Poem Analysis: St. James Cathedral

    Upon reading the poem "Saint Judas" by James Wright, the reader quickly realizes that the poem deals with Judas Iscariot, one of Jesus' twelve apostles.  The author describes Judas as "going out to kill himself,"(line 1) when he sees a man being beaten by "a pack of hoodlums"(2).  Judas quickly runs to help the man, forgetting "how [his] day began"(4).  He leaves his rope behind and, ignoring the soldiers around him, runs to help.  Finally, he remembers the circumstances that surround his suicidal intentions and realizes that he is "banished from heaven"(9) and "without hope"(13)  He runs to the man anyway and holds him "for nothing in [his] arms"(14)

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.

Lorna Dee Cervantes' poem, “Poema para los Californios Muertos” (“Poem for the Dead Californios”), is a commentary on what happened to the original inhabitants of California when California was still Mexico, and an address to the speaker's dead ancestors. Utilizing a unique dynamic, consistently alternating between Spanish and English, Cervantes accurately represents the fear, hatred, and humility experienced by the “Californios” through rhythm, arrangement, tone, and most importantly, through use of language.

This very well-known poem ‘Sanctuary’ was written in the early ‘50s by Judith Wright. Judith was a prolific Australian poet, critic, and short-story writer. She was also an uncompromising environmentalist and social activist campaigning for Aboriginal land rights. She believed that the poet should be concerned with national and social problems. The poem ‘Sanctuary’ was written as a great expression of environmental concern from her. The poem begins with a shocker. Sanctuary, implicitly, is a place of habitation which is safe. However, the first lines of the first stanza, “The road beneath the giant original trees sweeps on and cannot wait” represents a contrast. Here the road is used metaphorically to symbolise today’s modern developments taking place at the cost of all round natural destruction. The poem then unfolds the gloomy mood of the poet in the description of dangerous driving in the night on the road through the Sanctuary to the city: “only the road ahead is true.” In the last line then she is simply sarcastic: “It knows where it is going: we go too.” In fact the road never knows where it is going, but we know where we are going! The poet subtly asks: do we know where we are going by destroying our own habitation, native forests, plants and animals?

During the Victorian Era in 1837 the period that was ruled by Queen Victoria I, women endured many social disadvantages by living in a world entirely dominated by men. Around that time most women had to be innocent, virtuous, dutiful and be ignorant of intellectual opinion. It was also a time associated with prudishness and repression. Their sole window on the world would, of course, be her husband. During this important era, the idea of the “Angel in the House” was developed by Coventry Patmore and used to describe the ideal women who men longed. Throughout this period, women were treated inferior to men and were destined to be the husbands “Angel in the House”.

“I am so perfect so divine so ethereal so surreal. I cannot be comprehended except by permission.”. (Giovanni,1). Nikki Giovanni is an infamous poet who expressed African American excellence in her writing. In 1972, Giovanni issued a collection of poems called My House, which aimed its attention to children. In the collection was a poem named in Ego Tripping illustrating African ancestry and excellence. The poems title figuratively suggests Giovanni tripping over her own extremely large ego. However, the title of the poem does not relate to the poem itself. Moreover, the poem was published in a time where racial tensions inclined after the civil rights movement.

A true libertine of the Restoration Era, John Wilmot, Second Earl of Rochester – better known as his literary persona Rochester – is recognized for his poetry that often breaks barriers and social conventions in obscene ways. One such poem that is particularly explicit, some might even say pornographic, is entitled “A Ramble in St. James’s Park.” Including the sex, alcohol, and debauchery that is so characteristic of Rochester, this poem creates a unique balance between depravity of content and elegance of literary form. While there is much evidence that Rochester represents sex explicitly with obscene and shocking language in “A Ramble in St. James’s Park” for the purpose of satirizing both himself and contemporary love poems, I will argue that in doing so, he also makes a broader statement regarding the tension between the public and private spheres of sexuality, specifically representing female sexuality in the public sphere and erotic female bodies as communal property; finally, the lewd language hints at an anxiety about the power of the feminine over men, thus queering gender roles by becoming the abject feminine.

After reading through Cathedral many times, and highlighting multiple passages, I decided the excerpt above is where I found the most meaning, and a great conclusion for the narrator. The fist line, “It was like nothing else in my life up to now.” is the first time we see the narrator show anything beyond ignorance to the blind; there's a feeling of true understanding. He has been presented as a very close-minded person up until now and it seems like he may have just shown his first form of consideration for something beyond his own realm of beliefs. “But I had my eyes closed. I thought I’d keep them that way for a little longer. I thought it was something I ought to do.” I believe this part shows a major theme of this story, that you don't

In reading, Carver’s, short story, “Cathedral” and Mary Oliver’s, poem, “Singapore”, both writers use imagery as an influential role. As well as symbolism to explore the mystery and possibilities that life holds. In Carver’s, Cathedral”, a narrator, his wife, and her dearest friend Robert comes to visit in their home. Robert (who is blind) wife has just died, and he is visiting hiss’s in-laws as well. Just as in Oliver’s, “Singapore”, a business woman is visiting a restroom room in a Singapore airport. We watch a narrator and a business woman’s chance encounters with strangers change their lives forever. In Carver’s, “Cathedral” and Oliver’s, “Singapore”, their characters reveal the challenges of misconceptions in society, but appropriate thinking brings insight.

The Veldt is about a boy and girl who get spoiled by a house. Soon the mom feels displaced and tells the dad that the house should be shut down for some time. The son disagrees about shutting down the house a lot. When they are about to leave the son and daughter convince the parents to play in the nursery for a while longer. When they are playing the call for the parents and lock them in the nursery with a pride of lions.

To use the name of a Saint generally evokes images of holy men and women of the Catholic church, dressed in flowing robes and surrounded by an oil-painted aura. There are patron saints-those with a sort of specialized divinity-of bakers and bellmakers, orphans and pawnbrokers, soldiers and snake bites, soldiers and writers. Each is a Catholic who lived a life deemed particularly holy and was named, postmortem, by the Pope to sainthood. This construct, I find, is something of an empty set of ideas. The process of canonization is one notorious for its pecuniary nature and tendencies toward corruption. What kind of hope, then, can one possibly be offered by a long-dead person so chosen?

Oh, St. Benedict the hero of the hills. You became a monk because of God’s will. You taught your monks to obey.

A less theoretical definition of poetry is, “putting the best words in the best possible order.” A poet may incorporate the theory as follows. The poet may astutely choose words possibly with a double meaning in order to indirectly convey a message, evoke emotions, or to slander. Then, the poet may unconventionally place such words and phrases perhaps out of expected order for the sake of creating a “word picture,” emphasizing the speaker’s feelings, or offering tangibility to the poem. By implementing this idea onto poetic works, the poet will have auspiciously written a superb poem. This theory may be applied to a few of Catullus’s poems specifically “Carmen 5”, “Carmen 8”, and “Carmen 85.” Catullus’s meticulous choice of words and arrangement highlight the central focus of the poem, obliquely criticize traditional Roman law, manipulate the audience’s attitude, transmit the speaker’s emotions, paint “word pictures,” and offer symbolic meaning consequently producing a successful poem.

If you were to glance over the words you may mistake the sirens of hospitable hosts. But it is the words recited throughout the poem that express the sirens true intent. The sirens vocabulary consists of beautiful lies and unnerving truths. They invite the sailors to their "peaceful home...to be at rest forevermore." When the sirens continue to reference "evermore" it becomes obvious that the sailors are not meant to leave alive. Sailors are continuously told to "look down" as if this is a form of hypnotism. While hypnotized they will come willingly into the sirens death trap. A more modern example of repetition creating an eerie mood would be The Shining. Instead of "rest forevermore" being repeated the movie repeats the phrase "come play

“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.