When thinking of horror in terms of poetry, it’s natural to recount the works of Edgar Allan Poe. But other poems fall into this genre as well. A personal favorite is My Last Duchess by Robert Browning.
At first glance, it seems like a straightforward ekphrasis: a rich nobleman describes a newly painted portrait of his deceased wife. It’s written in rhyming couplets of iambic pentameter, with only one long stanza that serves as a sort of monologue. The narrator (presumably a Duke) speaks directly to the reader and refers to them as “sir”, showing that the Duke assumes the reader to be a male of similar status.
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Continued from the previous article. Line 13 In this second-to-last line, the narrator recalls burying a handmade Batman costume in his backyard, then not being able to find it again years later. They end this stanza with the famous lines “How can something be there, and then not be there? How do we forgive ourselves for all the things we did not become?” The narrator wishes for parts of their childhood that they can no longer find; a Batman costume can represent so many things — the dreams that became overshadowed by reality, the heroes they can’t look up to anymore, the battles to protect what they loved, the exciting uncertainty of i-could-be-anything, etc.. As time passed, the protection of the costume — the ideas of innocence, of dreams, of heroes and idols, has disappeared. The other detail here is that the costume was put together with a bundle of unmatching clothings by the narrator. This disorganization could either indicate the carefreeness of childhood, or it could be that the narrator’s upbringing had been skewed in some way, so that even in their youth it took efforts to pretend to be Batman. How to Become a Poet Laureate9/28/2021 Since the 14th century, talented poets have been appointed as laureates by governments and various organizations and institutions. A poet laureate composes poems for important occasions and events to help commemorate the festivities and memorialize the events in verse. For example, during the Biden inauguration, the U.S.A.’s first youth poet laureate Amanda Gorman recited an original poem titled “The Hill We Climb”. A laureate holds a prestigious position reserved for a select few talented wordsmiths.
But how does one obtain such a title? It seems so mysterious and allusive, yet people clearly reach that goal of poetic infamy. So, what’s the process? Continued from last week’s article. If you don’t feel like scrolling back, just see this as a “pick a quote and get a tragedy” game. Or free therapy. Or the opposite of that.
Tragic Character Arcs in Poetry (Part I)8/22/2021 You see the foreshadowing. You knew from the very beginning, from the moment you plucked it off the bookshelf, or from the second you clicked into the first chapter, that it’s a story with a bad ending. But you chose to read it. You keep waiting to get hurt, asking to be broken. Maybe you’re so drawn to tragedies because you are one in the making too.
(still not sponsored, unfortunately.)
You ask someone their opinion on something and they describe the thing with words like amazing and cool and really cool, which most likely does not answer your question at all. You ask someone their opinion on a writing class and they tell you oh I learned so much and I think it’s really helpful and yeah you should totally take it too and it gets exhausting, doesn’t it? You want answers that actually mean something because you want the class to mean something more. Look no further. Here is a list of specific things that you’ll learn from SLC’s writers’ week program: “He jests at scars that never felt a wound./But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?/It is the East, and Juliet is the sun.” (Romeo & Juliet, 2.2.1-3).
The above line begins one of the most iconic soliloquies in Romeo & Juliet. Arguably one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies, these lines are spoken by Romeo alone for only the audience to hear. Part of what makes the monologue so memorable is it’s format: it’s written in blank verse. Major spoilers for Dead Poets Society & trigger warning near the end for suicide.
Before I dissect the many issues I have with the movie itself, I want to shed light on why this is important. Being a cult classic starring the legend Robin Williams, the movie is integral to this save the arts idea, the reminder that poetry is worth studying and enriching. And yet, there is no studying poetry in this movie. And people today love it — with the Dead Poet’s Society tag on Tumblr having 14k followers and over 403k posts on Instagram. There are iconic dark academia accounts such as @deadpoets tribe on Instagram and at least 4 large and active ship blogs on Tumblr. Young people love this movie as much as the millennials did when it came out. I think the movie is misguided and maybe and even a little dangerous due to the pedestal it’s put upon. Not only is it full of intense themes taken to terrible extents, but it also portrays poetry as this passion over intellectual art as well as something to be loved rather than understood in the classroom. (not sponsored, unfortunately.)
So you want to be a writer. Right? It’s what you’ve always wanted to do. It’s what you promised yourself in the corner of your elementary school library. But you don’t say that out loud. You tell no one about it, not even your reflection on the glossy cover of your favorite novel. Things have changed. The bookshelves in your bedroom are loaded with AP prep books and you don’t remember the last time you added something to your to-read list. You know, the bulleted catalogue in your iPhone notes app, along with the unfinished poems you wrote at twelve and the not-so-original novel pitches with endings too happily-ever-after for your likings now. It’s a pretty safe bet that when people read the comics section of the newspaper, they aren’t thinking about the theory behind the art form. They’re looking to see what whacky shenanigans Snoopy and the gang are getting into, and whether Garfield got his lasagna. But using those colorful boxes, artists can manipulate time and space on the page.
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