Spenserian stanza

The son of an Indian Primary School teacher and a Chinese Teochew Homemaker; Thumboo now aged 81 is recognized as “Singapore’s Poet Laureate” and one of Singapore’s Pioneer Poets. His diverse cultural heritage helped to shape his values as he began his Primary School education on our little red dot. Growing up, he was read narratives and nursery rhymes by his aunt. This cultivated his early interest in literature. He continued on to major in both History and English Literature at University…

Ezra Pound eloquently highlights the overall impact Thomas MacDonagh had on Irish literature during his short life. Pound states that MacDonagh’s ‘loss is a loss to both Ireland and to literature, and it is a loss bound to be felt as his work becomes more widely known’. He was born in 1878 in Cloughjordan, Co. Tipperary to a father from Roscommon and a mother from Dublin, both school teachers. Both his family life and the influence of his parents are key to understanding the shape his life took…

“The night draws down. The baby has a cold. Here, take this blanket, it’s wool. It was my mother’s blanket―take it for the baby. This is the thing to bomb. This is the beginning―from ‘I’ to ‘we’” (152). This statement used by Steinbeck marks the transition from “I” to “we” in the novel, where people stop thinking about just themselves and start thinking about others in the exact same situation as them. They begin to learn that they’re not the only ones struggling to find jobs, earn money, and…

I Feel Like I’m Writing Poetry. I Love Poetry. (A Reflective Essay of an Event that Changed My Life and Shaped Me as a Person) There is always a line in a story where the narrator marks a specific point in time, a moment either horrible or wonderful, as a defining point in their life. The narrator may say that this changed them as a person, and how they saw things, or how they dealt with problems and experiences. Though this is a very common thing in stories written in famous novels, it’s not…

The Truth Within Imagery is an effective part of poetry. It allows readers to see what they are reading, and if the image is vivid enough, perhaps even feel the intensity of emotions within. Poems like “White Lies,” by Natasha Trethewey, and “Theme for English B,” by Langston Hughes, are saturated with color and carry a powerful voice. The imagery of these poems suggests a prominent theme of truth and identity as a critical topic for black Americans. By utilizing literary techniques such as…

Rather than a defined period of someone’s life, childhood is an abstract period created only when one can look back at it. In order to explore themes such as remembrance and childhood, it is crucial to consider linguistic features and the communications of emotions or feelings such as warmth. It is believed that copious poems all portray the subject of innocence of the younger; poems including ‘Prayer Before Birth’, ‘Half Past Two’, ‘Piano’ and ‘Hide And Seek’ are no exception to being exemplars…

Even though Life on Mars does not have the focused theme of family presented throughout like Rose, Smith's collection of poetry nonetheless does include a long interlude that is her eulogy to her dead father. The poem itself goes through multiple stages of the speaker's grief. Page thirty-one of this poem focuses on the speaker reflecting on life and her father. It is as if after all the grieving, she takes a moment to pause and think. The speaker addresses her own viewpoints of her father,…

Morrie Schwartz relates to two songs, one by Macy Gray called “Beauty in the World” and the second song by Kelly Clarkson called “I Forgive You.” Macy Gray’s song relates to Morrie and how he felt lucky to be alive and make peace with his life. On the contrary, Kelly Clarkson’s song relates to how Morrie felt self-pity. Macy Gray’s “Beauty in the World” and Kelly Clarkson’s “I Forgive You” both relate to Morrie during different parts of his memoir. To begin with, Gray’s song “Beauty in the…

“I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” by Maya Angelou is one of the poems that I will never forget, it is one of my favorite poems. It is a poem that really makes you ask yourself questions. Questions like, why would she write something like this? She mainly wrote it because of her background. From the time her parents divorced till the time she was raped. She felt like she was nothing and useless. A lot of people feel like this sometimes and they could relate to this poem. This poem is strong and…

both convey that its repercussions are devastating. Plath's extended metaphor focuses on the pain of aging, whereas Auden's elegy explores the grief of the physical loss of a loved one. The idea of overwhelming grief is evident in the beginning stanza of Stop all the Clocks with the use of the hyperbolic directive "stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone". In this verse, the narrator is asking for the distractions of the world to stop and is begging the audience to make the impossible…