Then this black bird, deceiving my sad state into smiling, by the serious and firm manners of the air it wore, I said, "Although your top is cropped like a monk's taking a vow of humility, you sure aren't a coward. ... He didn't say anything further, nor fluttered a feather, until I scarcely more than muttered "Other friends have left me before- tomorrow he will leave me, like my hopes have flown before."" ... Tell me, tell me, I beg you!... Do not leave a single black feather as a reminder of the lie you have spoken! Leave me alone! ...

• Word Count: 2508
• Approx Pages: 10
• Grade Level: High School

The compulsive uses of the "oo- sound are child like. ... One can see this from the beginning of the poem when Plath writes, " You do not do, you not do/ Any more, black shoe/ In which I have lived like a foot- (lines 1-3). ... For example, "she starts out imagining herself as a prisoner living like a foot in the black shoe of her father. ... "The Black Man,"" is her husband, who represents evil. ... The phrase, "But they pulled one out of the sack, And they stuck me together with glue. ...

• Word Count: 2858
• Approx Pages: 11
• Grade Level: High School

Her letters, like flowers often enclosed, are the result of Emily's work and care and, like flowers, have a symbolic connotation. ... In fact, through the synesthesia, syllables and sentences are described by words generally used in describing petals, which compose the flower's cup like syllables and sentences compose a poem. ... The negative account of other, pedestrian speech forms, like the admission of naturally superior discourse , is not only a way of recognizing (and sharing one's recognition) of a reality that lies beyond ordinary words, but also of communicating a sense...

• Word Count: 2619
• Approx Pages: 10
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Rilke's method was to remove our subconscious filters, thus becoming more like we were while still in the womb. ... Of course, according to him, we aren't normally in commune with our soul, but all we need to gain this connection is demonstrated in the following: Loafe with me [his soul] on the grass . . . . loose the stop from your throat, Not words, not music or rhyme I want . . . . not custom or lecture, not even the best, Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice. ... In essence, we become like Narcissus, gazing so long at ourselves that we fail to see the...

• Word Count: 2891
• Approx Pages: 12
• Grade Level: High School

However, the last line is angry and disturbing: "But I refused with every mark / to be like her, anonymous (Homecoming 9)." ... "I was growing up / even as she scrubbed for dirt, / horns, anything that looked like sin." ... One critic describes it as a "diary-like assemblage of meditations, stories, and confessions (Muratori 2)." ... From the safety of a typewriter, Alvarez declares war on all those that are not like her. ... In an article for a black publication, Essence, Alvarez asks the question, "Had I been unconscious of racism until we came to the United States?" ...

• Word Count: 2799
• Approx Pages: 11
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

Narratives gave way to lyrics, above all to 'impressions', capturing the sensation of an immediate scene or moment; a development paralleled in the 'Impressionist' painting of artists like Sickert and Whistler. ... In 1899, Arthur Symons, one of the poetic 'aesthetes' of the 1890s, published his study The Symbolist Movement in Poetry, which would have great influence on modern poets like W.B. ... He brought home to British poets the significance of French experimental symbolists like Rimbaud, Verlaine, Laforgue, and Mallarme, and observed that with them literat...

• Word Count: 10566
• Approx Pages: 42