Poem Review: 'The Fish' By Elizabeth Bishop

Poetry can elicit various emotions from the reader, and not everyone will find the same meanings to the poems. For example The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost, The Sky is low, The Clouds are Mean by Emily Dickinson, and Harlem Night Song by Langston Hughes all have different themes. Of the three my favorite is The Road Not Taken because it offers its audience a chance to make life choices.

The one that stands out to me the most is nature, because it talks about leaves, flowers, and sunsets. The cool thing about this poem is that it talks about a life cycle; the lifecycle of a day, a season, or even a lifetime. In nature nothing lasts, but in every ending there's a new beginning.

The poem is starfish by Lorna Dee Cervantes. At first glance this poem looks like it's about starfish but it's not about starfish at all. this poem is about people and how people think they die for a cause. Starfish is the best poem ever.

Although Poems are very similar they are also very different in the same way. Song lyrics are often written to sound good when sung to satisfy the ear, however, Poems are made to look appealing to the eye “If these rhymes look forced in print, they become whimsical in performance. To connect words that do not fully rhyme” (4 Bradley). Poems are also often written with a very deep

There are many different poems in the world some of which you may have not even been aware of. One poem that many people have heard and/or read and have not even realized is, “A Visit from St. Nicholas" or as it is known now as " 'Twas the Night before Christmas.” It comes on every holiday season and is a poem within a song. There are many different songs that are disguised as poems. I will tell you about another poem that has become a song. "A Dream Within a Dream” is a poem written by Edgar Alla (Poe)n Poe and was published in a periodical called The Flag of Our Union on March 31, 1849. It was later recorded as a musical adaption by the band, Elysian Fields in 2000. The poem has a very grim and apocalyptic feel to it as it questions the nature of reality and human existence. According to the poem, “That my days have been a dream / Yet if hope has flown away” (4-5) the author is questioning his own existence and the lack of faith he has in his own life.

I also felt that the poems were appealing and insightful because of the differences they had in common and how the use of different symbolic objects can transmit a similar message. For example, at first, I did not comprehend the connection between the titles

These characteristics combined often leave the reader feeling at a loss and not quite sure what to make of the poem. Nevertheless the message of the poem, for the reader who chooses to pursue it, is quite powerful. E.E. Cummings, the author of this poem, is not simply a poet. He also painted, wrote essays and plays, and taught as a guest professor. A student of Harvard, he in the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps during the first world war, and fell in love with Paris, where his work was located.

The two poems I chose were, This idiot Isaac by Yitzhak Laor, and Ha’Akeda (The Binding of Isaac) by Hanoch Levin. I chose these because they both spoke the most to me in different ways. Although Levin’s was not technically a poem, I believe it is in a way very poetic. The styling of both is extremely dactylic. These poems are very similar but are also different at the same time.

These two poems have opposite attitudes towards America. While “I Hear America Singing” has a very positive look at America, “I, Too” makes it sound like America needs

The poems “America” and “The Tropics of New York” are written by the same author, but have very different tones and attitudes toward America. “America” is about seeking hope and finding strength despite the way his country is treating him. “The Tropics of New York” is about the nostalgia he feels toward the place he lived before, and focuses little on New York, where he is when writing the poem. Both poems focus on the poet’s identity as an American and as a black American.

Cummings is often noted for his use of the lowercase letter "i" in reference to himself, but in this poem he has a different purpose for the uppercase "I". At the beginning of the paper, Cummings says "i sing of Olaf glad and big". This is intentionally structured this way to show that Olaf is the central focus of this poem. By marking himself with a lowercase i, Cummings is making it clear that he is not the central figure in this story - he does not want to draw attention to himself. In contrast, the first time Olaf speaks he says "I will not kiss your fucking flag". Cummings writes Olaf as referring to himself with the capital “I” in order to draw emphasis to the words that he is saying. This would be normal in any other poem, but the juxtaposition

This is a poem of creativity and expressing love to a significant other. Cummings’ is telling his significant other wherever he goes she will always be with him because he is carrying her heart. Creativity is also used in this poem; the first stanza is a large run on sentence. According to Poem Analysis, Cummings’ also gets more creative by not capitalizing any letters in the poem. Readers can assume he did not capitalize any words such as “i” because he wanted to be equal with his lover, capitalizing I might elevate him over his lover. He also uses parenthesis to make the words closer together, symbolizing love and an extremely close bond between two people. For example, “i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)” (poetry

Cummings” pg.13). Cummings continued to publish volumes of poetry at a rate of approximately one every four or five years (“E.E. Cummings pg.14). The last honor involved giving a series of public talks; published as i: six Nonlecture (1953), they provide a succinct and charming summation of his life and personal philosophy. Two years later he received a National Book Award citation for poems 1923-1954, and two years after that he won the prestigious bollingen prize in poetry from Yale University (“E.E. Cummings” pg.15). (In his poetry he often ignored the rules of capitalization and has sometimes been referred to as e.e. Cummings) expanded the boundaries of poetry through typographic and linguistic experimentation (Frazee, “E.E. Cummings). An avoidance of capital letters and creative placement of punctuation soon became his trademarks. His experimental poetry took many forms, some amusing, some satirical, some beautiful, some profound, and some which did not make much sense (Frazee “E.E. Cummings”). Typical stylistic devices in his work include: running words together; scattering punctuation symbols cross the page; subverting the conventions of the English sentence; intentional misspellings and phonetic spellings and the invention of compound words such as “puddle-wonderful” (“E.E. Cummings”). However, this obvious experimentation is often combined with strict formal structures and traditional

Cummings’ impressive education consists of a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree from Harvard, in which he graduated near the top of his class. He submitted many of his poems to the newspaper at Harvard, which sparked his interest towards a career as a poet. When his first poem was published, the publisher left all the letters of E.E. Cummings’ name lowercase. Cummings soon adopted this as his own personal trademark. The style of Cummings’ writing was what made his poems so distinctive. No matter what the topic, he always incorporated a lyrical flow to the poem. Cummings “experimented with typography, slang, dialect, jazz rhymes, and jagged lines” (Anderson et al). By exploring the possibilities of poetry, Cummings was able to create poems that have a beat that corresponds with the tone, mood, and theme of the poem.

The two poems that I chose to compare are “The Chimney Sweeper” poem from both Songs of Innocence and the Songs of Experience.