Showing 251 - 260 of 484 annotations in the genre "Poem"

I felt a funeral in my brain

Dickinson, Emily

Last Updated: May-07-2001
Annotated by:
Coulehan, Jack

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

The author feels "a funeral in my brain"--mourners treading, drums beating. They "lift a Box" and tread across her soul with "Boots of Lead" until "a Plank in Reason" breaks.

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Spring and Fall

Hopkins, Gerard Manley

Last Updated: May-07-2001
Annotated by:
Coulehan, Jack

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

The poet addresses Margaret, a young child, who grieves over the falling of leaves at Goldengrove and the turning of seasons. She may not now be able to understand or name the source of her grief. When she gets older, though, and learns more of the world ("such sights colder / By and by . . . "), she will become less sensitive to external things and more aware of the true loss in human life--the loss of oneself. "It is the blight man was born for, / It is Margaret you mourn for."

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When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer

Whitman, Walt

Last Updated: May-07-2001
Annotated by:
Mahl, Evan

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

The narrator recounts a day sitting through an astronomy lecture, listening to the astronomer's dry mathematical descriptions of the stars, and watching their arrangement into charts, columns, and figures. During the lecture he becomes "tired and sick" and wanders off into the "mystical moist night-air" to silently gaze up at the stars.

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The Wound Dresser

Whitman, Walt

Last Updated: May-07-2001
Annotated by:
Coulehan, Jack

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

An old man bending I come upon new faces . . . . The old poet is asked by the young to tell of his experience during the war. In silence and in dreams, he returns to the battlefield: "Bearing the bandages, water and sponge, / Straight and swift to my wounded I go, / Where they lie on the ground after the battle brought in, / Where their priceless blood reddens the grass . . . . "

He describes the rows of the hospital tent, where one man has a bullet through his neck, another an amputated arm. The poet cleans and dresses each wound. Even though he never knew these soldiers before, "Yet I think I could not refuse this moment to die for you, if that would save you." At the end of the poem, he remarks, "Many a soldier’s kiss dwells on these bearded lips."

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Reuben, Reuben

Harper, Michael

Last Updated: May-04-2001
Annotated by:
Shafer, Audrey

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

This poem concerns the poet's painful loss of his infant son: "a brown berry gone / to rot just two days on the branch . . . . " The anguish is raw and fierce. Throughout the poem emotion and music are intertwined. The poet reaches for a way to deal with his grief and finds a "music great enough" to offer solace and understanding: jazz.

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My Papa's Waltz

Roethke, Theodore

Last Updated: Apr-23-2001
Annotated by:
Chen, Irene
Aull, Felice

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

A child recalls waltzing with his drunken father. His papa's breath stank of whiskey, his moves were clumsy and borderline abusive, and the son's love and fear caused him to cling to his father "like death."

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When Death Comes

Oliver, Mary

Last Updated: Apr-23-2001
Annotated by:
Ratzan, Richard M.

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

When Death Comes is a blank verse poem that proclaims the poet's manifesto for life. In defining the moment of death for herself, she is defining how she wants to have lived her life up to that point.

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Miss Rosie

Clifton, Lucille

Last Updated: Apr-17-2001
Annotated by:
Aull, Felice

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry — Secondary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

The narrator observes an old, poor woman "who used to be the best looking gal in Georgia." now in a state of advanced deterioration. The poem expresses the poignancy of watching a decayed life from the perspective of memory; it ends with an affirmation of human dignity.

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The Portrait

Kunitz, Stanley

Last Updated: Apr-17-2001
Annotated by:
Coulehan, Jack

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

The author's father killed himself "in a public park . . . while I was waiting to be born." His mother never forgave his father. When the author found a portrait of him in the attic, his mother "ripped it into shreds / without a single word."

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After Making Love We Hear Footsteps

Kinnell, Galway

Last Updated: Apr-17-2001
Annotated by:
Coulehan, Jack

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

No loud noise will wake the author's son ("For I can snore like a bullhorn . . . "), but the "stifled come-cry" of his parents' making love brings him to their bedroom, where he "flops down between us . . . his face gleaming with satisfaction at being this very child." The parents look at one another and "touch arms across his little, startlingly muscled body."

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