Eliot’s “The Journey of the Magi”—an odd Christmas poem
tags:
Christmas poem, Eliot, modernism, modern poetry, poetry, the journey of the magi
One of Eliot’s post-conversion-to-Christianity poems, “Journey” is essentially a monologue delivered by one of the “wise men” who journeyed perhaps hundreds of miles long ago to visit the Messiah, if not in his infancy, at least in the earliest years. A manifestly modern poem, it…
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tags:
allusion, Atwood, modern poetry, poetry, Siren Song
Margaret Atwood’s “Siren Song” is a short poem that takes Homer’s original Sirens from the myth and gives one of them a modern voice. Recall that Odysseus’s men tie him to the ship preventing his hearing the irresistable song of the Sirens, which lead to…
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“How do I love Thee?”—not like that!
tags:
Browning, literature, love, modern poetry, Nims, poetry, sonnet
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was a talented poet (Sonnets from the Portuguese), but her best known poem, the sonnet “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways,” is not her best. I suspect it’s her most popular because of—let me count the ways 1.…
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Not with a bang
tags:
Eliot, modernism, modern poetry, poetry, the hollow men
The epigraph for T.S. Eliot’s modernist poem “The Hollow Men” is a quotation from Conrad’s novella, Heart of Darkness, “Mistah Kurtz, he dead.” Fittingly the mysterious Kurtz, who is touted by one and all as a wonder boy, turns out to be hollow, a symbol…
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