Great Poem Research Articles

Linguistic Features and Foregrounding Aspects in Dylan Thomas’ “We Lying by Seasand”

The main difficulty in understanding Thomas’ poetry is his diction and style, which the reader usually relies on to comprehend his poems. It would be difficult to go through character, activity, situation, or anything else unless the reader is able to grasp their sense. Thomas wrote many great poems. The selected poem is among these difficult and great poems. An obvious way to remove these obstacles is to depend on the use of linguistic features and the foregrounding theory of stylistics to explicate his poem. For this purpose, the present study is also supplemented by the checklist of Leech and Short (2007) to identify, describe, and evaluate the linguistic categories of the poem while making use of literary interpretations. As a result, the study is based on a qualitative descriptive analysis, which is used first to investigate the specific types of parallelism and deviations in the poem, then through describing and evaluating them the study shows how these prominent features help understanding and highlighting the themes and meaning behind the words. The study finds out that being able to identify and relate the prominent linguistic aspects supports the reader’s explications of this poem.

Motif of Mask in Joseph Brodsky’s ‘Great Elegy for John Donne’

This article offers an interpretation of the well-known poem by Joseph Brodsky, ‘Great Elegy for John Donne’ (1963). While traditionally elegy is analyzed in comparison with texts of the English medieval poet and preacher, where echoes of poetic and prose lines of John Donne are identified in Brodsky’s verses, the authors propose a different approach — viewing ‘Great Elegy...’ as an independent work by Brodsky, loosely connected to the verses and sermons of the abbot of St. Paul’s Cathedral. It is shown that at the time of creating the elegy, the young poet knew very little about Donne, leading the elegy to be an extension of Brodsky’s own ideas and beliefs that were already present in his previous works. None of the allusions to Donne suggested by critics were genuinely Donnesque but rather organic to the poet’s worldview at that time. The genre specificity of “Great Elegy for John Donne” is clarified during the analysis, demonstrating its connection to Brodsky’s genre of “great poems.” It is argued that the elegy was not a model of discipleship to Donne but an embodiment of the painful reflections prompted by a terrifying early diagnosis of “heart defect.” In this grand elegy, Brodsky donned Donne’s mask and through such mystification attempted to touch upon the mysteries of life-death, sleep-death, and grasp that “choral height” which transcends the Lord.

Modern Malaises: A study of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land

This paper seeks to examine modern malaises like the emptiness of mind, sexual perversion, alienation and fragmentation, spiritual barrenness, estrangement, disillusionment, and industrialization in the light of T. S. Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’. The poem explores how people have become uprooted and hopeless in their life routines. The poem was written in 1922 but reveals the real picture of the near future. In today’s world emotional and spiritual crises are the basic problems. Modern people do not have love, trust, hope, and morality. They are self-centered entrapped by the greed of money and power. T. S. Eliot suggests nourishing the dry roots of modern wasteland and regenerating a new and different world. An honest effort has been made to depict the real picture of today’s society, to deconstruct the polluted discourse of the modern world, and to look for the remedy of love, trust, hope and good deeds suggested by T. S. Eliot in his greatest poem, ‘The Waste Land’.

Reflections of Nature in the Poems of William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth, one of the greatest poets in England, is known as the poet of nature. His poems took on greater significance in English literature. The purpose of this study is to cram his source of forming and the process he expressed his ideal in singing highly of the nature. Wordsworth sought to bring a more individualistic approach and his poetry avoided high flown language however the poetry of Wordsworth is best characterized by its strong affinity with nature. Wordsworth was often dismayed by what he saw and he sought solace in the grandeur and beauty of nature. Wordsworth offered not just a beautiful picture of nature but also illustrated the healing power of nature on the spirit of man. William Wordsworth was deeply interested in the interaction between nature and humanities and their influence on each other. Having been inspired by many cases reported by Erasmus Darwin, he composed his great poems. He wrote this relationship in the Preface to Lyrical Ballads: stimulate and enlarge that inherent capability of the human mind and so become to believe in that human power and devote himself to fostering it. Wordsworth's poetry "Begins in delight and ends in delight” Wordsworth recognized here the capability of the human mind, so he repeated the words “inherent and indestructible qualities”.

R. S. Thomas, Siôn Cent, and ‘the buggeration of it.’

In a 1996 radio broadcast for the popular Radio Cymru series Beti a ‘i Phobol, R. S. Thomas declared his great admiration for a late-medieval cywydd by Siôn Cent, a lacerating attack on the vanity of all things human. By bringing the little that is known about Siôn Cent to bear on his great poem, this article makes it clear why Siôn Cent meant so much to Thomas, and suggests why Thomas came to recognize in Siôn Cent an alter ego. It concludes by suggesting that, for Thomas, Siôn Cent was a forerunner of the ‘warrior poets’ of Wales, to whose company Thomas himself aspired to belong.

В тени милых птиц, или О «Прощальной оде» Иосифа Бродского

This article is another effort to analyze the “Farewell Ode” by Joseph Brodsky. The internal and external contexts of the creation of the poem are described. Some text levels are analyzed to recognize the author’s intention. The stanza of the poem refers to Russian and Polish syllabic poetry of the 18th century. The lexico-semantic composition of the poem allows us to see the influence of poet’s many great precursors, primarily Dante and Tsvetaeva. The ode is also a stylization of the genre of prayer, as indicated by many lexical means. Brodsky’s first great poem can rightly be called the most complex “symphonic work”, in which the poet reaches the heights of Christian forgiveness.

Potential Energy of Pretext: Structural and Compositional Features of “Isaac and Abraham” by Joseph Brodsky

An interpretation of the well-known, but rarely used for a holistic analysis of the work of I. Brodsky “Isaac and Abraham” is proposed in the article. If Brodsky’s text is traditionally viewed as a poetic retelling of the Old Testament history in a modern way, then the authors propose a different perspective of textual perception - free reflections of a lyrical subject, a modern hero, over an ancient sacred text. As a result, the claims of critics regarding the “chaotic” and “congested” Brodsky’s text are removed, in contrast, the harmony and depth of reflection of the lyrical subject, the modern heropoet, are demonstrated. In the course of the analysis, the genre qualification of “Isaac and Abraham” was clarified - not as a poem (the traditional point of view), but as a “great poem” (I. Brodsky’s autopresentation). Deciphering of the “difficult” places of the poem - images of a bush, a board, a train, etc., as it seemed to critics, was artificially introduced by Brodsky into the text and violated the integrity of the work. It is argued that the poem “Isaac and Abraham” was not a transcription of the Bible, but an attempt by the maturing Brodsky from today to comprehend the sacred text and on its basis comprehend himself, penetrate into the dark past in order to see the present more clearly.

Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt and the Double Time of Motherhood

Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt and the Double Time of Motherhood

Evil Flowers: Stories by Gunnhild Øyehaug

Reviewed by: Evil Flowers: Stories by Gunnhild Øyehaug Lanie Tankard GUNNHILD ØYEHAUG Evil Flowers: Stories Trans. Kari Dickson. New York. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2023. 128 pages. NORWEGIAN WRITER Gunnhild Øyehaug plumbs her psyche in a newly translated work, putting a twenty-first-century spin on nineteenth-century French poet Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal. The compelling result teems with candor, wit, anxious obsession, and the merest touch of schadenfreude—or what Baudelaire might have termed joie malicieuse. As in her earlier collection of stories, Wait, Blink (see WLT, July 2018), Øyehaug again explores inner life. The opening presentation, "Birds," doesn't waste any time. In the very first sentence, a large chunk of an ornithologist's brain falls into the toilet as she's preparing to defend her PhD thesis. Oh, her mind still works, except she's forgotten everything about birds—can't even recognize one. Seeking refuge at her parents' house, memories emerge, coalescing into twenty-four short tales. Øyehaug shakes crumbs out of the pockets of her mind, wringing them for all they're worth to repel their power over her. Pieces range from one to eleven pages, plus two of notes. A wordless one-pager, "A Bit Like This," is a sole black-and-white photo—that of Baudelaire glaring at the preceding title story, "Evil Flowers." Øyehaug stares him down in the succeeding "Protest" by calling on American writer Richard Brautigan. She says Baudelaire's greatest poem is "The Swan" (Le Cygne), whose lines perhaps echo her own theme here: "dear memories … heavier than rocks" by "those who've lost what they cannot recover." Her narrations delve into the loss of a mother as well as past loves. Whereas Baudelaire engaged with Victor Hugo in "Le Cygne" or Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in "Le Calumet de Paix," Øyehaug nods to, say, Virginia Woolf or Henrik Ibsen. In one plot, she sets up an imaginative excursion to Monk's House, the Woolf cottage in East Sussex, without ever actually venturing there. "The Nordics Seen from the Outside" ponders the cold blue hues typically used to depict Nordic and Scandinavian countries on maps. The essay becomes a thought-provoking rumination on how those populations see themselves as well as how the rest of the world might view them, based on pictorial color selection alone. Hmm, what if they were portrayed in a warmer pink, she wonders, examining herself in the context of her society. When contemplations occasionally float off-course in various streams of consciousness, she steadfastly recenters her craft, murmuring, "I'll soon get to the point" or "but back to the subject." She's reminiscent there of others who don't always follow a pattern: Polish Nobelist Olga Tokarczuk talking to herself (as in Flights) or Croatian author Daša Drndić (as in Belladonna). In one account, Øyehaug notices a growing tendency to disguise guns as "cell pistols." Such smartphone protection cases appear harmless yet can actually perform as guns. Then she digresses charmingly into ornamental grass, hosta plants, and bocce balls. An older woman in "The Thread" dreams from her hospital bed about her daughter in Denmark, recalling how she took umbrage at her name as a child and its connection to "wicked Queen Gunnhild," lamenting she wasn't named after "a good queen." Gunnhild Øyehaug expects readers to defamiliarize themselves with traditional literary shapes and risk charting new territory with her in Evil Flowers. As Baudelaire wrote in "I" at his journey's end: "We've been around the world; and this is our report." [End Page 75] Lanie Tankard Austin, Texas Copyright © 2023 World Literature Today and the Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma

Generative Revision: Beyond the Zero-Sum Game

Generative Revision:Beyond the Zero-Sum Game Monica Youn (bio) I started off thinking about this essay's topic as a way of dealing with writer's block. I could be wrong, but in my subjective experience, poets complain about being blocked more than artists in any other discipline or genre. And one reason for that may be that, at least in the Western tradition, we have the least helpful model of artistic process. Apparently, we're supposed to sit around passively until something called a Muse—which may or may not be bird-shaped—descends from on high and breathes into us some sort of gas called inspiration. Unfortunately, this doesn't happen as regularly as one might hope. Hence, poets turn to substances, inappropriate romantic partners, and K-dramas. I watch my friends in other artistic disciplines, and rather than waste too much time beating themselves up about inspiration, they spend a higher percentage of it actually working. Claude Monet, after he painted the haystack, didn't spend the next week agonizing over what will I paint next? He just painted the haystack again. [End Page 377] As it turns out, poets also subject themselves to deeply unhelpful models of revision. The prevailing one is what I call the "zero-sum" model, in which the latest version of a poem substitutes absolutely for the old version, which is lost forever. The patron saint of this approach might be Elizabeth Bishop, whose nineteen extant versions of "One Art" bolster my theory. This is the first draft: Click for larger view View full resolution [End Page 378] And here, of course, is the iconic final version: The art of losing isn't hard to master;so many things seem filled with the intentto be lost that their loss is no disaster. Lose something every day. Accept the flusterof lost door keys, the hour badly spent.The art of losing isn't hard to master. Then practice losing farther, losing faster:places, and names, and where it was you meantto travel. None of these will bring disaster. I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, ornext-to-last, of three loved houses went.The art of losing isn't hard to master. I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster. —Even losing you (the joking voice, a gestureI love) I shan't have lied. It's evidentthe art of losing's not too hard to masterthough it may look like (Write it!) like disaster. It's instructive to note what didn't make the cut from the initial draft: the starting daily losses that seem to have triggered the poem (reading glasses, a favorite pen, keys); some, but not all, of the speaker's remembered places (a peninsula, an island, a beach, a [End Page 379] bay); and even the most emotionally resonant images of the original version—the blue eyes, the intelligent hands of Bishop's lover and literary executor, Alice Methfessel. All these elements fall victim to the scythe of Bishop's notoriously ruthless editorial eye and are discarded in the landfill of unwanted images. Surely there must be a kinder, more eco-friendly way … Luckily for us, there is another model of revision, which I call "generative revision," or "non-zero-sum revision." And because I prefer to belabor my metaphors past the point of all reason, I'll discuss this generative, non-zero-sum approach using four different mathematical operations: addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. In this alternative model, rather than replacing the original, the revision coexists with it, offering expansions, alternatives, sub-versions, and offspring that enrich the original work. My model of generative revision has its own patron saint: Emily Dickinson. Here is the final stanza of Dickinson's great poem of unfulfilled love "I Cannot Live With You" (poem 640): So We must meet apart –You there – I – here –With just the Door ajarThat Oceans are – and Prayer –And that White Sustenance –Despair – What you've just read is the official, authorized ending of this explosive, daring...

Steve McCaffery Remixed: “great poems are read from the bottom up”

The following essay is a work of Recombinant Theory. To write this essay, I have performed an elaborate cut-up and montage of Steve McCaffery’s poetic and critical writing, producing over 4,000 recombinant aphorisms that extend from McCaffery’s own poetics, while also refracting his theoretical concepts. Of these 4,000+ aphorisms, I have compiled several in the linear sequence that follows. This essay is an original work of narrative and theory, and it is also fully indebted to McCaffery’s own work. Recombinant Theory is constraint theory, producing critical writing by means of poetic technique. This strategy resonates with the first mandate of the Toronto Research Group Manifesto (written by McCaffery and bpNichol), which states that “all theory is transient & after the fact of writing.” In Recombinant Theory, the essay’s ideas minimally precede the writing process; the cut-up and montage techniques are predetermined, but the process itself determines what recombinant aphorisms will emerge, and what theoretical arc will be produced through the sequencing of these aphorisms. Recombinant Theory chooses not to assess a text at arm’s length, not to summarize any part of a text, not to paraphrase, not to speak on a text’s behalf. Instead, Recombinant Theory speaks with the text, geomantically realigning its energy patterns, infecting the text’s energy while also being infected by it, foregrounding the direct physical impact of material language, waging an attack on the categories of author and reader.

Working Title

Working Title

The Arab Influence in Robert Browning’s Poetry: The Arab Culture in Browning’s Poetry

Robert Browning is one the famous poets of the Victorian era. He wrote a lot of great poems in addition to many other literary forms. Upon reading his poetry, one may feel the taste of the Arabic flavor, I mean the Arabic influence. Browning, like many 19th-century poets, was exposed to Arabic literature wrapped in what is known as the literature of the Orient. The following paper is going to explore the Arab influence on Robert Browning’s poetry. Few famous poems have been chosen to trace the Arab impact on Browning’s poetry. Our focus will be on the content more than the form, mainly, wisdom and other cultural affairs.

Acquainted with Grief


 
 
 The authors of the numerous medieval and early modern Sanskrit-medium commentaries on the various recensions and sub-recensions of the Vālmīkirāmāyaṇa frequently found themselves in a somewhat awkward hermeneutical position. The epic itself, like many Indic texts, is highly revered both as a religious text, one of the earliest and most influential Vaiṣṇava texts, and as a literary work that is not only a great poem but indeed the very first poem and the fons et origo of all subsequent poetry. Moreover, like Vyāsa, the author of the Rāmāyaṇa’s sister epic, the Mahābhārata, Vālmīki was regarded not merely as an inspired poet and sage, but as a ṛṣi, that is to say an inerrant seer whose speech, in his case inspired directly by the creator divinity Brahmā and the god’s gift of a divine vision, must therefore be accepted as absolutely true and authoritative. The problem facing the work’s commentators is that Vālmīki’s text portrays its hero, Rāma, as not only a god in the form of a man, but as one who, ignorant of his own divinity, suffers all of the mental, emotional, and physical pain to which ordinary mortals are prey. In this Rāma differs sharply from the subsequent Vaiṣṇava avatāra and central figure of the Mahābhārata, Kṛṣṇa, who, fully aware of his godhood, rarely suffers in any way mentally or physically. But the Rāmāyaṇa’s commentators are living and writing in a world in which the development of the medieval bhakti movements has led poets and theologians to conceive of and write about Rāma as an omnipotent and omniscient figure very much like Kṛṣṇa.
 The present essay discusses the lexical, grammatical, and hermaneutical strategies the commentors adopted to negotiate the tension between Vālmīki’s apparent depiction of the suffering of his hero and a proposed deeper meaning in which the avatāra conforms more fully to what became the medieval and modern theology of god on earth.
 
 

President’S Message

2022…WOW! We have come so far and progressed, or should we say regressed? We were finally able to have an in-person face to face conference (664) with virtual attendance (366) too!!! (Excitement and shouts of joy!!!). We started the conference with a great poem written by my nephew Mikey Stevens, (a vascular need patient): To live is to grow, to grow is to learn.As we grow and learn, we must lead so they know.AVA will grow as members align; together we will say “We can save that line!”We raise our flag on the mountain of knowledge, wage war against naivety so they must acknowledge.Needle or catheter, our practice matters.Preserve the vein, is the name of the game.Some growth to improve and ignorance to be pruned.Our research the shears to stop the assume.AVA’s mission is the vessel that maintains our course.The knowledge we gain, is meant to align.Till we all yell together “We can save that line!”This reminds us, as we progress through our careers, we need to make sure we are addressing the problems AND saving the line/Vein. We all read research, but do we all do our diligence to research what we could do better? The AVA Foundation has implemented a program to enable all clinicians to bring their research to JAVA. If you didn’t reply to the foundations survey, it is not too late to reach out to them to apply for a mentor to guide you through the process to become an author of a journal article in JAVA.Although COVID has changed many of our practices is has also provided focus on some of our long-term issues. AVA has partnered with BBraun to develop a comprehensive eLearning module that provides a certification. This curriculum was developed to elevate the knowledge and skill of learners and is offered FREE to universities and colleges. This means your alma mater could now improve vascular access with your help of instituting the PIV curriculum into their current education.Intravascular Quarterly and JAVA continue to offer our members articles of interest, as well as peer-reviewed articles related to care and management of our patients. CE options are offered in the journal and on our website through webinars with additional learning with our podcast.ACE by AVA was offered at our Scientific Meeting Pre-Conference session, to provide education on Ultrasound Guided Peripheral Intravenous Insertions. This is an eLearning module offered to hospitals and individuals to develop a foundation of knowledge and validation of competency to support the placement of ultrasound-guided PIVs.The Resource Guide that was released in 2021 was updated this year and released during our AVASM 2022, along with our PediNeoSIG who published a digital resource for Insertion, Care and Maintenance of PICCs for our youngest of patients.The Education Department is diligently working on our Clinical Practice Guidelines. These comprehensive guidelines will include Patient Assessment and Device Selection, Pre-insertion, Insertion, Complications Management, Device Maintenance and Removal and Administrative Considerations.As we move to the end of a year and beginning of a new year, we have the opportunity to grow, expand, and mentor. Let’s take the knowledge we learned from the year and years passed, to educate our new nurses and inspire all to Save That Line!!!

Ideas of Religious Harmony in Bharathiyar Poetry

Bharathiyar's poems can be credited with leading the trend of Tamil literature to a new dimension in the twentieth century. It was Bharathiyar's works that made the Tamil language, which was immersed in the luxuriant flavours of the small literary genres in the palaces of the small land kings, rise up with a new force towards a new direction. Bharathiyar's poems, which arose for the liberation of the land, shed light on various fields, like women's liberation, spiritual liberation, caste liberation, and social liberation. Mahakavi Bharathiyar's poems became a rallying cry against slavery. Bharathiyar's family background, life in the city of Kasi, and friendship with Sri Aurobindo were factors in Bharathiyar's Hinduism. The reason why Bharathiyar took the nickname Shaktidaasan was because of his great love for Shakthi worship. Thus, even though Shakthi was sung as the supreme deity, Bharathiyar became a great devotee of the Vaishnava deity Kannan by composing the great poem Kannan Paattu. Bharathiyar's concept is also a celebration of the higher ideals of Buddhist philosophy. Although many poems have been sung with involvement in the various religious practises of India, it is also possible to know that religious harmony thoughts such as "one is supreme and we are its people" are prevalent in Bharathiyar's poems. Thus, speaking and writing about the ideas of religious harmony found in Bharathiyar's poems is an unavoidable requisite in today's environment. In this way, the ideas of religious harmony found in Bharathiyar poems are the foundation for the formation of a cultured society with high religious tolerance.

Ecotheological Community and the Question of Non-Human Animals Understood as Persons

Ecotheological Community and the Question of Non-Human Animals Understood as Persons

Michael L. Raposa Plays with Peirce, Love, and Signs: Review Essay on Theosemiotic: Religion, Reading, and the Gift of Meaning

Michael L. Raposa Plays with Peirce, Love, and Signs: Review Essay on <i>Theosemiotic: Religion, Reading, and the Gift of Meaning</i>

Prufrock in the 21st Century

ABSTRACT “Prufrock in the 21st Century” demonstrates how a professor of poetry at a university in the global south teaches T. S. Eliot’s poems, especially “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”. The poem also shows how the professor handles the classroom in which the students react and respond in precarious ways, and the professor attempts to relate the great poem to the present time. The poem situates Prufrock, the seminal character of Eliot’s poem, in the 21st century cultural context of global south.

Did Sir John Stanley write Sir Gawain and the Green Knight?

The Gawain Poet was the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a fourteenth-century Arthurian romance, and perhaps the greatest poem ever written in Northern England. Its anonymous creator ranks with Marvell, Wordsworth, and the Brontës as amongst the North's supreme literary artists. The question naturally arises as to who he was. In 2004 the present writer gave an answer, publishing (in the US journal Arthuriana) an analysis of the poem and its associated works Pearl, Cleanness, and Patience. He there proposed that the unknown poet was Sir John Stanley (c. 1350-1414), the evidence including dialect, topography, and verbal parallels between the four texts and Stanley's correspondence. What follows offers a revised survey of publications before and after 2004, examining whether they strengthen the case for Stanley as the Gawain Poet, weaken it, or demolish it completely.