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Category: Essays: Literary Works with Commentaries

  • Charles Simic’s “My Shoes”

    Image: Charles Simic  https://vuelapalabra.com/charles-simic-el-tiempo-de-los-poetas-menores-se-acerca/ Vuela Palabra
    Image: Charles Simic  – Vuela Palabra

    Charles Simic’s “My Shoes”

    Charles Simic’s “My Shoes” is a festering piece of doggerel, sounding like a postmodern poetry workshop assignment.  We will look at the poem using the medium of that oh-so-serious poetry workshop where trivia and nonsense are certain to prevail.

    Introduction and Text of  “My Shoes”

    Charles Simic’s piece “My Shoes” features five unriming stanzas. This nonsensical piece could be the response to a bizarre assignment in a poetry workshop such as the following:

    Pick some ordinary object, perhaps one you see daily.  Assign to it exclusive characteristics which only the imagination is capable of conjuring. Perform as outlandishly as you can, while staying focused on the object throughout. Choose either formal or free verse or any combination: for example, it may have rime but no regular meter or vise versa, and it may use traditional punctuation or innovative, postmodern style. Concentrate on creating a unified theme above a unifying metaphor.

    It is with these instructions in mind that one might imagine the late poetaster Charles Simic concocted his piece of doggerel titled “My Shoes.”  The postmodern mindset prevails in this piece. (For an overview of the central tenets of postmodernism, please see “Poetry and Politics under the Influence of Postmodernism.”)

    My Shoes

    Shoes, secret face of my inner life:
    Two gaping toothless mouths,
    Two partly decomposed animal skins
    Smelling of mice nests.

    My brother and sister who died at birth
    Continuing their existence in you,
    Guiding my life
    Toward their incomprehensible innocence.

    What use are books to me
    When in you it is possible to read
    The Gospel of my life on earth
    And still beyond, of things to come?

    I want to proclaim the religion
    I have devised for your perfect humility
    And the strange church I am building
    With you as the altar.

    Ascetic and maternal, you endure:
    Kin to oxen, to Saints, to condemned men,
    With your mute patience, forming
    The only true likeness of myself.

    Commentary on “My Shoes”

    Because “My Shoes” by the late poetaster Charles Simic reads like the result of a poetry workshop assignment, I have offered up some likely quips from those workshoppers who are forced to endure the drivel as they study and practice the art of poetry.

    First Stanza:  Choose Your Blues

    Shoes, secret face of my inner life:
    Two gaping toothless mouths,
    Two partly decomposed animal skins
    Smelling of mice nests.

    The speaker of the piece, a workshop participant, chooses to write about his shoes. He sits staring at them and then begins a conversation with them, addressing them directly, “Shoes, secret face of my inner life.”

    The speaker reveals that his inner life is like “[t]wo gaping toothless mouths.” By this revelation, he implies that he recognizes two aspects of his inner self, and they both look dumbstruck.

    The speaker continues to describe his shoes, which by chosen metaphor, describe his inner secret life: the shoes are made of “partly decomposed animal skins / Smelling of mice-nests.”

    The leather shoes comport with the speaker’s inner self as a consumer of animal flesh, it might be inferred, and the unpleasantness asserted by the stench of “mice-nests” alerts the reader to unwholesomeness to come.

    The workshoppers will find this a clever and fresh way of expressing the melancholy and dreary existence of residents of the war-torn 21st century; someone will even suggest that they are now post-postmodern and declare a new literary era for their own verse attempts, but the era’s name will have to remain undeclared for a year or two.

    Second Stanza:  Dead Sibling Shoes

    My brother and sister who died at birth
    Continuing their existence in you,
    Guiding my life
    Toward their incomprehensible innocence.

    In the second stanza, the speaker reports that his siblings, a brother and a sister, both “died at birth.” But oddly, those siblings are still living in the speakers/workshopper’s shoes.  Absurdly, they are even directing the speaker’s life.  And even more absurdly, they are leading his life to “their incomprehensible innocence.”

    It is at this point that the workshop will break into pandemonium over the workability of this second stanza. How the devil can he liken his shoes to his dead brother and sister? How on earth can those dead siblings be guiding his life through his shoes, no less?  And what is so “incomprehensible” about the “innocence” of infants who die at birth?

    However, others will marvel at the creative genius of having shoes likened to dead siblings:  shoes are kind of like brother and sister to each other, so then they could be brother and sister to the wearer.  Plus shoes are your feet when you go somewhere, and when you go somewhere, that place is “innocent” until you get there.

    What a treat it would be to listen in on the discussion this stanza would engender! This speaker is on a dangerous path, no doubt, but will he pull it off?  And we have not even considered what the workshop leader would attribute to the conversation.  The workshop leader is likely a poetaster himself, who publishes drivel in fledging, unread poetry mags.

    The workshop leader may even be an entrepreneur, having started his own little poetry publishing established to offset his own inability to make into the big po-biz mags.  But wait, we are getting too far from our workshop—back to the discussion.

    Third Stanza:  Question

    What use are books to me
    When in you it is possible to read
    The Gospel of my life on earth
    And still beyond, of things to come?

    The speaker poses a question in the third stanza: why do I need to read books when my shoes will tell me everything I need to know about myself and about everything else that I will experience in the future, even “on earth / And still beyond”?

    Defending this kind of question in a poem can be done only by defending the dexterity with which it is expressed. The lines sound fresh, although esoteric; they show a progression from the material to the spiritual, yet they remain stuck in the obtuseness of the content of the question.

    The workshoppers will remain obsessed with their initial reactions.  Again, some will offer light-weight questions and suggestions, while others will fawn and slobber over the “amazing” creativity of the piece.

    Fourth Stanza:   The Shoe Religion

    I want to proclaim the religion
    I have devised for your perfect humility
    And the strange church I am building
    With you as the altar.

    These postmodern workshop participants steeped in religion bashing will have no problem with the fourth stanza. That the speaker will let his shoes be “the altar” in his self-proclaimed/created religion that will be housed in “the strange church [he] is building” will delight and tickle the fancy of all church and religion haters.

    Better to worship shoes than a phantom that would control your sense pleasures and lusts with commanding guidelines for behavior. Only one or two of the workshoppers will shake their heads at this one and probably remain quiet after all the praise and gushing has subsided.

    Fifth Stanza:  The Shoe God

    Ascetic and maternal, you endure:
    Kin to oxen, to Saints, to condemned men,
    With your mute patience, forming
    The only true likeness of myself.

    After the noted religious conversion of the fourth stanza, the majority of the participants will hail the fifth stanza an unparalleled success. Yes, the shoes have now taken on a god-like patina, permanent because “[a]scetic and maternal.”

    It is wise to note that if the shoes had been labeled “paternal,” feminist cries of sexism would have ballooned to the classroom ceiling, despite the fact that this is a man and a man’s shoes.

    But the true value of the playful but completely asinine final line is that it satisfies the postmodern nihilistic psyche, while at the same time capping the mindlessness that has prevailed throughout the piece: it turns out that the man’s motherly shoes are “[t]he only true likeness of [him]self.”  He is not made in the image of God; he is made in the image of his shoes.

    The workshoppers have been had but will probably never know it. And they will go on to write equally dismal drivel, find it difficult to get published, and wonder why.  The more adventurous of spirit will likely establish their own publishing platforms, from which they can preach to their choir.

  • Barbara Guest’s “Red Lilies”

    Image a:  Barbara Guest https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/barbara-guest Poetry Foundation
    Image:  Barbara Guest – Poetry Foundation

    Barbara Guest’s “Red Lilies”

    Barbara Guest holds a prominent place among poetasters such as Robert Bly, Pablo Neruda, Charles Bernstein, Elizabeth Alexander, Richard Blanco, and Margaret Atwood. Her piece “Red Lilies” flames out from the first singed line, snuffing itself out with a pilot light going out on the stove.

    Introduction and Text of “Red Lilies”

    In Barbara Guest’s “Red Lilies,” the speaker creates in eight versagraphs observations that stack up in her mind transformations of frivolity and motion.   The ragged mind that concocts blistering stench pushes the envelope to the edge of oblivion.  Poetry movements rage and range on difference, and sometimes the difference becomes so different that it is a whole other species from its ancestors.

    Nonsense has its place in both the literary and non-literary worlds, but when it masquerades as the genuine, it is time to call it out for what it is.  Beginning poets love to wallow in the abstruse filth of nonsense; it gives them a sense of elitism that high-brow guff may prove the holier-than-thou crowd is with-it, that is, socially and/or culturally up-to-date, in style in fashion.

    What Barbara Guest needed was more critical responses like that of Matthew Cooperman, who remarked in his otherwise fawning essay titled “Envy and Architecture:  On Barbara Guest’s Realisms,”  “we can never quite fall into her worlds as the words get in the way.”

    Let that thought sink in:  if the words in a poem—made of words—”get in the way,” what happens to the poem?  The following piece is an example of what happens.  It ain’t pretty, but it is thoroughly postmodern (see “Poetry and Politics under the Influence of Postmodernism.”)

    Also, Denise Levertov, as a Norton editor, rejected a Guest manuscript, offering an accurate description of Guestian swill, that it displayed “the typical chic flipness of the NY School” and that “often a poem of yours has seemed to me like an unrelated series of poem-seeds, none of them developed.”

    As this surrealistic piece of wonder plays out in its eight raggedy, uneven versagraphs, its postmodern flavor lends itself too easily to satire as well as mockery—a conflated practice that I have employed in this commentary with genuine zeal and unrestrained alacrity.

    Red Lilies

    Someone has remembered to dry the dishes;
    they have taken the accident out of the stove.
    Afterward lilies for supper; there
    the lines in front of the window
    are rubbed on the table of stone

    The paper flies up
    then down as the wind
    repeats. repeats its birdsong.

    Those arms under the pillow
    the burrowing arms they cleave
    as night as the tug kneads water
    calling themselves branches

    The tree is you
    the blanket is what warms it
    snow erupts from thistle;
    the snow pours out of you.

    A cold hand on the dishes
    placing a saucer inside

    her who undressed for supper
    gliding that hair to the snow

    The pilot light
    went out on the stove

    The paper folded like a napkin
    other wings flew into the stone.

    “Red Lilies” at 4:06

    Commentary on “Red Lilies”

    You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t know if he really likes you.

    First Versagraph:  Fried, Scrambled, or Otherwise

    Someone has remembered to dry the dishes;
    they have taken the accident out of the stove.
    Afterward lilies for supper; there
    the lines in front of the window
    are rubbed on the table of stone

    The speaker observes that the dishes have been dried and infers that someone must have remembered to dry them; she also observes that the accident has been removed from the stove. The speaker then invokes a brief reference to the poem’s name-sake, “Afterward lilies for supper. “

    Now that the accident has been taken out of the stove, the cook is free to prepare the lilies in any style the eaters will like, whether scrambled, fried, or any other number of ways including completely raw.   She then notes that “rubbed on the table of stone” are “the lines in front of the window.” She remains emotionless regarding the rubbing of the stone table, as well as caring little about the lines in front of the window.

    Second Versagraph:   Birds of a Paper

    The paper flies up
    then down as the wind
    repeats. repeats its birdsong.

    The speaker then diverts her attention from the kitchen; some papers outside flying about have caught her eye. She must report on this momentous act. The wind is causing the paper to “fl[y] up,” and it keeps it up until the speaker’s mind becomes bored with the notice and decides that instead of mere paper, the wind is “repeat[ing] its birdsong.”

    One might have thought that actually birds repeated their songs; however, this speaker has corrected that notion: it is the wind, not the birds, that repeats the birdsongs.  This notion plays out in utter sincerity while the speaker takes further mental notes.

    Third Versagraph:   Arms Cleaving to the Night

    Those arms under the pillow
    the burrowing arms they cleave
    as night as the tug kneads water
    calling themselves branches

    Another mental jog lands the speaker’s attention on a memory of lying in bed with her arms nestled under the pillow. But these arms are creative; they “cleave / as night” would as it engulfs a boat in water, and these arms are so clever that they are calling themselves branches. The similarity between human arms and branches has not escaped the sharp eye of this speaker.

    The world becomes a murky tangle of limbs and water, songs on the wind still spilling into the open air of night, when all things may look silvery and rested on the brim of consciousness.

    Fourth Versagraph:    Oh, So Clever!  Tree Metaphor

    The tree is you
    the blanket is what warms it
    snow erupts from thistle;
    the snow pours out of you.

    Remaining with the clever tree metaphor, the speaker blurts out, addressing herself employing the “self-reflexive you,” “The tree is you.” She then decides that if the tree is herself, then the blanket warms it.  The blanket warms her when she is a human body, so now the blanket also warms her as she morphs into a metaphorical tree.

    Then by fantastic luck, “snow erupts from thistle.”  The speaker has landed full throttle in a tinseled universe, and she could not be more elated, because now “the snow pours out of you.” She becomes like thistle, enjoyable bristling with natural verve.

    Fifth Versagraph:   A Saucer of Breathlessness

    A cold hand on the dishes
    placing a saucer inside

    The speaker then notices surrealistically that some cold hand now is in the process of placing a saucer somewhere inside something. She has not, at this point, determined where the saucer is going to be relocated, but she seems breathless with anticipation.

    As she wonders, at this point, what difference it is going to make, she gleams out of ethereal wonder that a hand so cold could ever place itself on dishes, as she accepts each bit of jetsam flowing into her brain.  Flotsam may hang or loom as traces of bilge hurry by.

    Sixth Versagraph:   The Naked, Clintonian Truth

    her who undressed for supper
    gliding that hair to the snow

    Surprisingly, miraculously, and yet again surrealistically, the cold hand has placed the saucer inside the speaker. She did not see this coming; thus she placed the act in the following versagraph.

    She had “undressed for supper” and has been “gliding that hair to the snow.” Neither the speaker nor the reader could not have wished for better news, but then, she is sure that she, like Hillary Clinton, regarding telling the truth, said, “I’ve always tried to. Always. Always..”

    For this speaker, however, the naked truth is like finishing off supper in her birthday suit. Sprites and candles may glide more easily but hair that glides to the snow is better than yesterday stew.

    Seventh Versagraph:  Oh, the Inhumanity

    The pilot light
    went out on the stove

    Unceremoniously, the stove, despite having the accident removed from it or maybe because of the accident itself, suffers the indignity of having its pilot light extinguished. This occurrence could be either advantageous if the gas somehow ceases to escape, or disastrous, depending on the proximity of a lighted match.

    The speaker becomes agitated but continues to report only what she truly understands.  If moss grows on the north side, she is certain she did not observe the green stuff on another side.

    Eight Versagraph:  Return of the  Wind-Throttled Paper

    The paper folded like a napkin
    other wings flew into the stone.

    But the speaker refuses to anticipate any likelihood of an explosion, as her mind once again returns to the wind- throttled paper that caught her eye a few versagraphs back; the paper has miraculously folded like a napkin. And the stone table is now being bombarded by other wings.

    Likely, some wind giant with hands like cork-screws has fashioned that bleak napkin.  Otherwise, the speaker seems certain that when “other wings” fly into stone, they will not only break but become the bones of cherubim stunted on the horizon but chilling in the pockets of red lilies.

    https://www.epicgardening.com/red-lily-varieties/
    Image: Red Lily – Epic Gardening

    Life Sketch of Barbara Guest

    Barbara Ann Pinson was born on September 6, 1920, in Wilmington, North Carolina [1].

    She married Stephen Guest, her second husband, in 1948, but they divorced in 1954.  She married and divorced twice, with her third husband leaving her a widow.  She held on to the second husband’s name, likely because that is name, under which she had become well known.

    Guest graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1943.  Guest’s poetry career earned her inclusion in the New York School of writers, along with the ilk of James Schuyler, Kenneth Koch, John Asbury, and Frank O’Hara [2]. This group of writers had come to despise the confessional poetry of Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and Robert Lowell.

    The New York School opted to take their inspiration from painters such as Larry Rivers, Jackson Pollock, and Willem de Kooning. The more abstract, even the more nonsensical the work, the more this group salivated over the prospects.

    Deeming poetry not the place for ideas, they instead focused on individual words instead of meaningful groups of words. Unlike William Carlos Williams, who concocted the notion, “No ideas but in things,” this group believed no ideas ever, no images, just language [3].

    Guest’s illustrious career includes the winning of several prestigious awards [4]: the Longwood Award, the Robert Frost Medal for Lifetime Achievement, and the San Francisco State Award for Poetry. She also benefited from a grant, offered by the National Endowment for the Arts.

    About Barbara Guest’s poetry, Matthew Cooperman writes, “. . . we can never quite fall into her worlds as the words get in the way” [5].  In an otherwise piece of flattery, this gem is quite a testimonial for one whose words were the only focus—like saying  of Vincent van Gogh, ”. . . we can never quite fall into his worlds as the paint gets in the way.”

    Barbara Guest died on February 15, 2006, in Berkeley, California [6].

    Sources

    [1]  Editors.  “Barbara Guest.”  Library of Congress.  Accessed October 20, 2026.
    [2]  Emma Baldwin.  “New York School of Poets.”  Poem Analysis.  Accessed October 20, 2026.
    [3]  Nasrullah Mambro. “The New York School of Poetry.”  Literary Theory and Criticism. July 10, 2020.
    [4]  Curators.  “Barbara Guest.”  Prabook.  Accessed October 20, 2026.
    [5]  Matthew Cooperman.  “Envy and Architecture: On Barbara Guest’s Realisms.”  Jacket 2.  2008.
    [6]  Curators.  “Barbara Guest Obituary.”  Legacy.  Accessed October 20, 2026.

    Image b: Barbara Guest https://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Guest.php PennSound
    Image: Barbara Guest – PennSound

  • Charles Bernstein’s  “The Ballad of the Girly Man”

    Image a:  Charles Bernstein  https://www.english.upenn.edu/people/charles-bernstein University of Pennsylvania School of Arts and Sciences
    Image:  Charles Bernstein  https://www.english.upenn.edu/people/charles-bernstein University of Pennsylvania School of Arts and Sciences

    Charles Bernstein’s  “The Ballad of the Girly Man”

    Poetaster Charles Bernstein calls for poems that are “bad for you.”  He has written “The Ballad of the Girly Man,” a fine example of poem that is definitely not good for you and is terrible for the world of literary art.

    Introduction and Text of “The Ballad of the Girly Man”

    Charles Bernstein’s essay, “Against National Poetry Month As Such” [1],  castigates the Academy of American Poets’ attempt to enhance the reputation of poetry annually every April.  He crows:  “The kind of poetry I want is not a happy art with uplifting messages and easy to understand emotions.  I want a poetry that’s bad for you.”

    The piece “The Ballad of the Girly Man“ offers a stunning example of a poem that is, indeed, “bad for you.”  The piece is merely political propaganda masquerading as a poem.   “The Ballad of the Girly Man” is little more than a piece of doggerel which could certainly tickle the fancy of certain politicos who would be inspired as it feeds their utter ignorance, encouraging their emotion-filled reactions to world events of which they have little understanding.

    This piece of doggerel “The Ballad of the Girly Man” appears as the final offering in Bernstein’s collection, titled eponymously, Girly Man [2] .  Vacuous poetry begets vacuous literary criticism; thus, in her response to the radical Islamist attacks of 9/11/01, Professor Eun-Gwi Chung offers her thoughts on Bernstein’s 30th published collection.

    The following from her diatribe “‘The Falling Man’ to Girly Man: American Poetry after 9/11 and the Logic of Mourning” [3] trivializes the genuine emotion of mourning while revealing herself as a mere sycophant of the father of the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry movement:

    Bernstein’s prompt responses to what happened to America are meaningful not as therapy or commemoration, but as the song of an ethical, political troubadour questioning the logic of mourning. As a form of manipulating and re-conceptualizing American political discourse, his poetry constructs an alternate path where a new real is explored.

    The notion of “questioning the logic of mourning” spews out a base hatred of humanity.  Each human being’s mourning is off limits to critics.  Those who impose a “logic” onto a human emotion can be called none other than tyrannical thought police.  Thus, there is nothing “ethical” about a buffoonish poetaster who would attempt to make such out-of-bounds judgments about his fellow human beings.

    Chung’s shameful critical analysis perfectly reveals, however, the empty rhetoric of the poem; thus, having provided that service, her critical effort might legitimately be considered a resounding success.

    The Ballad of the Girly Man

    —For Felix


    The truth is hidden in a veil of tears
    The scabs of the mourners grow thick with fear

    A democracy once proposed
    Is slimmed and grimed again
    By men with brute design
    Who prefer hate to rime

    Complexity’s a four-letter word
    For those who count by nots and haves
    Who revile the facts of Darwin
    To worship the truth according to Halliburton

    The truth is hidden in a veil of tears
    The scabs of the mourners grow thick with fear

    Thugs from hell have taken freedom’s store
    The rich get richer, the poor die quicker
    & the only god that sanctions that
    Is no god at all but rhetorical crap

    So be a girly man
    & take a gurly stand
    Sing a gurly song
    & dance with a girly sarong

    Poetry will never win the war on terror
    But neither will error abetted by error

    We girly men are not afraid
    Of uncertainty or reason or interdependence
    We think before we fight, then think some more
    Proclaim our faith in listening, in art, in compromise

    So be a girly man
    & sing this gurly song
    Sissies & proud
    That we would never lie our way to war

    The girly men killed christ
    So the platinum DVD says
    The Jews & blacks & gays
    Are still standing in the way

    We’re sorry we killed your god
    A long, long time ago
    But each dead solider in Iraq
    Kills the god inside, the god that’s still not dead.

    The truth is hidden in a veil of tears
    The scabs of the mourners grow thick with fear


    So be a girly man
    & sing a gurly song
    Take a gurly stand
    & dance with a girly sarong

    Thugs from hell have taken freedom’s store
    The rich get richer, the poor die quicker
    & the only god that sanctions that
    Is no god at all but rhetorical crap

    So be a girly man
    & sing this gurly song
    Sissies & proud
    That we would never lie our way to war

    The scabs of the mourners grow thick with fear
    The truth is hidden in a veil of tears

    Commentary on “The Ballad of the Girly Man”

    Originally in this piece of doggerel, the Schwarzeneggerian term, “girlie,” is spelled three different ways:  girlie, girly, and gurly.  Kudos that the poet or editor or whoever managed to pare down those spellings to two for his published collection titled, Girly Man.

    This original oversight, however, signaled a confused mind, for there is no literary merit in three different spellings of this word that features importantly in the title and the rest of the work, in which it becomes a mantra.

    The spelling of the term used by the SNL skitsters, Hans and Franz, and then by Schwarzenegger was spelled, “girlie.”  Bernstein appears to prefer “girly” and “gurly”—so  those two spellings grace his collection title and poem in that collection.

    Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “Girlie-Men”

    A Saturday Night Live skit featuring comedians Dana Carvey and Kevin Nealon dramatizes the  Arnold Schwarzeneggeresque type body builders, Hans and Franz. Mimicking Schwarzenegger’s accent [4], they label folks without their muscular frame, “girlie men.” 

    Governor Schwarzenegger referred to the SNL skit by humorously labeling the members of the California congress [5] “girlie-men” because they would not pass his budget.

    Bernstein’s employment of the term, “girly man” remains flimsy and contrived, without literary value. The propagandistic lines,  “A democracy once proposed / Is slimed and grimed again / By men with brute design / Who prefer hate to rime,” fall in line with such slogans like “Bush lied, people died.”  Those who have continued to accept as truth that particular slogan have remained blissfully  unaware of the multiple sources that demonstrate that President George W. Bush did not lie [6].

    War Propaganda

    The poem is taking aim at the Iraq War, of course, not simply the California congress’s failure to pass the budget of the governor.  However, the poem’s speaker is employing the term “girly man” to ironically single out the correct thinkers—those of the Michael Moore ilk that yammer propaganda such as “Complexity’s a four-letter word / For those who count by nots and haves / Who revile the facts of Darwin / To worship the truth according to Halliburton.” 

    One might wonder if Bernstein, like the hypocritical Michael Moore and his ilk, may be benefitting from ownership of some stock [7] from the evil Halliburton, even as they all denigrate the company’s reputation.

    For this propagandistic exercise, the lines, “The truth is hidden in a veil of tears / The scabs of the mourners grow thick with fear,” becomes a mantra of sorts.  This feckless couplet repeats itself three times, and then again a fourth time in reversed lines, as it concludes the piece. Capitalism, of course, is a culprit for these miscreants: “Thugs from hell have taken freedom’s store / The rich get richer, the poor die quicker.”  These lines also repeat, mantra-like.

    Ultimately, the girly men are far superior to those who are not girly men:  “We girly men are not afraid / Of uncertainty or reason or interdependence / We think before we fight, then think some more / Proclaim our faith in listening, in art, in compromise.” Sounds quite lovely though utterly naïve in facing radical Islamic jihadis:  After all that listening, thinking, compromising, and making art, you will be just as dead after your recalcitrant jihadis have slit your throat or dazzled you with bullets.

    A Class-Baiting Ditty

    The poem features a little ditty coupled with the mantras of ad hominem attacks and class-baiting: “So be a girly man / & sing a gurly song / Take a gurly stand / & dance with a girly sarong.”  Note that “girly” becomes “gurly” in the second and third line, yet it remains a mystery what the altered spelling indicates.  A sarong is a garment that in many parts [8] of the world both men and women wear; therefore, it remains unclear why wearing a sarong is a “girly” thing to do.

    The purpose of this piece of doggerel soon becomes laughably apparent.  It offers a sense of self-righteousness to the so-called superior “girlie-men”—who not really girlie-men at all but are, in fact, the real men.  These real men, whom the Republican governor would label “girlie-men,” are far and away superior to those who follow a different political religion, according to this poetaster.

    However, in the end, turning propaganda on its head will have to wait for a different “bad for you” piece.  With ideological bullet points, the yapping remains ungrounded in historical reality.  The blind political stance without any reference to actual world events becomes yet another victim of disingenuousness and hasty posturing.

    A man of this word, however, Bernstein has foisted upon the world of poetry a poem that is, without doubt, “bad (for you).”  At least, he has been consistent and true to his officious, pandering claim, yet without any genuine sense of purpose.

    Sources

    [1]  Charles Bernstein. “Against National Poetry Month As Such.”  My Way: Speeches and Poems. University of Chicago Press. 1999.
    [2] – – – . Girly Man.  University of Chicago Press.  September 15, 2006.
    [3]   Eun-Gwi Chung.  “‘The Falling Man’ to Girly Man: American Poetry after 9/11 and the Logic of Mourning.” s-space. PDF.  Accessed March 9, 2024.
    [4] Peter Nicholas.  “Schwarzenegger deems opponents ‘girlie-men’ .”  SFGate.  July 18, 2004.
    [5]  JesseAndRachel. “Don’t Be Economic Girlie Men!”  YouTube.  Accessed October 19, 2026..
    [6]  Arthur Christopher Shaper.  “George W. Bush: Vindicated.”  Canada Free Press.  August 9, 2014.
    [7]  Editors. “Michael Moore Owned Halliburton, Defense Stocks”  Newsmax Media.  November 3, 2005.
    [8] Denise So and Steph P. Sison.  “Here’s Proof That Sarongs Are a Summer Closet Must-Have.”  Preview. April 8, 2019.

  • Adrienne Rich’s “Diving into the Wreck”

    Image a: Adrienne Rich  https://www.arche-editeur.com/auteur/rich-adrienne-4071 L’Arche
    Image: Adrienne Rich  – L’Arche

    Adrienne Rich’s “Diving into the Wreck”

    Adrienne Rich’s “Diving into the Wreck” dramatizes the speaker’s metaphorical journey to explore the nature of a contrived, non-existent catastrophe. The speaker begins with a major historical and literary error: that there exists only one book of myths.

    Introduction and Text of “Diving into the Wreck”

    Adrienne Rich’s speaker in “Diving into the Wreck” claims that she has read “the book of myths.”  Note that by stating she has read “the book of myths,” she is implying that there is only one such book.

    This unfortunate beginning leaves the speaker’s thought processes nowhere to go to explore truth. By beginning with this claim, the speaker promises to take her listeners into sheer fantasy.

    While the speaker creates a fascinating, metaphorical undersea diving expedition, she also creates an abysmally inaccurate revisionist history.  Her so-called “wreck” becomes nothing but a straw man, built from the beginning claim of her having read “the book of myths.”

    Diving into the Wreck

    First having read the book of myths,
    and loaded the camera,
    and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
    I put on
    the body-armor of black rubber
    the absurd flippers
    the grave and awkward mask.
    I am having to do this
    not like Cousteau with his
    assiduous team
    aboard the sun-flooded schooner
    but here alone.

    There is a ladder.
    The ladder is always there
    hanging innocently
    close to the side of the schooner.
    We know what it is for,
    we who have used it.
    Otherwise
    it is a piece of maritime floss
    some sundry equipment.

    I go down.
    Rung after rung and still
    the oxygen immerses me
    the blue light
    the clear atoms
    of our human air.
    I go down.
    My flippers cripple me,
    I crawl like an insect down the ladder
    and there is no one
    to tell me when the ocean
    will begin.

    First the air is blue and then
    it is bluer and then green and then
    black I am blacking out and yet
    my mask is powerful
    it pumps my blood with power
    the sea is another story
    the sea is not a question of power
    I have to learn alone
    to turn my body without force
    in the deep element.

    And now: it is easy to forget
    what I came for
    among so many who have always
    lived here
    swaying their crenellated fans
    between the reefs
    and besides
    you breathe differently down here.

    I came to explore the wreck.
    The words are purposes.
    The words are maps.
    I came to see the damage that was done
    and the treasures that prevail.
    I stroke the beam of my lamp
    slowly along the flank
    of something more permanent
    than fish or weed

    the thing I came for:
    the wreck and not the story of the wreck
    the thing itself and not the myth
    the drowned face always staring
    toward the sun
    the evidence of damages
    worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty
    the ribs of the disaster
    curving their assertion
    among the tentative haunters.

    This is the place.
    And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
    streams black, the merman in his armored body.
    We circle silently
    about the wreck
    we dive into the hold.
    I am she: I am he

    whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
    whose breasts still bear the stress
    whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
    obscurely inside barrels
    half-wedged and left to rot
    we are the half-destroyed instruments
    that once held to a course
    the water-eaten log
    the fouled compass

    We are, I am, you are
    by cowardice or courage
    the one who find our way
    back to this scene
    carrying a knife, a camera
    a book of myths
    in which
    our names do not appear.

    “There isn’t a single ‘book of myths’.”
             —Academy of American Poets

    Commentary on “Diving into the Wreck”

    Adrienne Rich did compose one poem that stands the test of time as a truly successful piece; that poem is “Living in Sin.”   Unfortunately, “Diving into he Wreck,” a poem much more widely anthologized than Rich’s fine, successful “Living in Sin,” does not attain the literary value of Rich’s one masterpiece.

    First Movement:  A Single Book of Myths?

    First having read the book of myths,
    and loaded the camera,
    and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
    I put on
    the body-armor of black rubber
    the absurd flippers
    the grave and awkward mask.
    I am having to do this
    not like Cousteau with his
    assiduous team
    aboard the sun-flooded schooner
    but here alone.

    Adrienne Rich’s speaker in “Diving into the Wreck” claims that she has read “the book of myths,” implying that there in only one “book of myths.”  The speaker does not identify any specific book of myths she had read; this omission is  significant.

    There are, in fact, many books of myths—Hindu, Buddhist, Judaic, Christian, Islamic, ancient Greek and Roman, and these identify only the five major religions and the two ancient cultural nationalities that have influenced Western civilization from its beginning through their books of myths.

    But this speaker is not addressing reality or anything that is actually within the bounds of the historical record; she is reporting from an adolescent hatred of her culture, supposedly struggling against an oppression that she has to create as a straw man in order to burn down.

    Thus this unnamed “book of myths” springs from the speaker’s imagination that has written a whole tome of nonsense targeting a phantom that her movement labels “The Patriarchy.”  Therefore anything written, especially by men, and more specifically by white men, is contained in this speaker’s concocted fantasy called (according to her truth) “the book of myths.”

    The speaker begins her journey to explore the metaphoric “wreck”  armed with the information that she has gathered from reading this non-existent but concocted book of myths.

    She takes a camera and a sharp knife with her. She dresses like a scuba-diver in “body-armor of black rubber / the absurd flipper / the grave and awkward mask.”  She does not explain why the “flipper” is “absurd,” or what is “grave and awkward” about the “mask.”

    Lest her listeners think she is really going on a Cousteau-like diving expedition, she disabuses them of that notion—she will not be aboard “the sun-flooded schooner” with “an assiduous team”; she will be here alone. She will remain in her library/study while examining further this unidentified, fictitious “book of myths.”

    The speaker creates an extended metaphor likening her scrutiny of the book of myths to diving down to a shipwreck. She compares herself to the divers who plunge deep below the Atlantic to gather information about the Titanic. 

    The speaker, therefore, has made a judgment about that book of myths; it is like a giant ocean liner that hit an iceberg and sank into the sea, and now this brave speaker will determine the cause and possibly salvage whatever she can from the wreck.

    Second Movement:  Guilty Ladders

    There is a ladder.
    The ladder is always there
    hanging innocently
    close to the side of the schooner.
    We know what it is for,
    we who have used it.
    Otherwise
    it is a piece of maritime floss
    some sundry equipment.

    The speaker notes the ladder, which she uses to descend into the water. The ladder “is always there / hanging innocently.” The comic effect jars the senses: what would a guilty ladder do? Hang guiltily, one supposes.

    Also rather comical, as well as substance-free, is the claim, “We know what it is for / we who have used it.” Whether they have used it or not, most conscious individuals over the age of two know what a ladder is for.

    The absurdities are beginning to accrue, damaging the credibility of this speaker’s ability to understand even the simplest of concepts, especially her remark about the ladder, which, if it were not used, would be merely, “a piece of maritime floss / some sundry equipment.” Of course, any equipment that has no specific use would be considered superfluous.

    Third Movement:    Descending into the Unknown

    I go down.
    Rung after rung and still
    the oxygen immerses me
    the blue light
    the clear atoms
    of our human air.
    I go down.
    My flippers cripple me,
    I crawl like an insect down the ladder
    and there is no one
    to tell me when the ocean
    will begin.

    The speaker descends the ladder into the ocean and cannot tell “when the ocean / will begin.” She reports that her flippers cripple her, and she crawls like an insect down the ladder. She seems to have difficulty approaching that “book of myths.”

    Fourth Movement:  An Ocean Filled with Air

    First the air is blue and then
    it is bluer and then green and then
    black I am blacking out and yet
    my mask is powerful
    it pumps my blood with power
    the sea is another story
    the sea is not a question of power
    I have to learn alone
    to turn my body without force
    in the deep element.

    The speaker describes the color of the air, seeming to have forgotten that her metaphor created a diver entering the ocean: there would be no air in the ocean water. She claims she is “blacking out,” but she also claims that her mask is powerful.

    The mask does a remarkable thing: “it pumps my blood with power.”   This claim creates another absurdity; the mask protects the diver from drowning by covering her nose and furnishing oxygen; it has nothing to do with directly pumping blood.

    Alone, she has to learn to how turn her body in the water.  She is creating image upon image, claim upon claim that offer nothing of substance.  She seems to imply that someone should have been there to help her learn to “turn [her] body without force”—but never reveals who or why such assistance would be expected or even necessary.

    Fifth Movement:  Ocean Breathing Is Surprisingly Different

    And now: it is easy to forget
    what I came for
    among so many who have always
    lived here
    swaying their crenellated fans
    between the reefs
    and besides
    you breathe differently down here.

    The speaker now reports that she almost forgets why she came, as she observes the sea creatures that are used to their habitat, and that “you breathe differently down here”—another superfluous remark, given the fact that she would be equipped with diving gear supplying the oxygen—obviously breathing with diving equipment would cause one to “breathe differently.”

    When this speaker is not making blatantly false statements, she simply offers up simplistic remarks whose substance remains lacking, because the information they present is obvious, that is, already known.

    Sixth Movement:  Words, Maps, Purpose

    I came to explore the wreck.
    The words are purposes.
    The words are maps.
    I came to see the damage that was done
    and the treasures that prevail.
    I stroke the beam of my lamp
    slowly along the flank
    of something more permanent
    than fish or weed

    In a failed attempt to bring the metaphor together, the speaker baldly states what the reader has known all along, “I came to explore the wreck.” She adds, “The words are purposes. / The words are maps.”

    Again, she adds text without any new information to further her narrative. All agree that words have purpose and are similar to maps.  The speaker adds, “I came to see the damage that was done / and the treasures that prevail.” Again, nothing new here, that is what all divers who explore shipwrecks do.

    Seventh Movement:  Circles of Unreason

    the thing I came for:
    the wreck and not the story of the wreck
    the thing itself and not the myth
    the drowned face always staring
    toward the sun
    the evidence of damages
    worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty
    the ribs of the disaster
    curving their assertion
    among the tentative haunters.

    The speaker then emphasizes that she came for the wreck itself “not the story of the wreck.” This metaphorically presents a very huge problem. Remembering that the “wreck” is the “book of myths.”

    “Myths” are stories, and although she now claims she is really after the thing itself and not the myth, she has no way of securing that thing, because it exists only in the “book of myths.”

    The speaker is now asking the reader to accept only her interpretation of the myths and not what others have found. She is implying that only she has truth of the thing; she can take the myth and make it not be a myth.

    Eighth Movement:  Because the Speaker Says So

    This is the place.
    And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
    streams black, the merman in his armored body.
    We circle silently
    about the wreck
    we dive into the hold.
    I am she: I am he

    In order to turn the wreck/myth into “the thing,” the speaker creates a drama of a mermaid and merman who “circle silently / about the wreck / we dive into the hold. / I am she: I am he.”

    The speaker is now transforming herself from a mere reader/diver into an androgynous creature that has the delicious ability to report about the wreck merely because the speaker says so.

    Ninth Movement:  A Question of Death

    whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
    whose breasts still bear the stress
    whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
    obscurely inside barrels
    half-wedged and left to rot
    we are the half-destroyed instruments
    that once held to a course
    the water-eaten log
    the fouled compass

    This creature is actually dead, displaying a “drowned face [that] sleeps with open eyes.” The open eyes, unfortunately, cannot see any better than closed eyes when they are situated in the head of a corpse. 

    But then again, maybe they are not really dead, for she claims, “we are the half-destroyed instruments that once worked” but because of that iceberg now lie ruined beneath the waves.

    Tenth Movement:   Sculpting from Misinformed Fancy

    We are, I am, you are
    by cowardice or courage
    the one who find our way
    back to this scene
    carrying a knife, a camera
    a book of myths
    in which
    our names do not appear.

    Apparently having grown tired of the water drama, the speaker sheds the scuba-gear and rouses up a universal, all-encompassing, profound statement: that “book of myths” does not contain our names. Whose names?  Surely, she means to call attention to all of those women who have been left out of history.  But this claim is simply not true.

    In fact, there are many “books of myths” that contain the names and activities of many women throughout history, for example Greek mythology [1], Hindu [2], Norse [3], and Eqyptian [4].  According to Joanna Gillan, writing in “Ten Powerful and Fearsome Women of the Ancient World” [5],

    There have been female figures throughout history who held powerful roles or played significantly influential parts too. Throughout history there have been many powerful women who have led nations or guided armies into war, renowned not only as fearsome fighters, but also as cunning strategists and inspirational leaders. There were others who made a name for themselves in a domain traditionally held by men and whose stories, carried forward over the centuries, continue to be told today.

    The speaker has made the disingenuous claim that women have been omitted from mythological and historical narratives, based on her own fabricated notion of one non-existent book of myths.

    But that notion of women being omitted from history remains a disingenuous talking point in the feminist movement.  And it is one talking point that can be easily refuted with a little common sense and some serious research.

    Sources

    [1] Mostafa Abo El Makarem.  “The Role Of Women In The Greek Mythology.” Promediaz.  Updated August 5, 2021.
    [2] Jay Varma. “Panchakanya: Five Powerful Women From The Epics.” Sandeep & Gitanjali Maini Foundation. Accessed March 4, 2024.
    [3] Karl Andersson.  “21 Norse Goddesses and Their Influence, Powers & Myths.” Nordic Perspective.  January 25, 2023.
    [4]  Joshua J. Mark.  “The Women of Ancient Egypt.” World History Encyclopedia.  February 28, 2024.
    [5] Joanna Gillan.  “Ten Powerful and Fearsome Women of the Ancient World.”  Ancient Origins.  Updated August 1, 2018.

    Image b: Adrienne Rich - https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_NPG.2013.55 National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian
    Image: Adrienne Rich – National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian

    Commentaries on Other Adrienne Rich Poems

    • Adrienne Rich’s “Living in Sin” Adrienne Rich’s poem “Living in Sin” is one of American literature’s finest pieces in free verse.  Its theme of disillusionment plays out in colorful sense imagery.  This little drama remains one of this poet’s best poetic efforts.
    • Adrienne Rich’s “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers”  Structured in three awkward movements, Adrienne Rich’s “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers” explores a theme that feminists [1] employ to assert concocted damage done to women by “patriarchal” marriage.

  • Adrienne Rich’s “Living in Sin”

    Image: Adrienne Rich http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/adrienne-rich Photo by Neal Boenzi/New York Times Co./Getty Images
    Image: Adrienne Rich http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/adrienne-rich Photo by Neal Boenzi/New York Times Co./Getty Images

    Image: Adrienne Rich http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/adrienne-rich Photo by Neal Boenzi/New York Times Co./Getty Images

    Adrienne Rich’s “Living in Sin”

    Adrienne Rich’s “Living in Sin” is one of American literature’s finest poems in free verse.  Its theme of disillusionment plays out in colorful sense imagery.  This little drama remains one of this poet’s best efforts.

    Introduction with Text of “Living in Sin”

    Adrienne Rich’s “Living in Sin” features four distinctive movements.   The poem focuses on sense awareness including visual imagery, such as “a pair of beetle-eyes would fix her own,” auditory as in “each separate stair would writhe / under the milkman’s tramp,” and olfactory with “last night’s cheese,” an image that superbly supports the theme of disillusionment.

    An omniscient speaker reports the actions and details of the narrative. While the reader is admitted into the mind of the young woman in the poem, it is obvious that the young woman is not actually telling her own story.

    This tactic is employed to make the revelations appear more objective and believable. If the woman in the poem were reporting the events and the feelings engendered by them, only confusion would ensue because the woman in the poem is, in fact, confused about her feelings.

    The phrase “living in sin” signifies an unmarried man and woman living together. A more contemporary term is “shacking up,” but as mores change, the concept is losing its traditional distinction.  In a postmodern world, the notion of sin becomes more and more passé.

    Living in Sin

    She had thought the studio would keep itself
    no dust upon the furniture of love
    Half heresy, to wish the taps less vocal
    the panes relieved of grime. A plate of pears,
    a piano with a Persian shawl, a cat 
    stalking the picturesque amusing mouse
    had risen at his urging.
    Not that at five each separate star would writhe
    under the mailman’s tramp; that morning light
    so coldly would delineate the scraps
    of last night’s cheese and three sepulchral bottles;
    that on the kitchen shelf among the saucers
    a pair of beetle-eyes would fix her own—
    enjoy from some village in the moldings . . .
    Meanwhile, he, with a yawn,
    sounded a dozen notes upon the keyboard,
    declared it out of tune, shrugged at the mirror,
    rubbed at his beard, went out for cigarettes;
    while she, jeered by the minor demons,
    pulled back the sheets and made the bed and found
    a towel to dust the tabletop,
    and let the coffee-pot boil over on the stove.
    By evening she was back in love again
    though not so wholly but throughout the night
    she woke sometimes to feel the daylight coming
    like a relentless milkman up the stairs.

    Reading

    Commentary on “Living in Sin”

    Adrienne Rich’s “Living in Sin” paints a portrait of disillusionment felt by a young woman, who at the urging of her paramour has moved in with him in what appears to be a small flat or studio apartment.

    First Movement:  What!  I Have to Dust the Furniture?

    She had thought the studio would keep itself
    no dust upon the furniture of love
    Half heresy, to wish the taps less vocal
    the pains relieved of grime. A plate of pears,
    a piano with a Persian shawl, a cat 
    stalking the picturesque amusing mouse
    had risen at his urging.

    A young woman is puttering around in a studio apartment, observing the slovenliness into which she has allowed herself to be brought by her boyfriend.   The idea of moving in together had seemed so romantic when he first touted the idea.

    He had suggested a delicious plate of fruit on the coffee table, he painted the image of a piano draped in a “Persian shawl,” and he described the cute antics of his cat chasing a mouse—all so colorful, sweet, and amusing.

    But she is now observing that there is dust on the real furniture, although no dust had appeared as her fellow described the “furniture of love.”   She is finding out that she actually has to work to make the place livable. The faucets belch out squeaky noises, and the windowpanes are filthy.  This scenario is not what she envisioned when her boyfriend suggested they shack up together.

    Second Movement:  How Can I Sleep through This Racket

    Not that at five each separate star would writhe
    under the mailman’s tramp; that morning light
    so coldly would delineate the scraps
    of last night’s cheese and three sepulchral bottles;
    that on the kitchen shelf among the saucers
    a pair of beetle-eyes would fix her own—
    enjoy from some village in the moldings . . .

    The young woman now rattling around in the tiny flat furthermore had no clue that she would have her sleep interrupted by the creaking stair-steps at 5 a.m. by the milkman stomping up those noisy stairway.

    Also, the “scraps / of last night’s cheese and three sepulchral bottles” do not look so tempting with the cold light of morning revealing them for what they actually are—filthy trash to be tossed out.

    She also had not anticipated to engage in a staring contest with a cockroach that has stationed himself “on the kitchen shelf among the saucers,” making her understand the creepiness in the fact that he must have crawled out “from some village in the moldings” where numerous others of his ilk continue to proliferate.

    Third Movement:  He Doesn’t Look so Good in the Cold Light Day

    Meanwhile, he, with a yawn,
    sounded a dozen notes upon the keyboard,
    declared it out of tune, shrugged at the mirror,
    rubbed at his beard, went out for cigarettes;
    while she, jeered by the minor demons,
    pulled back the sheets and made the bed and found
    a towel to dust the tabletop,
    and let the coffee-pot boil over on the stove.

    This nasty studio apartment is proving to be nothing but a pig sty, unlike any love-haven she might have imagined prior to moving in.   Even her man has disappointed her: with a bored demeanor, he plunked out of few notes on the piano then complains that it is “out of tune.”  Might this suggest that he does not even know how to play the piano?

    So he gives himself a quick look in the mirror, “rub[s] at his beard,” and leaves the apartment to buy cigarettes. What, no kiss good-bye?  While alone, she is “jeered by the minor demons,” annoyed by petty thoughts that irk her more than anger her. So she gets busy, making the bed and dusting, but “let[s] the coffee-pot boil over on the stove.” Oops, another irksome detail of “living in sin.”

    Fourth Movement:  Will Love Get Me though This?

    By evening she was back in love again
    though not so wholly but throughout the night
    she woke sometimes to feel the daylight coming
    like a relentless milkman up the stairs.

    Nevertheless, once her man is back, and they snuggle up together with wine and cheese again, she finds herself “back in love again.”  But later as she tries to sleep again, she remembers the irritating details of the grubby little place she is sharing with this yawning man as the creaking stair-steps remind her of what living in sin looks like in the cold light of day.

    Commentaries on Other Adrienne Rich Poems

    • Adrienne Rich’s “Diving into the Wreck”  Adrienne Rich’s speaker in “Diving into the Wreck” claims that she has read “the book of myths.” Note that by stating she has read “the book of myths,” she is implying that there is only one such book.
    • Adrienne Rich’s “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers”  Structured in three awkward movements, Adrienne Rich’s “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers” explores a theme that feminists [1] employ to assert concocted damage done to women by “patriarchal” marriage.

  • Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “Ulysses”

    Image:  Alfred, Lord Tennyson https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/alfred-tennyson  Poetry Foundation
    Image:  Alfred, Lord Tennyson – Poetry Foundation

    Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “Ulysses”

    Alfred, Lord Tennyson conflated Homer’s character with that of Dante’s to speak to his own difficulty of facing life after the death of his dear friend Arthur Hallam.

    Introduction and Text of  “Ulysses”

    Tennyson’s “Ulysses” features three unrimed blank verse paragraphs (versagraphs). Tennyson’s “Ulysses” dramatizes the theme of struggling to face life after living through a cataclysmic experience.

    About his poem, Tennyson has explained, “Ulysses was written soon after Arthur Hallam’s death, and gave my feeling about the need of going forward, and braving the struggle of life perhaps more simply than anything in ‘In Memoriam’.”

    Ulysses

    It little profits that an idle king,
    By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
    Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole
    Unequal laws unto a savage race,
    That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
    I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
    Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy’d
    Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those
    That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when
    Thro’ scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
    Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
    For always roaming with a hungry heart
    Much have I seen and known; cities of men
    And manners, climates, councils, governments,
    Myself not least, but honour’d of them all;
    And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
    Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
    I am a part of all that I have met;
    Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
    Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades
    For ever and forever when I move.
    How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
    To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!
    As tho’ to breathe were life! Life piled on life
    Were all too little, and of one to me
    Little remains: but every hour is saved
    From that eternal silence, something more,
    A bringer of new things; and vile it were
    For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
    And this gray spirit yearning in desire
    To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
    Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. 

             This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
    To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,—
    Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
    This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
    A rugged people, and thro’ soft degrees
    Subdue them to the useful and the good.
    Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
    Of common duties, decent not to fail
    In offices of tenderness, and pay
    Meet adoration to my household gods,
    When I am gone. He works his work, I mine. 

             There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
    There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
    Souls that have toil’d, and wrought, and thought with me—
    That ever with a frolic welcome took
    The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
    Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
    Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
    Death closes all: but something ere the end,
    Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
    Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
    The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
    The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
    Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
    ‘T is not too late to seek a newer world.
    Push off, and sitting well in order smite
    The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
    To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
    Of all the western stars, until I die.
    It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
    It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
    And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
    Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
    We are not now that strength which in old days
    Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
    One equal temper of heroic hearts,
    Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
    To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

    Reading

    Commentary on “Ulysses”

    Alfred, Lord Tennyson conflated Homer’s character with that of Dante’s to speak to his own difficulty of facing life after the death of his dear friend, Arthur Hallam.

    First Versagraph:  The Value of an Idle Life

    It little profits that an idle king,
    By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
    Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole
    Unequal laws unto a savage race,
    That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
    I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
    Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy’d
    Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those
    That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when
    Thro’ scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
    Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
    For always roaming with a hungry heart
    Much have I seen and known; cities of men
    And manners, climates, councils, governments,
    Myself not least, but honour’d of them all;
    And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
    Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
    I am a part of all that I have met;
    Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
    Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades
    For ever and forever when I move.
    How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
    To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!
    As tho’ to breathe were life! Life piled on life
    Were all too little, and of one to me
    Little remains: but every hour is saved
    From that eternal silence, something more,
    A bringer of new things; and vile it were
    For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
    And this gray spirit yearning in desire
    To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
    Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. 

    In the first versagraph, the speaker, Ulysses, the Roman counterpart of the Greek “Odysseus,” complains that his life as “an idle king” is not worth much.  The speaker’s activity consists of administering justice to the citizens who do not even understand him. All they are interested in is sleeping and eating. 

    Second Versagraph:   The Habit of Travel

    This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
    To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,—
    Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
    This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
    A rugged people, and thro’ soft degrees
    Subdue them to the useful and the good.
    Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
    Of common duties, decent not to fail
    In offices of tenderness, and pay
    Meet adoration to my household gods,
    When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

    The habit of “travel” has become such a great part of the speaker’s life that he finds he is unable to rehabituate himself to a settled existence.  The speaker then catalogues the events and feelings that have kept him occupied most of his life during his adventures. 

    While traveling, he became “a name” “roaming with a hungry heart.”  The speaker reports, “Much have I seen and known; cities of men / And manners, climates, councils, governments, / Myself not least, but honoured of them all.” 

    Compared to the excitement of the traveling life, settling down with an “aged wife” and trying to govern a territory seem dull and unsatisfying.  Although he has been back from his odyssey for only three years, the speaker yearns to be able to set sail again: “How dull it is to pause, to make an end, / To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!” 

    Third Versagraph:  A Strong Will

    There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
    There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
    Souls that have toil’d, and wrought, and thought with me—
    That ever with a frolic welcome took
    The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
    Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
    Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
    Death closes all: but something ere the end,
    Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
    Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
    The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
    The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
    Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
    ‘T is not too late to seek a newer world.
    Push off, and sitting well in order smite
    The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
    To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
    Of all the western stars, until I die.
    It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
    It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
    And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
    Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
    We are not now that strength which in old days
    Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
    One equal temper of heroic hearts,
    Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
    To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

    In the third versagraph, Ulysses introduces his son, Telemachus. He describes his son as decent and capable of fulfilling the role Ulysses now fills.   And the speaker makes it clear that he would prefer his son take over his governing responsibilities, so that he can continue his swashbuckling world-wide adventures: “When I am gone. 

    He works his work, I mine.”  The speaker then claims that in the harbor his ships are ready. And although he and his sailors are old, “Some work of noble note, may yet be done.” 

    For the men who fought very great odds to return to their homes, the speaker avers that something useful should still be available for them accomplish.   Thus, Ulysses appeals to this sailors, “Come, my friends, / ‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.” He insists that he still has goals to achieve and miles to travel before he is ready to give up his striving. 

    Finally, the speaker admits that he and his sailors are not as strong as they used to be “in old days,” but although they may be weaker physically, they are nevertheless “strong in will / To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”   The speaker is convinced that they all have the spiritual strength to conquer foes, whether those adversaries be external or internal.

  • William Wordsworth’s “Surprised by Joy”

    Image:  William Wordsworth https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw66828/William-Wordsworth - Edward McInnes - National Portrait Gallery, London
    Image:  William Wordsworth – Edward McInnes – National Portrait Gallery, London

    William Wordsworth’s “Surprised by Joy”

    In “Surprised by Joy,” the speaker’s mystic musing reveals his soul yearning; Wordsworth has revealed that the poem was urged by his deceased daughter.

    Introduction and Text of “Surprised by Joy”

    William Wordsworth has reported that this poem was “was in fact suggested by my daughter Catharine long after her death.” The poem’s mystic musing reveals the speaker’s soul craving.

    William Wordsworth’s “Surprised by joy—impatient as the Wind” is a Petrarchan sonnet with the traditional octave whose rime scheme is ABBAABBA and the traditional sestet with the rime scheme CDCDCD. The octave features two discrete quatrains and the sestet features two tercets. 

    Surprised by Joy

    Surprised by joy—impatient as the Wind
    I turned to share the transport—Oh! with whom
    But Thee, long buried in the silent Tomb,
    That spot which no vicissitude can find?
    Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind—
    But how could I forget thee?—Through what power,
    Even for the least division of an hour,
    Have I been so beguiled as to be blind
    To my most grievous loss!—That thought’s return
    Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore,
    Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn,
    Knowing my heart’s best treasure was no more;
    That neither present time, nor years unborn
    Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.

    Commentary on “Surprised by Joy”  

    The speaker senses the presence of his daughter, who had died many years earlier.

    Octave First Quatrain:  The Urge to Share Joy

    Surprised by joy—impatient as the Wind
    I turned to share the transport—Oh! with whom
    But Thee, long buried in the silent Tomb,
    That spot which no vicissitude can find? 

    The speaker is animated claiming to have been “surprised by joy.” The surprise of this joy impelled him to “share the transport” with his companion.  He felt “impatient as the Wind” and unthinkingly turns to comment on his euphoria but then suddenly is brought back to the reality that the person with whom he intended to share his feeling is “deep buried in the silent tomb.” 

    Having died, his companion can no longer be accosted by the “vicissitude[s]” of the wind, the sun, or other joyful expressions of nature.   The speaker is alone in his joy, and he is then compelled to capture that odd moment when the joy had been so strong that it made him briefly forget the death and think his loved one still alive and by his side. 

    Octave Second Quatrain:  Strong Bonds Beyond the Grave

    Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind—
    But how could I forget thee?—Through what power,
    Even for the least division of an hour,
    Have I been so beguiled as to be blind 

    In the second quatrain of the octave, the speaker then reasons that his momentary lapse was caused by his deep “Love, faithful love”; this strong connection based on profound love heralded the departed loved one to the speaker’s mind, making him virtually feel that she indeed stood beside him as the joy swept through his being. 

    Sestet First Tercet:  Reliving Grief

    To my most grievous loss!—That thought’s return
    Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore,
    Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn, 

    But then the speaker questions the idea implied by his brief moment of forgetfulness that he could ever forget his beloved. He asserts rhetorically through his question that no power could exert itself sufficiently to “blind” him to his “most grievous loss.” 

    The speaker then avers that having that thought of the fact that his beloved had died brought “the worst pang that sorrow ever bore.” However, he then qualifies that claim by stating that there was one—”one only”—other occasion when he had suffered such a grief. 

    Sestet Second Tercet:   Distressing Awareness

    Knowing my heart’s best treasure was no more;
    That neither present time, nor years unborn
    Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.

    That other occasion occurred as he “stood forlorn” just after the death of his loved one, probably by the gravesite. At that time, as he stood by the grave of the departed, he suffered deeply “knowing my heart’s best treasure was no more.” 

    The speaker recalls the distressing awareness that he would never look upon “that heavenly face” again. He remembers thinking that time “neither present time, nor years unborn” would ever resolve the grief he was experiencing.

    The Efficacy of Strong Emotion

    Strong emotion can bring about many different kinds of worldly experiences.   The strong feeling that penetrates the heart and then runs beyond the mind is capable of attracting the soul in its infinite wisdom and storehouse of thoughts and experiences and eliciting from the soul the very objects on which the mind and heart have depended for love and affection.

    Image:  William Wordsworth https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portraitExtended/mw06934/William-Wordsworth?   Henry William Pickersgill - National Portrait Gallery, London
    Image:  William Wordsworth –   Henry William Pickersgill – National Portrait Gallery, London

  • Robert Graves’ “Not Dead”

    044a Robert Graves
    Image: Robert Graves – National Portrait Gallery, London

    Robert Graves’ “Not Dead”

    The speaker in Robert Graves’ elegy “Not Dead” remembers his son who died in war; his elegiac tribute resurrects the young man as a spiritual reality.

    Introduction and Text of “Not Dead”

    Actually, the speaker in Robert Graves’ “Not Dead” does more than just remember because in his act of dramatizing the son’s spiritual qualities, he renders the young man’s presence as something quite tangible. 

    The elegy plays out in a curtal sonnet, a form created by Father Gerard Manley Hopkins.  The sonnet may be considered innovative because the rime-scheme—aabccb cbbdd—differs from the traditional abcabc dcbdc or abcabc dbcdc.

    Not Dead

    Walking through trees to cool my heat and pain, 
    I know that David’s with me here again.
    All that is simple, happy, strong, he is. 
    Caressingly I stroke 
    Rough bark of the friendly oak.
    A brook goes bubbling by: the voice is his. 
    Turf burns with pleasant smoke;
    I laugh at chaffinch and at primroses. 
    All that is simple, happy, strong, he is.
    Over the whole wood in a little while 
    Breaks his slow smile.

    Commentary on “Not Dead”

    The speaker in Graves’ “Not Dead” is remembering his son who died in war, but this particular remembering also dramatizes the resurrection of the young man as a spiritual reality.

    First Movement:  Walking to Clear the Mind

    Walking through trees to cool my heat and pain, 
    I know that David’s with me here again.
    All that is simple, happy, strong, he is. 
    Caressingly I stroke  

    In the opening line of Robert Graves’ “Not Dead,” the speaker locates himself in a wood, “Walking through trees to cool my heat and pain.” He has gone for a simple walk to clear his mind to allow himself to mourn his loss. 

    However, instead of mourning the loss of his son, he transforms that loss into a spiritual reality, asserting, “I know that David’s with me here again.” The spiritual presence of the son made itself known to the father, as the father walks through the woods.  The calmness of the natural setting has rendered the speaker capable of sensing the spiritual level of being.

    Instead of dramatizing the physical absence of his son, the speaker begins to muse on the spiritual reality of the son’s presence. The speaker avers that his son, David, influences the universe in a positive manner:”All that is simple, happy, strong, he is.”  

    He is insisting that David “is”—not “was,” as might be expected in remarking about the deceased.  The importance of that line is so strong that it is later repeated intact.  The speaker’s sense of his son’s essence remains with him.

    Second Movement:  The Ethereal Speaker

    Rough bark of the friendly oak.
    A brook goes bubbling by: the voice is his. 
    Turf burns with pleasant smoke;
    I laugh at chaffinch and at primroses.  

    In a way of supporting his astounding claim that David is, indeed, with him again, and that David “is,” the speaker suggests that the qualities he finds in nature, in fact, resurrect the qualities of his son.  The speaker lovingly touches the “[r]ough bark of the friendly oak.” The oak is “friendly,” suggesting the same familial and familiar relationship he enjoyed with his son. 

    The speaker “caressingly” “strokes” the bark; the act of listening to and perhaps discussing ideas with his son is brought back to his mind by this simple natural act of touching the bark of a tree.  

    Then the speaker hears the “bubbling” of a brook and avers that that sound is David’s voice. He continues finding his son in the pleasant odor of the burning turf, in the sound of a bird melody and in the beauty of the primroses. 

    Third Movement:   Summary of a Life

    All that is simple, happy, strong, he is.
    Over the whole wood in a little while 
    Breaks his slow smile.

    Then the speaker repeats the important line that describes his son: “All that is simple, happy, strong, he is.” This line offers the summation of the life of the deceased, and it serves as a signifier for the speaker as he dramatizes David’s qualities in order to resurrect the spirit of his son.  

    The final two lines—”Over the whole wood in a little while / Breaks his slow smile—reveal the success of the speaker’s dramatic attempts to summon his son’s spirit from the physical grave. 

    The speaker can sense David’s smile in the “whole wood,” and the speaker’s mourning is transcended by the “simple, happy, strong” qualities that were and, more importantly, are the hallmark of his son as a soul. 

    The speaker will still miss the physical presence of his son, but the son’s soul qualities will live on in the resurrection and drama of this speaker/poet’s creation. The speaker comes to realize that the soul is permanent, even though the body is not.

    Image b: Robert Graves https://theamericanreader.com/3-january-1951-robert-graves-to-derek-savage/ The American Reader
    Image: Robert Graves – The American Reader

    Brief Life Sketch of Robert Graves

    Born in Wimbledon, a wealthy suburb of London, in 1895, Robert Graves [1] enjoyed a long career as a poet, biographer, novelist, translator, classical scholar, and mythographer, before dying in Majorca in 1985.

    Robert Graves was twice married, producing four children in each marriage.  The poem “Not Dead” grows out of the war death of his son, David.  Between marriages, Graves lived with the American poet, Laura Riding (aka Laura Riding Jackson and Laura Riding Gottschalk, née Reichenthal), who is associated with the Fugitive Movement (See “The Fugitive-Agrarian Movement in Poetry.”

    Graves’ dalliance with Riding provides his biography with an especially dramatic episode [2].  Riding took a fancy to the husband of one of their friends, and when she could not win him, she jumped out a three-story window, fracturing her pelvis in three places.

    Graves had tried to stop Riding from jumping by jumping out the second-floor window himself.  They both recovered from their traumatic injuries.  Graves went on to marry his second wife; Riding went on the win the Nashville Poetry Prize in 1924 [3] and marry Schuyler Jackson in 1941.

    Most noted for his poetry, Grave’s produced upwards of 150 works in his prolific career.  It is thought that Graves quipped [4]: “There’s no money in poetry, but then there’s no poetry in money, either.” 

    Sources for “Brief Life Sketch of Robert Graves”

    [1]  Editors.  “Robert Graves.”  Poetry Foundation. Accessed October 14, 2026.
    [2]  David Mason.  “The One Story of Robert Graves.”  The Hudson Review.  Vol. 72.  No. 1. Spring 2019.  Via JSTOR.
    [3] Curators.  “Laura Riding Jackson.” Academy of American Poets.  Accessed October 14, 2026.
    [4]  Leo Hickman. “The Rise of Poetry in Advertising.” The Guardian.  December 1, 2009.

  • Rita Dove’s “Rosa”

    Image:  Rita Dove. https://amsterdamnews.com/news/2016/03/31/poet-laureate-rita-dove-edwidge-danticat-others-ce/  Amsterdam News
    Image:  Rita Dove – Amsterdam News

    Rita Dove’s “Rosa”

    Former U. S. poet laureate, Rita Dove, offers a simple yet powerful tribute to one of America’s heroes, Rosa Parks, who through her act of defiance by simply continuing to occupy a bus seat, became known as the “Mother of the Modern-Day Civil Rights Movement.”

    Introduction with Text of “Rosa”

    An Alabama seamstress named Rosa Parks [1]  became known the “Mother of the Modern-Day Civil Rights Movement.”  It all started with a bus ride on December 1, 1955.  Rosa had just completed her day’s work at a department store, she was tired, and she headed home.

    After boarding a Montgomery city bus, as was her usual routine, she sat down in the front row section of seats in the black section of the bus.  It is often misreported that she was asked to leave the front of the bus, but that is not accurate.   She was following the laws of segregation and seated herself in the section allowed her race.

    As the bus began to fill up, white passengers began seating themselves in the black section, which was, of course, within the law.  A white man wanted Rosa’s seat, and so the bus driver commanded Rosa to leave her seat in the front row of the black section and move farther back.

    Rosa refused.  She was tired from her day’s work.  And she was tired of the ridiculous Jim Crow/Black Codes that stifled the lives of black folks.   Rosa was arrested for violating the Jim Crow/Black Codes laws.  From that point on, the modern Civil Rights movement had begun.

    Former poet laureate of the United States (1993-95), Rita Dove, has penned a powerful tribute to Rosa Parks.   So simple, yet exquisitely profound, Dove’s elegy describes the quiet yet determined woman, whose uncomplicated act of resistance changed the country’s history in a way that led to a broader fulfillment of the Founding Father’s plan of freedom for all American citizens enshrined in the U. S. Constitution.

    Rosa

    How she sat there,
    the time right inside a place
    so wrong it was ready.

    That trim name with
    its dream of a bench
    to rest on. Her sensible coat.

    Doing nothing was the doing.
    The clean flame of her gaze
    carved by a camera flash.

    How she stood up
    when they bent down to retrieve
    her purse. That courtesy.

    Rita Dove explains the genesis of and reads “Rosa”:

    Image: Rosa Parks’ Mug Shot

    Commentary on “Rosa”

    In 60 words, this tribute to a genuine hero offers a heartfelt observation of courage and determination that changed a nation’s consciousness.

    First Stanza:  She Just Sat There

    How she sat there,
    the time right inside a place
    so wrong it was ready.


    The speaker is musing on the actions taken by the “Mother of the Modern-Day Civil Rights Movement” on that fateful day only decades ago—December 1, 1955.  The speaker effuses on “how” Rosa “sat there” because that just-sitting-there remains the heart of Parks’ resistance:  she just sat there in defiance of a humiliating, immorally legislated mandate that had kept her a second class citizen for most of her life.  

    Parks was tired from her day’s work, but she was even more tired of mandates that insulted her humanity on a daily basis.  She was already sitting in the “colored” section at the back of the bus, and then a white patron wanted her seat.  

    She would have to move farther back or even stand to accommodate the injustice being leveled against her and her fellow black citizens.  But on this day, she just “sat there.” Because of all that had gone on before in terms of the Jim Crow/Black Codes South, it was time to stand up and say “enough.”  All the wrong that had been done to black citizens was now “ready” to be righted.  Rosa stood up by just sitting there.

    Second Stanza:  A Sensible Woman 

    That trim name with
    its dream of a bench
    to rest on. Her sensible coat.

    The speaker then muses on the simple name “Rosa,” who at the time just wanted a place to sit and rest from her labors.  The plain, ordinary things in life should never be beyond the dreams of citizens who simply wish to exercise their civil rights, yet for Rosa and others of her skin tone, those rights had been abridged too long.   Her dream was one worth purchasing with some jail time, and she her “trim name” was up to the task.

    The speaker then makes the observation that Rosa was wearing a “sensible coat.”  She was a sensible woman, an uncomplicated, intelligent, law-abiding woman, and now she needed to rest her weary body that had finished her day’s contribution to the work force.

    Third Stanza:  Doing Much by Doing Nothing

    Doing nothing was the doing.
    The clean flame of her gaze
    carved by a camera flash.

    The speaker then emphasizes the simplicity of Rosa’s action: she was doing a great service to humanity by “doing nothing.”  By forcing the ludicrous law to take her to jail, she was showing how utterly bankrupt the laws had been.  

    The very description of what happened sounds utterly impossible: a woman arrested for failing to give up her seat on a bus and to a man—  aren’t gentlemen supposed to give up their seats for ladies?  In the Jim Crow South, however, black women were expected to give up their seats on the bus to both white men and women who demanded it.  

    With the law on their side, the authorities, including bus drivers, had for decades demanded compliance from both black men and women and had established the precedent that Rosa Parks, a black woman, would be jailed for non-compliance of that insane Jim Crow law.

    The speaker of the poem has observed the calm demeanor of the photographs that began to appear in the news outlets of Rosa Parks as the cameras began to flash in her face.  

    The “clean flame of her gaze” burned through the lenses as they revealed her solemn yet determined demeanor as she was undergoing her ultimate humiliation at the hands of unjust legal maneuvering.

    Fourth Stanza:  An Act of Courtesy

    How she stood up
    when they bent down to retrieve
    her purse. That courtesy.

    The speaker then recalls how Rosa “stood up,” her purse falling to the floor and someone bending down to pick it up for her.  That simple act of human kindness registers on the cosmos of time to show that people are simply people, face to face, and “courtesy” remains as natural as saying some simple greeting like “hello.”

    After the elimination of the evil institution of slavery had been accomplished by the bloody Civil War of 1861-1865, a number of Civil Rights Acts had still not been efficacious in restoring full citizenship to America’s black population.  

    The Jim Crow/Black Codes South had continued to undermine the rights of its black citizens. The straightforward, uncomplicated act of defiance took place at a time when society was finally ready to right wrongs that it had lived with for a century.

    Historical Significance of Dove’s Simple Tribute

    Rosa Parks’ act of civil disobedience leading to her arrest led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott [2], which began after Jo Ann Robinson sent out 50,000 protest pamphlets, and E. D. Nixon, a labor leader called a meeting of black leaders.  

    At this meeting, those leaders formed an organization that they called the “Montgomery Improvement Association.”  The MIA called for a bus boycott and began negotiation with the bus company to end the segregated sections on the buses. 

    Despite losing around 40,000 fares daily because of the boycott, the bus company stubbornly tried to keep its Jim Crow laws in effect.  But then almost a year later, on November 13, 1956, the Supreme Court ruled those segregation laws unconstitutional, and the bus company finally reluctantly relented and complied.

    The boycott resulted in the rise of the modern Civil Right Movement with Martin Luther King, Jr., who had been elected president of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), as the charismatic and most effective leader. 

    The final result was the Civil Right Act of 1964 and the Voting Right Act of 1965, which guaranteed the American black population would finally be recognized as true citizens of their country.

    Dove’s uncomplicated, straightforward, 60-word poem, very appropriately offers a clear glimpse at the uncomplicated act of defiance of the woman, who by just sitting there, helped roll out the most significant and efficacious civil rights acts the United States of America had ever experienced.  Such a tribute remains a remarkable achievement by the accomplished poet, Rita Dove.   

    Sources

    [1]  Editors.  “Biography.”  The Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development.  Accessed October 13, 2026.
    [2]  Curators.  “Montgomery Bus Boycott.”  U.S. Department of the Interior: National Park Service.  Accessed October 13, 2026.

    Video:  Rita Dove, “On the Bus with Rosa Parks,” interview:    

    Image c: Rosa Parks’ Quotation https://www.azquotes.com/quote/436308 AZ Quotes
    Image: Rosa Parks’ Quotation – AZ Quotes

  • Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress”

    Image a: Andrew Marvell https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw04263/Andrew-Marvell?LinkID=mp02994&role=sit&rNo=0  NPG, London
    Image: Andrew Marvell – National Portrait Gallery, London

    Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress”

    Andrew Marvell’s carpe diem poem, “To His Coy Mistress,” features a ludicrous attempt to seduce a young woman.  The poem’s clever idiocy rivals John Donne’s “The Flea.”

    Introduction and Text of “To His Coy Mistress”

    Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” consists of twenty-three riming couplets. The thematic arrangement of the three sections resembles the two premises and proposition of a syllogism that might be paraphrased as follows: if we had unlimited time, it would be fine to wait before we engage in sexual intercourse, but time is limited, so we should have at it now.

    Andrew Marvell was writing in the 17th century, and at that time the term “mistress” did not carry the connotation of an extramarital sex partner that it does in modern American parlance. “Mistress” merely meant “woman” or “lady.” 

    Etymologically, the titles Mrs, Miss, and Ms all stem from that term.  The woman in this poem is likely a virgin, and the speaker is a cad who wants to seduce her, much like the rascal speaking in John Donne’s “The Flea” or “The Apparition.”

    To His Coy Mistress

    Had we but world enough and time,
    This coyness, lady, were no crime.
    We would sit down, and think which way
    To walk, and pass our long love’s day.
    Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side
    Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
    Of Humber would complain. I would
    Love you ten years before the flood,
    And you should, if you please, refuse
    Till the conversion of the Jews.
    My vegetable love should grow
    Vaster than empires and more slow;
    An hundred years should go to praise
    Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
    Two hundred to adore each breast,
    But thirty thousand to the rest;
    An age at least to every part,
    And the last age should show your heart.
    For, lady, you deserve this state,
    Nor would I love at lower rate.
    But at my back I always hear
    Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;
    And yonder all before us lie
    Deserts of vast eternity.
    Thy beauty shall no more be found;
    Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
    My echoing song; then worms shall try
    That long-preserved virginity,
    And your quaint honour turn to dust,
    And into ashes all my lust;
    The grave’s a fine and private place,
    But none, I think, do there embrace.
    Now therefore, while the youthful hue
    Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
    And while thy willing soul transpires
    At every pore with instant fires,
    Now let us sport us while we may,
    And now, like amorous birds of prey,
    Rather at once our time devour
    Than languish in his slow-chapped power.
    Let us roll all our strength and all
    Our sweetness up into one ball,
    And tear our pleasures with rough strife
    Through the iron gates of life:
    Thus, though we cannot make our sun
    Stand still, yet we will make him run.

    Commentary on “To His Coy Mistress”

    In Andrew Marvell’s carpe diem poem, “To His Coy Mistress,” the speaker is attempting to seduce a young woman, using reasoning and logic similar to a syllogism.

    First Premise: If Time Were Limitless

    Had we but world enough and time,
    This coyness, lady, were no crime.
    We would sit down, and think which way
    To walk, and pass our long love’s day.
    Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side
    Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
    Of Humber would complain. I would
    Love you ten years before the flood,
    And you should, if you please, refuse
    Till the conversion of the Jews.
    My vegetable love should grow
    Vaster than empires and more slow;
    An hundred years should go to praise
    Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
    Two hundred to adore each breast,
    But thirty thousand to the rest;
    An age at least to every part,
    And the last age should show your heart.
    For, lady, you deserve this state,
    Nor would I love at lower rate.

    The speaker flings himself into his seduction drama, blurting out that both he and the young woman he wishes to defile will one day die, and therefore they should not wait to begin engaging in sexual intercourse. 

    The randy speaker then offers bizarre suggestions as to what they could do if they had more time: she could go searching for rubies beside the Ganges, while he would amble along grumbling still in England by the Humber.

    The speaker then asserts that the woman could continue to decline his propositions for ages and ages, for example, until the followers of Judaism take up that newfangled Christianity.  His “love,” meaning “lust,” could continue to grow, “Vaster than empires, and more slow.” 

    The speaker also could wait a “hundred years”; even “two hundred years” he could pass in admiring “each breast.” He could devote even “thirty thousand” years to the rest of her person, if they had time, and he admits that she would be worth every minute of it.

    Second Premise: But Time Is Limited

    But at my back I always hear
    Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;
    And yonder all before us lie
    Deserts of vast eternity.
    Thy beauty shall no more be found;
    Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
    My echoing song; then worms shall try
    That long-preserved virginity,
    And your quaint honour turn to dust,
    And into ashes all my lust;
    The grave’s a fine and private place,
    But none, I think, do there embrace.

    Regrettably, such copious amounts of time are not allotted to them. Surely as they are living, they will surely be dying, unable to participate in the ways of the flesh.

    He is so certain that he is such a smart fellow, and he knows what behavior is correct for himself and the object of his lust. The speaker then insults the woman’s intelligence and common sense, labeling her sensible stance on the issue “quaint.”

    If he cannot take her maidenhead, then the “worms” will do so after she dies. Conveniently, the arrogant speaker omits any reference to the problems that could likely follow the indiscretion of such an assignation. He gleefully allows himself to be guided by his genitals, not his brain, and he has the audacity to ridicule her for using her mind.

    Proposition: Thus, Now Is the Time

    Now therefore, while the youthful hue
    Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
    And while thy willing soul transpires
    At every pore with instant fires,
    Now let us sport us while we may,
    And now, like amorous birds of prey,
    Rather at once our time devour
    Than languish in his slow-chapped power.
    Let us roll all our strength and all
    Our sweetness up into one ball,
    And tear our pleasures with rough strife
    Through the iron gates of life:
    Thus, though we cannot make our sun
    Stand still, yet we will make him run.

    For this speaker, driven by his nether region, his logic naturally results in sexual gratification. He envisions a future of fading beauty. He concludes that because of little time and the physical decaying of the body, they should not delay sexual experience.

    The speaker unfortunately foists his own degenerate state upon the woman, insisting that she wants it as much as he does!  Ancient ultimatum!

    The speaker envisions their sexual act will be like “am’rous birds of prey.” He fantasizes their, “roll[ing] all [their] strength, and all / [Their] sweetness, up into one ball.” Furthermore, he insists that they should, “tear [their] pleasures with rough strife.” 

    This speaker does not just want sex, but he also desires the act to be violent, as he suggests this additional perversion in his final effusion, metaphorically heralding the sun that they cannot bid “stand still,” so they “will make him run.” 

    The comic effect of a running sun, like the male ejaculate down the leg, renders the piece floating somewhere on the edge of pornography.