Light of hidden flowers4/13/2023 William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) was a prolific American poet whose poems range from the short imagist lyrics which are among his best-known works to longer, more ambitious projects.Īs Ann Fisher-Wirth has remarked, this long 1955 poem is a fine affirmation of ‘the power of love in – and against – the nuclear age’. William Carlos Williams, ‘ Asphodel, That Greeny Flower’. In this short poem, Frost – a friend and encourager of Edward Thomas – addresses his wife, who was pregnant with their first child at the time, musing upon the times when he had to leave her at home while he went and gathered flowers for her.Ĩ. Elsewhere, he was fond of very short and pithy poetic statements: see ‘Fire and Ice’ and ‘But Outer Space’, for example. Many of his poems are about the natural world, with woods and trees featuring prominently in some of his most famous and widely anthologised poems (‘The Road Not Taken’, ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’, ‘Birches’, ‘Tree at My Window’). He famously observed of free verse, which was favoured by many modernist poets, that it was ‘like playing tennis with the net down’. And yet he didn’t belong to any particular movement: unlike his contemporaries William Carlos Williams or Wallace Stevens he was not a modernist, preferring more traditional modes and utilising a more direct and less obscure poetic language. Robert Frost (1874-1963) is regarded as one of the greatest American poets of the twentieth century. See the link above to read the full poem and learn more about it. Yet in this short poem, Edward Thomas (1878-1917) addresses the hidden beauty and poetry to be found in the tall nettles growing by the tool-shed. Nettles get a bad press from poets, and aren’t as obviously ‘poetic’ as, say, roses or daffodils. I like the dust on the nettles, never lostĮxcept to prove the sweetness of a shower. Follow the link above to read the poem in full. Housman’s poem is shot through with regret and nostalgia, and this poem neatly encapsulates his trademark style and tone. To paraphrase the meaning of Tennyson’s poem, he’s attacking those critics who scorn his work – likening it to useless and unwanted ‘weeds’ rather than beautiful flowers – because he feels that such critics have forgotten that he was the one who showed so many others how to write poetry.Īnd yet, does the poem have to be just about poetry itself? Tennyson is using the metaphor of the flower to suggest other forms of creativity: somebody creates something, others criticise it, and yet those same people still learn from what that artist created and copy it, often producing inferior results.Īnother daffodils poem, ‘The Lent Lily’ is from Housman’s popular 1896 collection A Shropshire Lad, which focuses on the daffodil or ‘Lent lily’, so named because it ‘dies on Easter day’.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |