Poetry
Poems reward rereading. These posts explore language, structure, imagery, and voice through close reading, always with an eye on how meaning emerges from the encounter between text and reader. Some poems reveal themselves immediately. Others take longer.
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13.06 WB Yeats
Some things are difficult because they are worth wrestling with. Not because someone else has decided they are too complex for you.
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RS Thomas – ‘Cynddylan On A Tractor’
An old Welsh hero on a modern steed, or a traitor to his culture, and a way of life which is struggling to survive the twentieth century? Analysis with clarity. Commentary with heart.
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Christina Rossetti – ‘No, Thank You, John.’
Rossetti employs commas like stun grenades, in the final line of this surprisingly modern poem about unwanted attention.
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Alfred, Lord Tennyson – ‘The Eagle’
Don’t be fooled by this poem’s brevity. Tennyson ‘could polish a pebble until it became a gem’, and that’s what he does here.