Analysis Of A Postcard From The Volcano By Wallace Stevens

From the title of the poem, the poet considered this classic work of art to be a postcard that would be found amidst the wreck caused by volcano. The poet, through the eyes of foreshadowed imagination, was seen thinking about what the little children who later found their skeletons would think about them.

In his imagination, he assumed the children wouldn't know how agile and fast they could run like "foxes on the hill" and the reaction on their skeletal faces would tell the children how they felt when "The spring clouds blow/ Above the shuttered mansion house/ Beyond our gate and the windy sky/ Cries out a literate despair."
He also concluded that the children would repeat the things they've said of the house that eventually turned to ruin.

Stanza 8 of the poem:
"A dirty house in a gutted world,
A tatter of shadows peaked to white,
Smeared with the gold of the opulent sun."

The poet tends to clarify that volcano is a very deadly havoc which has nothing to do with how athletic or how fast someone can run. It is mostly a sudden occurrence that claims many lives and properties within a twinkle of an eye.

Structurally, the eight stanza poem can be considered a free verse. Each of the stanza a triolet void of regular rhythm and rhyming scheme. With an instrument of comparison in line 3 "As quick as foxes on the hill", an alliteration in "These had a being, breathing frost", etc. The themes in the poem are (1) The effects of natural disasters (2) Importance of relics in comparison to human life (3) Death as the debt of mortality.

Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) was an american poet born in Reading, Pennsylvania. During his own days of active poetry, his style of poetry was philosophical in nature; as seen in his poem titled "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird".

Enunwa Samuel Chukwudinma
aka samueldpoetry
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Human Cruelty On Birds And The Schoolboy In William Blake Poem

Question:

Give an account of various forms of human cruelty on birds and the schoolboy as depicted in William Blake's "The Schoolboy" [NECO GCE NOV/DEC 2017]

Answer:

“The Schoolboy” is a beautiful poem crafted by William Blake (1757-1827) to portray children’s perspective to formal education (i.e. classroom learning ). He tabled his thought through the voice of a certain schoolboy whose parents were so keen about the little boy’s acquisition of formal education, on the contrary, the little boy saw learning through nature (the things happening around) as the most suitable way of learning.

Blake even exaggerated the schoolboy’s outlook towards attending school_ pointing that the little boy likened the actions of his parents towards him to that of a bird kept in a cage. According to lines 21-30, the schoolboy also likened himself to things such as a shutting bud, a blossom flower, a summer season, etc; so as to justify that the action of his parents were rash.

There are so many themes in the poem “The Schoolboy” by William Blake; they are (i) freedom or freewill (ii) beauty of nature (iii) informal education is better than formal education (iv) parental control.

Looking at the poem from the angle of freedom, human cruelty to the schoolboy and the bird is made vivid. As long as a sheep cannot be wiser than its shepherd, it remains truth that the schoolboy is not wiser than his parents yet the limitations placed on the desires of the schoolboy hampered his freedom and thereby painted the parents as wicked or cruel.

According to lines 16-17, the use of a caged bird in the poem to symbolize imprisonment also depicted human as cruel. The schoolboy asked: “How can the bird that is born for joy/ Sit in a cage and sing?” the lines tend to expose that one of the most wicked acts of humans towards birds is to confine them in a cage.

Enunwa Chukwudinma Samuel aka samueldpoetry

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Analysis of Unholy Marriage by David Holbrook

ABOUT THE POET

The poem “Unholy Marriage” was written by David Holbrook who lived between 1923 and 2011. His career record showed he was more than a poet but a well-known academician. According to Wikipedia record, “From 1989 he was an Emeritus Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge.”

ABOUT THE POEM

The poem narrated an evening vehicle accident that took the life of a careful virgin girl. Though a virgin she was but ironically in what looked like "Unholy Marriage" or "Unwilling Marriage" her virtuous body was compressed with that of a strange man when a truck collided with the vehicle she boarded causing both their "blood and brain and bone" to mix while their naked bodies were pieced everywhere so hard to recognise. 

The poem speaker then blamed and mocked the girl for her own misfortune; she was blamed for not realizing how senseless and insensible vehicles had always been, and she was mocked for trading her pleasurable youthfulness for abstinence which had never assured anyone certainty of reward.

[ Similar poem is Analysis Of A Taxi Driver On His Death By Timothy Wangusa ]

STRUCTURED AND STANZA SUMMARY 

Unholy Marriage is a seven stanza poem with a regular end rhyme scheme. Narrated from a third person point of view, each stanza is six lines in count with perfect imageries and simple diction. The events of the poem set at a foggy night and were climatic, flowng as follows: In stanza one, she was a very well nurtured virgin lady who had never shared "Cool soft anointment of her breasts". 

In stanza two, she would have been so sweet in bed_ imagining her bridegroom sweating while receiving the benediction of her breasts_ yes, because she truly kept herself for the best. In stanza three, the piece of her body are gathered like blown sheets of papers. In stanza four and five, she failed to realise "No wheel has built-in sense, she shared a vehicle seat with a strange man and suddenly like unholy marriage, her virgin blood mixed with that of a stranger. Stanza six and seven go thus:

"Anointed only by the punctured oil
poured like unleashed wind or fire from bag
Sold by some damned magician out to spoil
The life that girded in this young girl's breast,
Now never to unfurl her flag
And march love's happy quest.

Her mother hears the clock; her sighs,
Takes off his boots: she's late tonight 
I hope she's careful virgin: men have eyes
For cherished daughters growing in the breast.
Some news? They hear the gate.
A man comes: not the best."

THEMES AND POETICS

The poem has the following themes_ Death, Virginity, Accident, Uncrtainty, etc. Death cannot be ruled out of the journey of earthly living because uncertainty is one among the limitations in mortal beings, the poet saw virginity as an expensive foolishness and that was his reason for mocking the virgin girl who lost her lost not only her life but her virginity to a terrible vehicle accident.

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Enunwa Chukwudinma Samuel aka samueldpoetry
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Analysis of Fame Is A Food That Dead Men Eat by Henry Austin Dobson

About The Poet

“Fame Is A Food That Dead Men Eat” is a poem written by Henry Austin Dobson, an English poet and critic. According to Wikipedia article, Dobson was born in Plymouth on the 19^th of January, 1840. It is noted that he decided to focus on literature around 1864_ creating splendid poetry and prose. He was responsible for the first original ballade written in English language. He died on the 2^nd of September of 1921.

Denotation

Here, in the poem titled “Fame Is A Food That Dead Men Eat”, two important elements are juxtaposed; fame and friendship. In the poet’s debate, he clearly chose a side_ picking friendship over fame. Looking at both, fame in most cases attracts huge friendship though most friendship attained outside of fame are more cordial and long lasting than that which fame brought. This is probably the reason why the poem speaker denied fame as uttered in line 2 of the poem:  “I have no stomach for such meat”.

As he has keenly considered the aftermath of both fame and friendship then in line 8 of the poem he said, “Of friendship it is good to sing” knowing that someone who made or invested in friendship while on earth will long be remembered by his or her friends compared to someone who acquired fame while living but ended alone in grave without living friends to remember and speak of his or her friendly acts while on earth.

The denotation of the poem leads us to few of its theme which can be listed as follows:

1.       Friendship is better than fame; as stated in line 1-6 versus line 7-12.

2.       Living in friends memories is better than living in the grave alone.

3.       Death is the worst enemy of fame, when line 4-5 “They eat it in the silent tomb/ With no kind voice of comrade near”

4.       Remembrance is the true reward for friendship, as stated in line 9-12:

“For truly, when a man shall end

He lives in memory of his friend

Who doth his better part recall

And of his fault make funeral”.

Further Summary

‘Line 1: “Fame is a food” is an instance of metaphor in the poem and the repeated “f” sound is an example of alliteration.

Line 2: “I have no stomach for such meat,” meaning I am not interested in such thing.

Line 3: “In little light” is alliteration while “narrow room” symbolizes the grave or tomb.

Line 4: “They eat it in the silent tomb.” Though tombs might be quite cold but dead people eating in their tombs is very much of an imaginative creativity.

Line 5: “With no kind voice comrade near”, that the act of friendship ends on earth; it can’t be found in the grave.

Line 6: “To bid the feaster be of cheer” has the repeated “i” sound as assonance.

Line 7: This is where the poem speaker declared his or her actual preference which is the act of friendship.

Line 8: “Of friendship it is good to sing,” meaning it is a good thing to laud the act of friendship.

Line 9: “When a man shall end,” means when a person eventually dies.

Line 12: “And of his fault make funeral.”  The line means that the friends of the dead won’t talk or make reference to the faulty ways of the dead even at his or her death. The word “funeral” in the line is a metonymy.

Other things of note are the use of regular end rhymes pattern and rhythm. There are some old fashion words in the poem such as “doth”, “shall”, etc. The twelve line poem maintains simple dictions in addressing the subject between life and death. The poet supported friendship through the repeated use of the word “friendship” plus other family words “comrade”, “friends”, etc. 

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Enunwa Chukwudinma S aka samueldpoetry

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Analysis of The Companion by Yevgeny Yevtushenko

SUMMARY OF THE POEM

The battle was very tense and near the clinkers of the rail was a little girl named Katya, "sitting on the rough embankment" wearing a hat bigger than her head. She was nine years of age and we were "cut off from our grandmothers/ while the Germans were dive-bombing the train". I could not stand the idea of leaving her behind yet did not know what to do with her "but doubt quickly dissolved to certainty" as the sounds of exlosion were no longer at close range.

I gave her a better air of boot and we began trekking through streams and forests until I got tired and suddenly sat beside a fence
"Whats the matter with you?' she said.
Don't be so stuid! Put grass in your boots.
Do you want to eat something? Why won't you talk?
Hold this thin, this is crab.
We'll have refreshments. You small boys,
You're always pretending to be brave" (according to 33-38)

After a little rest, we resumed trekking, walking side-by-side and because I didn't want her to call me lazy, I gathered all my strength and further trekked long distance without rest; "passing craters, passing fire/ under the rocking sky of '41/ tottering crazy on its smoking columns".

HISTORICAL RELEVANCE OF THE POEM

The context of the poem fixed it under the war related poems such as (1) The Battle of Stanford Bridge by Laurence Binyon, (2) O Captain My Captain by Walt Whitman, (3) Five Ways To Kill A Man by Edwin Brock, (4) At Fifteen I Went With The Army by Arthur Waley, (5) An Irish Airman Foresees His Death by W. B. Yeats, etc. The poem speaker tends to share his experience of war at a very tender age where himself and a little girl were vulnerably isolated to seek survival. It can easily be concluded that the poem speaker recollected the 1941 battle between the Germans and Russians since the poet was a Russian and mentioned "the Germans were dive-bombing the train" in line 9 of the poem. A prove of year of event can be found in line 48 which says, "under the rocking sky of '41"; as read in a wikipedia article, such battle between German and Russian lasted 4 years.

FURTHER EXPLANATION OF THE POEM

The Companion by Yevgeny Yevtushenko is a free verse of 49 lines in total. In terms of the theme, the commonly seen negative impacts of war are as well present in the poem; homelessness, brutality, survival, children transforming into scavengers, etc. The homeless situation of the little girl and the poem speaker led them to seek a safe haven and the instance of brutality can be seen in line 8-9 "We got cut off from our grandmothers/ while the Germans were dive-bombing the train". The tone of the poem is mild and revealing which was presented from a first person point of view in order to create a sense of reminder in the heart of the readers. The largely employed imageries pointed at multiple settings such as the rail, the forest, beside the fence, etc. 

ABOUT THE POET

Yevgeny Yevtushenko was a Russian poet, novelist and actor whose love for art and humanity will linger very long in the hearts of literature lovers. He spent a very meaningful 83 years on earth between 1933 and 2017. Considering many of his works, "Women occupy important place in Yevtushenko's verse. In keeing with his sympathy for the peasant and workers. He dedicates many poems to the hardworking Russian woman, as in "The Hut", so says an article critically examining the life and work of the poet. The poem "The Companion" and other poems such as Lies, Psychotherapy, Fury, Babii Yar, I'm An Angel, and a whole lot can be found at the poemhunter website.
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Enunwa Chukwudinma S aka samueldpoetry
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Analysis Of Five Ways To Kill A Man by Edwin Brock

Analysis of Five Ways To Kill A Man by Edwin Brock

(1) Introduction:- In terms of the message from the poem, Five Ways To Kill A Man by Edwin Brock shares similarity with the following classics: The World Is Much For Us by William Wordsworth, and Report To Wordsworth by Boey Kim Cheng. I will personally categorize the poem under life and living considering the varied setting of the poem which moved from archaic to the present era of ours.

[Readable: Overview Of Alone by Edgar Allan Poe]

(2) Background:- Five Ways To Kill A Man is a poem written by Edwin Brock (1927 - 1997) an English poet. The five stanza poem shows the following themes_ human wickedness, modern day atmospheric and ecological danger. Not only that the diction can easily be understood, it also embodies the common poetic devices such as metaphor, alliteration, personification, and the use of allusion to the Bible story of crucifixion.

(3) Vital Sources:- There are other external links that can also be of help;

• The Link To The Poem Five Ways To Kill A Man
• The Audio Analysis of Five Ways To Kill A Man 
• The PDF Analysis of Five Ways To Kill A Man
• 1000 Words Explanation of The Themes In Five Ways To Kill A Man by Edwin Brock

(4) Overview:- The poet attempts to show his displease about many unspeakable acts of humans inhumanity to other humans. With the instrument of allusion, he showed the sympathetic Jesus Christ's crucifixion. he also revealed the epic wars of horses, swords and arrows. Followed by the modern destructive war which entailed the use of bomber jets. 

Brock was so keen about those insane act by arranging them one after the other in a timely order of occurrences. The five different ways to kill a man (as the title itself suggested), from the poet's perspective, four of the ways being cumbersome while the last one seems the easiest. He presented the five ways in the following forms: (1) Allusion to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. (2) The act of war with horses and swords. (3) The use of bombs and fighter jets for mass destruction. (4) The simplest way is to live in this modern era of immense environmental pollution.

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Enunwa Chukwudinma S. aka samueldpoetry
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Analysis Of Alone By James Joyce

                                      

Alone by James Joyce

This is a simple 8 line poem sending the message of nightly beauty in her calmness and the importance of having a companion. It sets at night near a lake, Joyce divided the poem into 2 equal stanzas of 4 lines each and well arranged with intersecting rhyme scheme_ the first stranza described the appearance of the lake as caused by the clouded moon. While in the second stanza, the emotion of the poet was revealed as of “...delight/ A swoon of shame.”

• “The noon’s greygolden meshes make (the moon is referred to as greygolden)
• “All night a veil” (means the community was covered with darkness as veil)
• “The shorelamps in the sleeping lake” (lake which the poet personified has a light reflection from its shore and a plant trailing in)
• “And all my soul is a delight” (‘soul’ is a metonymy in place of body and ‘delight’ for romantic feeling)
• “A swoon of shame” (the line has alliteration with the “s” sound. ‘swoon’ = infatuation, ‘shame’ = unworthy)
• James Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet who lived between 1882 and 1941.

Samuel C. Enunwa aka samueldpoetry

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Analysis Of Sonnet 3 By William Shakespeare

Analysis of Sonnet 3 by William Shakespeare

Naijapoets.com has been privileged to analyze Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare to a reasonable detail. It is another fun to discuss Sonnet 3 from personal perspective. William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet, and actor who lived between 1564 and 1616.

Line 1-2 advised the unmarried man to look straight into the mirror and assure himself the time has come to start a family. Line 3-4 if you sieve not this moment and provide yourself a heir, you have cheated the world. Line 5-6, is there any wife that will see delight in locking her womb to deny the husband of becoming father? Line 7-8 or is there any man that will disregard posterity because he loves to live alone and die alone? Line 9-10 you are your mother’s mirror and through your offspring she can enjoy the memories of being a nursing mother. Line 11-12 and through your offspring, you will be privileged to see this time again while in old age. Line 13-14 as you continue to live, remember not to die single else your legacy dies with you.

The major message in this poem deals with life, death, family and legacy_ Life goes on via the procreation process of birth and death being the normal chain of life. From the context of the poem, Shakespeare believed time is precious and must be grabbed at the right moment else will be gone forever.
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Samuel C. Enunwa aka samueldpoetry

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Analysis of to a Bedbug by Sam Mbure

Two important messages surfaced from the complaining voice of the poem speaker are; the victim's constant nuptial lost of blood and the victim's poverty condition. It can be said that one problem led to another in the sense that it might be the poem speaker's poverty that caused his "little bed" infested.

Sam Mbure, in this poem title "To A Bedbug" wrote about the negative effect and the inconvenience caused by bedbug; not only that, the chosen words of the poem marveled at the wisdom of the bedbug. Saying that the "tiny creature" only takes advantage of his unconscious sleeping state to feed and breed in his bed.


Clever thou art, tiny creature;
You attend me when I am deep asleep;
When thou art sure, I can’t you capture,
Just at the time I snore deep.

‘Tis so strange that before twilight,
The bed clear of you would seem;
For not one of you is in my sight;
As if your presence was in a dream

Mbure adopted the use of Elizabethan English to communicate his poem to the readers, such found in line 9 and 11 "thou art". Imagery is also evident; image of manner and of sight "you awful parasite", "By sucking blood from my poor head", "Just at the time I snore deep."

Sam Mbure is a Kenyan poet and author who is fond of writing and publishing collections of children's stories. Sam Mbure is an African and it widely known till this day that poverty and suffering are ravaging the continent beyond present attempted repairs. The suffering and poverty in Africa are linked to many factors such as cultural dogma, bad maintenance, greed bred oppression, and many more. Sam Mbure employed a very funny angle of human living to express the human problem of Africans.

It is very reasonable for the reader of the poem to relate with the setting, which has to do with the night and the tiny bed. The speaker of the poem supported his setting with words like "snore deep" "deep asleep" "tiny creature" "twilight" "For supper, diner and lunch".

How did Mbure managed to develop his themes? A very good question to consider. Few of the themes in the poem are (i) the effect of poverty (ii) the intelligence and nature of bedbugs. Though the poem didn't obviously broaden the message of poverty but the complaining voice of the speaker depicted a suffering person sleeping a "tiny bed" without escape from bedbugs sucking his "poor head". When the commenced, the voice of the poem, in his bewilderment, referred to the bedbugs as parasite sharing his bed uninvited. To feed and breed, the bugs depended solely on him which made him to ponder how plenty human blood can be.

The poem carried so much absolutely the image of sight and emotion; "awful parasite" "from my sweet dreams be lost" "is so strange that before twilight/ The bed clear of you would seem". There is synecdoche in line 5 "head" and metonym in line 1 "parasite". Alliteration in line 9 "my bed breed".

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Samuel C. Enunwa aka samueldpoetry
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Examine The Theme of Endurance in Birches by Robert Frost

Examine the theme of endurance in Birches (WAEC MAY/JUNE 2017 QUESTION AND ANSWER).

Birches is a poem written to paint the picture of uneasiness of living on earth most especially as an adult by using the birch trees as symbol of such uneasiness. Frost showed a distinct feature of the birch tree as a very tough and tenacious tree in nature.

Such feature led us to the theme of endurance among other themes such as the theme of nostalgia, theme of transition, theme of earthly pleasure, etc.

Now is the time to delve deeply into the theme of endurance. The flexibility of the birches aided their ability to contain swinging and pressing down effects caused by ice-storms. The poet mentioned two different strains of the birch trees which are the imaginary boy swinging it and the ice-storms; of the two, the ice-storms left the birches bent forever. 

The birches didn't just endured the burden of the ice but continued to grow in its ice-caused deformity "Year afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground"; after the birches are permanently bent, they didn't stop growing knowing that the deed is done and never to be reversed.

Inference of endurance is drawn from stanza four of the poem between line 14-19:
"They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair"



Sri Aurobindo says and I quote, "...pain is the key that opens the gates of strength; it is the high-road that leads to the city of beatitude". Looking at the life of human beings, some circumstances are irreversible and most humans are meant to live through them the same way the birches do; a good instance of such circumstances is aging. Aging brings changes to human permanently both in shape and in acts, leaving human beings with no other choice than to resign to fate of nature.

MUST NOT MISS:-
#1. Have you seen the poem Birches by Robert Frost (which is 59 lines in total)?
#2. Do you seem to have any addition to this analysis?
#3. If you were in Frost's shoe, would you have crafted the theme of endurance better?
#4. Is there any way you can relate the theme to your human experience?
#5. Drop your suggestion in the comment box.

Samuel C. Enunwa aka samueldpoetry
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Analysis Of Relic By Ted Hughes

DETAILED ANALYSIS OF THE POEM 

"Relic" by Ted Hughes is a descriptive poem. It lays its setting to the sea with irregular end rhyme pattern and two stanzas of unequal number of lines. Based on observation of naijapoets.com.ng, Hughes made use of imaginative description; he told an undefined entity how the jawbone got to the sea as if he witnessed it "broken by the breakers or tossed/ To flap for half an hour and turn to a crust" but the use of "or" between "breakers or tossed" showed that his description was imaginative.

The poem is about a jawbone found deep down the sea. If one claims that Ted Hughes had love for water, sailing and the things relating to the sea; it will not be disputed. He told of how he found the jawbone, how it was thrust, living in the sea among other things like claws, skulls, crabs, dogfish, etc. He told of how the jawbone lived gnawing and stretching to feed but later ended at the beach. The poet described the deep sea as a battleground where friendship does not exist "In that darkness camaraderie does not hold" (line 5) then at the end line of the poem tagged the jawbone "a cenotaph". From lines 14-16, he claimed that nothing gets better in the sea and thereby described the sea's digestion of things into its seabed as its biggest achievement.

The tittle of the poem generalized the interest of the poet. The first stanza of the poem is 11 lines while the second stanza is 5 lines; which looked like the summary of the first stanza. Grammatically, the clause "I found this jawbone" made it look spoken than written, as if someone was standing in front of the poet and could as well see the jawbone himself/herself. "Continue the beginning" sounds poetic genius, which means "lets go back to the description of the sea". Besides the large use of imagery, personification existed in great amount from line 6-9 "And the jaws, Before they are satisfied or their stretched purpose/ Slacken, go down jaws; go gnawn bare. Jaws/ Eat and are finished and the jawbone comes to the beach". Line 12 "Time in the sea eats its tail," happens to be personification as well. "This curved jawbone did not laugh" is also a personification.

The jawbone was described in many forms, he symbolised it in different ways by calling it "Indigestibles" in line 13. It was metaphorically called a cenotaph: "A cenotaph is a monument erected to honour the dead whose bodies lie elsewhere; especially members of the armed forces who died in battle".

"In that darkness" symbolized the sea, "The deep" also symbolized the sea. Other poetic devices in the poem are enjambments, alliterations, etc.

Few among the many themes to deduce from this poem is the longevity in things than beings, the unwholesome experience deep down the sea, and the havoc of duration. In accordance with the description of the poet, the jawbone had lasted very farther than the animal that owned it.

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Samuel C. Enunwa aka samueldpoetry
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What Literary Devices Are In "Sad Complaining Voices Of Beggars" FromVanity By Birago Diop

"Sad complaining voices of beggars" is found in line 4 of the poem Vanity by Birago diop. The line contains 5 figures of speech; imagery, metaphor, personification and assonance.

(i) Imagery is the vivid descriptions presenting or suggesting image of a sensible object. The two words "sad complaining" give a vivid description of their voices.



(ii) Metaphor is the comparison made between two words without the use of "like" or "as". The phrase "voices of beggars" is a metaphor because their voices is compared to that of beggars; if the line is "sad complaining voices as beggars" it would have been simile.

(iii) Personification is when an attribute of an animate is given to an inanimate. "Voices" were said to be "sad" in the line "Sad complaining voices of beggars" it takes an animate to have an emotion of being sad not just the voice of such animate.

(iv) Assonance is a repetition of similar vowel sound. "Sad" and "Beggars" have a similar /ae/ sound or something closely similar.

(v) Synecdoche is the use of part to represent whole or whole to represent part. In the line 4 of Vanity by Birago Diop: "Sad complaining voices of beggars" has a synecdoche because "voices" is a part used in representing the whole people.

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Samuel C. Enunwa aka samueldpoetry
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