STANZA SUMMARY Stanza one ‘Sunset and evening star’ informs the reader that the poetic personae has come of age and is close to death. ‘Sunset’ and ‘evening’ depicts the end of the day, but is poetically deployed in the poem to mean the end of one’s life. This death call he accepts as his, and… Continue reading Crossing the Bar – Stanza Summary
Category: Poetry
Vanity – Themes
THEMES Loss of value – The poem portrays the high rate of decadence in African cultural value which is being taken over by that of America and the western world. Backwardness – The backwardness in politics and administration, education, health and economy of Africa is bitterly expressed in the poem by the poetic persona when… Continue reading Vanity – Themes
Vanity – figures of speech, mood, tone and structure
POETIC DEVICE/FIGURES OF SPEECH Rhetorical question --- the poem itself is a rhetorical question. Each stanza harbours not less than two of this. E.g. – “who indeed will hear then with laughter?” what ear to our sobbing hearts” Metaphor – The word “beggar” is used to compare Africans to people who are impoverished and are… Continue reading Vanity – figures of speech, mood, tone and structure
Details of the Poem, Vanity by Birago Diop
Details of the Poem, Vanity by Birago Diop BACKGROUND The title, “Vanity”, literary means having immense interest in one’s appearance, achievement or material things. But, as the title of this poem, it figuratively refers to Africans’ penchant attitude towards material things often imported from the western world at the expense of African culture, value… Continue reading Details of the Poem, Vanity by Birago Diop
Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer’s lease hath all too short a date; Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his… Continue reading Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
The Anvil and The Hammer by Kofi Awonoor
The Anvil and The Hammer Caught between the anvil and the hammer In the forging house of a new life Transforming the pangs that delivered me Into the joy of new songs The trapping of the past, tender and tenuous Woven with fibre of sisal and Washed in the blood of the goat in… Continue reading The Anvil and The Hammer by Kofi Awonoor
Birches BY ROBERT FROST
Birches When I see birches bend to left and right Across the lines of straighter darker trees, I like to think some boy's been swinging them. But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning After a rain. They click… Continue reading Birches BY ROBERT FROST
The Dining Table by Gbanabom Hallowell
The Dining Table Dinner tonight comes with gun wounds. Our desert tongues lick the vegetable blood—the pepper strong enough to push scorpions up our heads. Guests look into the oceans of bowls as vegetables die on their tongues. The table that gathers us is an island where guerillas walk the land while crocodiles… Continue reading The Dining Table by Gbanabom Hallowell
The Pulley by George Herbert
The Pulley When God at first made man, Having a glass of blessings standing by, Let us, said he, pour on him all we can: Let the world’s riches, which dispersed lie, Contract into a span. So strength first made way; Then beauty flowed; then wisdom, honour, pleasure. When almost all was out, God… Continue reading The Pulley by George Herbert
Piano and Drums by Gabriel Okara
Piano and Drums When at break of day at a riverside I hear jungle drums telegraphing the mystic rhythm, urgent, raw like bleeding flesh, speaking of primal youth and the beginning, I see the panther ready to pounce, the leopard snarling about to leap and the hunters crouch with spears poised. And my blood ripples,… Continue reading Piano and Drums by Gabriel Okara
Litionary 