Poems

50 poems
Poems

The Whitsun Weddings

Larkin's train journey poem observes newlyweds boarding. Through accumulating couples and final arrow-shower image, it explores marriage, journey, class, and collective destiny. The poem meditates on ordinary ceremony and time.

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Poems

The Panther

Rilke's thing-poem captures a caged panther's consciousness. Through bars passing before vision until nothing penetrates, it explores captivity, consciousness, seeing, and spiritual death. The poem meditates on imprisonment.

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Poems

Duino Elegies

Rilke's philosophical cycle meditates on angels, existence, and human limitation. Through elegiac questioning, it explores being, angels, death, and the human task. The poem cycle is a meditation on existence.

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Poems

Archaic Torso of Apollo

Rilke's ekphrastic poem uses a headless statue to command transformation. Through 'You must change your life,' it explores art, beauty, divine presence, and ethical demand. The poem meditates on art's …

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Poems

The Panther

Rilke's thing-poem captures a caged panther's consciousness. Through bars passing before vision until nothing penetrates, it explores captivity, consciousness, seeing, and spiritual death. The poem meditates on imprisonment.

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Poems

Waiting for the Barbarians

Cavafy's political allegory depicts a city waiting for barbarians who never come. Through suspended action and final revelation, it explores fear, othering, meaning, and the need for enemies. The poem …

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Poems

Ithaka

Cavafy's philosophical journey poem uses Odysseus's return to meditate on life as journey. Through 'hope the voyage is a long one,' it explores journey, experience, wisdom, and destination as secondary. …

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Poems

The Waste Land

Eliot's modernist masterpiece fragments Western culture post-WWI. Through mythological allusions, multiple voices, and cultural debris, it depicts spiritual barrenness and the search for meaning in modernity. The poem is a …

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Poems

Skunk Hour

Lowell's confessional poem depicts mental breakdown. Through 'My mind's not right,' it explores madness, decay, isolation, and watching skunks as affirmation. The poem meditates on sanity's edge.

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Poems

One Art

Bishop's villanelle about loss masters the art of losing. Through 'The art of losing isn't hard to master,' it explores loss, denial, grief, and the lie of mastery. The poem …

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Poems

The Fish

Bishop's descriptive masterpiece observes a caught fish. Through meticulous detail and final release, it explores observation, beauty, victory, and mercy. The poem celebrates attentive seeing and compassion.

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Poems

Church Going

Larkin's skeptical meditation visits an empty church. Through a non-believer's reverence, it explores faith, doubt, ritual, and what remains when belief fades. The poem meditates on post-religious meaning.

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Poems

Fern Hill

Thomas's nostalgic lyric celebrates childhood's timeless joy. Through 'Time held me green and dying / Though I sang in my chains like the sea,' it explores childhood, time, loss, and …

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Poems

Dulce et Decorum Est

Owen's antiwar masterpiece depicts a gas attack. Through 'The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est / Pro patria mori,' it exposes war's horror and challenges patriotic lies. The poem is …

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Poems

Disabled

Owen's war poem depicts a legless veteran's regret. Through before-and-after contrast, it explores war, disability, youth, and the cost of glory. The poem is an antiwar lament.

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Poems

Mending Wall

Frost's narrative poem questions boundaries and tradition. Through 'Good fences make good neighbors,' it explores walls, connection, tradition, and questioning inherited wisdom. The poem meditates on barriers.

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Poems

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

Stevens's perspectival poem views a blackbird from multiple angles. Through fragmentary visions, it explores perception, reality, multiplicity, and the limits of knowledge. The poem meditates on perspectivism.

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Poems

Sunday Morning

Stevens's meditation replaces religious transcendence with earthly beauty. Through a woman's Sunday morning, it explores paganism, death, beauty, and immanence over transcendence. The poem is a hymn to the earth.

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Poems

Spring and All

Williams's manifesto poem asserts the primacy of the thing itself. Through the emergence of spring, it explores renewal, the real, imagination, and poetic vision. The poem celebrates immediate experience.

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Poems

anyone lived in a pretty how town

Cummings's experimental love story uses unconventional syntax to depict anyone and noone's love. Through linguistic playfulness, it explores love, conformity, individuality, and the cycle of life. The poem celebrates nonconformist …

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Poems

The Emperor of Ice-Cream

Stevens's surreal meditation uses ice cream and death to explore reality and pleasure. Through 'Let be be finale of seem,' it meditates on reality, appearance, death, and sensual pleasure. The …

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Poems

Anecdote of the Jar

Stevens's modernist riddle uses a jar in Tennessee to explore art and nature. Through the jar's ordering of wilderness, it meditates on form, chaos, art's power, and the tension between …

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Poems

If

Kipling's didactic poem outlines masculine virtue. Through conditional clauses building to manhood, it explores stoicism, virtue, masculinity, and paternal wisdom. The poem is a meditation on being a man.

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Poems

Invictus

Henley's defiant lyric asserts control over fate. Through 'I am the master of my fate / I am the captain of my soul,' it explores stoicism, defiance, suffering, and unconquerable …

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