Elegy for Jane by Theodore Roethke is an elegy by a teacher on the untimely demise of one of her students; Jane. The girl, Jane, was thrown by a horse, resulting in her untimely demise. It blends the tone of nostalgia, sympathy, love and moral dilemma. The speaker in this poem is the teacher of the dead girl, which shows the reader's curiosity about the nature of the relationship between the victim and the person telling the story.
A Supermarket in California is a poem by American poet Allen Ginsberg first published in Howl and Other Poems in 1956. This poem is a tribute to Walt Whitman in the centennial year of the first edition of Leaves of Grass. This poem criticizes the mainstream of American culture and is considered one of the major poetic works of the Beat Generation. It seems that there's nothing more American than a neon supermarket in California, filled with mothers, babies, and canned soup. This is not just a poem about Walt Whitman, Ginsberg, or even a supermarket, the title announces that it's a poem about America.
O Taste and See by Denise Levertov is a short poem that depicts the real ways to live the life to the fullest and enjoy the every moment of life the way it comes to us. Reversing the allusion of Wordsworth sonnet ‘the world is too much with us’ the speaker argues that the world is not enough with us only because the life we have today is uncertain and we need to cross the street and die one day. Death is inevitable and we have to give up this life at any cost.
O Sweet Spontaneous by Cummings is about the significance of earth in the modern and unique style in poetry writing. The speaker identifies the earth sweet and spontaneous. He asks the question that how often the doting fingers of lusty philosophers have pinched and poked the earth. Similarly, he wants to know where the naughty thumb of science has pinched the earth or not. He asks how often the religions have squeezed the earth in a mighty way. But the earth is the lover of rhythm. She is true to the incomparable couch of death and answers all them with only with spring.
Heart's Needle by William DeWitt Snodgrass, also known by his pseudonym S. S. Gardons was first published in 1959 in the collection of Heart’s Needle. Immediately after the publication, this poem was praised for its straightforwardness, important message, and autobiographical elements. This poem bagged the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for Snodgrass in 1960. In this famous poem, the poet shows his failing relationship with his daughter.
The poem 'Landscape with the Fall of Icarus' touches upon the Greek tragedy of Icarus. Icarus is the son of Daedalus. Icarus and his father were exiled in Crete. He took flight from imprisonment wearing the fragile wings his father had fashioned for him. Icarus was warned by his father not to go near the sun to keep him safe form the consequence of wax melting.
An Arundel Tomb by Philip Larkin was written in 1956 and published in 1964 in his collection named 'The Whitsun Weddings'. It is a formal lyric in which the poet gives his 20th century perspective on the funerary monument of 14th century Earl and his wife.
Love Calls Us to the Things of This World is one of the most celebrated poems of English literature by Richard Wilbur. The title was taken from the passage from St. Augustine’s Confessions. Wilbur received the famous Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1988 for the Collections New and Collected Poems where this poem is also included. This poem is praised for its clear use of conceit, controlled form and symbols.
Spring and Fall by Gerard Manley Hopkins is a modern poem about philosophical definition of human life. It is a dramatic meditative poem since it narrates an event, imagining a philosopher as a speaker in conversation to a girl name Margaret. We find character, dialogue, and setting and plot as well in the poem. The poem is about the reality of human existence that has been well introduced through its title 'Spring and Fall'.
The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket is one of the prominent poems of Robert Lowell which was first published in 1946 in his famous collection Lord Weary’s Castle. As the poem is a mourning poem on the death of Lowell’s cousin Warren Winslow, it can be taken as an example of elegy: it has all the necessary elements for the elegy. The poem is divided into seven sections with irregular use of pentameter and trimeter.