Andrew Marvell

Andrew Marvell 1621-1678

Andrew Marvell was a poet of the Metaphysical era, the poems of which contained wit, conceits, and in which "philosophical and spiritual subjects were approached with reason and often concluded in paradox." 

"On a Drop of Dew"

See how the orient dew,

Shed from the bosom of the morn   

   Into the blowing roses,

Yet careless of its mansion new,

For the clear region where ’twas born   

   Round in itself incloses:

   And in its little globe’s extent,

Frames as it can its native element.

   How it the purple flow’r does slight,   

      Scarce touching where it lies,

   But gazing back upon the skies,   

      Shines with a mournful light,

         Like its own tear,

Because so long divided from the sphere.

   Restless it rolls and unsecure,

      Trembling lest it grow impure,

   Till the warm sun pity its pain,   

And to the skies exhale it back again.

      So the soul, that drop, that ray   

Of the clear fountain of eternal day,   

Could it within the human flow’r be seen,

      Remembering still its former height,

      Shuns the sweet leaves and blossoms green,

      And recollecting its own light,

Does, in its pure and circling thoughts, express

The greater heaven in an heaven less.   

      In how coy a figure wound,   

      Every way it turns away:   

      So the world excluding round,   

      Yet receiving in the day,

      Dark beneath, but bright above,

      Here disdaining, there in love.

   How loose and easy hence to go,

   How girt and ready to ascend,

   Moving but on a point below,

   It all about does upwards bend.

Such did the manna’s sacred dew distill,   

White and entire, though congealed and chill,   

Congealed on earth : but does, dissolving, run   

Into the glories of th’ almighty sun.

This poem fits in with the metaphysical bunch in the most obvious way which is the conceit, comparing the human soul to a dew drop. The course of the dew drop's life is followed in this poem, from its creation, to its evaporation. The soul takes this same journey, yearning to "evaporate" back into heaven, where it rightfully belongs, according to the Platonic beliefs of the metaphysical poets. 

I think what Marvell was trying to say with this poem was that the souls of people can become spoiled on earth what with all the bad influences and temptation and the like, as is suggested by the phrase "congealed on earth...into the glories of th' almighty sun." But in heaven, the souls can be pure and free. The souls yearn to be taken there by God, just like the drop of dew yearns to be evaporated by the sun. 

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5662#sthash.cA4izr5Q.dpuf

Song of the Old Mother by W. B. Yeats (1899)

I RISE in the dawn, and I kneel and blow
Till the seed of the fire flicker and glow.
And then I must scrub, and bake, and sweep,
Till stars are beginning to blink and peep;
But the young lie long and dream in their bed
Of the matching of ribbons, the blue and the red,
And their day goes over in idleness,
And they sigh if the wind but lift up a tress.
While I must work, because I am old
And the seed of the fire gets feeble and cold.

W.B. Yeats is one of the symbolist poets of the time, who lived from 1865 to 1939, was Anglo-Irish, with leanings of Irish nationalism that he tended to keep to himself more often than not, and was interested in Irish mythology and the mystical. That last bit is what informs many of his poems, as he tended to include allusions to Irish myth and/or the occult in his poetry. 

In this poem the most obvious story being told is that of an old woman who gets up and works throughout the day while the younger folks dilly dally and spend their days with their heads in the sky and not thinking about anything worthwhile. There are more levels than that, though, as symbolists tend towards; the "old mother" mentioned in the title is the narrator, but whether she is actually the mother of the children that she is complaining about or whether she is an old woman thinking in general about the state of the youth today could be debated. The poem also deals with the dawn as a time for things to start beginning, moving around and such, a theme which is common in symbolist poetry. It deals with the passage of time from the beginning of the dawn to the dusk later that day, with the "fire flicker and glow" showing it as the beginning of the day and the "seed of the fire gets feeble and cold" showing that the day has come to an end - only showing it with the state of the fire rather than speaking directly. 

The young are mentioned as being in a dream - though in this case it could mean that they are literally dreaming and therefore asleep, not doing chores like the old mother is, or it could refer simply to being in a dream-like state and not paying attention to the real world or the work that is involved in it, simply paying attention to what they are going to wear or other unrelated, non-productive things. 

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes (1902-1967) was popular during the Harlem Renaissance period(spanned the 1920s). He was an American poet, a social activist, columnist, and novelist. He is best known for being a leader during the Harlem Renaissance period. As discussed in the Literary Periods document, the Harlem Renaissance was a time of cultural movement and is also known as the "New Negro Movement." It was centered in Harlem, New York. He was famous for writing about this time period. I found the majority of the poems I read of his to be very entertaining. I chose the specific poem "Culture Exchange" because I thought it related very well with the Harlem Renaissance period. This poem, written in 1926, is basically about the black culture, black history, and the differences among the cultures that existed during this specific time period. This poem relates well to the Harlem Renaissance period because this period was a time where Harlem culture included the new African-American cultural expressions across the urban areas of the northeast and midwest.

Cultural Exchange

In the Quarter of the Negroes
Where the doors are doors of paper
Dust of dingy atoms
Blows a scratchy sound.
Amorphous jack-o'-Lanterns caper
And the wind won't wait for midnight
For fun to blow doors down.
By the river and the railroad
With fluid far-off goind
Boundaries bind unbinding
A whirl of whisteles blowing.
No trains or steamboats going--
Yet Leontyne's unpacking.

In the Quarter of the Negroes
Where the doorknob lets in Lieder
More than German ever bore,
Her yesterday past grandpa--
Not of her own doing--
In a pot of collard greens
Is gently stewing.

Pushcarts fold and unfold
In a supermarket sea.
And we better find out, mama,
Where is the colored laundromat
Since we move dup to Mount Vernon.

In the pot begind the paper doors
on the old iron stove what's cooking?
What's smelling, Leontyne?
Lieder, lovely Lieder
And a leaf of collard green.
Lovely Lieder, Leontyne.

You know, right at Christmas
They asked me if my blackness,
Would it rub off?
I said, Ask your mama.

Dreams and nightmares!
Nightmares, dreams, oh!
Dreaming that the Negroes
Of the South have taken over--
Voted all the Dixiecrats
Right out of power--

Comes the COLORED HOUR:
Martin Luther King is Governor of Georgia,
Dr. Rufus Clement his Chief Adviser,
A. Philip Randolph the High Grand Worthy.
In white pillared mansions
Sitting on their wide verandas,
Wealthy Negroes have white servants,
White sharecroppers work the black plantations,
And colored children have white mammies:
Mammy Faubus
Mammy Eastland
Mammy Wallace
Dear, dear darling old white mammies--
Sometimes even buried with our family.
Dear old
Mammy Faubus!

Culture, they say, is a two-way street:
Hand me my mint julep, mammny.
Hurry up!
Make haste! 

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/cultural-exchange/

John Keats Romantic Poet

"To Autumn" by John Keats

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.


From http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15565
Published in 1820

I don't have Microsoft Word so when I try to open the word document it says the file format is invalid, but I'm going to use different sources to find the characteristics of romantic poems. 

The romantic period 1770-1870 happened while many different revolutions were occurring such as the American and French Revolutions. There was lots of social, economic, and political changes occurring at this time, and the Industrial Revolution brought new technology as well as some new ideas. The main characteristics of this period in literature were imagination, symbolism, nature, and individualism. 
"To Autumn" obviously fulfills the requirement of containing nature. The title and virtually every line in the entire poem references an aspect of nature from seeds, to seasons, to animals. Overall it is describing the gradual change from summer to autumn. The meaning of the poem is quite simple; I believe is is simply an ode to autumn as the title says. It complains about the "clammy cells" of summer and describes autumn in a more positive light. There is not much symbolism that I can detect in the poem, but there is lots of imagination. Keats describes very specific occurrences of nature very specifically and has quite the imagination to do so. For example, "Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn/ Among the river sallows, borne aloft/Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies" (27-29). There are no specific references to individualism, but you can assume the point of view is that of 1 person. He enjoys the change from summer to autumn, and describes it as he sees it without any interruption from other people. I can picture the speaker sitting in the park by himself watching these natural things occur. He appreciates the fruit, songs, and flowers that autumn gives him.

Here is a beautiful picture of autumn from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autumn

Sources:
http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/rom.html
http://www.odessa.edu/dept/english/dsmith/rom.lit.char.pdf

Arthur Symons

Arthur Symons was a British poet, critic, and magazine editor who was born in 1865 and died in 1945 and was a key member of the symbolist movement. Symbolists strove to create transcendence, they believed that art should be beautiful above all else and that reality was not it's true purpose. Symbolists use lots of imagery and symbolism to make their poems seem deeper and more imaginative.

A great example of this is Symon's "White Heliotrope", found at http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/180846

White Heliotrope

BY ARTHUR SYMONS

The feverish room and that white bed,

The tumbled skirts upon a chair,   

The novel flung half-open, where

Hat, hair-pins, puffs, and paints are spread;

The mirror that has sucked your face

Into its secret deep of deeps,

And there mysteriously keeps

Forgotten memories of grace;

And you half dressed and half awake,

Your slant eyes strangely watching me,

And I, who watch you drowsily,

With eyes that, having slept not, ache;

This (need one dread? nay, dare one hope?)

Will rise, a ghost of memory, if

Ever again my handkerchief

Is scented with White Heliotrope.

 

Upon reading the poem, we see Symon's immediate personification of the room as "feverish", suggesting a sexual sin has occurred that is juxtaposed with the "white bed", which would often signify purity. We then see the imagery: "The tumbled skirts upon a chair, / The novel flung half-open, where / Hat, hair-pins, puffs, and paints are spread". This gives the audience a mental picture of the scene. Then personification again, as Symons describes the "mirror that has sucked in your face / Into its secret deep of deeps". This suggests that the mirror has taken the person's "memories of grace", or virtue, referencing back to the "feverish room". The overall motif of sexuality continues as the narrator discusses his or her own "eyes that, having slept not, ache".We then learn in the final stanza that the narrator has smelled the white heliotrope on his handkerchief, and has remembered this vivid scene. The previous stanzas, we realize, have only been a memory, drawn out by the strong scent of the heliotrope. We know see the juxtaposition of the pure, white flower with the sinful, sexual scene described. Symon's poem "White Heliotrope" uses the juxtaposition of the vivid sexual scene and the scent of the pure, white heliotrope to show that love, while seemingly pure, is not always as innocent as it seems.

America by Claude McKay

Claude McKay was a famous poet during the Harlem Renaissance Era, getting his inspiration from seeing the immense amount of racism in South Carolina. He moved up north to get away from this, and began poetry so he could freely express his talents like other black poets at the time. The poem America, reflects his opinions on the country at the time. He says he loves the country he is in, but with some bitterness. He hates what is happening now, but he looks ahead and see's greatness will come and segregation will be no more basically. And that everything will fade into history like timeless treasures in the sand.My favorite line is "she feeds me breads of bitterness" Like America gives him this opportunity, but there is a cost with it. Th poem is optimistic at the time I think. He recognizes that there is a problem in America, but he nows that it will surely end in the future.
Written probably in the 1920's.

America

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger's tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate.
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state,
I stand within her walls with not a shred
Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
And see her might and granite wonders there,
Beneath the touch of Time's unerring hand,
Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand. 

Claude McKay

The Red Wheelbarrow

 

 

XXII (The Red Wheelbarrow)

by William Carlos Williams

from Spring and All (1923)

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

The poem "The Red Wheelbarrow" was written by William Carlos Williams, who was part of the Modernist movement in poetry. Modernism originated in the 20th century and modernist poems tended to always question what came before them. They were willing to experiment with new forms and were much more daring than the Symoblists. In this sense, Modernists were more willing to push the boundaries of traditional boundaries in format and in theme.

Even from first glance, one can stop Williams' nontraditional format and attribute it to the Modernist movement. Williams constructed his poem in four stanzas, the first line of each containing three words each, and the second line of each stanza containing only one word. This form of pictorial representation of the poem allows the reader to focus on the words and place emphasis between each line break. By using this type of enjambment, Williams is not only exemplifying the Modernist style, he is also purposefully slowing the reader down whilst they read.

The poem itself is only one long sentence, broken up at varying intervals. Often it is interpreted that the poems form is closely linked to its meaning. As to the inspiration behind the poem, Williams has been quoted saying, "["The Red Wheelbarrow"] sprang from affection for an old Negro named Marshall. He had been a fisherman, caught porgies off Gloucester. He used to tell me how he had to work in the cold in freezing weather, standing ankle deep in cracked ice packing down the fish. He said he didn’t feel cold. He never felt cold in his life until just recently. I liked that man, and his son Milton almost as much. In his back yard I saw the red wheelbarrow surrounded by the white chickens. I suppose my affection for the old man somehow got into the writing." This serves to imply that the form of the poem is also its meaning. American political writer and newspaper reporter has been quoted saying, "Williams is saying that perception is necessary to life and that the poem itself can lead to a fuller understanding of one's experience." Thus, by capturing his (Williams') experience with Marshall in poetic form, he could express his affection for Marshall whilst also painting a picture for his audience.

It is true that "so much depends / upon" each line of the poem because at the end of the poem, it is as if Williams has vividly painted a picture the wheelbarrow for the reader and it is that image that actually becomes the poem. One of the outcomes of Modernist poetry was to reduce the human experience to fragments and Williams was able to do just that with his poem. And yet another characteristic of the movement was its tendency to efface individuality and focus on machines or other inanimate objects rather than humans or nature. Thus, the focus of Williams' poem is not Marshall, but instead the red wheelbarrow he saw in his back yard. It is because of these characteristics that William Carlos Williams can be classified as a Modernist poet.