The eduify Poetry Analysis Series
By: Garin Kilpatrick
The eduify Poetry Analysis Series will consist of five separate Blog posts, and this introduction post. Each of the following five posts will analyze one of the five Poems by the five acclaimed Authors. Stay tuned to @eduify and @GarinKilpatrick as a new post will be announced every few days! The Poems we will be Analyzing are written by the 5 dead poets pictured above: Kipling, Frost, Shakespeare, Goethe, and Carrol. Shakespeare has been in the ground the longest but nonetheless his poetry and plays remain very alive! To learn when the aforementioned Authors lived, and what their first names are (and which Author used a pen name) simply read the rest of the post. You will also find introductions to these well written men and mention of the Poems that will be analyzed.
1. Rudyard Kipling – If
Rudyard Kipling was born on the 30th of December, 1865 and died on the 18th of January, 1936.
Kiplings most widely known work is The Jungle Book. Kipling was also a Poet and the poem that we will be analysing as a part of the eduify Poetry Analysis Series is “If.” “If” asks the questions that can either deny or define a life of nobility:
When you must answer the harsh questions of life,
Will you rise or will you fall?
Will you shrink or stand up tall?
Are we noble, “If” asks us all.
2. Robert Frost – The Road not Taken
Robert Lee Frost was born on March 26th, 1874 and died on January 29th, 1963.
During his life Robert Frost received four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry. He was one of Americas most celebrated poets, and after reading “The Road Not Taken” (commonly confused as the road less travelled) you should have some understanding why. This poem celebrates the less trodden path from a split in a road, a split in a road that poignantly symbolizes the pivotal decisions we all must make in our lives.
3. William Shakespeare – A Lovers Complaint
William Shakespeare was born on April 16th, 1564 and died on April 23rd, 1616.
William is an author that needs little introduction. Shakespeare is widely regarded as the best crafter of the english language. Will wrote 38 plays, 154 sonnets, as well as a few fine examples of narrative poetry. The narrative poem we will be analyzing, “A Lovers Complaint,” is considered by many to be one of the best examples of Shakespeare’s work.
4. Louis Carroll – Jabberwocky
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known by the pen name Louis Carroll, lived from January 27th, 1832 until the 14th of January, 1898.
Louis Carroll is most famous for writing Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Carroll is best remembered by his inventiveness. He liked to create his own terms, words, and worlds. Carroll was a creative genius, as anyone who has looked through the looking glass can attest. The inventive worlds of fiction Carroll created and the equally imaginative terms he used to describe them makes him a unique and praiseworthy poet. Jabberwocky is arguably Carrolls best poem, yet contains several undictionaried words. Nonetheless Jabberwocky has an unmistakable meter and a fantastical element of fantasy that only Carroll could conjure.
5. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – The Castle on the Mountain
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born on August 28th, 1749 and died on March 22nd, 1832.
Goethe was a brilliant polymath, having expertise in many fields of academia and the arts. George Eliot considered Goethe to be “Germany’s greatest man of letters.” His Magnum Opus was a tragic play named Faust that had tempo and rhyming structure similar to that of his poetry. The Goethe poem we are featuring is called “The Castle on the Mountain” and shows the literary skill of Goethe as he constructs the vivid image of a past castle in its glory. Goethe then smashes this imaginary construct to the ground as he brings the reader back to the present tense of the poem. Any reader who is captivated by Goethe cannot help but reminisce about the vivid painting of a past time he paints in The Castle on the Mountain.
