A Study of Four Classical Chinese Poems

Have you ever felt like you were born to do something? Since I was born I felt like I was born to play baseball, but after that I would love to be a broadcaster. That is why I have chosen to analyze “The Broadcaster’s Poem” by Alden Nowlan. Analyzing a poem is not an easy thing to accomplish for me. As I very rarely analyze anything I read, but you should try everything once.

Richard Blanco is a Cuban- American poet who was given the oppurunity to write an inaugaration poem for Barack Obama's second swearing-in. He wrote a poem titled "One Today" that praised the good and unique things about the United States and also the everyday people who's daily routines help to make America the proud country that it is.

A male would lead his life with the consciousness and recognition that they could “brave the Four Oceans,” or the “wind and dust of a thousand miles” - which are metaphors illustrating the high ranking positions and status they could gain in society, both in the workplace, and in their family. Thus, men were likely predisposed to having greater advantages and benefits throughout their lifetimes, and the poem illustrates that China’s patriarchal society had no faith in and did not value or celebrate the birth of a girl - who would live her life and grow up discordantly to her male

In the poem, A Story, by Li-Young Lee, a father struggles with the thought of his son growing older. The poem clearly shows fears of how he is afraid of their complex relationship. Lee uses many literary devices to convey this complex relationship of the father and the son through point of view and structure.

During the Tang Dynasty, Li Po and Tu Fu have reigned the literary world with their poetry. Their writing techniques and themes in their poetry allow them to stand out amongst other poets at the time. With the unique aspects and images these poets write about, they distinguish the similarities between themselves and contain different intensities in their poetry. While Li Po has a more relaxed tone to his poetry, Tu Fu deals with the serious aspects of life such as war, poverty, and suffering.

The Death of Woman Wang, by Jonathan D. Spence, paints a vivid picture of provincial China in the seventeenth century. Manly the life in the northeastern country of T’an-ch’eng. T’an-ch’eng has been through a lot including: an endless cycle of floods, plagues, crop failures, banditry, and heavy taxation. Chinese society in Confucian terms was a patriarchal society with strict rules of conduct. The role at this time of women, however, has historically been one of repression. The traditional ideal woman was a dependent being whose behavior was governed by the "three obedience’s and four virtues". The three obedience’s were obedience to

In the poem “A Story” by Li-Young Lee, the poet discusses the complex relationship between father and son through the son’s constant wanting for his father to tell him a story. Through the use of differing point of view and meaningful structure, the poet tries to highlight the idea of relationships changing as they mature and with time.

An example of gender inequality is shown in Document 5.1. It states that Confucius rarely talks about women and the reason being that he, Confucius, believes women have limited importance in Chinese society. Document 5.1 also talks about the work of Ban Zhou, a Chinese woman born into an elite family (which shows that China is a very patriarchal society in which Confucianism was abundant through China), and she was given a fine literary education. One of her works, Lessons for Women, talks about how the Chinese society was unfair to women and how the principles of Confucianism affects women's lives and their behavior. She refers to the marriage of man and woman to the Yin and Yang: Yin being the feminine side showing emotion, softness, and weakness and Yang being the masculine side showing power and rationality. She also writes about how childbirth for women was treated poorly. The child would be placed under the bed and given a potsherd, piece of a broken pot, to play with. The placing of the baby girl under the bed indicated that she was lowly and weak and the giving of the potsherd signified house labor and that house labor would be her first duty in the household.

No matter what one 's social status was, if one was born in China pre twentieth century, one would have at least rudimentary knowledge of Confucian gender values, whether through direct study or through traditions that were already soaked in Confucian ideology. In upper-class society, daughters are taught through study of classical Confucian texts and as a result most have a great understanding and following of those values; sons are likewise taught their role and are required to follow it if they desire to move up in society. In the lower social strata, it is a bit more difficult to tell how integrated Confucian gender values are because one can see from accounts by upper class scholars, artists, and during late-Imperial China,

The literary works of a society contain an abundance of information concerning its culture in regards to the time period that they were written in. Many significant documents written in history have had a vital impact on certain civilizations . An example of this is the Xiao Jing, which is a Chinese treatise that throughly explains the concept of filial piety. The Chinese strictly adhered to and lived by the rules set forth in the Xiao Jing, therefore these written set of rules greatly the influenced the way of life, behavior, and beliefs of Chinese people. A major point covered in the Xiao Jing is the role and position women have in Chinese society. Women were considered slaves, and their purposes in life were to serve the men they belonged to. The Good Earth, by Pearl S. Buck is a novel that demonstrates the expectations and roles of women in Chinese culture through the characters O-lan and Lotus as their worths are determined by their abilities to work, bear children, and/or please their men sexually like most women in China.

The genre of Tang poetry, developed during the Tang dynasty in China, can be split into several different styles, however they all share common themes. Tang poems evoke the mood, scene, and spirit of nature. Li Bo, known as one of the most famous Tang poets, added an extra aspect to Tang poetry by embodying Daoist ideals which gives his poem a free, flowing quality. Li Bo also departed from typical Tang poetry diction and rhyme, which had strict tone patterns, and preferred older poetic forms such as songs or ballads. Li Bo’s poem, "Drinking Alone with the Moon", uses tradition Tang poetic elements to influence the reader to bond with nature and lose one’s human ties, a Daoist philosophy.

“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed” declared by an influential leader Martin Luther King Jr. As a soldier againsts unfairness, King strongly states that people should fight for freedom. Driven by human nature, humans are always chasing freedom. In “A Century Later,” the Pakistan-born British poet Imtiaz Dharker uses the poetic devices of symbolism, diction, and allusion to explore how perseverance drives freedom.

Chinese literature, for example, ancient poetry, lyrics, and traditional Chinese stories, reveals many different kinds of good personalities of people. According to a famous ancient Chinese philosopher, Confucius (¿××Ó), men are born to be kind (ÈËÖ®³õ©o ÐÔ±¾ÉÆ). Everyone has his or her own good qualities and sometimes they are just hidden and needed to be explored and discovered.

Chinese literature is an important literary heritages of the world. With an history for more than thousands of years that influences people throughout the century. The Chinese language has retained its remarkable identity in both its spoken and written aspects in spite of generally gradual changes in pronunciation. With those syllabic tones, which produce a different but equally pleasing cadence. This tonal feature of the chinese language has brought about an intimate relationship between poetry and music in China. Chinese poetry were originally sung and played with instruments. Even after the musical scores were lost, the poems were more often chanted. In order to approximate signing than merely read it. Chinese poetry is difficult to understand and interpret, There’s a hindering meaning behind each chinese character. Translation and cultural ignorance is the two of the main hindering of a complete understanding. This paper will compare and contrast these two collections of poetry in order to gain a better understanding of Chinese poetry. The collections of book of odes and the songs of Chu will be extracted and explored. Where there are lots of differences and similarities between western Zhou period and Han/warring state period.

Some of the poems and essays I have read during this class were relatable to me. Being away from college, I have struggled with not being at home. I have become a different person when I am at school, but when I am home, I feel like I am my normal self again. Some of these authors of the poems and essays that I have read throughout this class has struggled with being somewhere where they don’t belong and that they are someone else when they are not home. Unlike the other poems and essays we have read throughout the course. I enjoyed reading the ones about “home” because I actually understood what they are going through and that I can relate. Some of these poems and essays include “Going Home” by Maurice Kenny, Postcard from Kashmir”, by Agha Shahid Ali, “Returning” by Elias Miguel Munoz and “Hometown” by Luis Cabalquinto. All of these poems deal with duality.