A birth myth or birth tale is a story about the often miraculous birth and infancy of a hero or, in some cases, an entire race of people or a nation. In the case of a hero, the baby is deprived of his true parents and heritage and is cast by fate into a different…
Category: Literature
Mushrooms by Sylvia Plath – Feminist & Civil Rights Movements
The Women’s Rights Movement Plath wrote ‘‘Mushrooms’’ in post-World War II England. During the war, both in England and the United States, many men of working age went away to fight in the war and women were left to run businesses and work in industry. Furthermore, many men died in combat, so women were needed…
Mushrooms by Sylvia Plath – Poetic Devices
Confessional Poetry In 1958 Plath attended Robert Lowell’s poetry seminar in Boston, where she met fellow poet Anne Sexton and became familiar with her work. Plath later identified Lowell and Sexton as poets whose work she admired for what became known as the confessional mode of poetry that they pioneered. The three poets are frequently…
Mushrooms by Sylvia Plath: Themes
Feminism The main theme of ‘‘Mushrooms’’ can be seen as the feminist struggle and growth to greater selfawareness. This is treated through the symbolism of the mushrooms, which can be assumed to stand for women. This interpretation, it might be argued, is the one that is most consistent within the context of the poem. However,…
Mushrooms by Sylvia Plath: Summary
Stanza 1 On the most literal level, ‘‘Mushrooms’’ is a description of the natural process of the growth of mushrooms. The poem opens with a description of how mushrooms appear seemingly out of nothing, quietly, unexpectedly, and without fuss. They appear overnight. Their white color is noted. Stanza 2 Using imagery of body parts that…
The Lotus Flowers by Ellen Bryant Voigt – Analysis
Textually, Ellen Bryant Voigt’s ‘‘The Lotus Flowers’’ is a rich poem. Its diction (use of language) reveals its underlying themes, and its structure shapes its meaning. Although the poem is written in free verse, it is divided into two long stanzas of almost identical length (the first stanza is twenty-nine lines; the second is thirty)….
The Lotus Flowers by Ellen Bryant Voigt – Summary
‘‘The Lotus Flowers’’ consists of two long stanzas and is written in free verse. Each long stanza, however, is divided, roughly in the middle, by an offset or broken line. In fact, in both stanzas, the broken lines occur between the eighteenth and nineteenth lines. The first stanza consists of twenty-nine lines, and the second…
Jazz Fantasia – Analysis
Langston Hughes has been widely acclaimed as the first true jazz poet, and there is little argument among critics that this is true. Hughes, a black poet of the Harlem Renaissance, wrote poetry unrivaled in its proliferation and depiction of jazz in the early 1900s. Hughes came upon the heels of Sandburg, encouraged by the…
Jazz Fantasia – Alliteration – Poetic Devices
Alliteration and Assonance Alliteration is a poetic device that uses the repetition of consonant sounds that appear close together in the poem. It is similar to rhyming, but the sameness of sound appears at the beginning of the word rather than at the end. This technique gives interest and delight upon reading aloud. Sandburg’s writing…
Jazz Fantasia: Themes
The Jazz Age The 1920s were the beginning of the Jazz Age, when musicians were experimenting with the earliest forms of jazz music. The sound came with the blacks migrating from New Orleans and mixed with the already established ragtime style. In ‘‘Jazz Fantasia,’’ Sandburg praises musicians of 1920, who had just begun to play…