POETRY ANALYSIS

  (Poems collected from: http://stielaprbhs.weebly.com/20-must-read-poems-for-ap-lit-students.html)

My Last Dutchess by Robert Browning

• Paraphrase: In essence Robert Browning's "My last Dutchess" reflects on the life/character of the eponymous woman. Via a recount of a painted portrait, the narrator details his own amorous ties to the girl before her passing.

• Purpose: A nostalgic reflection is the "purpose" of this poem. (as far as i could extrapolate) Nearly a memoir of sorts highlighting the good as well as bad qualities the Dutchess possessed whilst alive.

•  Structure: Utilizes a rhyming couplet structure, the end of one sentence almost always rhyming the last word of the next.

• Shift: From the intro only positive traits delivered by romanticizations of the Dutchess were present, but, by the mid/end the tone shifts alongside the positivity as the negative aspcts of the dutchess are described.

• Speaker: An unidentified narrator (possibly Robert Browning himself?) that had many a romantic relationship with the Dutchess.

• Spelling/Grammar/Diction: Old English. Utilized what we would dub "archaic" conjunctions/quixotic diction.

• Tone: nostalgic

• Theme: To be honest, didnt really discern a particular theme, whether it be a nostalgic ramble or a parable on adultorous turpitudes, i wouldnt say there was a distinct "theme"

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain, by Emily Dickinson

• Paraphrase: Umm... Yeah...Very, very, incoherent.... I suppose the poem is a metaphor for not genuine mortality, but death by life's  mundanity, maybe? (?) really couldn't give you a summary of what i jut read.

• Purpose: See paraphrase; My suspicions lend to a metaphor for how mundane life has essentially made for the narrator a type of living death....

•  Structure: Utilized four sentence quatrains; Free verse

• Shift: None, none that were telligble i could read really...remained consistently ambiguous and laced with blatantly loaded connotations

• Speaker: Emily Dickinson herself possibly, a commentary on the (theme)

• Spelling/Grammar/Diction: Stream of conscious style, its cerebral tone/peculiar and somewhat haunting choice of words definitely supports my

• Tone: Melancholic, haunting, cerebral the buzzwords go on and on.

• Theme: As i said previously if i had to salvage my own conception of a theme from this poem it would be that of the mundanity, exacerbating lethargy, of life without dreams, greater ambitions for improvement, pursuits, etc. leads to a sort of living death, a walking huk alive but dead. A funeral being commenced in your brain...

‘Out, Out—’ By Robert Frost

• Paraphrase: A boy working long by sunset, no breaks, no buts, diligently saws timber, by accident slipping and seriously injuring himself with the machinery. His arm is then amputated, the boy and the poem ending with the child passing into unconsciousness.

• Purpose/theme(they are essentially the same...): What I perceived the purpose of this piece was a commentary on the loss of childhood/innocence as adulthood/labor rears its ugly head. (as supported by the tectual language/ambiguous/apathetic reactions of the doctor/adults, almost as if pain such as this was inevitable a fact of life)

•  Structure: Relatively modern pacing/free verse

• Shift: The first third of the work is a vivid pastiche nearly, painting some beatuiful mountain imagery, but, transitions to dark, unexpected reality as the boy is injured and goes thru his operation.

• Speaker: unidentified; omniscient observer/re-teller

• Spelling/Grammar/Diction: Modern grammar/structure and diction, the use of vivid imagery/personification/symbolism of the saw really complemented my interest in this poem.

• Tone: Initially romantic in its rural descriptions of the surrounding ranges/the boy's hard sawing, the poem shifts to a dark/grim tone towards the end after the boy is injured/operated subsequently.

Ozymandias by Percy Busshe Shelley

• Paraphrase: The poem recounts a story (from the mouth of another traveler; from an "antique") about a statue crumbling in the desert, constructed by a disgruntled sculptor (apparently never appreciated for his masonry prowess)  by the name of "King Ozymandias".

• Purpose/Theme: "Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,The lone and level sands stretch far away." this excerpt illustrates my perception of this given poem's theme/pupose as it comments on the ultimate equilibrium of life (mortality delivering all to the same end, thus the disgruntled sculptor lives on thru his statue, much longer than those "ridiculed him"), of mankind as well as impotency of the species in the grand stretch of nature as nothing, even the statue, now decaying and crumbling, will forever remain.

• Structure: Sonnet/Iambic pentameter

• Shift: Begins with a two line intro then shifts to bombastic language/fulminations as the Ozymandias statue scripture is quoted

• Speaker: unidentified though presumably the author "retelling" (embellishing/fabricating more likely) a story told to them by a traveler

• Spelling/Grammar/Diction: Old English (lol basket word categorization I'm aware); grammar is definitely influenced by the Shakespearean days of yore, ye might need read a dictionary for thou'st understandeth. Diction is rather "modern" though.

• Tone: odd; wasn't necessarily imbued with a recognizable tone beyond the bombastic quoting of the structure inscriptions

 Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden

• Paraphrase: A son reflects on his father's compassion/dedication to the son/family as the father, even on those cold, winter Sundays would rise for work early in the morn to provide (not exactly identified what he is actually providing)  for his family. The son not able to truly appreciate or maybe even understand until his father, who he loved, was gone (maybe lived in a troubled home/ had a turbuluent upbringing?...)

• Purpose/Theme: Taking in the tone/literal in too account, I ruminate that the theme is appreciation/recognition for those who have provide for you, helped you, raised you, loved you unequivocally, like your parents :) to realize how much they have done for you and thank them before its too late.

• Structure: Didn't follow a particular structure that we have been made familiar of in class; Free verse maybe?

• Shift: Remained consistently "blue and cold" thru-out the work

• Speaker: Presumably Robert Hayden; or a son of the work's depicted father

• Spelling/Grammar/Diction: Modern; In terms of grammar it was executed coherently (no old Elizabethan conjunctions or structures here!); Modern diction too boot!

• Tone: "Blue"; not despondent nor "cold" in the traditional sense but "winter blue" would be the jine se qua mood/tone summoned, evoked within me while reading. It was dark by any means but it did seem guilty, if not regretful as a son seeming to recount/appreciate his father now gone.