Reading As A Writer Poems – Flashcards

The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock - T.S. Eliot

It is an examination of the tortured psyche of the prototypical modern man—overeducated, eloquent, neurotic, and emotionally stilted. Prufrock, the poem's speaker, seems to be addressing a potential lover, with whom he would like to "force the moment to its crisis" by somehow consummating their relationship. But Prufrock knows too much of life to "dare" an approach to the woman: In his mind he hears the comments others make about his inadequacies, and he chides himself for "presuming" emotional interaction could be possible at all.

Dramatic monologues are similar to soliloquies in plays. Three things: 1. utterances of a specific individual (not the poet) at a specific moment in time. 2. the monologue is specifically directed at a listener whose presence is not directly referenced but is merely suggested in the speaker's words. 3. primary focus is the development and revelation of the speaker's character. Eliot modernizes the form by removing the implied listeners and focusing on Prufrock's interiority and isolation. The epigraph to this poem, from Dante's Inferno, describes Prufrock's ideal listener: one who is as lost as the speaker and will never betray to the world the content of Prufrock's present confessions. In the world Prufrock describes, though, no such sympathetic figure exists, and he must, therefore, be content with silent reflection. Style Influence: 1. the French Symbolists. Eliot takes his sensuous language and eye for unnerving or anti-aesthetic detail that nevertheless contributes to the overall beauty of the poem (the yellow smoke and the hair-covered arms of the women are two good examples of this). creates the moody, urban, isolated-yet-sensitive thinker. However, whereas the Symbolists would have been more likely to make their speaker himself a poet or artist, Eliot chooses to make Prufrock an unacknowledged poet, a sort of artist for the common man. 2. use of fragmentation and juxtaposition. Here, the subjects undergoing fragmentation (and reassembly) are mental focus and certain sets of imagery

The Waste Land - T.S. Eliot

It is made up of four vignettes, each seemingly from the perspective of a different speaker. 1. an autobiographical snippet from the childhood of an aristocratic woman, in which she recalls sledding and claims that she is German, not Russian (this would be important if the woman is meant to be a member of the recently defeated Austrian imperial family). 2. a prophetic, apocalyptic invitation to journey into a desert waste, where the speaker will show the reader "something different from either / Your shadow at morning striding behind you / Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; / [He] will show you fear in a handful of dust" (Evelyn Waugh took the title for one of his best-known novels from these lines). The almost threatening prophetic tone is mixed with childhood reminiscences about a "hyacinth girl" and a nihilistic epiphany the speaker has after an encounter with her. 3. an imaginative tarot reading, in which some of the cards Eliot includes in the reading are not part of an actual tarot deck. 4. The speaker walks through a London populated by ghosts of the dead. He confronts a figure with whom he once fought in a battle that seems to conflate the clashes of World War I with the Punic Wars between Rome and Carthage. The speaker asks the ghostly figure, Stetson, about the fate of a corpse planted in his garden. The episode concludes with a famous line from the preface to Baudelaire's Fleurs du Mal (an important collection of Symbolist poetry), accusing the reader of sharing in the poet's sins.

seen as a modified dramatic monologue. The four speakers in this section are frantic in their need to speak, to find an audience, but they find themselves surrounded by dead people and thwarted by outside circumstances, like wars. Because the sections are so short and the situations so confusing, the effect is not one of an overwhelming impression of a single character; instead, the reader is left with the feeling of being trapped in a crowd, unable to find a familiar face. only partial rhyme schemes and short bursts of structure. These are meant to reference—but also rework— the literary past, achieving simultaneously a stabilizing and a defamiliarizing effect. The world of The Waste Land has some parallels to an earlier time, but it cannot be approached in the same way. The inclusion of fragments in languages other than English further complicates matters. The reader is not expected to be able to translate these immediately; rather, they are reminders of the cosmopolitan nature of twentieth-century Europe and of mankind's fate after the Tower of Babel: We will never be able to perfectly comprehend one another.

Araby - James Joyce

The narrator, an unnamed boy, describes the North Dublin street on which his house is located. He thinks about the priest who died in the house before his family moved in and the games that he and his friends played in the street. He recalls how they would run through the back lanes of the houses and hide in the shadows when they reached the street again, hoping to avoid people in the neighborhood, particularly the boy's uncle or the sister of his friend Mangan. The sister often comes to the front of their house to call the brother, a moment that the narrator savors. Every day begins for this narrator with such glimpses of Mangan's sister. He places himself in the front room of his house so he can see her leave her house, and then he rushes out to walk behind her quietly until finally passing her. The narrator and Mangan's sister talk little, but she is always in his thoughts. He thinks about her when he accompanies his aunt to do food shopping on Saturday evening in the busy marketplace and when he sits in the back room of his house alone. The narrator's infatuation is so intense that he fears he will never gather the courage to speak with the girl and express his feelings. One morning, Mangan's sister asks the narrator if he plans to go to Araby, a Dublin bazaar. She notes that she cannot attend, as she has already committed to attend a retreat with her school. Having recovered from the shock of the conversation, the narrator offers to bring her something from the bazaar. This brief meeting launches the narrator into a period of eager, restless waiting and fidgety tension in anticipation of the bazaar. He cannot focus in school. He finds the lessons tedious, and they distract him from thinking about Mangan's sister. On the morning of the bazaar the narrator reminds his uncle that he plans to attend the event so that the uncle will return home early and provide train fare. Yet dinner passes and a guest visits, but the uncle does not return. The narrator impatiently endures the time passing, until at 9 p.m. the uncle finally returns, unbothered that he has forgotten about the narrator's plans. Reciting the epigram "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," the uncle gives the narrator the money and asks him if he knows the poem "The Arab's Farewell to his Steed." The narrator leaves just as his uncle begins to recite the lines, and, thanks to eternally slow trains, arrives at the bazaar just before 10 p.m., when it is starting to close down. He approaches one stall that is still open, but buys nothing, feeling unwanted by the woman watching over the goods. With no purchase for Mangan's sister, the narrator stands angrily in the deserted bazaar as the lights go out.

In "Araby," the allure of new love and distant places mingles with the familiarity of everyday drudgery, with frustrating consequences. Mangan's sister embodies this mingling, since she is part of the familiar surroundings of the narrator's street as well as the exotic promise of the bazaar. She is a "brown figure" who both reflects the brown façades of the buildings that line the street and evokes the skin color of romanticized images of Arabia that flood the narrator's head. Like the bazaar that offers experiences that differ from everyday Dublin, Mangan's sister intoxicates the narrator with new feelings of joy and elation. His love for her, however, must compete with the dullness of schoolwork, his uncle's lateness, and the Dublin trains. Though he promises Mangan's sister that he will go to Araby and purchase a gift for her, these mundane realities undermine his plans and ultimately thwart his desires. The narrator arrives at the bazaar only to encounter flowered teacups and English accents, not the freedom of the enchanting East. As the bazaar closes down, he realizes that Mangan's sister will fail his expectations as well, and that his desire for her is actually only a vain wish for change. The narrator's change of heart concludes the story on a moment of epiphany, but not a positive one. Instead of reaffirming his love or realizing that he does not need gifts to express his feelings for Mangan's sister, the narrator simply gives up. He seems to interpret his arrival at the bazaar as it fades into darkness as a sign that his relationship with Mangan's sister will also remain just a wishful idea and that his infatuation was as misguided as his fantasies about the bazaar. What might have been a story of happy, youthful love becomes a tragic story of defeat. Much like the disturbing, unfulfilling adventure in "An Encounter," the narrator's failure at the bazaar suggests that fulfillment and contentedness remain foreign to Dubliners, even in the most unusual events of the city like an annual bazaar.

Nausicaa - James Joyce

A mawkish, clichéd, third-person narrative describes the summer evening on Sandymount Strand, near Mary, Star of the Sea church. Bloom stands across the beach from three girlfriends—Cissy Caffrey, Edy Boardman, and Gerty MacDowell—and their charges: Cissy's twin toddler brothers and Edy's baby brother. Cissy and Edy tend to the babies and occasionally tease Gerty, who is sitting some distance away. The narrative sympathetically describes Gerty as beautiful, and outlines the commercial products she uses to maintain her looks. Gerty's crush—the boy who bicycles past her house—has been aloof lately. Gerty daydreams of marriage and domestic life with a silent, strong man. Meanwhile, Edy and Cissy deal loudly with the children's disputes. Gerty is mortified by her friends' unladylike obscenity, especially in front of the gentleman (Bloom). Nearby, at the Star of the Sea church, a men's temperance retreat begins with a supplication to the Virgin. The toddlers kick their ball too far. Bloom picks it up and throws it back—the ball rolls to a stop under Gerty's skirt. Gerty tries to kick the ball to Cissy but misses. Gerty senses Bloom's eyes on her and notices his sad face. She fantasizes that he is a foreigner in mourning who needs her comfort. Gerty displays her ankles and her hair for Bloom, knowing she is arousing him. Gerty wonders aloud how late it is, hoping Cissy and Edy will take the children home. Cissy approaches Bloom and asks for the time. Bloom's watch has stopped. Gerty watches Bloom put his hands back in his pockets and senses the onset of her menstrual cycle. She yearns to know Bloom's story—is he married? A widower? Duty-bound to a madwoman? Cissy and the others are preparing to leave when the fireworks from the Mirus bazaar begin. They run down the strand to watch, but Gerty remains. Gerty leans back, holding her knee in her hands, knowingly revealing her legs, while she watches a "long Roman candle" firework shoot high in the sky. At the climax of the episode and Gerty's emotions (and Bloom's own orgasmic climax, we soon realize) the Roman candle bursts in the air, to cries of "O! O!" on the ground. As Gerty rises and begins to walk to the others, Bloom realizes that she is lame in one foot. He feels shock and pity, then relief that he did not know this when she was arousing him. Bloom ponders the sexual appeal of abnormalities, then women's sexual urges as heightened by their menstrual cycles. Remembering Gerty's two friends, he considers the competitiveness of female friendships, like Molly's with Josie Breen. Bloom remembers that his watch was stopped at 4:30, and he wonders if that is when Molly and Boylan had sex. Bloom rearranges his semen-stained shirt and ponders strategies for seducing women. Bloom wonders if Gerty noticed him masturbating—he guesses that she did, as women are very aware. He briefly wonders if Gerty is Martha Clifford. Bloom thinks about how soon girls become mothers, then of Mrs. Purefoy at the nearby maternity hospital. Bloom ponders the "magnetism" that could account for his watch stopping when Boylan and Molly were together, perhaps the same magnetism that draws men and women together.

In Episode Thirteen of Ulysses, Gerty MacDowell corresponds to Princess Nausicaa, who, in The Odyssey, discovers Odysseus asleep on the beach and tends to him. Gerty, associated with blue and white, also seems to correspond to the Virgin Mary. Sounds from the nearby temperance retreat are interspersed with Gerty's narrative, creating an ironic parallel between Gerty and Mary: as Gerty dreams of ministering to a husband and opens herself to Bloom's supplicating sexual attention, so do the men in the church appeal to the statue of the Virgin Mary for comfort and aid. Episode Thirteen is the first episode of Ulysses that centers on a female consciousness, and it inaugurates the final sections of the book, which are more female-centered in their characters and settings. The first half of Episode Thirteen centers on Gerty's appearance and consciousness, and we only hear Bloom's interior monologue in the second half of the episode. Gerty's half consists of several barely distinct narrative points of view and styles. The narrative is sympathetic with Gerty, and Gerty's consciousness slides in and out of the narrative—her interior monologue is sometimes rendered directly. The narrative's style borrows from (and parodies) the prose of both moralizing, sentimental literature and consumer-oriented women's magazines. The style is accordingly full of emotional clichés, effusive diction, and imprecise descriptions. Additionally, the style of the narrative is such that unpleasant realities and indelicate details are filtered out. Thus, Gerty's lame foot is only slightly alluded to, as is masturbation. The feminine pleasantries and the focus on sentimental love in Episode Thirteen seem to be something of a response to Episode Twelve's masculine violence and prejudice. This hypothesis fits with the workings of Ulysses, by which previous perspectives are tempered by later styles and character viewpoints. Thus, Bloom's foreignness—a detriment in Episode Twelve—becomes an attractive asset for him in Episode Thirteen. Yet Episodes Twelve and Thirteen ultimately turn out to have straightforward affinities. Excess lacking substance seems common to both, from the hyperbolic lists of Episode Twelve to the lush expositions of Episode Thirteen. And both episodes seem to offer examples of categorical or stereotypical thinking. The citizen's logic worked on the seemingly straightforward basis of race and religion. Gerty's thoughts offer conventional ideas, while the narrative of Episode Thirteen invites us to evaluate Gerty as an entirely typical Irish girl. Women in Episode Thirteen are defined, in part, by their perceptiveness about who is looking at them and when. Women become sexual beings through their ability to present themselves to be looked at, and Bloom's erotic moments are voyeuristic. Stephen, in "Proteus," experimented with closing his eyes and concentrating on his other senses. The second half of Episode Thirteen reflects a shift of emphasis from the eyes to the nose. Bloom's thoughts hover around smells and smelling. The distinction between the emphasis on senses in the two beach episodes seems to lie in the import of Stephen's and Bloom's musings—Stephen seeks to understand how our senses order our relationship to the physical world, while Bloom's thoughts dwell on sight and smelling as ordering relationships between people. Like the other women whom Bloom has seen and fantasized about so far in Ulysses, Gerty eventually reminds Bloom of Molly, suggesting that Bloom's desire for Molly is often refracted through another woman. It is in this episode that Bloom notices for the first time that his watch has stopped, apparently sometime between four and five o'clock—perhaps at the exact time of Boylan and Molly's tryst. Yet our sympathy for Bloom's sadness at this thought is tempered by the circumstances of the discovery—Bloom himself is conducting a tryst at this later hour, albeit an unconsummated one.

Portrait d'une Femme - Ezra Pound

This poem paints an obscure image of a woman, beginning with a handful of sea metaphors describing her and her interactions with other people. She has been living in London for at least twenty years ("score" means twenty). On line three, "bright ships" is likely a metaphor for the people that surround her, leaving her abstract "fees" like ideas and gossip. "Great minds," probably philosophers, writers, or others of that stature who "lack someone else" tend to seek her out. Even though she is always "second choice," she prefers this life to being stuck in a dull marriage. In return, she gives theses people "facts that lead nowhere; and a tale or two," which aren't particularly useful. The poem characterizes the woman's "riches" as decorative and gaudy. Despite this ongoing exchange, there is nothing that truly belongs to the woman, but this transience defines her. The poem finishes with the line "Yet this is you," which suggests that she would not be who she is if she had things to call her own.

Pound wrote this poem in blank verse, rather than the free verse he was frequently writing at the time. Blank verse is written in iambic pentameter, a rhythm most commonly associated with Shakespeare where each line consists of five sets of two-syllable "feet," or ten syllables in each line. In iambic pentameter, every other syllable is stressed. Though the vast majority of lines in "Portrait" follow this pattern, there are a few scattered which are either shorter or longer than ten syllables. There are a number of reasons why Pound may have done this, however, as it is common for poets to vary meter in order to draw attention to specific lines. Therefore, it is likely that Pound wanted to emphasize the lines that have irregular meter. In the very first line, the speaker associates the subject with the sea, an extended metaphor that continues throughout the poem. He references the Sargasso Sea even though it is far from the subject's residence in London. However, the Sargasso Sean is known for collecting seaweed and debris just as this woman is known for collecting knowledge, gossip, and ideas. The sea also symbolizes this woman's reluctance to tie herself down; the sea flows on and on forever, collecting whatever it finds, and the woman would rather do the same rather than dropping anchor somewhere. The ever-changing sea belongs to no one, just like this woman, and at the same, nothing and no one belongs to it/her. Pound reveals his fascination with economic theory in this poem through all the references to commerce and trade. He frames the woman and her ephemeral relationships as business interactions. "Great minds" and "bright ships" seek her out and provide her with gossip, knowledge, and ideas in exchange for the gaudy, decorative tales and useless facts. The setting fits with the commercial theme as well; the Sargasso Sea is located on an important trade route to the Caribbean, and London, of course, is a major global trading hub. The speaker finishes by emphasizing that despite all the tidbits this woman has accumulated, none of it is truly her own. Does that make all of it worthless? Does that mean these great minds are sharing their secrets with others as well, so they are not uniquely hers? There are many possible interpretations for the final few lines, though the ephemeral nature of the woman and her life is apparent. The ending of the poem is purposefully vague.

In a Station of the Metro - Ezra Pound

Watching faces appear in a metro station. It is unclear whether he is writing from the vantage point of a passenger on the train itself or on the platform. The setting is Paris, France, and as he describes these faces as a "crowd," meaning the station is quite busy. He compares these faces to "petals on a wet, black bough," suggesting that on the dark subway platform, the people look like flower petals stuck on a tree branch after a rainy night.

the shortness of this poem fits with its topic; when reading, the words flash by quickly, just as a subway speeds away from the platform in an instant. The doors open quickly, revealing a sea of faces, and then close again - the faces are gone after a fleeting glance. This poem's length and quick pace matches the constant motion of a train as it speeds by. Though short, this poem is very sensory in nature; it allows the reader to imagine a scene while reading the lines. Through Pound's economical description of these faces as "petals on a wet, black bough," he is able to invoke a transient tone. This poem is also a clear example of the Imagist style. Victorian poets would frequently use an abundance of flowery adjectives and lengthy descriptions in their poems. Yet Pound employs a Modernist approach to "In a Station of the Metro," using only a few descriptive words (and no verbs among them) to successfully get his point across. Pound uses the word "apparition," which is a ghostly, otherworldly figure, something ephemeral that fades in and out of view. By using this word, Pound reveals surprise at seeing this sea of faces as the subway doors open, which, for a brief moment, fills him with a sense of awe and astonishment. Also, the impermanence of the image gives the poem a melancholy tone, as if Pound is contemplating the fragility of life. Pound connects images of petals and boughs to a mass of humanity - linking a man-made metropolitan scene with the cycles of nature. Pound's use of living metaphors adds to the fleeting tone of this poem. Flowers and trees, like human beings on a metro, are constantly moving, growing, and changing. This short glimpse through the metro doors is the only time that group of people will be as they are in that instant. Similarly, no two petals will ever look exactly the same, as rains come and go, winters freeze, and new buds bloom.

The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter - Ezra Pound

This poem takes the form of a letter from a lonely wife who has not seen her husband in five months. She begins by reminiscing about meeting him during childhood. She was pulling flowers at the front gate and he came by on stilts, playing horse. The next two lines, "And we went on living in the village of Chokan/Two small people, without dislike or suspicion," imply that the pair did not grow close right away following that encounter; they continued to grow up separately. In the next stanza, the wife describes marrying her husband at age fourteen. After that, she was continuously shy, either out of respect, sub-ordinance, or just because of her introverted personality. According to the next stanza, she became more comfortable with the marriage by age fifteen and "stopped scowling." A year later, her husband (a merchant) departed for another village, which is where he has been for the past five months. The monkeys' sorrowful noise mirrors her loneliness. She writes that her husband "dragged [his] feet" when he left - indicating that he did not want to leave her. She ends her letter by writing that if he comes back along the river, he should send word ahead, and she will come out to meet him. The poem is signed "by Rihaku."

Pound was not the creator of this poem; he translated it from the original Chinese version by Li Po. The Chinese original likely had a specific form and identifiable meter, but Pound did not know enough about Chinese poetry to preserve it in his translation. Pound wrote his translation in free verse, structured around the chronological life events of the river-merchant and his wife. This form, though perhaps not Li Po's intent, does actually align with the content of this poem. The free verse makes the letter feel more authentic, as if it is a real letter from a wife to her husband. The lack of prescribed meter allows Pound to bring out the rawness of the wife's emotions, drawing readers directly into her loneliness without having to overcome the barrier of an overly structured presentation. Lines 25 and 26 are two short lines that stand out because they appear in the midst of longer lines. Therefore, these two lines capture the reader's attention just as the poem reaches its climax, and the speaker, the wife, acknowledges the deep sorrow she feels because of her husband's absence. Poets often adjust form or meter in order to bring attention to a specific line. Even though this poem is free verse, those two lines are markedly different from the rest, which allows Pound to emphasize their content. Because this poem follows the sequence of the characters' lives, it is thematically appropriate that Pound uses time-based imagery and figurative language as well. The setting of the poem shifts from spring to autumn. Spring usually represents abundance and new growth, and this is when the couple's love is in bloom. Meanwhile, in the autumn, growth and greenery slowly wither away, leaves fall, and the air grows colder. The husband is away and his wife longs for his return. The wife notes that the moss has grown thicker as well, which is another metaphor for the passage of time. As she grows older, the changing seasons represent her emotional development over time. Rivers are also an important symbol in this poem. Rivers constantly flow and change, just as the relationship between the wife and her husband has evolved. A river forms the physical barrier between them, as the husband traveled along it to another village. At the end of the poem, the wife wonders whether or not another river will bring them back together. In addition, the setting of this poem is a rare glimpse into a portion of China's landscape. in Pound's time, westerners had very little contact with this eastern land. Pound's translation of Chinese poetry probably caused a lot of discussion; it is doubtful that many of his contemporaries believed China to be the lush paradise he describes in this poem.

The Lake Isle - Ezra Pound

The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry - Ezra Pound

The Wild Swans at Coole - W. B. Yeats

With the trees "in their autumn beauty," the speaker walks down the dry woodland paths to the water, which mirrors the still October twilight of the sky. Upon the water float "nine-and-fifty swans." The speaker says that nineteen years have passed since he first came to the water and counted the swans; that first time, before he had "well finished," he saw the swans mount up into the sky and scatter, "whelling in great broken rings / Upon their clamorous wings." The speaker says that his heart is sore, for after nineteen autumns of watching and being cheered by the swans, he finds that everything in his life has changed. The swans, though, are still unwearied, and they paddle by in the water or fly by in the air in pairs, "lover by lover." Their hearts, the speaker says, "have not grown cold," and wherever they go they are attended by "passion or conquest." But now, as they drift over the still water, they are "Mysterious, beautiful," and the speaker wonders where they will build their nests, and by what lake's edge or pool they will "delight men's eyes," when he awakes one morning to find that they have flown away.

one of Yeats's earliest and most moving testaments to the heart-ache of living in a time when "all's changed." (And when Yeats says "All's changed, changed utterly" in the fifteen years since he first saw the swans, he means it—the First World War and the Irish civil war both occurred during these years.) The simple narrative of the poem, recounting the poet's trips to the lake at Augusta Gregory's Coole Park residence to count the swans on the water, is given its solemn serenity by the beautiful nature imagery of the early stanzas, the plaintive tone of the poet, and the carefully constructed poetic stanza—the two trimeter lines, which give the poet an opportunity to utter short, heartfelt statements before a long silence ensured by the short line ("Their hearts have not grown old..."). The speaker, caught up in the gentle pain of personal memory, contrasts sharply with the swans, which are treated as symbols of the essential: their hearts have not grown old; they are still attended by passion and conquest.

The Second Coming - W. B. Yeats

The speaker describes a nightmarish scene: the falcon, turning in a widening "gyre" (spiral), cannot hear the falconer; "Things fall apart; the center cannot hold"; anarchy is loosed upon the world; "The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere / The ceremony of innocence is drowned." The best people, the speaker says, lack all conviction, but the worst "are full of passionate intensity." Surely, the speaker asserts, the world is near a revelation; "Surely the Second Coming is at hand." No sooner does he think of "the Second Coming," then he is troubled by "a vast image of the Spiritus Mundi, or the collective spirit of mankind: somewhere in the desert, a giant sphinx ("A shape with lion body and the head of a man, / A gaze as blank and pitiless as the sun") is moving, while the shadows of desert birds reel about it. The darkness drops again over the speaker's sight, but he knows that the sphinx's twenty centuries of "stony sleep" have been made a nightmare by the motions of "a rocking cradle." And what "rough beast," he wonders, "its hour come round at last, / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

Structurally, the poem is quite simple—the first stanza describes the conditions present in the world (things falling apart, anarchy, etc.), and the second surmises from those conditions that a monstrous Second Coming is about to take place, not of the Jesus we first knew, but of a new messiah, a "rough beast," the slouching sphinx rousing itself in the desert and lumbering toward Bethlehem. This brief exposition, though intriguingly blasphemous, is not terribly complicated; but the question of what it should signify to a reader is another story entirely. Yeats spent years crafting an elaborate, mystical theory of the universe that he described in his book A Vision. This theory issued in part from Yeats's lifelong fascination with the occult and mystical, and in part from the sense of responsibility Yeats felt to order his experience within a structured belief system. The system is extremely complicated and not of any lasting importance—except for the effect that it had on his poetry, which is of extraordinary lasting importance. The theory of history Yeats articulated in A Vision centers on a diagram made of two conical spirals, one inside the other, so that the widest part of one of the spirals rings around the narrowest part of the other spiral, and vice versa. Yeats believed that this image (he called the spirals "gyres") captured the contrary motions inherent within the historical process, and he divided each gyre into specific regions that represented particular kinds of historical periods (and could also represent the psychological phases of an individual's development). "The Second Coming" was intended by Yeats to describe the current historical moment (the poem appeared in 1921) in terms of these gyres. Yeats believed that the world was on the threshold of an apocalyptic revelation, as history reached the end of the outer gyre (to speak roughly) and began moving along the inner gyre.

Sailing to Byzantium - W. B. Yeats

The speaker, referring to the country that he has left, says that it is "no country for old men": it is full of youth and life, with the young lying in one another's arms, birds singing in the trees, and fish swimming in the waters. There, "all summer long" the world rings with the "sensual music" that makes the young neglect the old, whom the speaker describes as "Monuments of unageing intellect." An old man, the speaker says, is a "paltry thing," merely a tattered coat upon a stick, unless his soul can clap its hands and sing; and the only way for the soul to learn how to sing is to study "monuments of its own magnificence." Therefore, the speaker has "sailed the seas and come / To the holy city of Byzantium." The speaker addresses the sages "standing in God's holy fire / As in the gold mosaic of a wall," and asks them to be his soul's "singing-masters." He hopes they will consume his heart away, for his heart "knows not what it is"—it is "sick with desire / And fastened to a dying animal," and the speaker wishes to be gathered "Into the artifice of eternity." The speaker says that once he has been taken out of the natural world, he will no longer take his "bodily form" from any "natural thing," but rather will fashion himself as a singing bird made of hammered gold, such as Grecian goldsmiths make "To keep a drowsy Emperor awake," or set upon a tree of gold "to sing / To lords and ladies of Byzantium / Or what is past, or passing, or to come."

definitive statement about the agony of old age and the imaginative and spiritual work required to remain a vital individual even when the heart is "fastened to a dying animal" (the body). Yeats's solution is to leave the country of the young and travel to Byzantium, where the sages in the city's famous gold mosaics (completed mainly during the sixth and seventh centuries) could become the "singing-masters" of his soul. He hopes the sages will appear in fire and take him away from his body into an existence outside time, where, like a great work of art, he could exist in "the artifice of eternity." In the astonishing final stanza of the poem, he declares that once he is out of his body he will never again appear in the form of a natural thing; rather, he will become a golden bird, sitting on a golden tree, singing of the past ("what is past"), the present (that which is "passing"), and the future (that which is "to come"). A fascination with the artificial as superior to the natural is one of Yeats's most prevalent themes. In a much earlier poem, 1899's "The Lover Tells of the Rose in His Heart," the speaker expresses a longing to re-make the world "in a casket of gold" and thereby eliminate its ugliness and imperfection. Later, in 1914's "The Dolls," the speaker writes of a group of dolls on a shelf, disgusted by the sight of a human baby. In each case, the artificial (the golden casket, the beautiful doll, the golden bird) is seen as perfect and unchanging, while the natural (the world, the human baby, the speaker's body) is prone to ugliness and decay. What is more, the speaker sees deep spiritual truth (rather than simply aesthetic escape) in his assumption of artificiality; he wishes his soul to learn to sing, and transforming into a golden bird is the way to make it capable of doing so.

Crazy Jane and the Bishop - W. B. Yeats

The Statues - W. B. Yeats

Indissoluble Matrimony - Rebecca West

As the story opens, with George Silverton, a solicitor's clerk, entering his darkened house after a day's work, there is an immediate sense of unease. George is evidently a sour, dry, secretive man who resents everything about his wife Evadne—her exotic beauty, which can sometimes change to ugliness; her quick, emotional response to things that he regards as trivial; her small, sensual pleasures; and above all her apparent refusal to respond to or even, perhaps, notice his growing irritation. All of this might seem to be typical of the situation between an ill-matched husband and wife. As the author describes George's life before marriage, however, George emerges as a misogynist with a neurotic fear and hatred of sex. He had cherished the idea of wife-desertion as a justifiable way for a man to cleanse himself of what he called "the secret obscenity of women." He married Evadne in the belief that they shared a bond of spiritual purity but quickly came to the conclusion that her interest in the marriage was purely physical. This disgusted him. Ten years later, he feels cheated and physically defiled. The crisis point is reached when a letter arrives enclosing a handbill announcing that Mrs. Evadne Silverton is to speak at a public meeting in support of Stephen Langton, a Socialist candidate for the town council. Although George is a radical, in the mild reformist meaning of the term, the word "socialism" and the sight of Evadne's name—his surname—on the handbill appall him. His evaluation of his wife as a woman of emotional and intellectual triviality is undermined by his refusal to acknowledge even to himself that she has become a popular and respected political speaker and writer. Political bigotry becomes mixed up with sexual bigotry. He tells her that Langton is a man of low morals, and when Evadne tries to defend him, he accuses her of being a "slut" and threatens to throw her out of the house if she speaks at the meeting. She hides her hurt by going into the kitchen and noisily washing up. George follows her and picks up a...

Most of the narrative is expressed from George's viewpoint, and for much of the time Evadne's character is presented in his subjective terms. The positive quality of her actual nature is defined by occasional, definitive interventions in the writer's own voice. This duality of voice—subjective and objective—heightens the contrast between the two people. It emphasizes George's physical and intellectual weakness and his self-delusions, and it gives authority and power to the characterization of Evadne and to her function in the story as the indissoluble element in the marriage. The story, with its passionate overtones and intricate underlying analytical structure, was acclaimed as a brilliant achievement—particularly impressive in that so young a writer was able to handle profound and difficult emotions with so much confidence and power. The story was an early indication of the qualities of West's more mature works, many of which pursue and develop this story's themes with similar stylistic intensity.

Sunday - Dorothy Richardson

The Garden - Dorothy Richardson

"The Garden" could be considered a close-up of the episode recreated in the Pilgrimage garden memories seen through the eyes of a small child. In this short story there are no epiphanic implications, only the ordinary perceptions of a small child on a common day. However, when the protagonist of Pilgrimage remembers the childhood episode when she contemplated the flowers in the garden by herself, it is so full of significance and poetry that it becomes a symbol, a recurrent epiphanic motif that is a source of meaning and peace

Sleigh Ride - Dorothy Richardson

The Fish - Marianne Moore

"The Fish" does an awesome job of painting an underwater world, while bringing to mind all those life mysteries that keep us interested in the bigger picture. We may not get answers to all our questions, but that's kind of what makes the whole scheme of life exciting and mysterious (and wet) in Moore's poem. Add all this to a poem that actually looks and sounds like a fish swimming through ancient moving waters and what's not to like? You've got some aquatic scenery, some sunlight, a bunch of fish doing their thing, and life's mysteries to boot.

The poem even looks like a deep-sea creature on paper, with stanzas that look like symmetrical scales. We're guessing that, if you stare at it long enough, it may also look like a fish moving through the water too. Intrigued yet? Good, because there's a lot to be said about Moore's style that, on the one hand often looks and sounds beautifully simple, while on the other can leave us scratching our heads. Even the infamously difficult Wallace Stevens preferred to read her work simply for its aesthetic qualities (what it looks like) (source). So, you're not alone if you're feeling a little confused by the poem's meaning, but still think the poem looks pretty cool anyway. Modern poets like Moore asked a lot of questions in their work, whether it be through their style or choice of language. Importantly, they also held off on giving answers. Bear in mind that we're dealing with a time period that featured two world wars, so folks were a bit confused by the sorts of things that were going on and what it all meant. That sense of questioning and confusion played out in a lot of their writing. So what we often end up with in modern poetry are works like "The Fish" that push conventional boundaries of what a poem should look like and what it's supposed to mean. In this case, Moore asks some big questions that deal with how things in the natural world (including people) get along with one another and how we confront cycles of life and death. She's not necessarily asking why we live and die, but rather paints a picture of both life and death coexisting in a cool, almost dreamlike setting. Hey, we all ask these kinds of life-stuff questions from time to time, but not all of us can pull it off in the shape of a swimming fish.

Poetry - Marianne Moore

This is a poem about poetry, which means it has the opportunity to comment on itself and on the poetic techniques it employs. You won't find much figurative language here, but you will find several wink wink/elbow nudge moments that offer some poetic play.

England - Marianne Moore

So to the question, why is a poem about America called "England?" First, of course (of course!), and just to complicate - to look at the back side of the page as well as the front - to the high modern priestess Moore the poem, any poem worth writing, must follow the modernist creed down the alleys of the poem's own Guadalajara-of-the-mind, must be always about its own making, its own self-actualizing. The poem must be an enactment of its own poetic thesis, at once a reification and one unique memorialization of the eternal rediscovery of first principles that was and is the high modernist project for poetry. So "England" is not just a poem about Americabut also, always, a poem about American poetry by way of being about itself, this specific American poem. And to Ms. Moore we (admittedly) presume, untroubled in 1920 as we suspect she would still be in 1960 by the idea that the American poem could be written by some Mexican or French Canadian, the American poem was a poem in English. And to the poet in English isn't all the world an "England?" In fact the poem works quite hard to conflate the "England" of its title (if a title it can be called) not just with America but with the entire world. As Moore's "The Fish" typographically enacts the shape of a fish, "An Octopus" an octopus, here in "England" we have seven blocky, tectonic-edged stanzas typographically representing the seven continents. Of course (of course!), in a world which is England which is the world which is just a poem, these are continents we wouldn't recognize in any geography. (For all her "precision," in W.C. Williams' fine word for her, Ms. Moore will leave the niceties of Geography with a capital "G" for Sister Elizabeth.) Indeed, as stanza five points out, these are if anything "continents of misapprehension" (17), making up a world where Europe (constituted only of England, Italy, Greece, and France) spills across nearly two continents (stanzas one and two), where Asia as a whole (constituted only as "the East") (7) takes up just two lines (or half a continent) that merely encrust the shores of Europe and America, where America sprawls across four continents, and where there is neither any Southern Hemisphere, Arctic nor Antarctic. "Misapprehension" - in the form of "continents of misapprehension" - which appears in the first line of stanza five (17), recurs in the first line of stanza six: "To have misapprehended the matter, is to have confessed / that one has not looked far enough" (21-22). The poem appears to turn in some critical way on the fulcrum of these twin "misapprehensions." But what is in fact being misapprehended is highly ambiguous. The rhetoric of the poem (inasmuch as a poem where "words remain separate, each unwilling to group with the others" (Williams, 231) can be said to have a rhetoric) strains towards an American triumphalism, a glorification of the American grain, which the concluding stanzas of the poem appear to celebrate and which - mistaking the "ramshackle" south for America as a whole (11), "poisonous toadstools" (18) for "mushrooms" (19), Boston "a"s for proper mid-Atlantic "a"s (15-16) - minds like the Anglophile Eliot's or the Italo‑phile Pound's, subsumed in and represented in absentia by the "England" and "Italy" of this poem's world, can and will never properly or fully apprehend.

Marriage - Marianne Moore

Marriage is relatively long for a non-narrative poem, nearly three hundred lines. The unidentified speaker retains distance from the subject, offering comments as a neutral "one" and as a more personal "I," but depending throughout on a technique characteristic of Marianne Moore: the interpolation of quotations as part of the poem's statement. The general tone is of detached, wry observation. The poem opens with a characterization of marriage as either an institution or an enterprise, followed by a query as to what Adam and Eve would think about it. The speaker then extends the Adam and Eve allusion to describe a generic bride and groom. The Eve-bride is characterized by beauty, accomplishment, and contradiction; she upsets the careful rationality of ordered creation with the disturbance of passion. The story of the snake in the garden of paradise is referred to as a convenient exoneration of Adam. The lengthy description of the Adam-groom begins with a vision of Adam in paradise as if depicted in a highly detailed Persian miniature. The speaker goes on to enumerate the man's assertive qualities, which can lead him to overlook the potential dangers of women as he maintains a formal pose, speaking with a specious sense of ownership of public accomplishments and external qualities; eventually, he foolishly begins to believe in his own image, satisfied that he has become an "idol." In the next several lines, he is described as being...

While Marriage is a satirical poem, the object of its satire is elusive and ambiguous. At some points, marriage itself seems to be satirized as a romantic delusion. Given the author's orthodox and conservative Christian belief, however, such an interpretation has limited persuasiveness. Rather, her witty barbs seem aimed more at the incrustations of artificial forms and manners that have obscured the elemental passionate union, and equally at the deceptions and misrepresentations made in the name of marriage. When love comes into the discussion, it is either as infatuate fixation, as in the passage from Trollope on "love that will gaze an eagle blind," or the mutual narcissism of the self-absorbed couple. Finally, the speaker admits to an inadequacy of rational explanation in, characteristically, another cited passage, this one from French fabulist Jean de La Fontaine: "Everything to do with love is a mystery." The true paradox is the institution of marriage as a combination of public contractual obligation and intimate, emotional experience. The contrast between the public, social façade of marriage and the internal emotional dynamics of a love relationship emerges most forcefully in the dialogue between man and woman that the speaker reports in the last half of the poem. This exchange is actually a series of alternating pronouncements rather than a true dialogue, as the two principals actually speak to each other only at one point....

What are Years? - Marianne Moore

The poet begins with a question to all men: what is the guilt or innocence of a person? The speaker uses abstract ideas that everyone thinks about as he grows older. Guilt, innocence, courage, doubt—all are aspects that a man must face in his life. A person will experience all of these feelings at some time. No one is always brave or doubtful. No one is always guilty or innocent. These feelings are subject to change depending on what happens in a person's life. They are raw emotions that impact a person's life. When a person faces these emotions, there are often no words heard or spoken. Death and nakedness are visual images. Death encounters these particular emotions, and sometimes loses to these feelings. Courage and innocence may stir the soul. When in times of despair or trouble, the pain makes the soul stronger. Death comes to all and though it is difficult the person rises above the chaos and fights for his freedom. He will not surrender to his problem. Someone who feels the pain...

Every man is uncertain about the course of his life. God bestows each of his children with certain talents and gifts. These can serve as constraints or limitations. Hopefully, each person can make the best of the course of his life. Because God loves mankind, he wants man to use his time on earth wisely. This is the message that Marianne Moore denotes in her poem "What Are Years?" It is most important to treat each other well with respect and humility. The poem is written in first person point of view with the poet as the narrator. She includes herself in the message as she asks the questions about mankind and his actions in the struggles of life. The poem is three stanzas with nine lines per stanza. There is no set rhyming pattern. In each of the stanzas, the first and third lines rhyme; however, the rest of the poem is primarily free verse. As the poem progresses, it is apparent that the purpose of the poem is to point out that no one is perfect. Hopefully, each person can make the run carefully the course of his life.

Black Tambourine - Hart Crane

Chaplinesque - Hart Crane

sees the human condition as rather bleak and tragic, he finds brief but welcome consolation in elements of everyday life as well as in kindness, imagination, and humor

At Melville's Tomb - Hart Crane

Crane pictures Melville as meditating on one of Crane's favored themes, the dual nature of the sea, beginning the lyric with the imaginative depiction of the novelist watching breakers roll onto a beach. Certainly Melville, a sailor, wrote knowingly about the sea, but his major novel, Moby Dick (1851), to which Crane alludes, is little concerned with this topic and centers on fraternal and hierarchical relations in a small community of men on a whaling ship. As Crane depicts the ocean that Melville is observing, it is a place both of death and of eventual resurrection as men overcome their fears and create a faith in something higher. Water has traditionally been viewed as connected to rebirth in baptism and other rituals. As Melville looks into the surf, he sees "the dice of drowned men's bones" and thinks of the wrecks and lost lives in the depths. His thought rises up, though, to a vision of men at sea finding a spiritual solace in the sky as...

O Carib Isle! - Hart Crane

Sensuous description of a hot, dry Caribbean island stands as an extended metaphor for the dry, desolate state of the speaker's consciousness. Ironically, it is a beautifully realized poem about the failure of poetic inspiration. The poem expresses the poet's exhausted sensibility and spiritual pessimism but creates in the poem itself a belief in something beyond himself, if only in Satan. Actually, Satan is no more present in the poem than the absent "Captain" (God). However, the depressed and weary speaker is more inclined to believe in the hot, desolate landscape of the island as hell rather than paradise.

To Emily Dickinson - Hart Crane

Crane, like Dickinson, believes in, and "desired so much," the kind of joy that Emerson and Whitman could celebrate in such joyous terms, yet both seemed to do so "in vain." Although they "bless the quest" of poetry, neither found the personal joy in life or received, at least in their lifetime, the fame they probably deserved. Crane envisions Emily as passing through eternity cradling a beauty, the beauty of poetry, obviously, in her hands that never withers. Her poetry is a greater treasure than the philosopher's stone or the finest gold.

A Night Among the Horses - Djuna Barnes

a guy is tending to his horses and is explaining his feelings about society. His wife is tormenting him and she wants him to joint he army and become a general, but he doesn't want to be anything higher than a common solider. There is a party and he gets drunk and lashes out at Freda. He thinks he doesn't belong in society and hates class (creates desire) he also gets trampled by horses Themes: rebellion, society's standards,

The Passion - Djuna Barnes

Orchard - H. D.

Unlike many poems in which orchard or garden imagery is used simply to suggest fecundity, fertility, or abundance, for this narrator the splendor of the orchard sets up a dilemma. This dilemma is the source of conflict within the poem: The orchard contains hazelnuts, figs, quinces, and "berries dripping with their wine"; however, like many people with puritan sensibilities, the narrator is wary of being seduced by its aesthetic and sensual appeal and leaves it "untouched." On entering the orchard, the narrator is profoundly moved by its opulence. A falling pear serves as a reminder of the resplendent blossoms that preceded it, and the narrator is overcome with emotion and reverence. Because of the seemingly unbearable beauty of the orchard, the narrator falls to the ground and begs for mercy, wishing to be spared its intoxicating effects. In contrast to the bees who take no notice, the narrator feels vulnerable to the allure of the orchard and must struggle to overcome its aesthetic appeal. However, the narrator feels obliged to reject the orchard's beauty for reasons ranging from veneration to disdain. Rather than taking pleasure in its gifts, the narrator repeatedly entreats the god of the orchard to "spare us from loveliness." In comparison to the orchard, the god appears coarse. He looks on impassively. Like the bees, he is unimpressed by the surroundings. But his plain appearance and indifferent demeanor make him a less threatening, more deserving object of adoration. By making an offering of the orchard's treasures, the narrator subordinates the aesthetic appeal of the orchard to authority of the "unbeautiful" (and therefore less suspect) deity. By using the immoderate bounty to supplicate a more meaningful ideal, the narrator satisfies both the impulse to revere the fruit of the orchard and the compulsion to reject it. By taking pleasure in the fruit by proxy, the narrator minimizes the risk of falling under its intoxicating spell.

Garden - H. D.

The only viable answer lies in the speaker's weariness and apparent powerlessness. One consequence of the Fall is humankind's entrance into the world of labor, a world in which one must work to make things grow, and struggle against barren soil, drought, and difficult climates. The oppressive heat, which, ironically, keeps the fruit from falling, reminds one that this garden is no Eden. Its hard roses and blunted pears reflect beauty in an imperfect and fallen world in which the human speaker is separate from nature, and even calls on one natural force (the wind) to relieve another (the heat).

Eurydice - H. D.

Told from Eurydice's perspective, the poem enables H. D. to delve into Eurydice's mind and to convey Eurydice's feelings, which allows H. D. to integrate into the poem her own viewpoint. The poem's tone, imagery, and form contribute to the complexity of emotion within the poem and display H.D.'s original treatment of old material. In Greek mythology, Eurydice dies from a snake bite. Her husband Orpheus, a poet and a musician, travels to Hades to retrieve his wife. After Orpheus plays a moving tune for them, the gods release Eurydice on the condition that Orpheus refrain from glancing back at his wife until the couple reach sunlight. Unfortunately, Orpheus turns around, and Eurydice must remain in Hades forever. Her hope shattered, Eurydice quietly accepts her fate (Swann 53). Unlike the passive heroine of Greek myth, H. D.'s Eurydice is angry, resentful, and bitter. Eurydice's dramatic monologue exemplifies the agony women suffer at the hands of men. The poem, spoken to Orpheus by Eurydice, exhibits her emotions as she copes with the situation. She communicates her feelings of betrayal through a wide range of emotions, which can be divided into two categories. Eurydice begins by expressing powerlessness, confusion, and anger; after releasing these feelings, she asserts her independence by internalizing her pain and strengthening her resolve.

The poem tracks Eurydice's transformation from a helpless, perplexed wife to an autonomous woman. A change in tone signals Eurydice's budding development. H. D. divides the poem into eight stanzas, which follow Eurydice's emotional growth. The first stanza displays Eurydice's feelings of helplessness. She has been at the mercy of others—first, the gods decided her fate, and then Orpheus sealed it. Eurydice never blames the gods for her death; she appears to accept death as part of the life cycle. Orpheus, however, tampered with the natural order of things. He almost succeeded in bringing her back to life, but he weakened, and for this, Eurydice blames him.

Helen - H. D.

it's about all those big issues in life, like war, hate, love, beauty. H.D.'s "Helen" can be your intro to the story of the Trojan War. But it's also more than just a retelling of Homer. "Helen" is a powerful study of what it means to be a powerful woman. from Greece's perspective

Magician - H. D.

Illusion - Jean Rhys

Mannequin - Jean Rhys

"Mannequin" was an interesting story to me about a young girl in Paris learning her way through modeling. I like that the author described so many types of girls that the main character meets along her journey through the solon. The main character Anna is the "mannequin". I see the term mannequin as being fake, plastic, and a creation of man. Anna's dream is to be one of the top mannequins and make a name for herself. However, she learns that everyone in charge of her tells her what to do and how to do it. Her life seems to be run by everyone but herself. She even has a mother figure who watches over her and the other mannequins, Madame Pecard. She tells them they can not smoke, can not act out, and can not be anything but what the clients what them to be. She is a tyrant to the girls. I see her as wanting the girls to be their best and also to make money. The mannequins are the models for the clothes. They stand in front of buyers and try to get them to buy the clothes that they are showing. The theme that I saw in the story is Identity. Does Anna really want to be this type of person? She has to follow the rules and regulations of how to live and act every second. Throughout the story Anna is trying to find her way through the building that she works. This is a symbol of a labyrinth. She is running trying to find her way throught the building and her life. She has to make her way through the world and find her own identity. Another symbol mentioned in the story is the human flowers. The mannequins and the way they look must be beautiful all the time, fresh, and young. They are seen as flowers and they must keep up appearences to make it in their line of business. Each of the girls that she meets of fellow mannequins, have their own characteristics. The author makes me see that each girl can relate to a "type" of girl in real life. They all fit in their certain roles. There was a tomboy, a strange looking beauty, a gorgeous blonde, and an exotic girl. They all were beautiful in their own way. I felt bad for the character of Anna because first she is looked down apon for being the new girl. She must fight for her place and her certain "look". I think that she needs to learn from the others and own her personality and appearance. In searching for her identity, she must also chose if she wants to be controlled by buyers and bosses for the rest of her life. She will always be the person behind the clothes and something to just look at. The mannequin business seems to me like it would be a very competitive and tiring business always trying to please everyone but yourself. I do not know if I see Anna that way. She seems like she is younger and more naive than the other more experienced mannequins. She must find her own way of doing things and not get lost in her maze of finding her true identity.

Endgame - Samuel Beckett

The setting is a bare interior with gray lighting. There are two small windows with drawn curtains, a door, and two ashbins covered by an old sheet. Hamm sits on an armchair with wheels, covered by an old sheet. Clov stares at Hamm, motionless. Clov staggers off-stage and returns with a stepladder and draws open the curtains for both windows. He removes the sheet from the ashbins and raises the lid of both and looks within. He removes Hamm's sheet. Hamm, in his dressing-gown, a whistle hanging around his neck, and a handkerchief over his face, appears to be asleep. Clov says, "It's finished." He says he'll go to his kitchen and wait for Hamm to whistle him. He leaves, then comes back, takes the ladders and carries it out. Hamm awakens and removes the handkerchief. He wears dark glasses. Hamm folds away his handkerchief. He questions whether anyone suffers as much as he does. He says "it's time it ended," but he "hesitate[s]" to end. He whistles and Clov enters. Hamm insults him and orders Clov to prepare him for bed. He asks what time it is, and Clov replies "Same as usual." Hamm asks if he has looked out the window, and Clov gives his report: "Zero." Hamm commands him to get him ready, but Clov doesn't move. Hamm threatens to hold back food from him, and Clov goes for Hamm's sheet. Hamm stops him and asks why Clov stays with him; Clov asks why Hamm keeps him. For Hamm, there's no one else; for Clov, nowhere else. Hamm accuses Clov of leaving him—Clov concedes that he's trying to do so—and that Clov doesn't love him. He asks why Clov doesn't kill him; Clov replies that he doesn't know the combination of the larder. From one of the ashbins, Nagg emerges in a nightcap. Nagg cries for his pap, but since there's none left, Hamm whistles for Clov to get a biscuit. Nagg complains, and Hamm directs Clov to close the lid on him. Clov says there's no more nature, and Hamm refutes this, arguing that their bodies and minds change. After some more debate, Hamm asks him what he does in his kitchen. Clov says he looks at the wall and sees his light dying. Nagg emerges from his bin, biscuit in mouth, and listens. Hamm tells Clov to leave, which Clov says he's "trying" to do and then does. Nagg knocks on the other bin, and Nell emerges. Nagg asks her to kiss him; they try but cannot reach, and Nell asks why they go through the "farce" every day. Their sight (and Nell's hearing) is failing. Hamm tells them to quiet down, and thinks about what he would dream of if only he could sleep. Nell rebukes Nagg for laughing at Hamm's misery. Nagg tells her a story about a tailor that has often made her laugh, especially the first time he told it to the day after they'd gotten engaged: a tailor keeps botching and delaying a customer's orders for trousers until the customer explodes and points out that God created the world in six days, while the tailor has taken three months for the trousers. The tailor tells him to compare the world with his beautiful trousers. Hamm calls for silence. Nagg disappears, and Hamm whistles for Clov and tells him to throw the bins into the sea. Clov checks Nell's pulse and says she has none. They discuss Hamm's painkiller medicine and Hamm's deceased former doctor. Hamm asks Clov to move him around on his chair and, as he can't see for himself, to hug the walls. Hamm directs Clov to return him back to his spot in the exact center. Hamm tells Clov to check outside with the telescope. Clov's report is "Zero." Clov asks why they go through the farce everyday, and Hamm answers that it is routine. Hamm wonders if he and Clov are beginning to "mean something"; Clov scoffs at this notion. Clov scratches a flea on his body. Hamm is astounded that there are still fleas, and begs Clov to kill it, as "humanity might start from there all over again!" Clov gets some insecticide and sprinkles it inside his pants. Hamm proposes that he and Clov leave for the South. Clov declines, and Hamm says he'll do it alone and tells Clov to build a raft. Clov says he'll start, but Hamm stops him and asks if it's time for his painkiller—it's not—and inquires about Clov's ailing body. Hamm asks why Clov doesn't "finish" them, but Clov says he couldn't do it, and will leave. Hamm asks him if he remembers when he came here, but Clov says he was too small. Hamm asks if Clov remembers his father—he doesn't—and says that he was a father to Clov. Before Clov can leave, Hamm asks Clov if his dog is ready. Clov returns with a three-legged toy dog, which he gives to Hamm. Hamm tells Clov to get him his gaff, and Clov wonders out loud why he never refuses his orders. He gets it for Hamm, who unsuccessfully tries to move his chair around with it. Hamm recollects a madman painter-engraver friend of his who thought the end of the world had come, seeing ashes instead of nature. Hamm asks how he'll know if Clov has left. Clov decides he'll set an alarm clock, and if it doesn't ring, it means he's dead. Hamm says it's time for his story, but Clov doesn't want to hear it. Hamm tells him to wake his father, and Clov looks into the ashbin of the sleeping Nagg. Clov reports that Nagg doesn't want to hear Hamm's story, and wants a sugarplum if he must listen. Hamm agrees, and Clov leaves. Hamm asks Nagg why he produced him, and Nagg says he didn't know that it would be Hamm. Hamm tells a story about how a beggarly man came crawling to him on Christmas Eve. The man revealed he had left behind a small boy in his distant home, alone, and wanted food for the boy. Hamm says he took the man into his service, and was asked if he would take the child, if he were still alive. Clov comes in and reports that there's a rat in the kitchen, and that he's exterminated half of it. Hamm says he'll finish it later, but now they'll pray to God in silence. They are all disappointed by the lack of a godly response, and Hamm believes God doesn't exist. Nagg remembers how Hamm would call him when he was scared as a child, and not his mother. He didn't listen to him, he says, but he hopes the day will come again when Hamm will depend on his father. He knocks on Nell's lid, but with no response he retreats into his bin and closes the lid. Hamm gropes for his dog. Clov hands it to Hamm, who soon after throws it away. Clov cleans up the room, as he loves order, but Hamm makes him stop. Before Clov can leave, Hamm tells him to stay and listen to his story; he repeats the last bit, and says he's too tired to finish it, or to make up another story. He tells Clov to see if Nell is dead; he looks into the bin and says it looks that way. Nagg hasn't died, but he's crying. Hamm asks Clov to push his chair under the window, as he wants to feel the light on his face. He says he feels sunshine, but Clov says it isn't really the sun. Clov pushes Hamm back to the center. Hamm twice calls for his father, and tells Clov to see if Nagg heard him. Clov investigates and says Nagg isn't crying anymore, but sucking his biscuit. Hamm asks Clov to kiss him on the forehead, or hold his hand, but Clov refuses. Hamm asks for his dog, and then rejects the idea, and Clov leaves, vowing that either he'll kill the rat or it'll die. Alone, Hamm takes out his handkerchief and spreads it before him. He considers finishing his story and starting another, or throwing himself on the floor, but he isn't able to push himself off his seat. He ruminates on his eventual death, and then whistles. Clov enters with the alarm clock. He reports that the rat got away from him. Clov says it's time for Hamm's painkiller, which relieves him until Clov reveals there's none left. Hamm tells him to look at the earth. Clov reminds him that after Mother Pegg asked Hamm for oil for her lamp, and he refused her, she died of darkness. Hamm feebly says he didn't have enough, but Clov refutes this. Clov wonders why he obeys Hamm, and Hamm answers that perhaps it's compassion. Clov finds the telescope. Hamm asks to be put in his coffin, but Clov says there is none left. Clov takes the telescope, goes up the stepladder, and sees a small boy out the window. He says he'll investigate with the gaff (a hook-like tool), presumably to kill off the "potential procreator," but Hamm says the boy will either die outside or come inside. He tells Clov that they've come to the end and he doesn't need him anymore, and asks him to leave him the gaff. Before Clov leaves, Hamm asks him to say something "from your heart." Clov repeats a few things "They said to me," and reflects on the pain of life. Hamm stops him before he leaves and thanks him for his services. Clov thanks him, and Hamm says that they are obliged to each other. He asks him to cover him with the sheet, but Clov has already left. He tries to move the chair with the gaff. Clov enters, outfitted for his journey. Hamm doesn't know he's there, and throws away the useless gaff. He resumes telling his story about the man and his child, repeating how the man wanted his child with him. Hamm recalls it was the moment he was waiting for. Hamm twice calls out "Father" and, not hearing anything, says, "We're coming." He discards his dog and his whistle. He calls out for Clov, but hears nothing. He takes out his handkerchief, unfolds it, and says "You...remain." He covers his face with the handkerchief and sits motionless.

Virgins Plus Curtains Minus Dots - Mina Loy

What do you get when you get virgin women with curtains (carefully controlled environment) with no money- a house of captivity/what kind of life is this. How are women valued economically through marriage? Women's place is in the home, a nurturing role. The white gaps between specific=separation. Point of view switches from men to women. On the marriage market without money is difficult for women. Men have taught women what love is. Love is really divinely sanctioned

About what it means to be a women, bolded important words. Idea is controversial even today.