DDCPoetry

Poem found here:  "A Happy Man" by Edwin Arlington Robinson Written in four quatrains with an aabb rhyme scheme, the structure in the poem is very tight nit, first two lines then a semi-colon then the next two lines and end the sentence.  Each quatrain serves as a different focus on saying goodbye.      When these graven lines you see,      Traveller, do not pity me;      Though I be among the dead,       Let no mournful word be said. The conceit is established in the first stanza.  The first two lines address a traveller (the reader) and how the reader should't "pity" -- the semi-colon with the line brings the narrative together relying on the connection of "no pity" being reiterated "let now mournful word be said."      Children that I leave behind,      And their children, all were kind;      Near to them and to my wife,      I was happy all my life. ...

Original Poem Reprinted Online Here: "The House on the Hill" by Edwin Arlington Robinson More Information about the Poet: Edwin Arlington Robinson This is a villanelle.  Past me tried to make sense of the form and wondered why did the lines repeat themselves, and why the rhyme scheme.  Distance does make things appear different. But that's the point of this poem in particular -- how "they are all gone now" and how this distance changes the perspective of "the house on the hill." So the two refrain lines in the poem are, "They are all gone away," and "There is nothing more to say."  The first refrain has a somber tone of leaving and the second refrain has more of a mysterious quality since the poem, indeed, says something. "Through broken walls and gray / The winds blow bleak and shrill: / They are all gone away.  The first usage of the first refrain brings more of the after effects -- they are all gone only the broken and the b...

Original poem reprinted online here: "Richard Cory" by Edwin Arlington Robinson Originally read: February 18, 2013 More information about the Poet: Edwin Arlington Robinson So the "we" narrative has been done before and reinvented through stories like Kanthapura  and A Rose for Emily  (oddly, I cannot remember works that use the "we" narrative before this poem was written).  So what does the "we" narrative contribute to a piece 1) I think isolation is the main point.  That the "we" narrative is a collective thought (everyone is thinking this way) against the construction of the subject through the lens of the collective thought.  For example, if the collective thought that  subject was weird -- the style and the narrative adapts to the collective style. 2) In the "we" narratives that I've read, the collective doesn't know the "exact" nature of a person.  Richard Cory, who seems to have everything he wants, ki...