Your weekly slice of Poetry

Welcome back to another week of Poetry Pie! The poems selected for today span multiple different styles. While there is no obvious theme connecting them, they all have something of an earthy feel to them (whatever that means), a subtle effect that feels nicely at home to the Fall season. Enjoy!

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

William Butler Yeats (1865—1939)

I have read very little of Yeats, though I may begin to after reading this poem. The Lake Isle of Innisfree captures the feelings of "home" that nature so often holds for us. A simple life: a cabin, a lake, crickets, and beans – this is a peace that our busy world despises.

The meter is quite interesting as well. Each line is hexameter in length (6 feet), which is not often used in English poetry. The meter also forces a pause in the middle of each line by introducing an extra unstressed syllable. Note this in the first line with the word "now."

-    /    -  /     -    /    (-)      -     /   -    /    -   /
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree

Lastly, each stanza ends with a shortened line, which, even though it still rhymes with line 2, feels abruptly ended. This effect is an odd one to include for a poem that is centered around the peace and "home-ness" of nature. Perhaps this is the adult in Yeats knowing that the busy world will always exist and is constantly chomping away at the peace that we all need. The poem itself is a call to "arise and go now," yet so much of life prohibits us from doing this. There are the tastes of home and peace, yet a longing for time when these will be the norm and not a distant desire.

She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways

William Wordsworth (1770—1850)

One from the collection of "Lucy poems" that Wordsworth wrote, this poem is brief and pure, tragic and tender. One of the wonderful things that poetry can do is to memorialize someone who would otherwise be easily forgotten by the world. This Lucy was "unknown," "whom there were none to praise / and very few to love." Yet her life was deeply meaningful to the author, and it is made meaningful to us with this beautiful song.

My Last Duchess

Robert Browning (1812—1889)

This poem is a monologue by man to his guest, to whom he is showing a painting of his most recent wife. The monologue moves from the painting to his description of this woman, who he faults for being "too soon made glad / Too easily impressed." Though only one person is speaking throughout the poem, it is fascinating how easily you are drawn into the scene. You feel as if you are sitting there yourself, viewing the portrait and listening as the man exhibits his indifferent disapproval of the woman who recently passed. (There is a historical background to this poem which I will leave as an exercise for the interested reader.)

In terms of form, Browning has written this poem in iambic pentameter with rhyming couplets. If you're like me, you'll only have noticed that this poem was rhyming about half-way through. For being a rhymed poem, it has a thoroughly "unrhymed" sound to it, mostly owing to Browning's use of enjambment. Enjambment is when a line doesn't end with a pause in the sentence, where the sentence "spills" into the next line. Notice this taking place in the first two lines:

That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece...

The first line is not enjambed (it ends in a comma), but the second line is ("I call" leads into the third line). Since we don't pause when reading "call," the rhyme between wall/call is not naturally heard. After seeing this, you can't help but noticing it throughout the entire poem. This effect serves to give the monologue a very natural flow to it: it feels as if this is directly transcribed from a real conversation. There's much that could be written about this effect which I will save for another day.

Coo, coo, my quiet child

G. Abram Newcomer

This is a lullaby that I wrote a few weeks ago based on the joy I've had holding a child and hearing it speak to me. It's something of a reverse lullaby, since its goal is to keep the child awake rather than lulling it to sleep. Though unrhymed, I tried to make each line contain its fair portion of internal rhyme, assonance, and alliteration. I found this enjoyable to write, since it freed me from the need to work out end-rhymes while giving me the freedom to use any flow of sounds that I wished for.

I hope you enjoyed these poems and the discussions on each of them. Let me know which of these you especially liked! Take care.