Took just a moment
To look beyond the moment
That didn’t matter
©2016 Annette Rochelle Aben
in the end
2 Replies
Category Archives: Uncategorized
A Short Analysis of T. S. Eliot’s ‘Death by Water’
The continuing analysis by Interesting Literature of Eliot’s “The Wasteland”.
A reading of the fourth part of The Waste Land
‘Death by Water’ is by far the shortest of the five sections of T. S. Eliot’s 1922 poem The Waste Land. The section which precedes it, ‘The Fire Sermon’, is 234 lines – over half of the entire length of the poem. Why is ‘Death by Water’ so short? We’re going to attempt a brief summary of this section of the poem here, along with some words of analysis. You can read ‘Death by Water’ here.
Any analysis of ‘Death by Water’ must contend with the question: how come this fourth section is so much shorter than the other four which make up The Waste Land? Well, it wasn’t originally. In [The Facsimile of the Original Drafts] (a must-read for any serious student of Eliot’s poem), we discover a much longer draft involving a crew of men…
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Well, yes, right…or write…
Interesting take on the desire of humans to make contact with aliens.
The clocks have gone back, and it’s getting dark earlier and earlier, but there is still a blackbird singing in the garden, although there is also the smell of wood smoke in the air – from a bonfire, I would guess – and a definite chill in the air. The autumn leaves have been exceptionally beautiful this year, seeming to have an extra couple of tones of red and orange. And there are still plenty of late flowers out. I may be a summer person, but it is decidedly beautiful at the moment..
I said I’d take part in NaNoWriMo this year, didn’t I? What on earth could I have been thinking of?
Did I really commit to writing over a thousand words a day all through the month?
Oh, for goodness sake! I’ve not even had time to look at anyone’s posts for the last five days, let alone…
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Share your blog!
A generous offer to share your blog. I have already popped over and shared one of my poems. Kevin
The Anatomy of a Mourning
Flanked by kin
Holding up the stretcher,
The white sheet charting your casing like the afternoon mowing down inner cities.
The mosque hurling the compassionate to your side
To temporarily wreck their composure
Uncovering how you were a pillar of the community,
Your tenants took a furlough from their inflation adjusted lives
And stuffed their mouths and shot their feet under the flash of cold showers.
Doorbells ducked into tin-foil wraps,
Dirty dishes into slumber parties going through laminated albums
No one said it was your penchant for red meat,
Or the hostility of habits to diabetes,
It was remember how he used to keep to himself mostly, but was a good man.
It was he is survived by his wife, five children, and ten grandchildren,
The likes of who will gargle the holy water used to bathe their wounds.
–
A Short Analysis of T. S. Eliot’s ‘The Fire Sermon’
A reading of the third part of The Waste Land
‘The Fire Sermon’ is the third section of T. S. Eliot’s ground-breaking 1922 poem The Waste Land. Its title is chiefly a reference to the Buddhist Fire Sermon, which encourages the individual to liberate himself (or herself) from suffering through detachment from the five senses and the conscious mind. You can read ‘The Fire Sermon’ here; below we offer a short summary of this section of Eliot’s poem, along with an analysis of its meaning.
‘The Fire Sermon’ opens with the River Thames, and a description of the litter that was strewn across its surface until recently: during the summer, the Thames was full of empty bottles, cigarette ends, and even, it is hinted, contraceptives (that ‘other testimony of summer nights’). The ‘nymphs’, we are told, ‘are departed’. The meaning of this is ambiguous: on the one hand…
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10 of the Best Gothic Poems for Halloween
Some great reading for Halloween.
The best Halloween poems
What are the best poems about Halloween, the best poems for Halloween? In this post, we’ve gathered up a mixture of the two: some of the following ten poems are specifically about Halloween, while others are suitably Gothic poems to enjoy on or around Halloween. So, if you have your pumpkin at the ready, get ready to click on the title of each poem to take you through to a treat rather than a trick…
Robert Fergusson, ‘Hallow-Fair’. Robert Fergusson died aged just 24 in 1774, and might be seen as a sort of precursor to Robert Burns, who was just a teenager at the time of Fergusson’s death. Fergusson’s ‘Hallow-Fair’ (1772) is a great Halloween poem to begin this list: it’s rich in Scots dialect and offers a window onto eighteenth-century Scotland, focusing on the Hallowmas Fair held annually (usually on 1 November…
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2nd Halloween Poem Contest – Third group of submitted poems
Thank you to Aurora, of Writer’s Treasure Chest for the opportunity to enter the second Halloween competition. Kevin
Picture courtesy of: http://preventioncdnndg.org/eco-quartier/eco-tips-for-halloween/
Your Animal Side by Angela Kay
I hear everyone has an animal side.
What is yours?
What is mine?
No one can really know for sure.
Could it be repulsive in the dark, silent night?
Save me from this frightening thought.
I saw a creature enter my room last night.
Could it be what I think?
This is not a story because I saw it.
As horrifying as it is, I believe I saw your animal side.
It’s not ordinary.
Do you want to know what it is?
I saw a big shadow on the wall.
The eyes were blood red in the mirror.
I saw gruesome fangs.
The creature howled at the round moon
And tore into my soft, clean flesh.
I fought back, teeth sharp and hungry
Our animal side has gotten the better of us.
Written by Kevin Morris
Walking through the churchyard…
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Sue me and I’ll have you killed!
…slowly, he inched his way along the ledge, his heart in his mouth. It was too late to even contemplate turning back now. The sun was sinking rapidly in the pale sky in front of him, dropping towards the distant plains that were almost hidden in the desert haze. It would be completely dark within the hour. For the first time, he knew real fear. He could never survive a night on this thin, narrow ledge – God knows, there was barely enough room to stand and almost nothing to hold on to. It was inevitable that he would slip off at some point. Even now, there was a thin skin of ice on much of the surface, and the terrible cold would descend as soon as the sun disappeared.
Gritting his teeth, he edged towards what looked like a slightly better foothold, and cried out in sudden terror as his foot…
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Ere We Die
On seeing the stormy sky
The poet thinks “man must die”.
He sees the young girl bloom
And says “she is destined for the tomb”.
Oh let us gather wild flowers
And not waste our powers
Trapped in ivory towers.
Beware the scholar’s domed head
For we are soon dead.
May our spirit fly
Ere we die
And are lost in endless sky.
K Morris - Poet 