DDCPoetry

Original Analysis here:  https://ddcpoetry.blogspot.com/2013/02/analysis-of-iron-gate-by-oliver-wendell.html I have a hard time analyzing long poems.  For this poem, I know I'm self-conscious about it as I wrote about it.  After re-reading this poem a couple of times trying to figure out what to write about it, I'm still a bit lost.  But what I know is the form is in quatrains with an abab cdcd type of rhyme scheme.  Most of the lines are end-stopped so I get a sense of a contained narrative with the poem. I'm unsure of the narrative.  The speaker asks where "this patriarch" is and defines this patriarch familiarly, "Old age, the graybeard! Well, indeed, I know him -- / Shrunk, tottering, bent, of aches and ills the prey;" and after such physical description of this being, the speaker admits, "Yes, long, indeed, I've known him at a distance, / And now my lifted-door latch shows him here;" Then the poem goes philosophical the next couple of ...

Original poem reprinted online here:  "The Iron Gate" by Oliver Wendell Holmes Originally read: December 1, 2012 More information about the Poet: Oliver Wendell Holmes There's a lot going on in this poem: form, rhyme scheme, tone changes, perspective changes, irony, etc which are really well rendered and all lead to the same conclusion of death, or Death.  However, when I was reading this over again I was thinking of "quote worthy lines." Maybe I was thinking this because it's too early in the morning for me to do an 15 minute analysis on a single aspect on a poem that has a lot going on, but the idea of epigraphs came to me when reading the poem again. Epigraphs are quotes from another source in the beginning of poems, stories, whatev. The epigraph in the beginning serves several purposes like a) contextualizing the piece, b) the piece is responding to the quote, c) focuses the reader on looking for the same aspect the quote brings (i.e. if the quote is abo...