke against my ear-

I laughed a crumbling Laugh
That I could fear a Door
Who Consternation compassed
And never winced before

I fitted to the Latch
My Hand, with trembling care
Lest back the awful Door should spring
And leave me in the Floor-

Then moved my Fingers off
As cautiously as Glass
And held my ears, and like a Thief
Fled gasping from the House-

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Futility by Wilfred Owen (read by Alex Jennings)

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How does Thomas Hardy present war in this poem? 

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How does Thomas Hardy present war in this poem? 

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Wilfred Owen

Move him gently into the sun --
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.

Think how it wakes the seeds, --
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides,
Full-nerved -- still warm --- too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
-- O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth's sleep at all?

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Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) was a major Victorian novelist and short story writer who transformed himself into a major twentieth-century poet. He grew up near Dorchester, a builder's son, and never went to university, but worked as an architect for several years. Finding that no one wanted to publish his poems, he began to write novels set in his home patch, 'Wessex', and made a breakthrough with Far from the Madding Crowd (1874). Other very popular novels followed, but after attacks on Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891) and Jude the Obscure (1895), he turned from fiction to poetry, publishing the first of many volumes, Wessex Poems, in 1898. His Poems of 1912-13, inspired by the death of his wife, are among the greatest in English.

He had written about war long before 1914. While he was growing up there were still plenty of people around who remembered the Napoleonic wars, when the French had seemed poised to invade Dorset; this is the background to his novel The Trumpet-Major (1880). He was fascinated by what he called 'the Great Historical Calamity, or Clash of Peoples, artificially brought about some hundred years ago'. It seemed impossible that another European upheaval could ever happen, and he agreed with Tolstoy's denunciation of war, 'with all its senseless and illogical crimes'. His sympathies were not with the generals and emperors but with the victims, the sailor taken by the press-gang or the two young men in 'The Melancholy Hussar of the German Legion' (1890) who are executed for desertion.

He wrote a group of fine poems around the time of the Boer War (1899-1902). 'Drummer Hodge' may have influenced Rupert Brooke's 'The Soldier', but in Hardy's perspective the young man does not understand what is happening and his death is not glorified:

They throw in Drummer Hodge to rest Uncoffined - just as found: His landmark is a kopje-crest That breaks the veldt around; And foreign constellations west Each night above his mound. Young Hodge the Drummer never knew -Fresh from his Wessex home -The meaning of the broad Karoo, The Bush, the dusty loam, And why uprose to nightly view Strange stars amid the gloam. Yet portion of that unknown plain Will Hodge for ever be; His homely Northern breast and brain Grow to some Southern tree, And strange-eyed constellations reign His stars eternally.

'The Man He Killed' was written around the same time:

'Yes, quaint and curious war is! You shoot a fellow down You'd treat if met where any bar is, Or help to half-a-crown'.

Not long afterwards he started work on The Dynasts (1904-08), an extraordinary 'epic' in verse, blank verse and prose about the Napoleonic wars. This is far from his best work, and is little read today, but was much admired by his contemporaries and contains some passages of great power. There is a Spirit of the Pities which is appalled by the slaughter:
Each for himself, his family, his heirs; For the wan weltering nations who concerns, who cares?
Other spirits look down from a 'vague altitude' on Europe, where 'the peoples, distressed by events which they did not cause, are seen writhing, crawling, heaving and vibrating in their various cities and nationalities'. Napoleon's army is described as a 'caterpillar shape' from which men drop off and die.

Hardy is savagely ironic about the statesmen on both sides.

When the First World War broke out he was appalled, writing that 'the world, having like a spider climbed to a certain height, seems slipping back to what it was long ago'. Nevertheless, though in his mid-seventies, he did what he could to assist the war effort. His fine poem 'Men who March Away' was published in September 1914 and has remained popular; 'A Call to National Service' (March 1917), written by request, is comparatively weak. The fact that this war had started almost a century after the end of the Napoleonic wars had not gone unnoticed. W.N. Ewer, writing in 1917, drew the obvious parallel in his poem '1814-1914: On reading The Dynasts ':

A hundred years passed - once again: - 'The liberties Of Europe are at stake!'Once again the statesmen bid the silent Englishmen Die for freedom's sake. Stern, stupid Englishmen, nowise disbelieving them, March cheerfully away, Heedless of the story of their fathers' 'War for Freedom'Under Pitt and Castlereagh.

Hardy's deepest feelings about war were probably expressed in his famous 'In Time of "The Breaking of Nations"' (1915). He sympathised with ordinary Germans, and a poem of 1920, 'And There Was a Great Calm', sadly wondered whether all the suffering could have been avoided.

Siegfried Sassoon revered him and in 1917 dedicated The Old Huntsman to him; Hardy particularly enjoyed the grimmer poems. He also persuaded his friend Wilfred Owen to read The Dynasts. Owen was probably struck by the repeated word 'pity', and his poem 'The Show' recycles some of Hardy's images. The spectator looks down from a 'vague height' on a vast tragedy; the armies are 'thin caterpillars'. He also sympathised with Hardy's internationalism.

After the war Sassoon saw a great deal of the older poet and one of his best post-war poems, 'At Max Gate', is about him. In 1919 he organised a tribute from forty-three younger poets, who particularly thanked him for The Dynasts.

Merryn Williams

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Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) was a major Victorian novelist and short story writer who transformed himself into a major twentieth-century poet. He grew up near Dorchester, a builder's son, and never went to university, but worked as an architect for several years.

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Richard Armitage Reads "Wife in London" Poem by Thomas Hardy

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Thomas Hardy

I--The Tragedy
She sits in the tawny vapour
That the City lanes have uprolled,
Behind whose webby fold on fold
Like a winning taper
The street-lamp glimmers cold.

A messenger's knock cracks smartly,
Flashed news is in her hand
Of meaning it dazes to understand
Though shaped so shortly:
He--has fallen--in the far South Land . . .

II The Irony
'Tis the morrow; the fog hangs thicker,
The postman nears and goes:
A letter is brought whose lines disclose
By the firelight flicker
His hand, whom the worm now knows:

Fresh--firm--penned in highest feather --
Page-full of his hoped return,
And of home-planned jaunts by brake and burn
In the summer weather,
And of new love that they would learn.

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How does Lenrie Peters convey a deep sense of nostalgia and regret in this poem? 

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How does Lenrie Peters convey a deep sense of nostalgia and regret in this poem? 

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Lenrie Peters

The present reigned supreme
Like the shallow floods over the gutters
Over the raw paths where we had been
The house with the shutters

Too strange the sudden change
Of the times we buried when we left
The time before we had properly arranged
The memories that we kept.

Our sapless roots have fed
The wind-swept seedlings of another age.
Luxuriant weeds have grown where we led
The virgin's to the water's edge.

There at the edge of tee town
Just by the burial ground
Stands hte house without a shadow
Lived in by new skeletons.

That is all that is left
To greet us on the home-coming
After we have paced the world
And longed for returning.

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The New Zealand poet Lauris Edmond, who has died aged 75, began writing seriously just 25 years ago. She subsequently published 11 collections of verse, a novel, three volumes of autobiography (1989-92), and radio and stage drama.

Personal turmoil accompanied her emergence as a writer. Edmond's daughter Rachel died in 1975; she and her husband parted in the mid-1980s, and in the 1990s, post-autobiography, tensions arose between Edmond and some of the children over her exposure of their family life. It provoked her son to publish his version of his father's life in response to hers.

In dealing with these events, as well as in more public encounters that at times became confrontational, Edmond displayed a philosophical acceptance, forgiveness and compassion. Her poetry, essentially a meditation on her experience, also conveys these qualities; a strength in facing the dark side of life with which she became so familiar, a perception of the everyday as humorous or incongruous. Always accessible, Edmond wrote often about family life: the responsibilities of motherhood, the connectedness with children. The sequence of poems in Wellington Letter (1980), written out of grief after the death of Rachel, are among the most moving.

Other poems celebrate the dignity of the individual, and display understanding of people and relationships. Those in Season And Creatures (1986) are probably the most assured technically. Edmond's major themes such as childbirth, friendship, love, growing old, loneliness, loss, the encroachment of death, are commonly held to represent the woman's point of view.

But although her main readership was undoubtedly women, she also wrote about cities (especially Wellington, which she loved), exotic places, and contemporary events in ways which mark her out as a traveller in her own time. In particular, her preoccupation with the momentariness of life, in poems which weigh up gain against loss in a transient world, has relevance to all readers of poetry. In later works her search at the borders of empirical certainties, defining herself in relation to the unknown dimensions of the life beyond, while simultaneously remaining anchored in the present, became a serious act of self-repositioning.

Edmond's inspiration was rooted in her New Zealand identity, and it was this which gave her work a wider appeal. She was friend to several generations of women, especially writers, who admired her as a pioneer for breaking with social convention and carving out a successful literary life at a time when this seemed risky.

For years before she was published, she scribbled - poems, diaries, letters - in the hours left over from raising six children and moving round rural New Zealand with her schoolteacher husband. She had trained as a teacher at Wellington teachers' college, and then worked as a teacher before the children arrived. Only later did she take a degree and an MA in English literature.

She edited Selected Letters of ARD Fairburn (1981) under the auspices of the poet Dennis Glover, and co-founded the periodical New Zealand Books in 1990. She was president of PEN 1980-81, a frequent speaker at writers' festivals, and her writer in residence posts included Deakin university in Melbourne.

She enjoyed her role in New Zealand's literary life, as much as she was engaged in family life. Literary passions were inseparable from her devotion to family and friends; she was known as the great New Zealand poet of parents and children.

Edmond was awarded the Katherine Mansfield Memorial Fellowship, the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for her Selected Poems in 1985, and the OBE in 1986.

She continued to see her husband Trevor after their divorce, and indeed nursed him until his death. She is survived by four daughters and a son.

* Lauris Edmond, poet, born April 2 1924; died January 28 2000

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The New Zealand poet Lauris Edmond, who has died aged 75, began writing seriously just 25 years ago. She subsequently published 11 collections of verse, a novel, three volumes of autobiography (1989-92), and radio and stage drama. Personal turmoil accompanied her emergence as a writer.

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Victorian Literature @ MacEwan University

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"Pheu pheu, ti prosderkesthe m ommasin, tekna;"
[Alas, alas, why do you gaze at me with your eyes, my children.]-Medea.
Questions? of course you have questions. You're probably wondering why I have decided to start this entry with a quotation that seemingly has no bearing on my discussion of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "The Cry of the Children." I know, it is quite daring. However, this technique is not unique as it is one that Elizabeth Barrett Browning employed more than a century ago.

To be completely honest, when I first read "The Cry of the Children," I could not comprehend the relevance of Medea's quotation to the poem at all, which is why I completely dismissed it. I could not understand its purpose or why Barrett Browning would include it in her poem. I thought the poem did not require any support of Medea's quotation to convey its overall thesis. However, that did not sit well with me, as I thought the quotation had to have some sort of significance, because why would an established Victorian writer just throw in an unnecessary quotation and especially at the beginning of her poem with no context beforehand?

Thanks to my unrelenting curiosity and further research, things began to make sense. The quotation is a reference to Greek mythology, more specifically Euripides's Greek tragedy Medea. In this ancient story, the enchantress Medea helps Jason, leader of the Argonauts, steal the Golden Fleece from her father, King Aeëtes, prompting her to flee from her home with Jason when her father begins to pursue them. To secure her and Jason's escape to Colchis, Medea resorts to murdering her own brother to delay her fathers' pursuits. However, Medea is later betrayed by Jason when he deserts her to marry the daughter of King Creon; tormented by her grief, Medea murders King Creon and his daughter as the ultimate act of retribution. Medea contemplates murdering her and Jason's two sons. While grappling with her decision, Medea looks at her children and utters, "Alas, alas, why do you gaze at me with your eyes, my children" before ultimately deciding that murdering her children would be the best punishment for Jason.

Now that Medea's statement has some context, its relevance to the poem becomes clear. Firstly, Barrett Browning's poem is a literary critique of the mistreatment of children at the hands of the British empire; the poem acts as a plea for children to be treated by and cared for with compassion. Secondly, by juxtaposing young animals frolicking freely in nature and children confined within an industrial prison, Barrett Browning emphasizes the children's unnatural state. The children's misery and distress are further reinforced through the depiction of their faces as "pale and sunken" (25). The reoccurring motif of faces appears numerous times throughout the poem and can be tied back to Medea's quotation to foster a sense of unity between the two literary pieces. The quotation's significance becomes blatant in the last stanza of the poem when the children "look up, with their pale and sunken faces" and utter "How long ... how long, O cruel nation'" (145). Barrett Browning initially mimics Medea's quotation in this sentence to further draw on those parallels and elicit an implicit connection between the two literary pieces.

Although this might appear to be a lot of work just to equate two seemingly distinct pieces of literature, Medea's quotation actually serves as an allegory for the British empire, and the children's plea for freedom parallels that of Medea's own children. Moreover, Britain's neglect of its children represents Medea's murder of hers. Both Medea and the British Empire fail to bestow mercy upon the innocent children they are responsible for. This quotation elevates the poem and further emphasizes Medea's emblematic role as the British empire. Ultimately, the reference to Medea further emphasize the poem's central argument

Work Cited

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett. "The Cry of the Children ." Poetry Foundation, http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43725/the-cry-of-the-children.

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A Student Response to EBB's "The Cry of the Children"

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"Pheu pheu, ti prosderkesthe m ommasin, tekna;" [Alas, alas, why do you gaze at me with your eyes, my children.]-Medea. Questions? of course you have questions. You're probably wondering why I have decided to start this entry with a quotation that seemingly has no bearing on my discussion of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "The Cry of...

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Wordwall - Create better lessons quicker

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Quiz - A series of multiple choice questions. Tap the correct answer to proceed.

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Lauris Edmond

I do not ask for youth, nor for delay
in the rising of time's irreversible river
that takes the jewelled arc of the waterfall
in which I glimpse, minute by glinting minute,
all that I have and all I am always losing
as sunlight lights each drop fast, fast falling.

I do not dream that you, young again,
might come to me darkly in love's green darkness
where the dust of the bracken spices the air
moss, crushed, gives out an astringent sweetness
and water holds our reflections
motionless, as if for ever.

It is enough now to come into a room
and find the kindness we have for each other
— calling it love — in eyes that are shrewd
but trustful still, face chastened by years
of careful judgement; to sit in the afternoons
in mild conversation, without nostalgia.

But when you leave me, with your jauntiness
sinewed by resolution more than strength
— suddenly then I love you with a quick
intensity, remembering that water,
however luminous and grand, falls fast
and only once to the dark pool below.

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Wordwall - Create better lessons quicker

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Imagery - Any images relating to the senses (touch, taste, sight, smell, sound), Metaphor - A comparison between two things that are not alike, which implies or directly states that one IS the other. , Extended metaphor - A comparison which states one thing IS another thing, carried over a number of lines, stanzas, or the entire poem. , Simile - A comparison between two things that are not alike, using or inferring one of the things is 'like' or 'as' the other. , Personification - Giving human qualities to non-human or abstract things. , Hyperbole - An exaggeration or overstatement. , Litotes - An understatement for effect. Often using a double negative: 'not bad', for example. , Antithesis or contrast - When completely different ideas are placed next to each other. Also known as juxtaposition. , Climax - The point of highest significance. , Paradox - Two contradictory ideas placed together which make sense when placed together. , Oxymoron - Two contradictory terms placed together in close proximity 'awfully pretty', for example. , Repetition - When an exact word or phrase is used twice or more for emphasis. , Anaphora - When a phrase or word is used at the beginning of sentences twice or more: 'We shall fight on the beaches, We shall fight on the landing grounds'.' , Irony - A difference in what is said by the writer and what is meant. Or, what the reader expects and what is written. , Sarcasm - The use of mocking or scornful tone of voice - not meaning what has been said. Often used to undermine others and often used in speech. , Parrallelism - Similar sentence structures or phrases placed together. , Anti-climax or bathos - This undermines a climax and can be humorous. It plays on a reader's expectation for a significant or poignant moment and replaces it with something pithy or seemingly unimportant. ,

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Imagery - Any images relating to the senses (touch, taste, sight, smell, sound), Metaphor - A comparison between two things that are not alike, which implies or directly states that one IS the other. , Extended metaphor - A comparison which states one thing IS another thing, carried over a number of lines, stanzas, or the entire poem.

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What was 'The infamous blaze/ At the Triangle Factory in nineteen-eleven'?

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What was 'The infamous blaze/ At the Triangle Factory in nineteen-eleven'?

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Brown Brothers

Saturday, March 25, 1911. The work week was ending at the Triangle Waist Company factory in Lower Manhattan, and the men and women who operated the sewing machines and cut the cloth were pushing away from their tables, with some anticipating a night on the town and all looking toward their one day of rest.

On the eighth floor, flames suddenly leaped from a wastebasket under a table in the cutters' area.

While workers frantically struggled with pails of water to douse it, the fire hopscotched to other waste bins and snared the paper patterns hanging from strings overhead.

The fire spread quickly - so quickly that in half an hour it was over, having consumed all it could in the large, airy lofts on the eighth, ninth and 10th floors of the Asch Building, half a block east of Washington Square Park.

In its wake, the smoldering floors and wet streets were strewn with 146 bodies, all but 23 of them young women.

In the 100 years since the Triangle shirtwaist factory fire, as it is commonly recorded in history books, the story has been told many times about the poor, largely immigrant girls who toiled long hours inside an overcrowded factory only to find themselves one early spring afternoon trapped in a firestorm on floors where exit doors may have been locked. At least 50 workers concluded that the better option was to jump.

International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union Archives, Kheel Center

The ironies are many: The building was fireproof, and it still stands today. Like the Titanic a year later, it was considered state of the art, with conditions far safer than what existed before. The owners of the factory were themselves immigrants, but they became wealthy by employing newcomers at low wages at their shirtwaist factory, one of the largest in the city. And while two years earlier those owners had managed to withstand a 13-week industrywide strike aimed at achieving better conditions and union representation, the fire accomplished those goals and more.

On that Saturday 100 years ago, about 4:40 p.m., workers who had been perched at their machines since 8 a.m. were ending their week. As the whir of the sewing machines subsided and some workers headed for the cloakrooms for their hats and coats, flames were spotted in the wastebasket.

Workers unraveled a hose from a stairwell fixture, but no water came out. The building also had no sprinklers, nor had the factory held fire drills. The fire began to race across the 100-foot-long loft.

Workers rushed to an exit door leading to Washington Place, but it opened inward and some workers testified at a later trial that they first had to retrieve a key to unlock it. Still, most of the 180 workers were able to escape down the staircases.

As they fled, one Triangle supervisor on that fiery eighth floor placed a warning phone call to the executive offices on the 10th floor, where the owners, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, were at work. Visiting were two of Mr. Blanck's young daughters and their governess, waiting for a promised shopping trip.

International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union Archives, Kheel Center, Cornell University

The 60 or so executives, pressers and packers and two children escaped through choking smoke and flames onto freight elevators or up stairs to the roof. There, a New York University law professor and his students in the taller, adjacent building lowered ladders - fortuitously left by painters - to pull them to safety.

But, in her alarm, the worker who had taken the call on the 10th floor never hung up the phone. That prevented anyone from calling to alert the 250 workers on the ninth floor. Only when they saw flames rising up the air shaft, incinerating tables where shirtwaists were examined for workmanship, did the seamstresses, cutters and support workers who were crowded among eight rows of sewing machine tables realize they were in danger.

Many of the 250 workers crammed the usual exit, a door on the Greene Street side of the building, where a supervisor nightly checked departing workers for any hidden shirtwaists or stolen scraps of lace.

Others, seeing the press of bodies, hopped from table to table to reach the Washington Place staircase diagonally across the loft.

There, a young man twisted the lock of the Washington Place door and screamed, "The door is locked! The door is locked!" according to workers' testimony. Others tried to open it and also failed.

Dozens managed to make their way into the two freight elevators, where their operators, Joseph Zito and Gaspar Mortillalo, returned again and again to the burning floors, risking their own lives to save 150 people, according to " Triangle: The Fire That Changed America," a 2003 history by David Von Drehle.

Brown Brothers

Some who could not crowd into the elevators attempted to slide down the cable or jumped or fell down the shaft, and soon the elevators stopped, one so weighed down by the crush of 19 bodies that it could no longer rise.

As hundreds watched from nine floors below on Washington Place and Greene Street, workers hung out of windows and climbed onto ledges, hoping to be rescued by fire trucks that had responded within minutes of the first alarm.

But when the ladders stretched only to the sixth floor, 30 feet below, and flames began to singe their hair and consume their skirts, many jumped, often in twos and threes - 54 of them altogether, by the count of William Gunn Shepherd, a United Press reporter who was first to the scene.

Witnesses reported seeing a man at a Washington Place window who, in a gallant effort to spare his co-workers from the licking flames, held out three women at arm's length and dropped them, one by one, to their deaths. Then he kissed a fourth, released her to her death - and plunged to the sidewalk himself.

"They were all as unresisting as if he were helping them into a street car instead of into eternity," Shepherd reported. "He saw that a terrible death awaited them in the flames and his was only a terrible chivalry."

Workers who pressed onto the fire escape in a rear air shaft found their way blocked by swinging metal shutters. Had they made it all the way down, they would have found that it ended treacherously a full floor above a basement skylight.

Brown Brothers

With so many people crammed onto the fire escape with nowhere to go, it collapsed. Two dozen bodies were later recovered among the broken glass below the air shaft on the basement floor.

As the sun set, policemen and firemen recovered the charred corpses, lowering some by block and tackle to the sidewalk to join the broken bodies of the co-workers who had jumped. A parade of vehicles transported the bodies to the Charities Pier on 26th Street, and there they were lined up in simple wooden coffins for relatives to identify.

Tens of thousands showed up, the voyeurs and pickpockets mingled with grief-stricken relatives who were seeking any telltale features - hair braids, shoes, jewelry, gold teeth - so they could pick out their mothers, sisters, fathers and brothers from among the scorched faces.

International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union Archives, Kheel Center, Cornell University

All but six were identified. On the day the city buried them in a shared grave at the Cemetery of the Evergreens on the border of Brooklyn and Queens, the grief and anger of the city spilled out onto the downtown streets in a somber, rain-soaked funeral march for those "unknowns."

Hundreds of thousands made their way on routes from the north and south, meeting in Washington Square Park, where on a sunny Saturday a few weeks earlier, the clang of fire bells had shattered the genteel calm. Police officials, worried the crowd would erupt in a frenzy, diverted the marchers away from the Asch Building, to continue their procession uptown.

For nearly 100 years the names of those six remained unknown - until a persistent researcher, Michael Hirsch, ended the mystery, just in time for the centennial of their deaths.

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Brown Brothers Saturday, March 25, 1911. The work week was ending at the Triangle Waist Company factory in Lower Manhattan, and the men and women who operated the sewing machines and cut the cloth were pushing away from their tables, with some anticipating a night on the town and all looking toward their one day of rest.

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Some thoughts from the poet himself! Robert Pinsky talks about 'Shirt'

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Some thoughts from the poet himself! Robert Pinsky talks about 'Shirt'

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Press, Media, Events

Production Diary: Poetry of Art, Sport, and Play

by Leah Reis-Dennis

During the first two weeks of May, the Poetry in America team hit the road, filming classrooms at Greenwich Country Day School and Success Academy Charter Schools. The project? A new educational series on the Poetry of Art, Sport, and Play designed to help teachers and their students explore the intersections of poetry and other kinds of creativity-- whether artistic or athletic-- and to read with an eye toward fostering play and fun.

Press, Media, Events

The Production Design of Modernism

by Aaron Blanton

When we began filming the core segments for our Modernism course, the production team knew that we wanted to move beyond the one-note aesthetic of previous edX Poetry in America modules. We wanted to marry our visual approach to the mold-breaking spirit of Modernist poets themselves. Because the structure of the videos themselves wasn't something we could experiment with, we turned to production design to explore the individual tone of each week.

Course

Poetry in America for Teachers: The City from Whitman to Hip Hop

Ranging from Whitman to contemporary hip hop, we will venture into "The City" as represented in American poetry, and bring it to life in the classroom.

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At New York Fashion Week, host Elisa New catches up with fashion designer Johnson Hartig, Bergdorf Goodman's Betty Halbreich, shoe designer Stuart Weitzman and with fashion and poetry students from the New School to discuss Robert Pinsky's poem on labor, craft, and the threads that connect us.

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Analysis: Helpful guide for revision and notes. 

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Analysis: Helpful guide for revision and notes. 

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Thomas Hood

With fingers weary and worn,
With eyelids heavy and red,
A Woman sat, in unwomanly rags,
Plying her needle and thread—
Stitch! stitch! stitch!
In poverty, hunger, and dirt,
And still with the voice of dolorous pitch
She sang the "Song of the Shirt!"

"Work! Work! Work!
While the cock is crowing aloof!
And work—work—work,
Till the stars shine through the roof!
It's O! to be a slave
Along with the barbarous Turk,
Where woman has never a soul to save
If this is Christian work!

"Work—work—work
Till the brain begins to swim,
Work—work—work
Till the eyes are heavy and dim!
Seam, and gusset, and band,
Band, and gusset, and seam,
Till over the buttons I fall asleep,
And sew them on in a dream!

"O, Men with Sisters dear!
O, Men! with Mothers and Wives!
It is not linen you're wearing out,
But human creatures' lives!
Stitch—stitch—stitch,
In poverty, hunger, and dirt,
Sewing at once, with a double thread,

A Shroud as well as a Shirt.

"But why do I talk of Death!

That Phantom of grisly bone,

I hardly fear his terrible shape,

It seems so like my own—

It seems so like my own,

Because of the fasts I keep;

O God! that bread should be so dear,

And flesh and blood so cheap!

"Work—work—work!

My labour never flags;

And what are its wages? A bed of straw,

A crust of bread—and rags.

That shatter'd roof,—and this naked floor—

A table—a broken chair—

And a wall so blank, my shadow I thank

For sometimes falling there!

"Work—work—work!

From weary chime to chime,

Work—work—work—

As prisoners work for crime!

Band, and gusset, and seam,

Seam, and gusset, and band,

Till the heart is sick, and the brain benumb'd,

As well as the weary hand.

"Work—work—work,

In the dull December light,

And work—work—work,

When the weather is warm and bright—

While underneath the eaves

The brooding swallows cling,

As if to show me their sunny backs

And twit me with the spring.

"O, but to breathe the breath

Of the cowslip and primrose sweet!—

With the sky above my head,

And the grass beneath my feet;

For only one short hour

To feel as I used to feel,

Before I knew the woes of want

And the walk that costs a meal!

"O, but for one short hour!

A respite however brief!

No blessed leisure for Love or Hope,

But only time for Grief!

A little weeping would ease my heart,

But in their briny bed

My tears must stop, for every drop

Hinders needle and thread!

"Seam, and gusset, and band,

Band, and gusset, and seam,

Work, work, work,

Like the Engine that works by Steam!

A mere machine of iron and wood

That toils for Mammon's sake—

Without a brain to ponder and craze

Or a heart to feel—and break!"

—With fingers weary and worn,

With eyelids heavy and red,

A Woman sat, in unwomanly rags,

Plying her needle and thread—

Stitch! stitch! stitch!

In poverty, hunger, and dirt,

And still with a voice of dolorous pitch,—

Would that its tone could reach the Rich!—
She sand this "Song of the Shirt!"

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Robert Pinsky

The back, the yoke, the yardage. Lapped seams,
The nearly invisible stitches along the collar
Turned in a sweatshop by Koreans or Malaysians

Gossiping over tea and noodles on their break
Or talking money or politics while one fitted
This armpiece with its overseam to the band

Of cuff I button at my wrist. The presser, the cutter,
The wringer, the mangle. The needle, the union,
The treadle, the bobbin. The code. The infamous blaze

At the Triangle Factory in nineteen-eleven.
One hundred and forty-six died in the flames
On the ninth floor, no hydrants, no fire escapes --

The witness in a building across the street
Who watched how a young man helped a girl to step
up to the windowsill, then held her out

Away from the masonry wall and let her drop.
And then another. As if he were helping them up
To enter a streetcar, and not eternity.

A third before he dropped her put her arms
Around his neck and kissed him, Then he held
Her into space, and dropped her. Almost at once

He stopped to the sill himself, his jacket flared
And fluttered up from his shirt as he came down,
Air filling up the legs of his grey trousers -

Like Hart Crane's Bedlamite, "shrill shirt ballooning".
Wonderful how the pattern matches perfectly
Across the  placket and over the twin bar-tracked

Corners of both pockets, like a strict rhyme
Or a major chord. Prints, plaids, checks,
Houndstooth, Tattersall, Madras. The clan tartans

Invented by mill-owners inspired by the hoax of Ossian,
To control their savage Scottish workers, tamed
By a fabricated heraldry: MacGregor,

Bailey, MacMartin. The kilt, devised for workers
To wear among the dusty clattering looms.
Weavers, carders, spinners. The loader,

The docker, the navy. The planter, the picker, the sorter
Sweating at her machine in a litter of cotton
As slaves in calico headrags sweated in fields:

George Herbert, your descendant is a Black
Lady in South Carolina , her name is Irma
And she inspected my shirt. Its colour and fit

And feel its clean smell have satisfied
Both her and me. We have culled its cost and quality
Down to the buttons of simulated bone,

The buttonholes, the sizing, the facing, the characters
Printed in black on neckband and tail. The shape,
The label, the labour, the colour, the shade. The shirt.

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This analysis includes the whole poem but you only need to focus on the first two stanzas. This means that you will need to  select the  appropriate information from the document  - not all the examples and notes will be relevant to the first two stanzas.

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A two-volume anthology, Poems, by Elizabeth Barrett, later Barrett Browning (1806-1861) was published in 1844, to great critical acclaim. The most significant verse in the collection was a powerful sentimental work, ‘The Cry of the Children’, which had first appeared the previous year in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine. Barrett believed that ‘ethical poetry is the highest of all poetry forms’. She had been shocked by a parliamentary report published by the Children’s Employment Commission in 1842, which recorded the appalling conditions endured by children working in mines and factories. Her condemnation helped to raise public awareness of the problem, and garnered support for Lord Shaftesbury’s Ten Hours Bill.

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Context: The Children who built Victorian Britain

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Context: The Children who built Victorian Britain

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What did you learn about child labour during the industrial revolution from this video? What was it like to be a child factory worker?

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The Children Who Built Victorian Britain Part 1

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Context: What was it like to be a miner? 

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Context: What was it like to be a miner? 

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What did you learn about child labour during the industrial revolution from this video? What was it like to be a child working in the mines?

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0:00 / 5:33•Watch full video

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Sonnet Sisters Episode 19A: Sonnet #19 - What is the meaning of this?!

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The Huskor disaster

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Elizabeth  Barrett Browning

"Pheu pheu, ti prosderkesthe m ommasin, tekna;"
[[Alas, alas, why do you gaze at me with your eyes, my children.]]—Medea.

Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers,

Ere the sorrow comes with years?

They are leaning their young heads against their mothers,––

And that cannot stop their tears.

The young lambs are bleating in the meadows;

The young birds are chirping in the nest;

The young fawns are playing with the shadows;

The young flowers are blowing toward the west––

But the young, young children, O my brothers,

They are weeping bitterly!––

They are weeping in the playtime of the others,

In the country of the free.

Do you question the young children in the sorrow,

Why their tears are falling so?––

The old man may weep for his to-morrow

Which is lost in Long Ago––

The old tree is leafless in the forest––

The old year is ending in the frost––

The old wound, if stricken, is the sorest––

The old hope is hardest to be lost:

But the young, young children, O my brothers,

Do you ask them why they stand

Weeping sore before the bosoms of their mothers,

In our happy fatherland?

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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Some good tips in here about analysing form.

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A' Level English Literature: Form Analysis Sample Answer: A01 Continued

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Structural devices normally effect the tone of the writing. Check out these examples of paragraphs that discuss the effect of structure / tone to give yourself a good idea of what to aim for. Remember:
- use the PEEAL help sheet to make sure you're on the right track,
- then check your paragraphs against the PEEAL pie chart.

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The Poets Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979)

About the Poet

Treasured for spare elegance, imagery, and precise language, Elizabeth Bishop revealed her thoughts to readers through regular poetry submissions to The New Yorker magazine. She was skilled at dreamy fantasy and detachment as well as solid description, and she filled her work with the places and emotional states that marked a life much influenced by nomadic travel, lesbianism, depression, and alcohol. In addition to poetry collections, she produced a musical score, juvenile verse, and translations of the poems of Octavio Paz. She also introduced the English-speaking world to Brazilian poetry.

Bishop was born on February 8, 1911, in Worcester, Massachusetts. The instability of her childhood derived from the death of her father from kidney failure when she was eight months old and the permanent committal of her mother to an asylum five years later. From that point on, Bishop never saw her mother again. Deprived of interaction with her peers, she grew up among adult relatives.

Placed with maternal grandparents in Great Village, Nova Scotia, Bishop attended a one-room school at age six. Her elementary education was sporadic because of frequent attacks of asthma, bronchitis, and eczema. She then returned to Worcester and lived with an aunt while attending two Massachusetts boarding schools: North Shore Country Day School in Swampscott and Walnut Hill School in Nantick. At both schools, she published in student newspapers and composed poems and skits for class performance.

While attending Vassar, ostensibly to study piano, Bishop read Henry James and Joseph Conrad and discovered American poets H. D., Emily Dickinson, and Walt Whitman. She regretted that she did not study more Greek and Roman poets, whom she considered sources of mastery. When the editors of The Vassar Miscellany rejected a submission of modern verse, she joined with classmates Mary McCarthy, Eleanor Clark, and Muriel Rukeyser in founding a less conventional literary journal, Con Spirito. With the aid of the college librarian, in 1934, Bishop established a friendship with mentor Marianne Moore that lasted until Moore's death in 1972. After graduating, Bishop produced evocative verse while living on an inherited income. Moore published a few of Bishop's poems in 1935 in Trial Balances, a collection of the works of beginning poets.

Bishop spent the next three years in Europe and North Africa, then settled in Key West, Florida, where the vigor of storms at sea and fishing trips empowered her verse. She then moved to Mexico. Her work appeared in Partisan Review and, in 1945, she won a $1,000 Houghton Mifflin Poetry Fellowship. In the late 1940s, friendships with Randall Jarrell and Robert Lowell sparked a new literary direction. From 1949 to 1950, she served the Library of Congress as poetry consultant, a prolific period that earned her the American Academy of Arts and Letters award and a Houghton Mifflin honor for North and South (1946).

In 1951, after a bout of gastitis sidelined her from a South-American cruise, Bishop remained behind in Brazil, where she established a satisfying relationship with Lota de Macedo Soares. She earned critical acclaim and a Pulitzer Prize for poetry for a collection set in Nova Scotia, A Cold Spring (1955). In her Brazilian period, she translated Alice Brant's The Diary of "Helena Morley" (1957) and composed Brazil (1962), an overedited volume stressing the struggle of South America under entrenched patriarchy. She followed with a National Book Award-winner, Questions of Travel (1965).

After the death of her mate in 1967, Bishop returned to the United States and wrote a volume of children's verse, The Ballad of the Burglar of Babylon (1968). In 1969, she began a satisfying teaching career as Harvard's poet-in-residence. During this period, she issued Complete Poems (1969), edited An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Brazilian Poetry (1972), and published Geography III (1976), which earned her an election to the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the National Book Critics' Circle award. Bishop died of a cerebral aneurysm in Boston on October 6, 1979. Posthumous works include The Complete Poems (1983) and The Collected Prose (1984).

Chief Works

A model of Bishop's tendency toward singular or isolated figures, "The Man-Moth" (1946) opens on an incisive description that was her trademark. The image of a man standing in moonlight depicts him as "an inverted pin, the point magnetized to the moon." With a deft twist, she envisions him like toothpaste in a tube "forced through . . . in black scrolls on the light." Unlike the man himself, the "man-moth" shadow attempts the unthinkable by climbing buildings and trailing along behind his source "like a photographer's cloth." The fourth and fifth stanzas imperil the shadow during a subway ride, where he "always seats himself facing the wrong way" and cowers from the dangers of the third rail. The poet merges the play of light on dark with fantasy in the sixth stanza, in which the shadow, like a mime, acquires humanity by squeezing out a tear, the pure substance of "underground springs."

Critics have characterized Bishop's detachment as the result of emotional inertia, the atmosphere of "The Fish" (1955). The vignette inventories physical parts, which she catalogs without dissection. The fish, sapped of fight, becomes an elder statesman who bears the marks of past challenges. The poet-speaker delights in his "medals with their ribbons/frayed and wavering"; then, in line 75, experiences an unforeseen surprise of "rainbow, rainbow, rainbow." Her victory over the fish gives place to admiration. In sympathy with the water world below, she exults, "I let the fish go."

Similarly immersed in minutiae, "At the Fishhouses" (1955) notes a paradox: the inflexible rule of change. The poem moves through crisp air beyond the net-mender's niche to seaside structures and equipment that wear has silvered with "creamy iridescent coats of mail." Similar in color imagery to "The Fish," the poem equates the shimmer of scales with a store of experience. Through a simple poet's trick, Bishop compares coastal glamour to the old man's "Lucky Strike," a cigarette logo rich in implications of sensory wealth.

Beginning at line 41, Bishop speculates on the net-mender's milieu. In an atmosphere "Cold dark deep and absolutely clear," the poet-speaker encounters a familiar companion, a seal "curious about me." The semi-serious bombardment with Martin Luther's hymn "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" earns the seal's disinterest, as though fundamentalist theology "were against his better judgment." In place of sectarian assurance, the poet-speaker turns to experience - the swift plunge of hand and arm into icy depths. The burning pain of freezing water and the bitter, briny taste of the sea crystallizes an analogy: Knowledge is likewise "dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free." Unlike philosophy, the experience with cold salt water is a paradox: a constant flux, "historical, flowing, and flown."

"Filling Station" (1965), one of Bishop's more whimsical poems, offers a snoopy inventory of elements in the life of a working-class family. Soiled with the grease inherent to their trade, they exist in "a disturbing, over-all / black translucency," another example of illustrative paradox. In the third stanza, the poet-speaker moves into the private realm of family life, including the oil-stained family's dog. The fourth stanza introduces evidence of sensibility in comic books, a doily atop a drum-shaped table, and a hairy begonia.

As though questioning the individual's right to examine a life, the poet-speaker reaches a peak of interest with three parallel questions: "Why the extraneous plant? / Why the taboret? / Why, oh why, the doily?" The answer lies in the "somebody" who loves the father and sons. Bishop extends domesticity to an image of murmuring, a shelf of oil cans whispering "Esso-so-so-so," a play on the original logo of the Eastern Standard Oil Company. With a teasing twist, the poet-speaker concludes with the reassurance, "Somebody loves us all."

Another of Bishop's poems is less assuring. Dedicated to Robert Lowell, her lifelong friend and fellow poet, "The Armadillo" (1965) is a naturalistic meditation on skepticism. The poem focuses on an unforeseen clash between fire balloons and frail beings on the ground below. Composed in a precise quatrain rhyming abab with abcb, the poem follows a pattern of iambic trimeter in lines 1, 2, and 4 with line 3 expanding to five beats. The masculine rhymes vary from exact patterns (year/appear, night/height) to approximate rhyme (alone/down) and conclude with aaxa in the union of mimicry/cry/fist/sky.

Early on, the poet introduces hints of instability with "frail, illegal fire balloons" and the flicker of light like a beating - or possibly inconstant - heart. She compacts the action as the wind carries shapes that "flare and falter, wobble and toss" toward the constellation known as the Southern Cross, a literal crux of the action. Repeated present participles (receding, dwindling, forsaking, turning) exaggerate the mobility of the image to a height in line 20, which concludes with a warning of danger.

In the final five stanzas, Bishop describes in detail the fall of a large balloon, which "splattered like an egg of fire," an introduction to the destructive power that looms above living creatures. The first, a pair of owls, shriek as they flee the combustion in their ancient nest. The lone armadillo departs like an exile, "head down, tail down," leaving the poet-speaker to marvel at an ashy-soft baby rabbit whose gaze carries the fire in "fixed, ignited eyes." The final italicized stanza reproves a scene that is "too pretty," turned hellish as "falling fire" injures and terrorizes unseen life-forms below. As the title directs, the poem focuses on the seemingly protected armadillo, an image of unsuspecting weakness. Like the armadillo, the poet implies that human beings make weak provisions for catastrophes that can fall from an unidentified source. Written at the height of the Cold War, when people built bomb shelters to protect them from atomic attack, the poem expresses a realistic doubt that any man-made shell can erase a pervasive unease.

One of Bishop's autobiographical commentaries, "In the Waiting Room" (1976), returns to the end of her sixth year with a serendipitous coming-to-knowledge. Set precisely on February 5, 1918, while her Aunt Consuelo keeps a dental appointment in Worcester, Massachusetts, the young speaker must entertain herself with a copy of National Geographic. A precocious reader, she examines articles in a revealing order - the inside of a volcano, the explorations of Osa and Martin Johnson, and photos of bare-breasted native women. In line 36, the poem's high point, an unsolicited burst of emotion, like a volcanic eruption, surprises the speaker, who at first believes the sound bursts from her "foolish, timid" aunt, who quails at dental treatment. Discovering that the cry came from her own mouth, the child experiences an emotional plunge.

At the climax of observation, Bishop notes that the child identifies with "them," the other people in the waiting area. Personalized as an "I," she wonders at the listing of human beings according to physical and cultural traits. The sensation of fainting "beneath a big black wave, / another, and another," precedes a return to reality through the immediacy of the room, the cold outdoors, and World War I, which evidences the child's awareness of current history. The simplistic child's world picture exalts the flexibility of the imagination, which can catapult the mind into exotic locales, then reel it in to a fixed point. Like an aerial artist on a maiden leap, the speaker is surprised that she recovers so quickly from the first mental venture beyond self-imposed boundaries.

Discussion and Research Topics

1. Explain James Merril's tribute to Elizabeth Bishop, whom he characterizes as "a Dream Boat / Among topheavy wrecks."

2. What does the image of a man standing in moonlight in "The Man-Moth" symbolize? How does Bishop use light to create feeling in the poem?

3. Ally images from "In the Waiting Room," "Sestina," and "In the Village" with situations and events in Bishop's childhood.

4. Discuss the image of fire balloons in "The Armadillo." What do the balloons symbolize?

5. Contrast realistic details in Bishop's "Filling Station" and John Updike's "The Ex-Basketball Player."

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About the Poet Treasured for spare elegance, imagery, and precise language, Elizabeth Bishop revealed her thoughts to readers through regular poetry submissions to The New Yorker magazine. She was skilled at dreamy fantasy and detachment as well as solid description, and she filled her work with the places and emotional states that marked a life much influenced by nomadic travel, lesbianism, depression, and alcohol.

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Nonmetrical, nonrhyming lines that closely follow the natural rhythms of speech. A regular pattern of sound or rhythm may emerge in free-verse lines, but the poet does not adhere to a metrical plan in their composition. Matthew Arnold and Walt Whitman explored the possibilities of nonmetrical poetry in the 19th century. Since the early 20th century, the majority of published lyric poetry has been written in free verse. See the work of William Carlos Williams, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and H.D. Browse more free-verse poems.

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Nonmetrical, nonrhyming lines that closely follow the natural rhythms of speech. A regular pattern of sound or rhythm may emerge in free-verse lines, but the poet does not adhere to...

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Remember, analysing poetry is not about 'knowing' answers, it is much more about exploring your ideas and interpretations. Use this guide to help build confidence in your ability to develop a personal interpretation of the poem and enjoy the process of questioning and exploring the ideas expressed here.

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Blench - sudden flinch, fear or pain, alternative meaning is to grow pale

Impenetrable - cannot penetrate it, go beneath

Demarcation - mark something out, fix the boundary or limits (dividing line), can be figurative

Clambering - clumsily climbing

Sifted - putting it through a sieve, the grains become fine and even

Stanza 1: In the evening, the narrative voice (potentially the mountain) notices something behind them. They stop for a moment and flinch, shudder and burn, process of growth in a mountain. It doesn't know its age.

Stanza 2: The morning is different. In daylight, the mountain can see its surroundings, but cannot necessarily decipher them. It asks its age.

Stanza 3: An indefinite amount of time passes and the valleys impede the mountain with mist that block the senses, specifically hearing. It doesn't know its age.

Stanza 4: It doesn't want to complain. It is said that the mountain is at fault. It does not get told anything. It asks its age.

Stanza 5: The human made boundaries in the mountain change over time for mountains are not stationary things, the movement likened to a tattoo. It does not know its age.

Stanza 6: Night falls and day rises, the passing of time. The mountain gives birth to stumbling souls on their travels, but likened to childhood it is transient in comparison to the eternity of the mountain. It asks its age.

Stanza 7: The mountain witnesses countless deaths; the wings of a bird turn from a petrified state to refined grain (back to the earth). The claws are lost and the animal can no longer fend for itself. The mountain still doesn't know its age.

The mountain is given a voice to speak about its observations of the world, but also its personal feelings and concerns. It observes the life and death of ephemeral entities - the shifting boundaries of human borders, the death and decay of birds. It is particularly preoccupied with the unknown aspect of ageing, and also the access to knowledge around it that cannot be understood - a metaphor for our limited capacity to understand the world from a subjective viewpoint.

7 quatrains, fairly even / regular.

Alternating conclusions to each stanza; repeated statement and repeated imperative run throughout the poem. This creates a regular rhythm between passive and active, with a rocking rhythm.

These recurring lines are monosyllabic with basic vocabulary; in contrast the poetic voice of the mountain seems to articulate itself well throughout, however here it is diminished to a childish state with its lack of knowledge.

Feels like a broken villanelle (a form which Bishop liked) but without the conclusion of a harmonising couplet, unresolved - some lines repeat but in a more fragmented way than a standard villanelle.

There is no set rhyme scheme.

Enjambment and end stopped lines are both used: many of the stanzas begin with a sense of fluidity and end abruptly. It seems to symbolise the growth of mountains, shuddering quickly due to the tectonic plates - emulating the natural rhythm of nature.

Only one caesura in the opening line of the penultimate stanza - this contrasts the monotonous sense of infinity that the line suggests and draws attention to it. Antithetical line, demonstrates the contrast of night and day.

The mountain could be argued to be an analogous for life, a conceit metaphor running throughout the entirety of the poem ...

Stanza 1: Sibilant 's' sounds contrasted with the plosive 'b' sounds

active monosyllabic dynamic verbs 'halt' and 'burn' create a feeling of pain relating to the mountain's growth process. The adverb 'Staggeringly' coupled with the verb 'halt' seems oxymoronic, like a kind of contradiction; it possibly alludes to the stop-start and erratic growth process of the mountain

'open book' - a metaphor for the landscape, alluding to how we can decipher and decode the mysteries of nature if we are able to understand and 'read' it; for the mountain it is 'too close' to read, i.e. it is unable to understand nature because it is itself a part of nature

'the valleys' are personified as the antithesis of the mountain (in shape but also in behaviour), and they are antagonistic to it - they 'stuff' mists in the mountain's ears, a playful yet irritating movement that further impairs the mountain's perception of the world - linking to the later images of blurred or dulled senses

'like any blurred tattoo' - a simile that refers to the way in which humans scar the landscape with their wars and boundary impositions, the imprint of their conflict erodes over time and fades, or becomes 'blurred' - time to the mountain moves differently from humans, so we may see a country's border as a permanent or long lasting entity, whereas to the mountain it is very transient and passes quickly

'Let the moon go hang' - there is a tonal shift in the final stanza where the mountain appears to be angry and frustrated, and also weary of its constant questioning with no answers

Eternity vs Ephemerality - from the perspective of the mountain, humans and their activities are very ephemeral, and the lives of animals pass very quickly - although from our perspective mountains seem eternal, the mountain is preoccupied with its own age, which suggests an anxiety about death or the ageing process

Childhood - this is a transient state - the mountain watches its children or some children - young entities - growing up, becoming independent and leaving - to the mountain this process happens too quickly - reflects the idea of families, children growing up, ageing is more evident in children than adults as their physical and mental development is rapid - the older something is, the slower its process of change

Age / The Ageing process - death, ageing and time are all relative - perhaps the worry the mountain has about not knowing its age is more concerning its expiry date than the time its lived, or loss of beauty or youth as humans would be concerned by - ageing is also seen as the process by which matter shifts from inert to active - soil or rock to life - and back again via the imagery of the deconstructed bird

Death - the mountain harbours a questioning anxiety about death, but more specifically about when its demise will come. Despite the misconstrued idea that mountains are immortal, there is an acknowledgement that everything has to die in order for others to be born, relating to the concept of matter being finite.

Boundaries - between human + nature, imposed by humans, between day + night, old + young. The poem seems to undermine the definition of boundaries; they seem frivolous to nature as the human constraints do not apply.

Observation - the mountain observes the life of its surroundings, the birth and deaths are an emblem of the transience of ephemerality. It cannot ultimately interfere in the lives of the youth that will follow the same path of every other living specimen.

Activity / Passivity - despite the mountain being seemingly passive through this observative stance, it shudders and burns, an allusion to the growth of mountains by tectonic plate movements. This is reflected in the alternating final lines of each stanza, from passivity to activity (statement to impertitive) concerning the wondering of its age.

Time - the concept of time is relative to the amount one is given; the mountain does not know how much time it has lived and thus even when it can see its environs, it cannot demystify its blurred concept of time.

Loneliness - the mountain lives in solitude, being outside of the time that animals and humans follow. Even when its surroundings are revealed, it still cannot relate to the outside world, creating a feeling of loneliness.

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The Mountain by Elizabeth Bishop - Poem Analysis

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Blench - sudden flinch, fear or pain, alternative meaning is to grow pale Impenetrable - cannot penetrate it, go beneath Demarcation - mark something out, fix the boundary or limits (dividing line), can be figurative Clambering - clumsily climbing Sifted - putting it through a sieve, the grains become fine and even Stanza 1: In the evening, the narrative voice (potentially the mountain) notices something behind them.

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Elizabeth Bishop was born in 1911 in Worcester, Massachusetts and grew up there and in Nova Scotia. Her father died before she was a year old and her mother suffered seriously from mental illness; she was committed to an institution when Bishop was five. Raised first by her maternal grandparents in Nova Scotia, Bishop's wealthy paternal grandparents eventually brought her to live in Massachusetts. During her lifetime Bishop was a respected yet somewhat obscure figure in the world of American literature. Since her death in 1979, however, her reputation has grown to the point that many critics, like Larry Rohter in the New York Times, have referred to her as "one of the most important American poets" of the 20th century. Bishop was a perfectionist who did not write prolifically, preferring instead to spend long periods of time polishing her work. She published only 101 poems during her lifetime. Her verse is marked by precise descriptions of the physical world and an air of poetic serenity, but her underlying themes include the struggle to find a sense of belonging, and the human experiences of grief and longing.

Bishop was educated at the elite Walnut Hills School for Girls and Vassar College. Her years at Vassar were tremendously important to Bishop. There she met Marianne Moore, a fellow poet who also became a lifelong friend. Working with a group of students that included Mary McCarthy, Eleanor Clark, and Margaret Miller, she founded the short-lived but influential literary journal Con Spirito, which was conceived as an alternative to the well-established Vassar Review. After graduating, Bishop lived in New York and traveled extensively in France, Spain, Ireland, Italy, and North Africa. Her poetry is filled with descriptions of her journeys and the sights she saw. In 1938, she moved to Key West, where she wrote many of the poems that eventually were collected in her first volume North and South (1946). Her second poetry collection, Poems: North & South/A Cold Spring (1955) received the Pulitzer Prize. In 1944 she left Key West, and for 14 years she lived in Brazil with her lover, the architect Lota de Macedo Soares in Pétropolis. After Soares took her own life in 1967, Bishop spent less time in Brazil than in New York, San Francisco, and Massachusetts, where she took a teaching position at Harvard in 1970. That same year, she received a National Book Award in Poetry for The Complete Poems. Her reputation increased greatly in the years just prior to her death, particularly after the 1976 publication of Geography III and her winning of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature.

Bishop worked as a painter as well as a poet, and her verse, like visual art, is known for its ability to capture significant scenes. Though she was independently wealthy and thus enjoyed a life of some privilege, much of her poetry celebrates working-class settings: busy factories, farms, and fishing villages. Analyzing her small but significant body of work for Bold Type, Ernie Hilbert wrote: "Bishop's poetics is one distinguished by tranquil observation, craft-like accuracy, care for the small things of the world, a miniaturist's discretion and attention. Unlike the pert and wooly poetry that came to dominate American literature by the second half of her life, her poems are balanced like Alexander Calder mobiles, turning so subtly as to seem almost still at first, every element, every weight of meaning and song, poised flawlessly against the next."

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Elizabeth Bishop was born in 1911 in Worcester, Massachusetts and grew up there and in Nova Scotia. Her father died before she was a year old and her mother suffered seriously from mental illness; she was committed to an institution when Bishop was five. Raised first by her maternal grandparents in...

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Definition of Villanelle

A villanelle is a poetic form with nineteen lines and a strict pattern of repetition and a rhyme scheme. Each villanelle is comprised of five tercets (i.e., a three-line stanza) followed by one quatrain (a stanza with four lines). The first and third lines of the opening tercet are repeated in an alternating pattern as the final line of each next tercet; those two repeated lines then form the final two lines of the entire poem. The rhyme scheme calls for those repeating lines to rhyme, and for the second line of every tercet to rhyme. Thus, the rhyme scheme looks like this: A1 b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 A2. Though the structure may sound complicated, in practice it is easy to see how the rules work.

The word villanelle comes originally from the Italian word villano, meaning "peasant." The villanellas and villancicos of the Renaissance period were Italian and Spanish songs made for dancing, which featured the pastoral theme appropriate for peasant dances. The contemporary definition of villanelle thus has changed quite a bit since its conception as a verse without strict rhyme scheme or repetition.

Common Examples of Villanelle

The villanelle is a highly structured poetic form, and thus there are no examples of villanelle from outside of poetry. However, some villanelles have become famous enough that some of their lines have entered public consciousness. For example, Dylan Thomas's poem "Do not go gentle into that good night" is a villanelle example, and the lines that he repeats in the poem are quite famous:

Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Significance of Villanelle in Literature

The villanelle is known as a fixed verse form. Other examples of fixed verse forms include the haiku, sonnet, and sestina. It is believed that the French poet Théodore de Banville defined the form in the late nineteenth century, though villanelles became much more popular in England than it ever did in France. Though the form is quite strict in its rules, it is not all that difficult to write a villanelle; indeed, eight of the nineteen lines are repetitions. The difficulty is in making this repetition seem new or important each time. Many poets have played just a bit with the repetition of lines so that there is a slight change, either in the insertion or deletion of a word, or in changing the tense or punctuation of the repeated lines. The function of the repetition often can seem a bit obsessive, and, indeed, many villanelles center around a central issue a poet is trying to work out in a manner that sounds circular and obsessive.

Examples of Villanelle in Literature

In order to understand the way a villanelle works, we have reprinted the following three villanelle examples in their entirety. Notice the rhyme scheme and function of the repeated lines.

Example #1

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

("Do not go gentle into that good night" by Dylan Thomas)

No article on villanelles would be complete without printing the most famous example of a villanelle of all time: Dylan Thomas's "Do not go gentle into that good night." Unlike some other authors, Thomas chose not to alter his repeating lines whatsoever, and we see them reproduced exactly the same in each repetition. The lines in and of themselves are very powerful, and their repetition serves only to make Thomas's forceful message that much stronger.

Example #2

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

-Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

("One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop)

Elizabeth Bishop's famous example of villanelle, "One Art," is slightly looser with the rules, though she does stick to them fairly closely. For example, the lines that end with the word "disaster" have only that final word in common, and are quite different leading up to the word. Bishop is also a bit freer with the rhyming words, choosing half rhyme rather than perfect rhyme in some cases. For example, she choose near rhymes for "disaster" such as "fluster," "last, or," and "gesture." Similarly "intent" and "continent" have the same final vowel and consonant combination, yet the stress pattern of "continent" makes it not a perfect rhyme for "intent." Still, Bishop has chosen the villanelle form for a reason. She builds up to the final quatrain with insisting that "the art of losing isn't hard to master," yet it's clear that there is some verbal irony here and that it is indeed difficult to lose a loved one.

Example #3

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

("The Waking" by Theodore Roethke)

Theodore Roethke's poem "The Waking" is another famous and lovely example of a villanelle. He is somewhere between Thomas and Bishop in terms of how closely he sticks to the villanelle rules. Generally his lines rhyme with either "slow" or "fear," though he also chooses near rhymes of "you," "how," "do" and "there," "stair," and "air." He also slightly varies the second repeating line of "I learn by going where I have to go."

Test Your Knowledge of Villanelle

1. Which of the following poetic forms is the correct villanelle definition?
A. Three lines with a syllable count of 5-7-5.
B. Fourteen lines with three quatrains and a final couplet with an alternating rhyme scheme.
C. Nineteen lines with five tercets and a final quatrain with two repeating lines.

2. Which of the following subjects would a contemporary villanelle be most likely to deal with?
A. Obsession
B. Pastoral themes
C. Obscene humor

3. Which of the following is true about villanelles?
A. The repeating lines must never change in any way.
B. Every line must rhyme (or be a near rhyme) with either the first or second line of the villanelle.
C. Early examples of villanelles were written with more structure than contemporary examples.

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Villanelle Examples and Definition - Literary Devices

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A villanelle is a poetic form with nineteen lines and a strict pattern of repetition and a rhyme scheme. Each villanelle is comprised of five tercets (i.e., a three-line stanza) followed by one quatrain (a stanza with four lines).

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Which performance do you prefer? Why do you feel this way? 

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Which performance do you prefer? Why do you feel this way? 

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Include analysis of structure, form, voice, and language to explain your preference.

i.e. 'The actor has emphasised the use of end-stopped lines to create a....effect. I prefer this because it makes me consider images such as...and... . As a result I think it is a more powerful way to convey the overall theme of... in the poem.'

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This is a vocabulary 'cheat sheet' to help you understand the command words in exam questions.

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1. Waterfall, by Lauris Edmond

2. Homecoming, by Lenrie Peters

3. I Years had been from Home, by Emily Dickinson
4. Farewell, Ungrateful Traitor, by John Dryden
5. A Complaint, by William Wordsworth
6.
7.
8.
9.

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Elizabeth Bishop

At evening, something behind me.
I start for a second, I blench,
or staggeringly halt and burn.
I do not know my age.

In the morning it is different.
An open book confronts me,
too close to read in comfort.
Tell me how old I am.

And then the valleys stuff
impenetrable mists
like cotton in my ears.
I do not know my age.

I do not mean to complain.
They say it is my fault.
Nobody tells me anything.
Tell me how old I am.

The deepest demarcations
can slowly spread and fade
like any blue tattoo.
I do not know my age.

Shadows fall down, lights climb.
Clambering lights, oh children!
you never stay long enough.
Tell me how old I am.

Stone wings have sifted here
with feather hardening feather.
The claws are lost somewhere.
I do not know my age.

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Analysing Tone: Sonnet 19 in performance

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Analysing Tone: Sonnet 19 in performance

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Patrick Stewart reading Sonnet 19 'Devouring time, blunt thou the lion's paws'

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This performance is from THE SONNETS BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE for iPad, described by the Sunday Times as 'an extraordinary achievement, that brings the sonnets bracingly to life and definitively sets the bar for the future of digital reading.' Available on the iTunes App Store: http://itunes.apple.com/app/sonnets-by-william-shakespeare/id528646395?ls=1&mt=8 Find out more at www.thesonnets.tv

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Analysing Tone: Sonnet 19 in performance

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Analysing Tone: Sonnet 19 in performance

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Sonnet Sisters Episode 19B: Sonnet #19 - In Performance

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Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion's paws,

And make the earth devour her own sweet brood;

Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger's jaws,

And burn the long-liv'd Phoenix in her blood;

Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleets,

And do whate'er thou wilt, swift-footed Time,

To the wide world and all her fading sweets;

But I forbid thee one more heinous crime:

O, carve not with the hours my love's fair brow,

Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen!

Him in thy course untainted do allow

For beauty's pattern to succeeding men.

Yet do thy worst, old Time! Despite thy wrong

My love shall in my verse ever live young.
William Shakespeare
Devouring - consuming / eating with enthusiasm

Time - The use of the capital 'T' shows that Time is personified here

To blunt - to make something lose its sharpness

Thou - you

Brood - babies or a group of young animals

Keen - sharp, eager

Phoenix - a mythological bird that burst into flames when it dies and is reborn again

Fleet - to move or pass quickly

Whate'er thou wilt - whatever you want

Heinous - terrible or wicked

Untainted - not harmed or stained

Succeeding - following on from / being successful

This is a poem addressed directly to 'Time', a personification of the idea of time, so the speaker is speaking to it as if it were a conscious being. He says that Time is 'devouring', it consumes everything hungrily. He says it can blunt the sharpness of lion's paws and force the earth to take back its fruits and produce. He allows it to pluck the teeth from a tiger's jaws as it dies and decays, and to burn the Phoenix as it dies and is reborn (typically, Phoenixes are 'long-lived' because it is thought that they lived for 500 years before bursting into flames). He says that Time is welcome to make the seasons shift from happy to sad as it moves quickly through the years, and do whatever it wants to the world and all the sweet things in it that fade. But, the speaker says, he forbids Time to do one terrible crime: Don't carve his lover's fair brow with lines ( and don't let him grow old and get wrinkles, drawing lines on his head with an antique pen). Allow him to remain 'untainted' so that he can set an example of the pattern of beauty to following generations of men. Finally, the speaker says that he no longer cares and that time can do its worst, because regardless of what Time does to the beautiful man, he shall be immortalised as a beautiful youth in this poem forever.

In Shakespeaere's sonnets, the speaker is always an unnamed person who is telling the situation from a personal perspective. Sonnets are traditionally explorations of the theme of love, and so the persona of the poem often takes the form of a lover who addresses their words to their desired partner. Yet here the speaker is also more universal, he or she is talking about Time's effect on youth, beauty and attraction in general. It seems a pity to the speaker that Time destroys the beauty of youth.

Animalistic imagery - 'the lion's paws' / 'the fierce tiger's jaws' - the speaker uses various examples of beautiful, powerful and dangerous entities that have only ephemeral power that lasts for a short time and fades over the years. There is a sense here that anything powerful is only temporary, and that Time has the ultimate power over all other things.

Personification- Time is personified through the use of the capital letter T, yet 'earth' is also personified, as the speaker suggests that Time forces her to 'devour her own sweet brood', a harrowing image that conjures up the impression of a mother being forced to eat her own children, but also a natural image as we are reminded that all living things come from and return to the earth.

Sibilance - 'make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleets' - the use of repeated 's' sounds in this line creates a rushing sound that imitates the way in which Time flows and seeps through the world, switching the seasons throughout the year

Metaphor - 'beauty's pattern' - the speaker suggests that a pattern of beauty lies within the lover's face, that there are some specific standards of beauty that he holds true to, and that this type of beauty should serve as an example for other men in the future to copy. It implies that beauty can have an inherent aesthetic (surface value) quality to it, that the shape and design of some things that can be found on earth are just certainly beautiful, that they inspire a feeling of love or awe in us. This would be an interesting point to contrast with modern perspective on beauty, which is typically more focused on inner qualities than aesthetics.

Term of address - 'old Time' - the speaker uses the adjective 'old' to create a kind of contradictory feeling to his relationship to Time, though Time controls the passing of the days, hours and weeks the speaker is suggesting that Time itself is old, perhaps an outdated concept or something that's less powerful than the speaker's own new and refreshing take to his art - he feels that he can beat Time through his poetry, which will continue to be read and reprinted for years after both himself and the subject have passed on. In traditional literature, Time is often personified as 'Old Father Time', or 'Cronos' as he is known in Greek Mythology, and so Shakespeare may be drawing upon this reference when he calls Time 'old'. This also complements the depiction of 'earth' as a feminine presence that gives life, and Time as a masculine presence that takes it away.

Sonnet form - the poem is split into quatrains (four line sections) which have different but linked ideas: Firstly, an attack on Time and its all-consuming power where the speaker says Time is welcome to continue devouring these things. Secondly, the crimes that Time commits as it steals the seasons and the beautiful 'sweets' of the world. Thirdly, the specific power that Time has to shape and mould the lover's face and in the final two lines that form a rhyming couplet the speaker offers a final defiant gesture - that Time can do its worst because poetry will beat it in the end.

Apostrophe - the whole sonnet is an apostrophe to Time, addressed directly to the personified character of Time

Caesura / Exclamation - 'one more heinous crime: O, carve not..' The use of the colon creates a caesura, a dramatic pause at the end of the line that asks the reader to pause and pay attention to the next line. This creates a cataphoric reference - where the speaker is indicating to us to observe clearly what he is about to say. The exclamative 'O' sound at the beginning of this line creates a plaintive tone where the speaker seems to be begging, pleading and complaining about Time's movement. He begs Time to reconsider affecting the lover, as this seems to be indescribably cruel and tragic for a man who is defined by his youthful beauty to lose this trait.

Volta - 'But I forbid thee one heinous crime' / Yet do thy worst, old Time! - there are arguably two voltas in this poem, two separate turning points. Firstly, the speaker builds up an argument as it acknowledges that Time destroys all things, then the 8th line has a tonal shift from passively accepting to assertive as he says he forbids Time to commit the 'heinous crime' of destroying the beauty of the fair youth's face with old age and wrinkles. Then in the final couplet the tone switches again, becoming more confrontational, as if the speaker sees himself as locked directly in a battle with Time over the preservation or decay of the youth's beauty. He says Time can do whatever it pleases because he has so much confidence in his own poetic ability, that the beautiful youth will be preserved forever in his poetic lines.

Sonnets- sonnets originate from Italy in the 14th Century, they are a form of lyric poetry and are intended as a 'little song' that sings about love in all its many variations. The form was invented by Petrarch and became highly popular during the Renaissance era - in fact, Shakespeare primarily wrote sonnets because he could make a lot of money out of them, whereas the income from his plays was less stable. Writing in the 16th Century, Shakespeare modernised the 200 year old sonnet form by breaking from the traditional Petrarchan structure and creating his own rhyming pattern. Therefore, Shakespearean sonnets are still 14 lines long, but they always have an ABABCDCDEFEFGG rhyme scheme - being split into three quatrains of alternate rhyme and a final rhyming couplet that serves as a conclusion to the poem. Traditional sonnets often had an unobtainable goddess-like woman as the subject, and typically explored the notion of unrequited love. Yet, Shakespeare's sonnets were famously split between an unnamed man and a 'dark lady' who was far from a goddess. Sonnet 19 focuses on the unnamed man or 'faire youth', as he's called elsewhere, as a love interest, and so we may interpret this in several ways - Shakespeare may be commenting on the condition of youth in general, or speaking about a particular friend of his whose attractiveness will fade with time. Some critics have posited that it may also imply homosexual tendencies on Shakespeare's part, as he seems quite fixated on the preservation of this man's beauty.
ATTITUDES
Time ravages all beautiful things - it destroys strong things such as lions and tigers, and softer things such as the fruits of the earth and the beauty of the human face. The speaker begs Time not to let this happen to the lover in the poem, whose beauty is certainly bound up with his youth. Yet he also challenges Time directly in the last two lines, saying that he too has power as a writer and he can beat time by writing poems that last and commemorate beauty. There is a sense that poetry has the power to immortalise beautiful moments that would otherwise be ephemeral and only witnessed by a few people.

Aesthetic beauty is one of the fleeting pleasures of the world - there is something specific about the youth's appearance that makes him beautiful, and the speaker feels that this beauty is very fleeting and not the kind to last into old age. Perhaps this is a comment on the idealistic freshness of youth and how this fades as people mature. Though the poem is focused on aesthetics, the outer appearance of the youth, we could also say then that this is connected to the inner attitude of the man.

Decay is a natural process - though we are often repulsed by the idea of decay, this poem reminds us that it is a natural process. It seems whimsical and ironic in nature rather than deadly serious, exploring the idea that it might be vain and selfish to expect our beauty to last into old age when the ageing process is applied to all natural things in life. It also reminds us to appreciate the good moments while they last, because time is relentless and before we know it our lives will have changed, or finally be over.
Love Attraction Youth vs Maturity Aesthetic Beauty Time Death / Decay The Power of Art Defiance Femininity vs Masculinity

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Analysis of Sonnet 19 - William Shakespeare

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Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion's paws, And make the earth devour her own sweet brood; Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger's jaws, And burn the long-liv'd Phoenix in her blood; Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleets, And do whate'er thou wilt, swift-footed Time, To the wide world and all her fading sweets; But I forbid thee one more heinous crime: O, carve not with the hours my love's fair brow, Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen!

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"But before we could marry, he became a lion -

thick pelted, and rich with the musk of beast.

The switch to all fours was not easy - all his weight

slung from the blades of his shoulders."

Joanna Preston

(Full poem unable to be reproduced due to copyright)
VOCABULARY
Pride - there is a pun on this word in the title, the collective noun to describe a lion's family group is 2his 'pride', usually made up of several lionesses and cubs. However, it also refers to the abstract noun 'pride', meaning a sense of self-worth and importance.

Thick pelted - having a thick skin, 'pelts' refer to animal skins, usually covered with fur

Musk - a deep scent

All fours - when a human or animal crawls or walks using all four limbs (hands and knees for a human)

Deltoids - shoulder muscles

Teak burls - teak is a type of wood, burls are the knots and imperfections that can be seen in wood grains

Burnished - polished (usually metal)

Burr - seeds with sharp hooks that stick onto fur and clothes

Suede - soft leather

Chime - a musical ringing sound, as in when bells are struck

Saffron - an extremely expensive and exotic herb that has a deep yellow colour

Ruff - another word for 'mane'

Ardent - filled with love and passion

Topaz - an amber coloured precious stone

Rasp - a scraping noise

Before the speaker could marry her partner, he turned into a lion. He developed a thick skin and an animalistic scent. This transformation wasn't easy, he was not used to walking on all fours and it affected his muscles. His shoulders became knotted, so she polished or massaged them to ease the pain. His fur was full of burrs, but it took a while before he allowed her to groom him, he knocked her away with his paw and snarled at her throat, showing potentially violent or dangerous behaviour. He refused to eat fruit or milk, only meat that she gave him, which he picked from bones. His claws stuck in the carpet, so she got rid of that and polished wooden floors instead, so that his claws were musical when they hit the floorboards. She strokes his fur and looks at him with love, which he returns with a look from his deep yellow eyes. The poem ends with the couple locked in an embrace as lovers.

The speaker uses first person pronouns to show that she is speaking from a personal point of view, about the private relationship between herself and her husband. She explains that their connection started before marriage, and at that point he also became a lion - a metaphor which suggests she views him as powerful in an animalistic sense, and that she has a strong feeling of loyalty towards him.

Extended metaphor - the transformation of the man into a line has a fairytale allegorical quality to it, it feels magical and unbelievable but we can see that the poet is using figurative language to explore the way in which a person's behaviour can change when they enter into a relationship, they may, for example, become more animalistic or wild at first and over time with the right amount of patience and support become calmer and more comfortable.

Alliteration - 'His claws caught in the carpet,' - this visual image is underscored by harsh 'k' sounds which give the textural impression of the claws as they stick in fabric.

Dynamic verbs - 'slapped' / 'snarled' - the dynamic verbs in the third stanza are violent and intended to shock the reader - the lion shows his wilder instincts and powerful, dangerous behaviour - this may symbolically represent arguments that the couple have, or difficulties that they experience. This visual imagery becomes much softer and more tender by the end as we realise that the lion was only lashing out because he was himself in pain and finding it hard to trust. Lines such as 'I stroke his saffron hide' demonstrate that he is tame and now accepts the speaker's touch.

Semantic field of refinement - several words throughout the poem relate to the process of cleansing and refinement ('burnished', 'groom', 'polished'), implying that it is a significant concept to the speaker. She sees her task as a gradual process of smoothing out any difficulties in the relationship, any pain in her partner, and anything unsuitable in their domestic environment.

Symbolism - the colour yellow is used to symbolise the richness and power of the lion - he has a 'saffron' mane, implying the richness and rareness of his character as well as the way in which the speaker values him as a source of beauty and nourishment. Equally, his eyes are metaphorically described as 'topaz', an amber coloured precious stone, that shows beauty and wealth that she finds in the relationship.

Adjective 'hypnotic' - while the speaker and lion are at odds at the beginning of the poem, where he is unhappy with her behaviour and generally experiencing difficulty and pain, at the poem's conclusion his tail starts to swish with a 'hypnotic lash', a regular motion that transfixes the woman.

In medias res - the poem begins 'in medias res', in the middle of the action with the conjunction 'but' suggesting that the piece is part of a larger dialogue or story that started earlier.

Free verse - the poem has no set rhyme, stanza length or metre and so it changes and adapts, much in the way that the two characters adapt to one another. Several of the stanzas are couplets, two line stanzas which traditionally are used to signify harmony in a relationship.

Caesurae - The switch to all fours was not easy - all his weight' - several of the lines contain dashes - either within the line or at the end - which indicate brief pauses in the flow of the language and invite the reader to stop and think about the image for a second. The quoted case above creates a leap in the line that imitates the transition that the man himself made from human to beast, as well as creating a sense that he found it difficult to be a lion at first and to shift his 'weight' into adapting to this new form.
Joanna Preston is an Australian-born poet (1972) who currently lives in Canterbury, New Zealand. She grew up on farms in rural Australia, moving to Christchurch, New Zealand in 1994 (aged 22) and marrying her husband, a scientist whom she met at university.
This poem appears to draw on several literary and allegorical references, most notably Angela Carter's 'The Bloody Chamber' - a set of modernised fairytales which include stories of men transforming into beasts and being tamed by their lovers, and William Blake's 'The Tyger', where the speaker is in awe of a tiger's absolute beauty and power, as well as slightly frightened by it.

Love helps us navigate through difficulty - though the lion is at times frightening and harsh towards the speaker, she is loyal and understanding, and she patiently waits for him to trust her and open up to her. Towards the end of the poem she is rewarded for his behaviour, as the lion looks back at her with love and trust. The meaning behind this narrative seems to be that true love and companionship requires patience and sacrifice.

Power can be attractive - Instead of being frightened by the lion and running away, the speaker seems intrigued by his power, she almost takes it upon herself as a challenge to tame him and work with him to a point where he trusts her and becomes softer in his actions. We could interpret this as a potentially violent or abusive partner, but this doesn't seem to be the intention of the poem as it ends happily and mutually. Instead, it seems that the speaker feels that any kind of difficulty or tension in relationships is normal and should be expected, the trick is to accept each other's strengths and weaknesses, and try to find a middle ground that suits both parties.

We must adapt to one another in order to have successful relationships - The speaker alters her life and surroundings to better suit the lion, easing off when he is in pain and lashing out because she takes that as a cue to mean he's not ready to allow her to groom him. This metaphorically symbolises the way in which we must exercise patience and be willing to adapt or change to help those that we love. She also adjusts her home - taking up the carpet to provide a more comforting and positive environment for the lion. Once his environment is more comfortable, his wildness also subsides, and so by providing a comforting living space she is able to ease his stress and tension.

Marriage and union cause people to undergo transformations - the use of the lion as an extended metaphor expresses the way in which a person's personality or nature can change when in a relationship. The man is not a lion at first, he becomes one before the couple are married. Instead of wishing he turned back or leaving him, the speaker works with the partner and also adapts herself to accommodate for these transformations. In the end, this is more beneficial for both of them.
Love Relationships Dominance Domesticity Passion / Attraction Metamorphosis / Transformation Wildness

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The Pride of Lions by Joanna Preston - Analysis

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"But before we could marry, he became a lion - thick pelted, and rich with the musk of beast. The switch to all fours was not easy - all his weight slung from the blades of his shoulders."

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When it comes to fairy tale retellings, no story is perhaps more popular than Beauty and the Beast. Created in seventeenth century France, and later popularized by Jeanne-Marie Leprince De Beaumont, the tale continues to be reimagined again and again. Everyone, from French filmmaker Jean Cocteau to Walt Disney, has adapted this particular love story. Even today's popular literature such as Twilight, 50 Shades of Grey, and Of Beast and Beauty seek to emulate it. While undoubtedly popular, Beauty and the Beast is also famous for its treatment of both male and female characters. Some claim that it is not a love story but instead a tale of abuse. Others say it is a story about female empowerment and the healing power of love.

But how are both these readings possible? According to fairy tale scholar Jack Zipes, De Beaumont intended Beauty and the Beast to teach self-sacrifice, modesty, virtue, and industriousness. Over time, many writers and creators have forgotten these intentions. Instead of focusing on building the romance itself, they have focused on the sensationalism of the romance. One writer that did get it right however, is British novelist and journalist Angela Carter. Known for feminist and magical realism, Carter published a short fiction collection The Bloody Chamber and other Adult Tales in 1979. This collection features not one, but two Beauty and the Beast retellings.

In writing these retellings, Carter intended to bring out the latent meanings of said fairy tale. By that logic, Beauty and the Beast is a story about a young woman finding her equal, and in doing so, has a sexual awakening. Through comparing De Beaumont's variant with Carter's two variants, The Courtship of Mr. Lyon and the Tiger's Bride, we can understand the "true" meaning of Beauty and the Beast.

History

At its conception, Beauty and the Beast was first intended for adults and not young children. As stated in Formidable Fairy Tale: A Writer's Guide, this particular story is a literary fairy tale. Literary fairy tales served as way for aristocratic men and women to take familiar stories and place their own ideas into it. For example, Beauty and the Beast has roots in the Cupid and Psyche myth, written by Apuleis in the second century AD. In that story, a young maiden named Psyche is whisked away into marriage by the god Cupid. Unable to a catch a glimpse of her new husband, Psyche worries she has married a monster. When she discovers his true identity, Cupid disappears on her. Psyche then risks everything to find him once again.

Literary fairy tales took myths, like that of Cupid and Psyche, and rearranged them to suit ideas of love, arranged marriage, and fidelity from the women's perspective of that time period. Beauty and the Beast, then, is an updated version of the Cupid and Psyche myth for the seventeenth century. Jeanne-Marie Leprince De Beaumont used this particular fairy tale to teach young men and women how to achieve happiness. In her mind self-sacrifice, honesty, industriousness, and virtue in both sexes could lead to happy marriage no matter the circumstances.

Here in the twenty-first century, society's perspective on love, arranged marriage, and fidelity has changed to a certain extent. Angela Carter acknowledges this, and puts her own ideas on those topics from a modern women's perspective. She still uses common motifs associated with Beauty and the Beast. For example, the rose motif first used by De Beaumont is present in both retellings. The Courtship of Mr. Lyon, in particular, is heavily inspired by De Beaumont's version.

The Courtship of Mr. Lyon

Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories features many fairy tales retold in a women-centered and sexually charged way. The Courtship of Mr. Lyon is but one of her Beauty and the Beast retellings. At the start, Beauty is consistently called "girl," "child," and "pet." Her skin has the same "inner light" as the snow outside. Readers then have a very clear idea who Beauty is. She is childlike, innocent, and above all good. She is "untouched" by wickedness.

The rose motif, which occurs in nearly all retellings, represents Beauty as a character. A single white rose is all Beauty has requested from her father, something that is rare in the cold winter months. The Beast too covets white roses. When Beauty meets the Beast, a lion-esque figure, she considers him terrifying. At the same time, though, she considers him beautiful because lions are, in their own way, beautiful. She is "bewildered" by his otherness and it pressures her. Beauty refers to herself as a lamb in his presence.

The same purity and softness that accompanies Beauty is often attributed to the Beast, but in a different way. He first appears in the white light of the moon, a similar light that bathes Beauty in her introduction. His actions speak volumes about him. The Beast treats Beauty's father kindly, until he tries to steal the Beast's roses. Beauty's father attempts to appease him by referring to him as "my lord," but the Beast is not fooled. He fully acknowledges that he is a monster. The Beast invites Beauty and her father to come to dinner, where the Beast offers to help them with their money troubles. Beauty's father is sent to London and the Beast suggests that Beauty stay with him in the meantime.

When the Beast converses with Beauty around his fireplace the light from the fire puts halo around his mane. From that visual clue, readers can infer that the Beast is not bad at all. They can picture him as a good companion for Beauty. Another sign comes from Beauty herself, who acknowledges they both must overcome their shyness. At the end of each conversation they have, the Beast falls to Beauty's feet and kisses her hands before fleeing away from her.

As the "pressure" Beauty feels in the Beast's presence begins to fade so too does her childishness. She begins to refer to herself as a house cat rather than a lamb. She is no longer called "girl" and her attachment to her father lessens until he phones her to come home. The Beast lets her go, but asks that she visit him some day. Despite Beauty's feeling for him, she cannot make herself touch him, to give him a proper hug goodbye.

Back home she discovers she is not the same girl she was. She realizes that she is at the end of her adolescence and she can no longer hang back. Beauty returns to the Beast to discover him dying out of loneliness and starvation. She begs him to live and tells him if he'll have her, she'll never leave. Before Beauty's eyes, the Beast transforms into a human man and she can still detect the lion in him. The two now called Mr. and Mrs. Lyon head to the garden and step on fallen rose petals.

Although not overtly sexual, The Courtship of Mr. Lyon is about a sexual awakening. The Beast is not the only one who undergoes a transformation, Beauty transforms from girl to woman. Readers know from the opening passage that Beauty is attached to her father and retains childlike innocence. When she arrives at the Beast's home and he offers her a place to stay, Beauty reluctantly accepts and hates to see her father go. She feels dominated by him at first and fears him.

But as she spends time with the Beast and she acknowledges that she can see a reflection of herself in him, she gradually begins to give up that part of herself. Her inability to touch the Beast when her father comes calling, shows us the Beauty is not completely ready to give up her innocence. It's only from the time she spent with Beast and her reflection on that time, that Beauty realizes she would not mind losing her innocence to the him. The fallen petals at the end of story show that Beauty has at last become woman and she found someone "rare" and worthy of her.

Carter's variation of the tale focuses on Beauty owning her sexuality. Through discovering the Beast mirrors herself, Beauty is able to give herself to him. Much like women in the seventeenth century, modern women want equality in their relationships. Many women today and back then fear that they will enter abusive relationships; relationships where they have no power and are treated as objects and not human beings. Back when Beauty and the Beast was created, women could very easily get in this situation thanks to the popularity of arranged marriages. Carter still touches on the fear but in a modern setting.

Other popular Beauty and the Beast inspired tales, such as Twilight and 50 Shades of Grey, look at the sexual implications in the original story. Twilight and 50 Shades use the Beauty and the Beast archetypes as a way to explore sexuality. Those stories are essentially about a dominant male falling in love with a submissive female. These stories allow readers to experience the dominant/submissive lifestyle without having to physically experience it.

It's the fact that he could hurt her but chooses not to (in most cases) that makes this archetype so popular. Therein lies the criticism many feminists have with the story. Why should Beauty be dominated by the Beast? Why can't the power be shared between the two? In both Twilight and its carbon copy 50 Shades of Grey there is no equality. The beasts, Edward Cullen and Christian Grey, overstep their boundaries. They stalk their prospective lovers and consistently push them away.

In their minds they are doing the right thing by telling their lovers they are no good. However, despite this thinking they come back for more. They control all sexual aspects to the relationships as well. No matter how many times they tell their lovers they have the power, this so called power is never used. Bella Swan and Anastasia Steele are used and are under the illusion that they have found their soulmate. The danger between the coupling is what the authors are selling and not a healthy romance. Other writers, such as Angela Carter, remedy the power dynamic by turning Beauty into a Beast as well.

The Tiger's Bride

Angela Carter's the Tiger's Bride is narrated by Beauty herself, or what we as readers assume is Beauty. In this tale, Beauty is not the sweet innocent girl we know from other variants. She is tougher and wiser from growing up in the frigid North with her father. This Beauty is angry with her father for trading her away to a masked man after losing a game of cards. The masked man whom Beauty refers to as the Beast offers her a single white rose, for which she destroys immediately. It's not her choice to become a prisoner of the Beast like in other versions.

Although the motifs of pure white snow and roses appear again in this variant, they are not used to the same effect. These innocent symbols are tainted instantly. For example, Beauty's father asks for a rose so he knows that she forgives him. When she hands it to him her hand is cut by the thorns and she hands him a bloodstained rose, indicating there is blood lost between herself and her father.

On the way to the Beast's home, Beauty remembers the tale of the tiger man and of a bear child born to a woman in town. She remembers squealing in disgust at these stories when she was young. She is under the impression that she is imprisoned by the real tiger man. Unlike Mr. Lyon, this Beast cannot speak and requires the aid of an inhuman valet. She realizes there are not any humans in her new home.

Soon the valet makes an unexpected request from his master to Beauty. He tells her the Beast wishes to see her unclothed and then will return her to her father. Beauty laughs at him outright and refuses. She tells him she will let him see an ankle and then must immediately be sent to a church to be cleansed. The Beast, unable to respond, cries a single tear. In this instance, Beauty is more beast like, more inhumane then the Beast. She treats him as something less than human.

Beauty discovers that the Beast isn't comfortable in his clothes. She suspects walking upright causes him pain and he tries to hide his natural scent with perfume. It seems to her that he is hiding something from her, as if he is afraid of rejection. Beauty begins to feel for him, but not enough to accept him. She continues to reject his request until he removes his own mask. When he does, she discovers he is in fact a tiger dressed in human clothing.

Beauty is surprised but not disgusted and finds him beautiful. She says to herself "a tiger will not lay down with lamb but the lamb could learn to run with tigers." Beauty finally follows his request. The Beast in his natural state begins to lick off Beauty's skin revealing tiger fur beneath her skin. In this tale, the Beast does not become a prince but Beauty becomes a Beast.

Unlike earlier variants, Beauty is not idealized to perfection. Typically, Beauty is treated as the perfect woman, someone who is kind, forgiving, and honest. Instead the Beast is a far more fragile character. He does not even act beastly. In fact, he is kind to her even when she laughs at his face. In most variants it is Beauty that changes the Beast, but in this case it is Beast that changes Beauty.

The Tiger's Bride still focuses on building a relationship between equals. After all, it is only when the Beast reveals himself to her that Beauty is comfortable revealing herself. Beauty acknowledges that a tiger will not lay down with lamb, meaning she cannot be with the Beast unless she is a beast herself. When the Beast turns Beauty into a tiger, he is essentially cleansing her. She is giving up her life as human and presented a new life where she can start again. The only way this works is because these beastly qualities, that the Beast can relate to, are already in Beauty. It is their outer differences that keep them apart.

In this variant, Carter again touches on the women's perspective on love and sexuality. Beauty is again in charge of herself and her body. Again through self-sacrifice and honesty Beauty and Beast are able to fall in love. Until they become equals they cannot be together. Beauty and the Beast works as a feminist romance because Beauty forms a partnership with the Beast. Both parties make sacrifices for one another and in doing so they understand what they mean to each other. These are the decisions that build a lasting and believable romance.

Twelve years after The Bloody Chamber and Other Adult Tales was published, Walt Disney Animation released their version of Beauty and the Beast. Like Angela Carter's variants, this film too is a feminist love story. Belle, the Beauty, eschews the typical Disney tropes that her fellow Disney princess fall into. She is not dreaming of the day a prince will come to rescue her. Nor is she taken in by the first attractive guy she meets. Belle is independent, intelligent, and intensely loyal to her father. So much so she that is willing to sacrifice her dreams of adventure for his safety.

Twenty years later, Disney's Beauty and the Beast remains the definitive version for many people. But if not for Carter's variants beforehand, Belle would not have a model to based upon. The loyalty, self sacrifice, and honesty we see in Belle are also present in Carter's variants. In this way the Courtship of Mr. Lyon and the Tiger's Bride serve as a guideline for adapting this beloved romance. Hopefully, Disney will keep these elements in their live action remake set for 2017.

Work Cited

Carter, Angela. The Bloody Chamber and Other Adult Tales. New York, New York; Penguin Publishing Group. 1980. Print

Zipes, Jack. The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales. Oxford, United Kingdom; Oxford University Press. 2000. Print.

What do you think? .

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Angela Carter's Beauty and the Beast: Building a Feminist Romance

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When it comes to fairy tale retellings, no story is perhaps more popular than Beauty and the Beast. Created in seventeenth century France, and later popularized by Jeanne-Marie Leprince De Beaumont, the tale continues to be reimagined again and again. Everyone, from French filmmaker Jean Cocteau to Walt Disney, has adapted this particular love story.

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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Shakespearean sonnet

The variation of the sonnet form that Shakespeare used-comprised of three quatrains and a concluding couplet, rhyming abab cdcd efef gg-is called the English or Shakespearean sonnet form, although others had used it before him. This different sonnet structure allows for more space to be devoted to the buildup of a subject or problem than the Italian/Petrarchan form, and is followed by just two lines to conclude or resolve the poem in a rhyming couplet. Learn more about sonnet forms here.

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Shakespearean sonnet | Poetry Foundation

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Shakespearean sonnet The variation of the sonnet form that Shakespeare used-comprised of three quatrains and a concluding couplet, rhyming abab cdcd efef gg-is called the English or Shakespearean sonnet form, although others had used it before him.

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William Shakespeare

Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion's paws,
And make the earth devour her own sweet brood;
Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger's jaws,
And burn the long liv'd Phoenix in her blood;
Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleets,
And do whate'er thou wilt, swift footed Time,
To the wide world and all her fading sweets;
But I forbid thee one more heinous crime:
O, carve not with the hours my love's fair brow,
Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen!
Him in thy course untainted do allow
For beauty's pattern to succeeding men.
Yet do thy worst, old Time! Despite thy wrong
My love shall in my verse ever live young.

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Biography
The short version:
Joanna Preston is an Australian-born poet, editor and freelance writing tutor, who lives in a small rural town in Canterbury, New Zealand. In 2008 she won the inaugural Kathleen Grattan Award for Poetry. Her first collection, The Summer King, was published by Otago University Press in July 2009, and won the Mary Gilmore Award for the best first poetry collection by an Australian author in 2010.

She has an MPhil in Creative Writing from the University of Glamorgan (now the University of South Wales). She worked for three years as a part-time tutor in Creative Writing at Christchurch Polytech (now Ara Institute), was co-editor of Kokako magazine from 2009 to 2012, and poetry editor for magazine from 2014 to 2016.

In a previous life, she won the 1988 Winton to Longreach Stockman's Hall of Fame Endurance Ride. In this one, she's a chicken-keeper.
The longer version:
She was born in Sydney in 1972. Her childhood was spent in various outback towns in New South Wales, with her maternal grandparents' farm - Cowarral, on the Forbes River - the one constant. She grew up surrounded by books, and wrote stories, songs, plays and poems from a very early age.

In 1994 she emigrated to Christchurch in New Zealand, and married scientist Stewart, whom she had met at university. In 1998 she joined the Airing Cupboard Women Poets group, and began writing poetry seriously.

She received a BA from the University of New South Wales, majoring in Theatre and Film Studies, with a secondary major in The History and Philosophy of Science and Technology. During her final year at university she studied Creative Writing with poet Hazel Smith.

From 2003 to 2006 she lived in the United Kingdom. She recieved an MPhil in Creative Writing from the University of Glamorgan, studying under Gillian Clarke, Tony Curtis and Sheenagh Pugh. (Excerpts from Joanna's thesis, Weaving Complexity: beyond the single, linear narrative in contemporary poetry, can be read in the Analysis & Commentary section.)
Publications:
In 2005 she was one of the two featured Broadsheet Poets in the Australian issue of Agenda (41:1-2), and had a poem ('The Pride of Lions') selected for Best Australian Poems 2005. In 2007 Carcanet selected eleven of her poems for inclusion in New Poetries IV. Her first collection, The Summer King, was published by Otago University Press in 2009, and won both the inaugural Kathleen Grattan Award (2008), and the 2010 Mary Gilmore Award for the best first poetry collection by an Australian author. Her poem 'Fault' was selected for inclusion in the ESA Level 2 English Study Guide, and 'The Pride of Lions' was selected for inclusion in the Cambridge International Examinations anthology of Poetry in English, Songs of Ourselves vol. 2.

Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including: Acumen, Dreamcatcher, Envoi, The Interpreter's House, Iota, Magma, Poetry Wales, Smiths Knoll, and South in the UK, Barnwood Poetry Magazine, Chronogram, Contemporary Haibun 4, 5 , 8 & 10, Frogpond and Sub Tropics in the US, Big Sky, Glottis, JAAM, Poetry New Zealand, takahē, The Press and The Unbelievable Lightness of Eggs in New Zealand, and Cordite, Four Tellings, four W, Hobo, Imago, LiNQ, Southerly, and Tirra Lirra in Australia.

She co-edited the 3rd Airing Cupboard anthology, Half Light and High Wind (2000) with Helen Bascand and Lynn Tara Austin, and the haiku anthology, listening to the rain (2002) with Cyril Childs. ( listening to the rain was runner-up in the Haiku Merit Book Awards 2003, for the best anthology of English language haiku published the previous year). She has also edited and produced three competition anthologies for the New Zealand Poetry Society: A Savage Gathering (2002), the infinity we swim in (2007) and Before the Sirocco (2008). She co-edited the anthology Leaving the Red Zone: poems from the Canterbury earthquakes (Clerestory Press, 2016) with James Norcliffe.
Activities:
She was a foundation member of The Australian Haiku Society, the Small White Teapot Haiku Group, and the Lost Friday Salon. She was a committee member of the Canterbury Poets' Collective from 2001-2003 (and is so again, returning in 2018) and was an active member of Spin magazine's Orbital Poetry Workshops 1998-2001. Joanna was co-editor of Kokako magazine from 2009 to 2012, and poetry editor for magazine from 2014 to 2016.

She has been a guest reader for the Canterbury Poets' Collective on numerous occasions, as well as for National Poetry Day (2001), the United Nations "Dialogue Between Nations" Poetry Reading in Christchurch (2002), and the Dunedin Fringe Festival (2002). In 2010 she was the International Guest Poet at the Perth Spring Poetry Festival, and in 2011 was guest reader at both the Southland Festival of the Arts and Auckland Writers and Readers Festival. She has also regularly read on radio, both national and local.

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Biography The short version: Joanna Preston is an Australian-born poet, editor and freelance writing tutor, who lives in a small rural town in Canterbury, New Zealand. In 2008 she won the inaugural Kathleen Grattan Award for Poetry. Her first collection, The Summer King, was published by Otago University Press in July 2009, and won the...

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Joanna Preston

But before we could marry, he became a lion ---
thick pelted, and rich with the musk of beast.

The switch to all fours was not easy - all his weight
slung from the blades of his shoulders.
His deltoids knotted like teak burls,
and I burnished them as he slept.

Burrs matted his mane, and for days
he wouldn't let me groom him -
slapped me away with a suede paw,
snarled against my throat.

He would not eat fruit, or drink milk,
but tore meat from the bones I provided.

His claws caught in the carpet,
so I stripped the rugs from the floor
and polished the boards until they gleamed
and rang with the chime of his nails.

I stroke his saffron hide
and tangle my fingers deep in his ruff,
draw him up around me, ardent
as the gleam of his topaz eyes

-- the hypnotic lash of his tail,
the rasp of his tongue on my thighs.

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In 1856, Elizabeth Barrett Browning published Aurora Leigh, a "novel in verse" that follows the title character, an aspiring poet, through several pot-boiling twists. In one revealing passage, Aurora's cousin and would-be suitor, Romney Leigh, summarizes his attitude toward her and women writers of that era:

Therefore, this same world
Uncomprehended by you must remain
Uninfluenced by you. Women as you are,
Mere women, personal and passionate,
You give us doting mothers, and chaste wives.
Sublime Madonnas, and enduring saints!
We get no Christ from you,-and verily
We shall not get a poet, in my mind.

As starkly sexist as the above passage might seem to contemporary readers, the idea that women and female experience were incompatible with poetry continued to hold sway for the next 100 years, until second-wave feminism of the 1960s and 1970s brought a political and cultural watershed. Women fought for equal treatment and civil rights; meanwhile, women poets created structures to support one another while profoundly changing poetry itself.

To accompany the podcast mini-series A Change of World, which examines the intersections of second-wave feminism and poetry, the Poetry Foundation gathered a selection of poems by women poets from the past five centuries. Though by no means comprehensive, these poems roughly track how women poets turned, twisted, and blasted open poetry's forms, subjects, and institutions to make room for their experiences and their voices.

To contextualize these pieces, we listed the poems in order of date of publication. Though the notion of feminism occurring in "waves" is somewhat problematic, we used it as an organizing tool to demonstrate the longer history of English poetry's relationship to questions raised by feminism.

The poems collected here range from considerations of female sexuality, authorship, motherhood, and gender to formal experiments, such as Barrett Browning's, in the epic, the essay, received forms, and political speech. Many have appeared in influential anthologies, including No More Masks!, Lesbian Poetry, This Bridge Called My Back, Gay and Lesbian Poetry in Our Time, and Amazon Poetry. To suggest further additions, please contact us.

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In 1856, Elizabeth Barrett Browning published Aurora Leigh, a "novel in verse" that follows the title character, an aspiring poet, through several pot-boiling twists. In one revealing passage, Aurora's cousin and would-be suitor, Romney Leigh, summarizes his attitude toward her and women writers of that era: Therefore, this same world Uncomprehended by you must remain Uninfluenced by you.

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Context: Who was Elizabeth Barrett Browning? 

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Context: Who was Elizabeth Barrett Browning? 

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Among all female poets of the English-speaking world in the 19th century, none was held in higher critical esteem or was more admired for the independence and courage of her views than Elizabeth Barrett Browning. During the years of her marriage to Robert Browning, her literary reputation far surpassed that of her poet-husband; when visitors came to their home in Florence, she was invariably the greater attraction. She had a wide following among cultured readers in England and in the United States. An example of the reach of her fame may be seen in the influence she had upon the reclusive poet who lived in the rural college town of Amherst, Massachusetts. A framed portrait of Barrett Browning hung in the bedroom of Emily Dickinson, whose life had been transfigured by the poetry of "that Foreign Lady." From the time when she had first become acquainted with Barrett Browning's writings, Dickinson had ecstatically admired her as a poet and as a woman who had achieved such a rich fulfillment in her life. So highly regarded had she become by 1850, the year of Wordsworth's death, that she was prominently mentioned as a possible successor to the poet laureateship. Her humane and liberal point of view manifests itself in her poems aimed at redressing many forms of social injustice, such as the slave trade in America, the labor of children in the mines and the mills of England, the oppression of the Italian people by the Austrians, and the restrictions forced upon women in 19th-century society.

Elizabeth Barrett was extremely fortunate in the circumstances of her family background and the environment in which she spent her youth. Her father, whose wealth was derived from extensive sugar plantations in Jamaica, was the proprietor of "Hope End," an estate of almost 500 acres in Herefordshire, between the market town of Ledbury and the Malvern Hills. In this peaceful setting, with its farmers' cottages, gardens, woodlands, ponds, carriage roads, and mansion "adapted for the accommodation of a nobleman or family of the first distinction," Elizabeth-known by the nickname "Ba"-at first lived the kind of life that might be expected for the daughter of a wealthy country squire. She rode her pony in the lanes around the Barrett estate, went with her brothers and sisters for walks and picnics in the countryside, visited other county families to drink tea, accepted visits in return, and participated with her brothers and sisters in homemade theatrical productions. But, unlike her two sisters and eight brothers, she immersed herself in the world of books as often as she could get away from the social rituals of her family. "Books and dreams were what I lived in and domestic life only seemed to buzz gently around, like bees about the grass," she said many years later. Having begun to compose verses at the age of four, two years later she received from her father for "some lines on virtue penned with great care" a ten-shilling note enclosed in a letter addressed to "the Poet-Laureate of Hope End."

Before Barrett was 10 years old, she had read the histories of England, Greece, and Rome; several of Shakespeare's plays, including Othello and The Tempest; portions of Pope's Homeric translations; and passages from Paradise Lost. At 11, she says in an autobiographical sketch written when she was 14, she "felt the most ardent desire to understand the learned languages." Except for some instruction in Greek and Latin from a tutor who lived with the Barrett family for two or three years to help her brother Edward prepare for entrance to Charterhouse, Barrett was, as Robert Browning later asserted, "self-taught in almost every respect." Within the next few years she went through the works of the principal Greek and Latin authors, the Greek Christian fathers, several plays by Racine and Molière, and a portion of Dante's Inferno-all in the original languages. Also around this time she learned enough Hebrew to read the Old Testament from beginning to end. Her enthusiasm for the works of Tom Paine, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Mary Wollstonecraft presaged the concern for human rights that she was later to express in her poems and letters. At the age of 11 or 12 she composed a verse "epic" in four books of rhyming couplets, The Battle of Marathon, which was privately printed at Mr. Barrett's expense in 1820. She later spoke of this product of her childhood as "Pope's Homer done over again, or rather undone." Most of the 50 copies that were printed probably went to the Barretts' home and remained there. It is now the rarest of her works, with only a handful of copies known to exist.

At the age of 20 Barrett offered to the public, with no indication of authorship, a slender volume entitled An Essay on Mind, with Other Poems (1826). Long afterwards in a letter to an American critic she called the book "a girl's exercise, nothing more nor less!-not at all known to the public." The poem for which the volume was named was a pretentious and frigid effort to survey in some 88 pages the history of science, philosophy, and poetry, from ancient Greece to the present. The other 14 poems were occasional pieces or verses of a personal nature which did not yet display the author's authentic voice. Of the two journals which noticed the volume, one objected to its obscurity of language and its "barren themes," and the other advised the poet to come down from the heights to look more closely at nature.

Shortly after the publication of this volume Barrett entered into one of the most important friendships of her life. Hugh Stuart Boyd, a totally blind, middle-aged dilettante scholar with private means, had published at his own expense several volumes of translations from the Greek patristic writings. Since the author of the "Essay on Mind" lived not far from him, he was eager to become acquainted with a poet of such extraordinary erudition. From his home in Malvern Wells he sent her copies of his works and invited her to pay him a visit. Starved as she was for intellectual companionship, she eagerly began to correspond with him and before long was making frequent visits to Ruby Cottage, where he lived with his wife and daughter. It was entirely owing to Boyd's influence that Barrett's enthusiasm for Greek studies was rekindled. During this period she read an astonishing amount of classical Greek literature-Homer, Pindar, the tragedians, Aristophanes, and passages from Plato, Aristotle, Isocrates, and Xenophon-as well as the Greek Christian Fathers Boyd had translated.

In 1832 the peaceful, secure lives of the Barretts in their Herefordshire retreat came to a distressing close. For a number of years the Jamaican plantations of the Barrett family had been mismanaged and Mr. Barrett had suffered serious financial losses. With the prospect of a greatly reduced income he could no longer afford to maintain the Hope End estate and suffered the embarrassment of having to sell it at a public auction to satisfy creditors. The 11 children and their father (Mrs. Barrett had died in 1828) went to live temporarily in Sidmouth, on the southern coast of Devonshire. The reason for the choice of this town in the south of England may have been Mr. Barrett's concern for Elizabeth's health. At the age of 15 she had injured her spine when she was attempting to saddle her pony. Seven years later the breaking of a blood vessel in the chest left her with a weakened constitution and a chronic cough. During the period of the Barretts' stay in Sidmouth, Boyd lived for a year and a half within a few minutes' walk from their home. To the detriment of her own poetic career she went to him daily and helped him to see through the press a bizarre volume on his favorite subject, the Greek Christian Fathers. By the time she left Sidmouth Browning's feelings toward Boyd had changed: she now saw him as limited, naive, and even pathetic. The one volume that she produced while at Sidmouth was Prometheus Bound, Translated from the Greek of Aeschylus; and Miscellaneous Poems, published anonymously in 1833. 12 years later in a letter to Boyd she called the translation "that frigid, rigid exercise," and after her marriage she made amends by writing a vastly improved version. The "miscellaneous poems" give little promise of their author's future distinction.

After living for three years in several rented houses in the coastal town, the Barretts moved in 1835 to London, which was to remain their permanent place of residence. Barrett made her name known in literary circles with The Seraphim and Other Poems (1838). Except for the privately printed Battle of Marathon, this was the first work with her name on the title page. She said that the volume, despite some shortcomings, was "the first utterance of my own individuality." Almost all of the many reviews that appeared in England and America hailed her as a young poet of extraordinary ability and still greater promise. The long poetic drama of 78 pages for which the volume was named presents the conversation of two angels in the heavens retelling portions of the Old and New Testaments, and commenting on the Crucifixion then taking place. Although most of the critics considered the poem too mystical and too high-flown to be successful, they generally praised the shorter poems, most of which now seem sentimental and trite. A poem that soon became a great favorite with both professional critics and the general public was "Isobel's Child," with its depiction of the death of a three-month-old baby who has been lying all night in the mother's arms. The well-known critic John Wilson ("Christopher North") declared that there was beauty in all the poems and that some were "altogether beautiful."

Just as Barrett was being recognized as one of England's most original and gifted young poets, she was in such poor health because of the weakness of her lungs that her physician recommended that she move away from London and live for a while in a warmer climate. Torquay, on the south coast of Devonshire, was selected, and there, together with various members of her family who took turns living with her, she remained for three years as an invalid under the watchful care of her physicians. Seriously ill as she was, she suffered a sudden shattering blow that left her prostrated for months. The death by drowning on July 11, 1840 of her favorite brother, Edward, who had been with her constantly at Torquay, was the greatest sorrow of her life. The memory of that tragic event remained with her as long as she lived and was so painful that she could never speak of it even to those closest to her.

When she returned to the family home at 50 Wimpole Street after the three terrible years at Torquay, she felt that she had left her youth behind and that the future held little more than permanent invalidism and confinement to her bedroom. For the following five years she remained mostly in her room, which she decorated with busts of Homer and Chaucer and later with engravings of Browning (whom she had not yet met), Tennyson, Carlyle, Harriet Martineau, and Wordsworth. Despite her frail health, she was more fortunate in her circumstances than most women writers of her time. Thanks to inheritances from her grandmother and her uncle, she was the only one of the brothers and sisters who was independently wealthy. As the eldest daughter in a family without a mother, she normally would have been expected to spend much of her time supervising the domestic servants, but her weakness prevented her from leaving her room. Thus the members of her family came to visit with her and to bring her everything she desired. Relieved of all household burdens and financial cares, she was free to devote herself to reading English and French fiction and memoirs and to writing letters, essays, and poetry. Since the prospect of meeting strangers made her nervous, only two visitors besides her family had the privilege of seeing her in her room: John Kenyon, a minor poet and friend of many English poets, and the well-known writer Mary Russell Mitford. During her last year or two at Wimpole Street she also received the Reverend George B. Hunter, whom she had come to know during her years at Sidmouth, and the art critic Anna Jameson.

Protected from the outside world and surrounded by a loving family, Barrett resumed her literary career, which had been partially interrupted during her serious illness at Torquay. In addition to producing a continuous flow of poems for publication in both English and American journals, she wrote a series of articles on the Greek Christian poets and another series on the English poets, the latter originally begun as a critique of a recently published anthology of English verse. Also, in collaboration with the playwright Richard Hengist Horne, she made many anonymous contributions to a book of critical essays on eminent literary figures edited by him and entitled A New Spirit of the Age (1844). Within three years after her return to Wimpole Street she had many new poems in manuscript and others already published in journals, and she believed that the time was ripe for their appearance in book form-the first since The Seraphim and Other Poems of 1838. The critical reception of her Poems, published in two volumes in 1844, was such that the author was no longer merely a promising young poet but had suddenly become an international celebrity. On both sides of the Atlantic the leading journals came out with substantial reviews, and almost all found much to praise; Elizabeth Barrett was now acclaimed as one of England's great living poets.

None of the shorter poems caught the public fancy more than "Lady Geraldine's Courtship: A Romance of the Age." A young poet with slender financial resources falls in love with the daughter of an earl; but since her life is filled with luxuries, he has little hope that his love will be returned. Despite the social barriers, however, the romantic conclusion has the girl responding to her suitor's ardor. Another poem much admired by sentimental readers was "Bertha in the Lane." The heroine, though apparently in good health, dies suddenly after learning that her lover has jilted her in favor of her younger sister. The most influential poem in the volumes, and one of the best-known of all her works, was "The Cry of the Children," which had first appeared in Blackwood's a year earlier. Having read the reports from the parliamentary commissioners of the terrible conditions of children's employment in mines, trades, and manufactures, she tells of the hopeless lives of the boys and girls who are the victims of capitalist exploitation. Even though Barrett was a bookish, sheltered, upper middle-class unmarried woman far removed from the scenes she was describing, she gives evidence here of her passionate concern for human rights. The critics reviewing Poems praised her for her intellectual power, originality, and boldness of thought; but most agreed that her weakness lay in her frequent vagueness of concept and obscurity of expression.

The two volumes found their way into the home of Robert Browning. Upon seeing a handsome tribute paid to him by name in "Lady Geraldine's Courtship," Browning in January 1845 wrote a letter which began, "I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett." When Browning wrote that first of the many letters that were to be exchanged between the two poets, Barrett had already won an admiring public and was maintaining an extensive correspondence with writers and artists in England and the United States. Browning, on the other hand, was bitterly discouraged because his poetical career was not prospering and his productions on the London stage had proved to be hopeless failures. Six years younger than Barrett, he had abundant energy and good health, dressed as a young man of fashion, and enjoyed going to dinners and receptions where he conversed with many of the leading figures of the literary world. For almost all of his life he had been living at home with his parents and his sister-all three of whom adored him-and was financially dependent upon his father, since none of his volumes of verse had repaid the expenses of publication.

The courtship progressed despite the objections of Mr. Barrett, who wished his children to remain totally dependent on him. During the period of the exchange of letters and of Browning's visits to her room, she was composing the poems later to be named "Sonnets from the Portuguese." Among the finest love poems ever written, they are her most enduring poetic achievement. A chronic invalid, worn down by a succession of griefs, robbed of the bright-hued cheeks and resilience of youth, living without hope that a new life might someday be hers outside of her virtual prison, she expresses in the sonnets her sense of wonder that her life has been so transfigured. Filled with gratitude for her suitor's offer of love, she at first tells him that they must remain no more than friends because of the disparities in health and age. Marriage, she says, would place a severe burden upon him, for the care of an invalid wife six years older than he would necessarily take him away from the varied social life he has been enjoying. Will love that has come so quickly not fade just as quickly? Is her lover's suit based merely on pity? If she will promise to give up her home and the day-to-day associations with father, brothers, sisters, and friends, will he in turn be everything to her so that she will never miss the life she leaves behind? From the earnest look of her lover's eyes she finds the answers to these and other questions, so that her doubts and hesitations are dispelled. With the full assurance of the depth of his feelings for her, she responds to his love in the most inspired sonnet of the cycle, " How do I love thee? Let me count the ways."

The clandestine marriage ceremony took place on September 12, 1846 at St. Marylebone Parish Church, which was not far from the Barretts' house. Almost immediately the couple left for Italy, where they hoped the warmer climate might help Elizabeth to regain some of her strength. After one winter they moved to Florence, which was to remain their home until Elizabeth's death. Despite the responsibilities of marriage and motherhood-their only child, Robert Wiedemann Barrett Browning, called "Pen," was born in 1849-Barrett Browning had no intention of discontinuing her literary career. Her first task was to revise her volumes of 1838 and 1844 for publication in a new edition.

For the three years following her marriage Barrett Browning had kept the 44 sonnets in a notebook; she did not show them to her husband until the summer of 1849. He was so impressed with their beauty that he insisted on their appearing in her forthcoming new edition of Poems (1850). In order to make it appear that the poems had no biographical significance, the Brownings selected the ambiguous title "Sonnets from the Portuguese," as if they were translations. "Catarina to Camoens," the poem immediately preceding the sonnets in the second volume of Poems tells of the love of Catarina for the Portuguese poet Camoens. Since first reading "Catarina to Camoens" in Elizabeth's Poems of 1844, Browning had associated Elizabeth with the Portuguese Catarina. Most of the reviews of the Poems of 1850 paid little attention to the sonnets, but a writer in Fraser's magazine immediately appreciated their distinctive quality: "From the Portuguese they may be: but their life and earnestness must prove Barrett Browning either to be the most perfect of all known translators, or to have quickened with her own spirit the framework of another's thought, and then modestly declined the honour which was really her own." The sonnets gradually gained critical acceptance and have become the most beloved of all Barrett Browning's works.

Besides the "Sonnets from the Portuguese," the other major new work in the volumes was the retranslation of Prometheus Bound. This new version was an enormous improvement over the translation that had been published in 1833; it is faithful to the original without being pedantic and is expressed in lively, idiomatic English. The two volumes were fairly well received in England, where the reviewers praised her for the depth of her intellect, the earnestness of her thought, and the "pathetic beauty" of the romantic ballads. They believed, however, that Barrett Browning's poetry still retained some of the deficiencies of her earlier books, such as diffuseness, obscure language, and inappropriate imagery.

Barrett Browning had developed a passionate interest in Italian politics; during her first year in Italy she had written "A Meditation in Tuscany" and sent it to Blackwood's. The editor had declined it and returned the manuscript to her, and it became the first part of Casa Guidi Windows (1851). The poem deals with political events as seen by the poet from the windows of Casa Guidi, the great stone palace in Florence where the Brownings had an apartment. In 1846 the newly elected Pope Pius IX had granted amnesty to prisoners who had fought for Italian liberty, initiated a program looking forward to a more democratic form of government for the Papal State, and carried out a number of other reforms so that it looked as though he were heading toward the leadership of a league for a free Italy. Progressive measures had also been instituted in Tuscany by Grand Duke Leopold II, who arranged for a representative form of government and allowed the people to have a free press and to form their own civic guard. The first half of Casa Guidi Windows had been written when Barrett Browning was filled with enthusiasm and was hopeful that the newly awakened liberal movements were moving toward the unification and freedom of the Italian states.

In the second half of the poem she voices her disillusionment and her bitter disappointment that liberalism had been crushed almost everywhere in Italy. Pope Pius had fled in disguise from the Vatican in the face of agitation for a republican government and had taken refuge at Gaeta under the protection of the king of Naples. Leopold, whom Barrett Browning had at first admired, had proved to be a coward; and, rather than agree to the formation of a constituent assembly of the Italian states in Rome, he had left his Florentine palace and joined the exiled pope in Gaeta. Several months later the Austrian troops had occupied Florence, and Leopold had returned under their protection. In her poem Barrett Browning expresses her disappointment with the pope, the grand duke, the English government for its failure to intervene on the side of the Italian patriots, and the Florentines themselves because they had been unwilling to make the necessary sacrifices. By the middle of 1849 the liberal impulses had been crushed; except for Piedmont all the Italian states were under the domination of Austria and the papacy. For the next 10 years there were no more uprisings or wars, and in the absence of stirring political events Barrett Browning began the composition of a completely different kind of poem from anything she had written up to then.

As early as 1845 she had written to Browning that it was her intention to write a sort of novel-poem "running into the midst of our conventions, & rushing into drawing-rooms & the like 'where angels fear to tread'; & so, meeting face to face & without mask the Humanity of the age, & speaking the truth as I conceive of it, out plainly." For several years events in her own life and in the world about her distracted her from her purpose, so that the first mention of her new work appears in a letter written in 1853 to her friend Anna Jameson. Her poem would fill a volume when it was finished, she said; it was the romance she had been "hankering after so long, written in blank verse, in the autobiographical form." Named after the heroine of the poem, Aurora Leigh was published in 1857. In the dedication to her lifelong friend and benefactor John Kenyon she wrote that it was "the most mature of my works, and the one into which my highest convictions upon Life and Art have entered." In a narrative of some 11,000 lines the heroine tells of her birth in Italy, her early years in rural England, her successful literary career in London and later in Florence, and at the end her marriage to her one true love.

Orphaned at an early age and brought up by an aunt in the western county of Shropshire, the youthful Aurora finds herself in a cultural desert, with no one to share her enthusiasm for literature. Aurora's description of the kind of education imposed upon her by her conventional aunt illustrates the restricted, anti-intellectual attitudes of the English middle classes toward the upbringing of their daughters. Aurora memorizes the Collects of the Anglican Church, takes lessons in music and dancing, is given some superficial instruction in French, German, history, and geography, and is taught sewing and embroidery. Not only were young women discouraged from learning Greek and Latin and from reading "controversial" books, but they were denied a university education. Aurora has to seek her education at home, whereas her cousin Romney Leigh is sent to a university. Rebelling against her aunt's narrow regimen, Aurora finds her true life in the world of books. Discovering her father's private library hidden away in the attic, she reads widely in Greek and Latin literature and English poetry and begins to compose verses of her own.

At the age of 20 she rejects a proposal of marriage from Romney Leigh, who asks her to be his wife for the sole reason that he needs her to help him in his philanthropic activities. Women, he tells her, are lacking in the higher imaginative qualities that would enable them to be great writers or artists. Aurora moves away from the rural community which has so stifled her and makes her home in London, where she will be independent and strive for literary success. By dint of steady application she wins within six or seven years a place for herself in the London literary world. To help support herself she writes articles for encyclopedias and journals, but she finds her chief satisfaction in the publication of her volumes of poetry. The heroine of this novel-poem serves as Barrett Browning's mouthpiece when she declares that the most fitting subjects for poetry are to be found in contemporary settings and that a poet should not reject his own times to seek inspiration from earlier civilizations. Aurora, though still in her middle 20s, has already produced books of poetry which are reaching a wide and admiring public.

In contrast to Aurora, who has lived a serene and rather sheltered life, the main figure of the subplot is a pathetic victim of the abuses of society. Marian Erle is the only child of an ignorant and abusive migrant farm worker and a wife cowed into submission by his drunken rages. The girl runs away from her parents in fear of their violence, is rescued from destitution by Romney Leigh, and even receives from him an offer of marriage. As a radical socialist he thus proposes to put into practice his utopian ideal of the destruction of the barriers that separate the rich from the poor and the educated from the ignorant. The marriage, however, does not take place, for Marian is treacherously spirited away from England by a woman who believes herself to be in love with Romney. Marian is taken to a brothel in Paris, where she is drugged and sexually assaulted. As a result of this act of violence she becomes pregnant and after much ill-treatment gives birth to a son.

After nine years in London Aurora suddenly gives up her apartment and establishes a new home for herself in a villa in Florence. On the way she stops in Paris, where she encounters Marian and hears her story; she takes Marian and the baby to Florence with her. A few months after her arrival Aurora is asked once again by Romney to be his wife. This time, however, he is blind and much humbled by his misfortunes. Leigh Hall, which he had converted into a utopian community, had been set on fire and destroyed by the very people whom he had been aiding. At the time of the fire he had been struck on the forehead and blinded by a falling beam. Romney now sadly admits that doctrinaire socialism is a failure, for the people will rebel against any restrictions and reforms imposed upon them. Aurora says that she too has been wrong in her proud independence and her belief that her life could be complete without the companionship of a loved one. They pledge themselves to each other and look forward to a life of shared responsibilities. In the meanwhile Marian has told them that she will never marry and that when her child no longer needs her care she will devote herself to helping the "outcast orphans of the world."

In this long narrative poem Barrett Browning has dealt with some of the major social problems of her age. In Victorian England an educated woman with unusual talents had almost no opportunity to make use of her skills in a world that was dominated by men. Nevertheless, as the poem shows in the example of its heroine, it was possible for a woman with great energy and sense of purpose to live by herself in London and become renowned on the strength of her own unaided efforts. Professional success alone, however, is not sufficient, for nothing can give more meaning to a woman's life than enduring love in marriage. Another theme is Barrett Browning's distrust of the theories of contemporary French socialists, such as Charles Fourier, who advocated the division of society into communistic units. She believed that in the kind of state envisioned by the radical socialists there would be no place for artists and poets. Nothing stirred up more controversy than her frank treatment of the plight of "the fallen woman"-a subject that was considered by the Victorian public to be outside the purview of the serious novelist or poet. In mid-19th-century England standards of sexual conduct were so rigid that any woman who bore a child out of wedlock, even if she had been a victim of male aggression, was shunned by "respectable" people and condemned to a life of penance and mortification. One of Barrett Browning's most fundamental convictions was that sexual activity outside of marriage was immoral, but she believed that society should be more compassionate in its treatment of women who had been victims of sexual violence. It is not surprising that the story of Marian Erle shocked a number of women readers, some of whom were reported to have said that the reading of Aurora Leigh had endangered their morals.

Most of the Brownings' literary friends were delighted with the poem and accorded it the highest praise; Swinburne, , Walter Savage Landor, Ruskin, and the Rossetti brothers all spoke of it with unrestrained enthusiasm. From a commercial point of view it proved to be by far the most successful of Barrett Browning's works; by 1885, 28 years after its first publication, it had gone through 19 editions. Despite its great popularity with other poets and with the general public, it found little favor with professional reviewers.

Two years after the publication of Aurora Leigh Barrett Browning again became absorbed in current political events as the Italians, after a decade of truce, began once more their struggle for independence and unity. In response to these events Barrett Browning's Poems before Congress was published in the spring of 1860; seven of the eight poems deal with Italian politics, while the other, "A Curse for a Nation," is an antislavery poem that had earlier been published in an abolitionist journal in Boston. The notices in the leading English journals were uniformly unfavorable toward the volume, which they found offensive because of its strident tone and anti-British bias.

In the spring of 1860 Barrett Browning continued to write poems on the Italian situation, which to her great delight appeared to be moving toward a victorious outcome. Central and northern Italy had become a united kingdom under the leadership of Victor Emmanuel of Piedmont and his prime minister, Count Cavour. Besides her political poems, at this time she wrote "A Musical Instrument," which has become one of her best-known poems. Based on the myth of Pan and Syrinx, the verses exemplify the doctrine that the true poet is destined to suffer much hardship and pain in the practice of his art.

Despite her extreme frailty Barrett Browning followed with feverish excitement the rapidly unfolding events of the winter of 1860-1861. The peoples of Sicily, Naples, and the States of the Church had voted for annexation with Victor Emmanuel's new kingdom. With most of the Italian states united, a national parliament met at Turin early in 1861. Barrett Browning felt that her faith in the Italian leaders had been justified. "There are great men here, and there will be a great nation presently," she declared. She had been in poor health for several years, suffering from weakness of the lungs and heart, and her obsession with Italian politics further weakened her nervous system. The final blow, which prostrated her emotionally and physically, was the unexpected and premature death on June 6, 1861 of Count Cavour, the great patriot who had been chiefly responsible for bringing the disparate states into a unified and independent kingdom. "I can scarcely command voice or hand to name Cavour," Elizabeth wrote; "if tears or blood could have saved him to us, he should have had mine." For the next two weeks she remained in seclusion, never going out and seeing almost no one at home. Then on June 20, she was stricken with a severe cold, cough, and sore throat, and was confined to her bed; she died in Browning's arms early in the morning of June 29. Within a month Browning left Florence with his son to make his permanent home in London.

The many journals which reported Barrett Browning's untimely death all spoke of her as the greatest woman poet in English literature. The highly respected Edinburgh Review expressed the prevailing view when it said that she had no equal in the literary history of any country: "Such a combination of the finest genius and the choicest results of cultivation and wide-ranging studies has never been seen before in any woman." In America the most extravagant of the obituary notices appeared in the Southern Literary Messenger, which called her "the Shakespeare among her sex" and placed her among the four or five greatest authors of all time. A year after her death Browning collected and arranged for publication her Last Poems, which included a number of translations from Greek and Latin poetry, personal lyrics, and poems on Italian politics. In the same year the fifth edition of her Poems was published. Both works were warmly received by the leading literary journals on both sides of the Atlantic as they reviewed her poetic career from its beginning and concluded that her gifts had been of the highest order. A writer in the Christian Examiner of Boston said that Tennyson's In Memoriam (1850) and Barrett Browning' Aurora Leigh were the two greatest poems of the age and that the "Sonnets from the Portuguese" were the finest love poems in English: "Shakespeare's sonnets, beautiful as they are, cannot be compared with them, and Petrarch's seem commonplace beside them."

In the decades following Barrett Browning's death her poetry began to lose much of the appeal it had held for readers during her lifetime. The consensus of late-Victorian critics was that much of her writing would be forgotten in another generation but that she would be remembered for "The Cry of the Children," a few of the romantic ballads such as "Isobel's Child" and "Bertha in the Lane," and most of all for the "Sonnets from the Portuguese." During all this period and for the first three decades of the present century, Aurora Leigh largely dropped out of sight. In 1930, however, Virginia Woolf in an article in the Times Literary Supplement deplored the fact that Barrett Browning's poetry was no longer being read and especially that Aurora Leigh had been forgotten. She urged her readers to take a fresh look at the poem, which she admired for its "speed and energy, forthrightness and complete self-confidence." "Elizabeth Barrett," Mrs. Woolf wrote, "was inspired by a flash of true genius when she rushed into the drawing-room and said that here, where we live and work, is the true place for the poet." In Mrs. Woolf's view, the heroine of the poem," "with her passionate interest in social questions, her conflict as artist and woman, her longing for knowledge and freedom, is the true daughter of her age."

Notwithstanding Mrs. Woolf's enthusiasm for Aurora Leigh, the poem continued to be ignored by the general public and by scholars until the recent advent of feminist criticism. None of Barrett Browning's poems has received more attention from feminist critics than Aurora Leigh, since its theme is one that especially concerns them: the difficulties that a woman must overcome if she is to achieve independence in a world mainly controlled by men. In Literary Women Ellen Moers writes that Aurora Leigh is the great epic poem of the age; it is "the epic poem of the literary woman herself." It now looks as though Barrett Browning's literary reputation will remain secure with future critics who view her work from a feminist perspective. One may also prophesy that for the general public the "Sonnets from the Portuguese," despite some Victorian quaintness of imagery, will continue to hold their place among the most-admired love poems of world literature.

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Elizabeth Barrett Browning | Poetry Foundation

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Among all female poets of the English-speaking world in the 19th century, none was held in higher critical esteem or was more admired for the independence and courage of her views than Elizabeth Barrett Browning. During the years of her marriage to Robert Browning, her literary reputation far...

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Some good notes on structure which will help you review what we have covered in class.

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A' Level English Literature: Analysing Structure Part 4

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Pamphilia to Amphilanthus is a sonnet sequence by the English Renaissance poet Lady Mary Wroth, first published as part of The Countess of Montgomery's Urania in 1621, but subsequently published separately. It is the second known sonnet sequence by a woman writer in England (the first was by Anne Locke). The poems are strongly influenced by the sonnet sequence Astrophel and Stella (1580) penned by her uncle Sir Philip Sidney. Like Sidney's sequence, Wroth's sonnets passed among her friends and acquaintances in manuscript form before they were published in 1621. In Wroth's sequence, she upends Petrarchan tropes by making the unattainable object of love male (as opposed to female).

Wroth began writing sonnets for the sequence as early as 1613, when the poet Josuah Sylvester referred to her poetry in his Lachrimae Lachrimarum. She composed, in total, 105 sonnets.

Parts of the sequence appear in four versions: in the 1621 The Countess of Montgomeries Urania, the manuscript continuation of Urania, and Wroth's holograph manuscript held at the Folger Shakespeare Library. Nineteen sonnets are spread throughout the prose of the 1621 Urania, and eighty-three are printed in sequence at the back of the same volume. Three sonnets appear in the manuscript continuation of Urania. The holograph manuscript is the most comprehensive collection of the sequence. Five sonnets and one song in the Folger manuscript were not printed in the 1621 volume, while the fourth sonnet in the published sequence does not appear in the manuscript. Dramatic differences between versions consist of changes to punctuation in the 1621 version from that which appears in the manuscript; these changes were probably completed by Urania's printer Augustine Matthews.

The sonnet sequence is organized in four sections. In the first, fifty-five-poem section, Pamphilia determines her true feelings about her unfaithful lover, toward whom she is ambivalent throughout this section, though she affirms her choice to love Amphilanthus by its end. After a series of songs, the next section, of ten poems, takes on a darker tone as Pamphilia confronts doubt and jealously, but the end of the sequence finds her seeking forgiveness from Cupid, the god of love, to whom she promises a crown of sonnets as penance for her doubt. The crown's fourteen sonnets form the sequence's third section. The final eight sonnets in the sequence comprise the fourth section, in which Pamphilia returns to a darker, melancholy tone, but understands that her suffering is necessary in order to understand the inner world of human emotion.

The seventh sonnet in Pamphilia to Amphilanthus supports Wroth's overarching themes of a woman's struggle in 17th century English society. The sonnet introduces female struggle between coercion and consent to a male lover. Bernadette Andrea's "Pamphilia's Cabinet: Gendered Authorship and Empire in Lady Mary Wroth's Urania" addresses the reasons why a female character would confront the reality of choosing between coercion and consent. One of the main aspects that Andrea approaches is the limits that the historical context put on the author's freedom of speech. Andrea states, "She may write, but only from the limits of her own room; she may preserve her writing, but only within the confines of her own mind". Sonnet 7 is Pamphilia's expression of her own thoughts, emotions and views.

The power of the patriarchal society on her views is evident. The influence is exemplified in line 6, "I am thy subject, conquered, bound to stand". Voicing her situation, Pamphilia feels subjected to male dominance. However, her desires are unclear on this matter because she says, "behold I yield", (5) as if a declaration of her choice to the relations with Amphilanthus. The idea of free choice for women would be classified as a protofeminist thought because they were grossly oppressed and not allowed to think for themselves. [The following is a misapplication of Mullaney's ideas; or rather, the writer needs to explain how Wroth's work is akin to the ideological functions of the theater which are the actual subject of Mullaney's work]: Stephen Mullaney provides insight into the reason that Mary Wroth's work survived by stating, "What comes to reside in a wonder-cabinet are, in the most reified sense of the phrase, strange things: tokens of alien cultures, reduced to the status of sheer objects, stripped of cultural and human contexts in a way that makes them eminently capable of surviving the period that thus produced them". This essay was first published in 1983 and was subsequently included as chap. 3 in Mullaney's extended study of The Place of the Stage: License, Play, and Power in Renaissance England. The social analysis of the survival of the oppressed writings comes from "Strange Things, Gross Terms, Curious Customs". The treatment of women caused Pamphilia to question whether she even has a choice in who she loves (consent) or if that is determined by society (coercion). Her inability to differentiate in the poem is probably due to the subjugation of inferior treatment that she has experienced. Mullaney refers to this as being "reduced to the status of sheer objects". She is forced to analyze if she is merely an object at the disposal of men. As a result, her ability to analyze, invoke higher level thinking, and even her personhood is examined.

Wroth's representation of female emotions conjured with the interaction with of a male suitor puts expected women's values into action. The sonnet explores the "obedience" attribute of what Bernadette Andrea refers to as the "triple injunction" of English culture in the 17th century. The "triple injunction" concept was communicated through many different forms including: educational tracts, religious sermons, and legal codes. Its purpose was to define the perfect woman as upholding social norms through the values of chastity, obedience, and silence. Pamphilia ends the sonnet resolving to "obey" (14) Amphilanthus' "charms", (14) regardless of her own wants. Her conclusion to persevere despite her personal feelings speaks to the cultural understanding of women heroism which is equated with endurance. Pamphilia does not concede all hope of having a choice in the relationship, but does wish to avoid physical hurt.

The sonnet does make an intriguing reference to Astrophel and Stella: in line 13 of the Petrarchan sonnet, Wroth writes, "...Sir God, your boyship I despise". The phrase "Sir God" is linked to the late 16th century poem, Astrophel and Stella. Sidney's Astrophel is referred to as "Sir Foole". According to Catherine Bates, Astrophel contracts similar difficulty as he, "is not only overmastered, the willing victim of a superior power, he is also emasculated". Perpetuating the gender roles of the time, Bates argues that Sidney paints Astrophel, a boy, as feminine. Wroth includes traces of Astrophel and Stella to provide ties to previous gender inequality. Astrophel only experiences the struggle between coercion, "overmastered", and consent, "willing", because he is cast as feminine. Bates's understanding of downward mobility in social status by moving from male to female through Sydney's Astrophel and Stella is strongly supported by Bernadette Andrea's analysis of social norms. Wroth's echo of Sydney's work is to address the gender issues from a new voice: the female perspective.

It is suggested that the line "Like to the Indians, scorched with the sun" recalls Wroth's role in Ben Jonson's Masque of Blackness (1605). This masque was designed by Inigo Jones and written for Queen Anne of Denmark. Gary Waller, in his book The Sidney Family Romance, explains that this masque was controversial because Wroth and the other female actors appeared in blackface as the twelve daughters of Niger.

Anita Hagerman, in her article "'But Worth pretends': Discovering Jonsonian Masque in Lady Mary Wroth's Pamphilia to Amphilanthus", discusses Wroth's role in Jonson's The Masque of Blackness and the specific influence of the theme of darkness on Sonnet 22. She states that Wroth played a character named Baryte, an Ethiopian maiden. Hagerman suggests that Wroth created a courtly persona for herself in these masques and that the themes of this persona are themes in Pamphilia to Amphilanthus. One idea of Wroth's courtly persona was darkness, probably stemming from her reputation of seriousness. The theme of dark versus light is explored in Sonnet 22 and is representative of her uncertainty of whether she wants her desires for Amphilanthus to be fulfilled or not, because either way will prove "torturous".

The idea of theatricality influences the way this poem is interpreted. Because it is understood that Wroth is talking about her experience in a theatrical performance, the theme of the artificial aspect of the masque performance needs to be taken into account. To understand this sonnet, we must understand how Wroth felt about taking part in courtly masques. Hagerman says that in the way that Pamphilia is ambivalent about what to do with her love for Amphilanthus, Wroth herself is ambivalent about the life of courtly masques. The contradiction of allowing women to have "feminine expressive display" of feelings and then strictly "enforced silence" could have represented the good and the bad of courtly life for Wroth. In the masques, Wroth was given a voice, but after she was no longer affiliated with the court life, she recognized the artificiality of the voice she had because the courtly life and the masques require a level of falseness. Gary Waller states that Wroth's female characters describe the pressure they feel in terms of theater and display. For a female to take part in a masque, she is creating the illusion of power because she is entering the space of the court and commanding attention. However, it subjects her to the gaze of men and makes her feel powerless and victimized.

1. An exhibition at the ^ Folger Shakespeare Library, including Lady Mary Wroth's Manuscripts

2. Bolam, Robyn, "The Heart of the Labyrinth: Mary Wroth's ^ Pamphilia to Amphilanthus", in New Companion to English Renaissance Literature and Culture, ed. Michael Hattaway (Singapore: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 289.

3. Andrea, Bernadette. ^ Pamphilia's Cabinet: Gendered Authorship and Empire in Lady Mary Wroth's Urania. Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001, pp. 335, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/elh/v068/68.2andrea.html

4. This manuscript is a part of the collection of the ^ Folger Shakespeare Library, V.a.104

5. Grosart, Alexander. The Complete Poems of Sir Philip Sidney. Oregon: University of Oregon, December 1995. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2008-12-04..

6. Bates, Catherine. ^ "Astrophil and the Manic Wit of the Abject Male". SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500-1900. Vol. 41, Num. 1, Winter 2001, pp. 1.

7. This manuscript is a part of the collection of the ^ Folger Shakespeare Library, V.a.104

8. Hagerman, Anita. "'But Worth pretends': Discovering Jonsonian Masque in Lady Mary Wroth's Pamphilia to Amphilanthus". ^ Early Modern Literary Studies 6.3 (January 2001): 4.1-17 <URL: http://purl.oclc.org/emls/06-3/hagewrot.htm>

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Pamphilia to Amphilanthus is a sonnet sequence by the English Renaissance poet Lady Mary Wroth, first published as part of The Countess of Montgomery's Urania in 1621, but subsequently published separately. It is the second known sonnet sequence by a woman writer in England (the first was by Anne Locke).

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A 14-line poem with a variable rhyme scheme originating in Italy and brought to England by Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, earl of Surrey in the 16th century. Literally…

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Elizabeth Barrett Browning

If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love's sake only. Do not say
"I love her for her smile...her look...her way
Of speaking gently...: for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day---"
For these things in themselves, beloved, may
Be changed, or change for thee,...and love so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity wiping my cheeks dry!---
For one might well forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby---
But love me for love's sake, that evermore
Thou may'st love on through love's eternity---

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1. A Wife in London (December,1899), by Thomas Hardy

2. Futility, by Wilfred Owen

3. Distant Fields / ANZAC Parade, by Rhian Gallagher
4. Sleep, by Kenneth Slessor
5.

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1. The Mountain, by Elizabeth Bishop
2. The Cry of the Children, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
3. Shirt, by Robert Pinsky
4. The Song of the Shirt, by Thomas Hood
5.
6.
7.

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1. Song, by Lady Mary Wroth,  born 1587 - died 1651.
2. If Thou must Love Me, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, born 1806 - died 1861.
3. The Pride of Lions, by Joanna Preston - born 1972 - alive today.
4. Sonnet 19, by William Shakespeare - born 1564 - died 1616.
5.

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Analysing poetry: The 'What if?' strategy

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Analysing poetry: The 'What if?' strategy

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Playling With Poetry - Memory and What if

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Use these materials to help you analyse elements of poetry in detail.

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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This is what you should consider and make notes / annotations on when you read and analyse a poem. You are expected to include analysis of these elements in your essays.