DDCPoetry

  Fort he longest time, I thought threescore and ten equaled seventy-one.  I asked ChatGPT and it stated:  "Threescore and ten" is a phrase that is often used to refer to the number 70. In modern English, "threescore" is an archaic term meaning "three times twenty," or simply 60. So when combined with "and ten," it becomes 60 + 10, which equals 70. This phrase is commonly found in literature, poetry, and religious texts, and is used to express the number 70 in a more poetic or traditional manner. It is worth noting that this phrase is not commonly used in everyday modern English language and is more commonly encountered in historical or literary contexts. Would that make me two scores if I'm forty?  In any case, the poem laments in a poetic way of what happened in those pat 71 years: "With all their chances, changes, losses, sorrows"   From the second line, the speaker goes specific, "My parents' deaths, the vagaries of my ...

Poem found here: "A Glimpse" by Walt Whitman Do you know those scenes in Romantic movies where time slows down, the music stops, and then our couple looks in each other's eyes and the connection is there.  Well that's what is portrayed. The overall feel of this poem is that moment.  However, the speaker admits this moment through the title itself, "a glimpse" who is the one peeking "A glimpse, through an interstice caught, / of a crowd of workmen and drivers in a bar-room, around the stove."  Note how the poem starts on the outside and focuses in.   Here the crowd is of "workmen and drivers," innocuous enough, but also note that this is in a bar-room, "late of a winter night -- and I unremark'd seated in a corner;" in which it is cold and the speaker separates himself from the others. But the semi-colon of the line connects his need to be alone with, "Of a youth who loves me, and whom I love, silently approaching, and /...

Original poem reprinted online here: "A child said, What is the grass?" by Walt Whitman Originally read: June 11, 2013 More information about the Poet: Walt Whitman Rhetorical questions at the beginning of poems make me wonder some times technique wise.  After the question, does the speaker try to answer it, or does the speaker try to further explain the question with the following lines?  The poem does both.  There's an expansion of the scope of the question and the answer which is interplayed with each stanza in which . The first stanza sets up the question from the perspective from a child, "A child said, What is grass" to the speaker who "I do not know what it it is anymore than he."  But then there's the expansion of what it could be, "I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven."  Note that the repeating of this phrase "Or I guess" continues on for the next three stanzas.  To me, the rep...

Original poem reprinted online here: "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer" by Walt Whitman Originally read: May 31, 2013 More information about the Poet: Walt Whitman  The poem is composed of two quatrains even though it's one stanza.  There's a sense of observation and response where the speaker in the first stanza observes, and simply states what he observed, and then the response is a little more complicated. So with the first four lines:      When I heard the learn'd astronomer,      When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,      When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,      When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture room, The anaphora of "when" sets up a build up of the scene, and character.  "When" refers to a time, place, and scene, but also informs the reader that there's an observatio...