"The Flower-Fed Buffaloes" Analysis

Background

Vachel Lindsay was born in 1879 in Illinois, USA. He often sold his poetry on the

streets and made long walking expeditions, trading his poetry on the way in

exchange for food and lodging. As his poetry was often known for its

experimentation with sound and as he often gave recitals, it is worthwhile listening to

old recordings of his poetry which are accessible on the internet.

Line 1: It is hard to estimate how many buffalo once roamed North America but it is

thought that there would have been between 30 and 75 million. By the time Lindsay

was writing there were about 300.

Line 3: the first railroad in the area was the Illinois and Central Railroad chartered in

1851. The construction of the railroad hastened the depletion of the buffaloes.

Shooting the beast from the windows of the railroad by passengers was popular and

widely advertised.

Line 14: Blackfeet and Pawnees are two American native tribes. The population of

the Pawnees in the early nineteenth century was about twenty to twenty-five

thousand, but it declined rapidly in the later part of the nineteenth century mostly

because of smallpox and cholera, but also through falling prey to traditional enemies.

"The Flower-Fed Buffaloes"

The Flower-Fed Buffaloes

Vachel Lindsay

The flower-fed buffaloes of the spring

In the days of long ago,

Ranged where the locomotives sing

And the prairie flowers lie low;

The tossing, blooming, perfumed grass

Is swept away by wheat,

Wheels and wheels and wheels spin by

In the spring that still is sweet.

But the flower-fed buffaloes of the spring

Left us long ago.

They gore no more, they bellow no more,

They trundle around the hills no more:

With the Blackfeet lying low,

With the Pawnees lying low,

Lying low.

"On The Grasshopper and The Cricket" Analysis

Background

Keats was born in England in 1795 and died of tuberculosis when he was just 25, by

which time he had composed an astonishing amount of powerful poetry. This

particular sonnet was written when he was 21. It is in the Petrarchan or Italian form

of the sonnet with an octave (here quite clearly divided into two quatrains) and a

sestet, without a rhyming couplet at the end. Like Milton, who also used this form, he

wrote sonnets about many different subjects, not specifically, as early sonnet writers

tended to, about love.

The poem was written as a response to a sort of competition between himself and his

great friend, Leigh Hunt, as to who could write the best verse, in a short time, on a

specified topic. Keats won on this occasion, although he generously avowed that he

preferred the other poet’s attempt.

Students' attention might be drawn to parallels with (e.g.) Aesop’s fable ‘The Ant and

the Grasshopper’ in which the grasshopper lightheartedly plays during the Summer,

while the Ant toils. When Winter comes, the grasshopper, unlike the Ant is illprepared

for its severity. (Cf. also Poems 40 and 41 in Songs of Ourselves: Isaac

Watts, ‘The Ant or Emmet’ and Abraham Cowley, ‘The Grasshopper’.)

Title: the grasshopper is a diurnal insect, the cricket nocturnal. They both like

warmth, hence the reference to the stove as a home for the cricket.

Line 8: weed: the poetic use of this word denotes a small plant and is quite neutral,

with no implications of not being wanted or being out of control.

"On The Grasshopper and The Cricket"

On The Grasshopper and The Cricket

John Keats

The poetry of earth is never dead:

When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,

And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run

From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;

That is the Grasshopper's--he takes the lead

In summer luxury,--he has never done

With his delights; for when tired out with fun

He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.

The poetry of earth is ceasing never:

On a lone winter evening, when the frost

          Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills

The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever,

And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,

                    The Grasshopper's among some grassy hills.

"Lament" Analysis

Background

Gillian Clarke has created a very accessible homepage on the internet

 and students might be referred to this for a brief biography. All of the details which are woven through the poem are derived from newspaper items which distressed her at the time of the Gulf War of 1991.

Title: A lament is an elegy or a mourning of the passing of someone or something.

Each item introduced by the preposition ‘for’ is being mourned.

Line 1: the green turtle is found in the Gulf. Nesting beaches occur particularly in

Oman and Yemen.

Line 5: the veil of iridescence refers to oil slicks.

Line 13: the hook-beaked turtles are an endangered species as is the dugong (Line

14), a large herbivorous marine mammal. The small population in the Gulf was

further endangered by the spillages of oil in the Gulf conflict.

Line 16: terns regularly migrate over enormous distances, some species from the

Arctic to Antarctic. Some species of tern overwinter in the Gulf and some species

breed there. Waders are long-legged birds which roam through marshes and coastal

strips for food. Many of these also migrate. The word ‘restless’ refers to its

movements as it searches for food. It is estimated that between 1 and 2 million birds

overwinter or rest in the Gulf during migration.

It should be emphasised to students that these background notes are intended only

as background information to provide a context for the real study of the poem which

starts from here.

"Lament"

Lament

Gillian Clarke

For the green turtle with her pulsing burden,

in search of the breeding-ground.

For her eggs laid in their nest of sickness.

For the cormorant in his funeral silk,

the veil of iridescence on the sand,

the shadow on the sea.

For the ocean's lap with its mortal stain.

For Ahmed at the closed border.

For the soldier in his uniform of fire.

For the gunsmith and the armourer,

the boy fusilier who joined for the company,

the farmer's sons, in it for the music.

For the hook-beaked turtles,

the dugong and the dolphin,

the whale struck dumb by the missile's thunder.

For the tern, the gull and the restless wader,

the long migrations and the slow dying,

the veiled sun and the stink of anger.

For the burnt earth and the sun put out,

the scalded ocean and the blazing well.

For vengeance, and the ashes of language.

iridescence: a surface of shimmering colours

fusilier: rifleman

dugong: large aquatic mammal

"Full Moon and Little Frieda" Analysis

Background

Frieda, the daughter of poets Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, was about two when the

poem was written and the family were living in the countryside of Devon in England,

near Dartmoor. At that age, the little girl would have been taking delight in trying out

new words.

It is very important that any explanation of individual words does not close down the

richly suggestive meaning of this poem. It is always true of poetry that each reader

must explore the words herself or himself. Here, it is especially true.

Line 2: In the second stanza, the images might be taken either as physical details in

their own right or as metaphors to describe Frieda’s intense listening.

"Full Moon and Little Frieda"

Full Moon and Little Frieda

Ted Hughes

A cool small evening shrunk to a dog bark and the clank

         of a bucket -

And you listening.

A spider's web, tense for the dew's touch.

A pail lifted, still and brimming - mirror

To tempt a first star to a tremor.

Cows are going home in the lane there, looping the

         hedges with their warm wreaths of breath -

A dark river of blood, many boulders,

Balancing unspilled milk.

'Moon!' you cry suddenly, 'Moon! Moon!'

The moon has stepped back like an artist gazing amazed

         at a work

That points at him amazed.

"Amends" Analysis

Background

Adrienne Rich (born in Baltimore in 1929) once wrote:'Poetry is, among other things,

a criticism of language. In setting words together in new configurations, in the mere,

immense shift from male to female pronouns, in the relationship between words

created through echo, repetition, rhythm, rhyme, it lets us hear our words in a new

dimension.'

These observations might be used to inform a study, not only of this poem but most

of the others in the collection.

Nights like this: Teachers might recall the opening lines of Act 5 of Shakespeare’s

The Merchant of Venice:

'The moon shines bright. In such a night as this,

When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees

And they did make no noise – in such a night . . .'

The scene is clear and students might be encouraged to picture the way the moon

lights up various features as it progresses through the sky; but the moon is

personified throughout the poem and students will need to discover the sensuous

way her actions are described for themselves.

Line 11: hangared fuselage: the body of an aeroplane in a hangar

"Amends"

Amends

Adrienne Rich

Nights like this:      on the cold apple bough

a white star, then another

exploding out of the bark:

on the ground, moonlight picking at small stones

as it picks at greater stones, as it rises with the surf

laying its cheek for moments on the sand

as it licks the broken ledge, as it flows up the cliffs,

as it flicks across the tracks

as it unavailing pours into the gash

of the sand-and-gravel quarry

as it leans across the hangared fuselage

of the crop-dusting plane

as it soaks through cracks into the trailers

tremulous with sleep

as it dwells upon the eyelids of the sleepers

as if to make amends

"Dover Beach" Analysis

Background

This poem was written in June 1851 shortly after Arnold visited Dover on holiday with

his newly married wife, Lucy. However, it is perfectly legitimate – some would say

preferable – to read the poem without reference to these biographical details. What

is evident is that, in the poem, Arnold’s agnostic approach to religion is very evident

and clearly of great concern to him.

Line 3: straits: the strait(s) of Dover is the narrowest part of the English Channel just

before it becomes the North Sea. The coast of France can often be seen over the

water from Dover.

Line 6: can be taken as addressed to his companion, his new bride, in his hotel.

Line 11: high strand: the upper part of the beach

Line 15: Sophocles was a Greek tragedian. On several occasions he compares the

misery of Man to the ebb and flow of his local sea, the Aegean. Here is just one

example from the play Antigone:

‘When a house has once been shaken by the gods, no form of ruin is lacking,

but it spreads over the bulk of the race, just as, when the surge is driven over the

darkness of the deep by the fierce breath of Thracian sea-winds, it rolls up the black

sand from the depths, and the wind-beaten headlands that front the blows of the

storm give out a mournful roar.’

Line 17: turbid: muddy; can be used figuratively to suggest muddy or confused

thought.

Line 20: this distant northern sea: the English Channel as distinct from the southern

sea of Sophocles, the Aegean.

Line 21: The Sea of Faith: a change to a metaphorical Sea – that of certainty of

belief. At first it is depicted at high tide, later retreating.

Line 23: girdle furled: a belt or band, rolled up

Line 29: again reminding us that he is addressing the poem to his wife at Dover.

Lines 30-31: one might expect the couple to be optimistic as they start out on a

holiday at the beginning of their married life together.

Line 35: darkling: dark, shadowy

Lines 36-37: Arnold seems to evoke here the picture of a battle by night. The armies

are ignorant because, unable to tell who is their friend and who their foe, they are

totally confused. It has been suggested that the poet refers to the battle of Epipolae

in the Peloponnesian War, but the exact reference is unimportant.

"Dover Beach"

Dover Beach

Matthew Arnold

The sea is calm to-night.

The tide is full, the moon lies fair

Upon the straits; - on the French coast the light

Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,

Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.

Come to the window, sweet is the night air!

Only, from the long line of spray

Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,

Listen! you hear the grating roar

Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,

At their return, up the high strand,

Begin, and cease, and then again begin,

With tremulous cadence slow, and bring

The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago

Heard it on the Ægæan, and it brought

Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow

Of human misery; we

Find also in the sound a thought,

Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.

But now I only hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,

Retreating, to the breath

Of the night wind, down the vast edges drear

And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

strand: beach     tremulous: quivering           cadence: rhythm

turbid: muddy, unclear, confused              darkling: shadowy, obscure, dark