Poem Analysis : Somewhere I Have Never Travelled '

Authors write poetry for many reasons including to prove a point, share life stories or to just make the reader think. Robert Frost is a great example of a poet influenced by his experiences. These influences show up in most of his poetry, but especially in “The Road Not Taken”, “Stopping by Woods On a Snowy Evening”, and “Birches”. Moving to the New England region the nature and people helped him become a poet of worldly fame.

While the poems he uses in his article may depict skittishness and an elusive voice, many of the poems in The Best of the Best of American Poetry edited by Robert Pinksy represent modern poetry as having a focal point and self-consciousness of narrative. This anthology contains poems from the best of American poetry from recent years that have appeared in magazines and other published articles. Hoagland may think that narrative and continuity are things of the past but this compilation of today’s poetry illustrates a different take on the argument at hand.

The existence of poetry as an artform predates literacy itself. Over the course of history, poetry grew from a verbal form of art, existing mainly in religious hymns, to becoming the universal “language of the heart”. The work of William Shakespeare and Edgar Allen Poe, some of the most notable poets of history, has resonated with generations of Americans. Although they lived in a Pre-industrial world, their work remains powerful because the themes expressed in their artwork can still be applied to modern society. On the contrary, protruding among this group of ancient poets is Robert Frost, whose modern work remains just as powerful, shaping generations through his questions of existence, and depiction of loneliness in an indifferent universe. One of Frost's most celebrated poems: The Road Not Taken, is influential not only in the literary world, but also within American culture. The poems subsequent ripple through American life is analyzed by David Orr In his essay The Most Misread Poem in America. Here, Orr argues that the misread of The Road Not Taken magnifies the underlying issues in society’s understanding of both Frost and poetry as a whole.

Dana Gioia argues in this analytical essay that Robert Frost was a narrative poet who left a modernist narrative legacy by writing ballads, linear narratives, dramatic monologues, and dramatic narratives. She provides a thorough description of Frost’s book North of Boston, and she describes the effects the book has had on the way poetry is now written. Gioia states that Frost’s ballads represent the weakest body of his poetic work. She also considers the language in Frost’s linear narratives as “modern and conversational” (4). Gioia makes visible that Frost typically avoided dramatic monologues. She attributes this to Frost’s tendency to write more modernistic poetry. Dramatic narratives are an important category of Frost’s poetry, and Gioia considers this category the largest and most original. She vividly

e. e. cummings' poem, "next to of course god america i," is a wonderful example of stylistic variation in a text. Once again, we see his skill and mastery at manipulating the English language in order to foreground a thought and turn it into a commentary on society. As with all of cummings works, there is evidence of a multitude of variances and deviances at work, however, I shall concentrate on the area of language variance, more specifically, domain.

Whitman is able to traverse both time and distance and connect with his readers, through the use of simple diction, as so few other poets can. His mastery of verbiage draws readers into the poem, and creates a poetic experience like no other. In “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” Whitman creates a vignette into the Brooklyn of the past, as he connects it to the present, in surprising ways. Omnipresence allows the reader to envision themselves in the settings created and to interpret them into modern language. Whitman connects with his readers in a fascinating and deeply personal ways, by creating a path through the cities of the past to the people of the present.

One iconic story from Greek mythology tells the tale of Sisyphus, disciplined for his self-aggrandizing craftiness and deceitfulness. As a punishment in the Underworld, he must push a boulder up a hill, just to have it roll down the other side. This man’s predicament relates to Jack London’s story To Build a Fire because the man constantly tries to surpass the harshness of his surroundings, only to fail when his life source extinguished. In contrast, Walt Whitman’s poetry has an idealistic view of mankind, representing the hope that Sisyphus could eventually roll the boulder to the top. Accordingly, London views mankind as an inferior pawn of nature, while Whitman praises the common man and his redemptive qualities.

Technically, individuality is at the core of Cummings’ experiments with word coinings, innovations with typography, and punctuation that make Cummings’ literature, especially his poetry look and sound different 5. His extraordinary style of writing, which represents his individuality, is clearly present at “Buffalo Bill’s” and “from spiraling ecstatically this.” To understand his poetry on a deeper level it may be necessary to review each technique separately, plus look at the emotions that appear inside a reader as the poem is read.

A common theme in both Welcome to Nightvale and War of the Worlds is that original assumptions can misleading. War of the Worlds utilises sentence structure to bring the concept that experiencing death and horror will increase the appreciation of life to the forefront of the reader’s mind. Contrastingly the serious elements of death and horror are masked under the aural techniques of Welcome to Nightvale through music. The audience expectations of Welcome to Nightvale are inverted through the weather section in Welcome to Nightvale which is non-diegetic sound because it is a song or instrumental item that alludes to the darker elements of the episode. These elements are contained within the lyrics or tone of the music to explain more about

E.E. Cummings’ 20th century modernist poem, “in Just-” can be viewed as a chaotic poem. Through this reading, the poem depicts the disorder that is often associated with children playing outside after a spring rain. However, while Cummings’ unorthodox approach to poetry may elicit confusion from his readers, this poem is, in fact, pointed and controlled. At first glance, the poem seems to be static because of its repetition and uncontrolled because of its sporadic stanza breaks. However, it is through Cummings’ diction and the structure of the poem itself through which movement becomes apparent in “in Just-”. Through these conventions, Cummings is able to control the time he presents to the reader in his poem, and it is through this control Cummings causes the reader to slow down his/her reading and at other times he rushes the reader through his words. These pauses and hastenings control the characters’ growth throughout the poem and foster the reader’s sense of its movement.

Both Whitman and Dickinson were legendary in the branch of poetry, making their marks by writing plenty of poems, concentrating on important themes such as the developing America/independence, and creating beautiful works of art by exceeding the norms of Iambic Pentameter in conventional poetry. These poets exercised great influence among the coming generations of poets, while also exemplifying their traditional uses of poetic devices. But an important aspect that distinguished the uniqueness of both poets was the tone that was exemplified in their works. As a result, Dickinson and Whitman’s poems incorporated a plethora of symbolic messages that supported their tone and mood of not only their writing, but also what influenced them in

Robert Frost’s poetic techniques serve as his own “momentary stay against confusion,” or as a buffer against mortality and meaninglessness in several different ways; in the next few examples, I intend to prove this. Firstly, however, a little information about Robert Frost and his works must be provided in order to understand some references and information given.

In the words of Anne Bradstreet, “If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.” As writers of the modern era expressed their hardships through poetry, one can only hope that they kept such advice in mind. Through captivating works, poets such as Langston Hughes, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Robert Frost, and E.E. Cummings expressed the struggles of life during the modern era. By examining what these poets have to say about dissatisfaction with life, feelings of inadequacy, and loneliness, it becomes clear that life during the modern era was full of hardships.

A comparison of Sharon Olds’ “Still Life in Landscape” with Linda Pastan’s “I Am Learning to Abandon the World.”

Modernist Poets E.E. Cummings, Wallace Stevens, and T.S. Eliot Change the Face of American Poetry