Themes in Walcoott's work

           Methodism and spirituality have played a significant role from the beginning in Walcott's work. He commented, "I have never separated the writing of poetry from prayer. I have grown up believing it is a vocation, a religious vocation." He describes the experience of the poet: "The body feels it is melting into what it has seen… the “I” not being important. That is the ecstasy...Ultimately, it’s what Yeats says: 'Such a sweetness flows into the breast that we laugh at everything and everything we look upon is blessed.' That’s always there. It’s a benediction, a transference. It’s gratitude, really. The more of that a poet keeps, the more genuine his nature".[6]

He notes that "if one thinks a poem is coming on...you do make a retreat, a withdrawal into some kind of silence that cuts out everything around you. What you’re taking on is really not a renewal of your identity but actually a renewal of your anonymity".[6]

DEREK WALCOTT As a poet

         Derek Walcott is an outstanding lyric poet of the West Indies writing in English. He is one of the three greatest poets writing in the English language in the world today, the other two being Seamus Heaney and Jorie Graham. His father was a Bohemian; that is a person, who lives and behaves in an informal way that is considered typical of artists and writers. His mother was a teacher, who had been a real inspiration to Derek to compose poetry, not only that but she really encouraged him to read poetry of good poets of the world and he did it just like a prayer. 

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Louise Labé(1520 or 1522-1566)

Louise Labé, (c. 1520 or 1522, Lyon – April 25, 1566, Parcieux), also identified as La Belle Cordière, (The Beautiful Ropemaker), was a female French poet of the Renaissance, born at Lyon, the daughter of a rich ropemaker, Pierre Charly, and his second wife, Etiennette Roybet. A recent book has argued that the poetry ascribed to her was a feminist creation of a number of French male poets of the Renaissance.

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Ode on a Grecian Urn: Critique and Analysis/ Keats’s poem is much like Keats himself meditated on the urn to explore his own emotions. Discuss!

Ode on a Grecian Urn: Critique and Analysis/ Keats’s poem is much like Keats himself meditated on the urn to explore his own emotions. Discuss!

“Ode on a Grecian Urn” was written in May of 1819 when Keats was 23 years old and his life was in emotional turmoil. In the previous six months his brother Tom had died, and he had met and fallen in love with Fanny Brawne who, at the time the poem was written, lived next door to him in Hamstead.

It was a period of intense creativity during which Keats wrote his great odes; in them, he explored his emotions by addressing, describing and questioning some idea or symbol that he celebrated. Keats’s odes are a form of meditative poetry. In meditation, a person thinks intensely upon and draws conclusions from a subject. By writing an ode, originally a Greek poetic form, Keats is making his own claim to permanence. The “Ode on a Grecian Urn” is Keats’s own “silent form” meant to perform a similar function — “tease us out of thought” — as that of the original Greek urn, that, ironically, does not exist. There is smooth transition of ideas and emotions in the poem starting with:

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Ode to Nightingale: Critique and Analysis/ Keats’s Ode to Nightingale is a fine piece of impersonality and journey into Negative Capability. Discuss!

Ode to Nightingale: Critique and Analysis/ Keats’s Ode to Nightingale is a fine piece of impersonality and journey into Negative Capability. Discuss!

The speaker responds to the beauty of the nightingale’s song with a both “happiness” and “ache.” Though he seeks to fully identify with the bird — to “fade away into the forest dim” — he knows that his own human consciousness separates him from nature and precludes the kind of deathless happiness the nightingale enjoys.First the intoxication of wine and later the “viewless wings of Poesy” seem reliable ways of escaping the confines of the “dull brain,” but finally it is death itself that seems the only possible means of overcoming the fear of time. The nightingale is “immortal” because it “wast not born for death” and cannot conceive of its own passing. Yet without consciousness, humans cannot experience beauty, and the speaker knows that if he were dead his perception of the nightingale’s call would not exist at all. This paradox shatters his vision, the nightingale flies off, and the speaker is left to wonder whether his experience has been a truthful “vision” or a false “dream.” Referred to by critics of the time as "the longest and most personal of the odes," the poem describes Keats' journey into the state of Negative Capability.  John Keats coined the phrase 'Negative Capability' in a letter to his brothers and defined his new concept of writing:

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Hyperion: Critique and Analysis/ Major Themes/ Human Sufferings in Hyperion/ Discuss “the agonies, the strife of human hearts.” In Hyperion

Hyperion: Critique and Analysis/ Major Themes/ Human Sufferings in Hyperion/ Discuss “the agonies, the strife of human hearts.” In Hyperion

Hyperion" is an uncompleted epic poem by John Keats. It is based on the Titans and Olympians, and tells of the despair of the former after their fall to the latter. Keats wrote the poem for about one year, when he gave it up as having "too many Miltonic inversions." He was also nursing his brother Tom, who died in January of 1819 of tuberculosis. Hyperion relates the fall of the Titans, elemental energies of the world, and their replacement by newer gods. The Olympiangods, having superior knowledge and an understanding of humanity's suffering, are the natural successors to the Titans.

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Keats as writer of odes/ Dramatic quality of Keats’ Odes/ Sensuousness as a path to experience and reality/ Keats is not wholly Sensuous; Discuss!

Keats as writer of odes/ Dramatic quality of Keats’ Odes/ Sensuousness as a path to experience and reality/ Keats is not wholly Sensuous; Discuss!

Ode is a dignified and elaborately structured lyric poem praising and glorifying an individual, commemorating an event, or describing nature or some object intellectually rather than emotionally. Odes originally were songs performed to the accompaniment of a musical instrument.  The Odes of Keats are constructed with harmonious skill.

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John Donne’s poem: Flea.

A Critical Analysis of John Donne’s poem: Flea.

Flea was a popular subject for ribald and amatory poetry during the Renaissance. In this respect, the Renaissance poets imitated Ovid who has a poem on the subject. The argument used by the poet is that the flea has a free access to the body of the beloved which is denied to the lover. Donne, however, makes a plea for physical union, which is necessary for spiritual love. Donne’s originality and intensity makes it a powerful lyric.

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