Good Poetry and Great: An Identification

Good Poetry and Great

The first essay tackled about good and bad poetry. In this essay, the analysis is centered on the identification of good and great. Many critics justify and conclude that if there are good poems, there should be a great poem among those good ones. In this sense, this paper is on evaluating and analyzing two poems, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot and Death of the Hired Man by Robert Frost. These poems exhibit man’s unfulfilled tasks because of inhibitions. At the end of this essay, final results of which of those two poems exemplify greatness can be inferred.

The qualified readers can determine a great poem by multiplying its measurements on two scales, perfection and significance. If a poem measures well on both scales, it is identified great.

Death of a Hired Man: Analysis

The poem, Death of the Hired Man written by Robert Frost, is about an old man who wants to fulfil his left duties before he dies but unfortunately, at the end of the poem, he dies without completing his tasks.

This poem exemplifies a narrative of an old man named Silas returning to his former work place which is a farm owned by Warren and Mary. He also calls the farm his home. On his return, Mary pleads to Warren to accept the old man as she is convinced that the man is ill and waiting for his death.

“”He has come home to die,” Mary said”

“He’s worn out. He’s asleep beside the stove.

When I came up from Rowe’s I found him here,

Huddled against the barn-door fast asleep,

A miserable sight, and frightening, too –”

But Warren has a hard time in accepting the old man again who often disappoints him by the results of his work and the contracts Silas broke that made Warren furious.

“When was I ever anything nut kind to him?

But I’ll not have the fellow back,” he said.

“I told him so last haying, didn’t I?”

If he left then, I said, that ended it.”

However, in the end with the continuous urging of Mary, Warren agrees to have Silas again but when he sees Silas, he is already dead.

“Warren returned – too soon, it seemed to her,

Slipped to her side, caught up her hand and waited.

“”Warren?” she questioned.

“Dead”, was all he answered.”

Warren has not seen Silas’ condition in the first place, but if in the event that Warren saw him earlier, the ending, perhaps, is in the other way around. Warren must have been more compassionate.

Robert Frost, the poet behind this poem, is known for his blank verse and keen understanding of people. It is a fact that he goes beyond a person’s physical through psychological aspect. The poem is in dialogue form which provides the readers a clear understanding of the topic. It is a good example of a blank verse.

It is vivid in the poem that there is a well character development. The poem ends with the three characters well developed, mostly through dialogue but also through minimum actions.

Frost used some figures of speech that help him in describing vividly the events in the poem. The figures of speech involved in the poem are as follows with examples:

“Those days trouble Silas like a dream.” – Simile

“He takes it out in bunches like big birds’ nests.” – Simile

“Part of the moon was falling down to west,

Dragging the whole sky with it to the hills.” – Personification

“Among the harp-like morning-glory strings,” – Personification

“Smooth sailing cloud will hit or miss the moon.” – Personification

Imageries that comprise the poem are as follows with examples:

“Mary sat musing on the lamp-flame at the table” – Visual

“Waiting for Warren. When she heard his step,” – Auditory

“She ran on tip-toe down the darkened passage” – Kinaesthetic

“-you know how they fought all through July under the blazing sun.” – Thermal

The tone of the poem is sympathetic, practical, compassionate and bleak. For the part of Mary, she is sympathetic and compassionate with Silas and his condition. If Warren had seen Silas beforehand, he won’t be practical in saying he doesn’t want him in the farm again. Warren turned bleak on the end of the poem when he said “dead”.

The theme of the poem is “Home is not only where man’s relatives live but where he can find acceptance and belongingness”. Silas found home in the farm owned by Mary and Warren. Though they were not the real family of him, there he found acceptance and belongingness. In the end of the poem, Silas did not hesitate to go to the farm; even he had broken contracts with Warren. He knew that he would be accepted there and thus the end, he died there with the home he knew as his family.

This is a poem highly invigorates the emotions of its readers. A reader may feel sorry or sympathetic with the hired man who is very old, thus it is sentimental. This treatment of the poem can move anyone who reads it intriguingly. Its substance is more moving but not timeless. It can be introspected that it is also didactic.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock: Analysis

The poem, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot, is about its persona’s life of kept feelings and actions as he thinks of man’s disapproval and narrow-mindedness of his thoughts and acts. The persona fears failure that inhibits him in taking risk and action for a progressive life. His acts fall to an abyss of pessimism that is not required for a man’s genuine acquisition of life. What he got now is what he will get in the future and what he was on the past is as is to the future. This acts shows that it is a narrative and a dramatic monologue.

The poem initiates with a quotation in Italian from Dante’s Inferno. Speaking to a visitor in hell, one of the damned says that he will describe his torment only because the visitor cannot return alive to the world to repeat it. This quotation has something to do with the poem. This will be further explained on the following paragraphs.

After the Italian quotation, the J. Alfred Prufrock invites his listener to walk with him into the streets on an evening similar to a patient lying on a table being etherized or anesthetized. This listener is a not vivid on its identity as presented on the poem but it is considered to be Prufrock’s inner self since it is a dramatic monologue. They will walk on the half-deserted streets, when the business on that certain area ended thus sawdust are left to the streets to absorb spilled beverages and foods.

The second stanza consisting two lines,

“In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.”

These lines repeated two times in the poem, on the second and fourth. The women here are the ones who he wants to talk with but hindered by his own thought. Eliot mentions Michelangelo for the reason that it creates an irony for the character of Prufrock. Michelangelo continually sought challenge, whether physical, artistic, or intellectual. This fact contributes to the irony.

The third stanza evokes to us the continuation of their roaming.

“The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,

The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,”

This time, Prufrock saw a cat. The yellow fog and the yellow smoke represent a cat. This is a striking image that renders a heavy meaning. The images in the poem, including this cat, are associated with Prufrock himself and reveal his fears, his self-consciousness, and his sustaining dreams – these are the problems of Prufrock that he exposes on the said stanza.

In the fifth stanza, he, indeed, believes that there is a right time for him to “shine” but he repeatedly asks himself, “Do I dare?” He made a conscious look on himself,

“With a bald spot in the middle of my hair-

(They will say: “How hair is growing thin!)

My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to my chin,

My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin-

(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)”

Moreover, Prufrock seems to grow increasingly insecure. He can be observed that he wants to do something extraordinary at the party.

Stanza number six elaborates that Prufrock knows all the people in the party since but he doesn’t know how to presume or to socialize: “So how should I presume?”

The seventh stanza explains that Prufrock was being scrutinized by other women in other parties he attended. In parties, he talks to women but eventually forgets what to say:

“Is it a perfume from a dress

That makes me so disgress?”

He wants to say something but he doesn’t know how. This is the sad part when a person is on socialization and doesn’t know how to start or prolong a conversation.

Eighth and ninth stanzas expound that Prufrock compares himself to a lobster or a crab. It is introspected that Prufrock’s self-esteem is inhibited. The Footman he refers on the ninth stanza is the angel of death.

The tenth and eleventh stanzas elaborate Prufrock rationalizing his failure to ask the overwhelming question. This question may be his kept query for the woman he loves but he loses the chance of asking in the fact that he compared himself to Lazarus, the man who lay dead in his tomb for four days before Jesus brought him back to life. Prufrock compares himself to Lazarus because he thinks of another chance to say to the woman what he really means: “Should say: “That is not what I meant at all. That is not it at all.”” In the eleventh stanza, there is a magic lantern mentioned. In this image, the “nerves” may be Prufrock’s inner self exposed for all to see.

On the twelfth stanza, Prufrock resigns himself to play a supporting role rather than a starring one. According to him, he doesn’t want to be Prince Hamlet which is a starring role on a Shakespearean story. He chooses to be an attendant lord, a job easier than being a prince. This shows his frail attitude towards work. He does not want more responsibilities. He is kind of lazy.

On the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth stanzas, the mermaids were mentioned. In mythology, mermaids attract mortal men allowing them to live with them in the sea. To Prufrock, the mermaids may represent women who go after him. This time, the scenario alters. He dreams of a woman to go after him and not him after her but he doesn’t think that the mermaids will go after him. There is still a touch of pessimism but he continues to dream about it.

The last stanza infers that Prufrock and his love will be together and the setting is by the chamber in the sea. He dreams about it and if human voices wake them to reality, they will drown. In other words, their relationship only lives in a dream because Prufrock is stagnant and inable to take risk because of low self esteem and pessimism. Just like what happened to a character in Dante’s Inferno, he hopes that he and the reader will never get back from hell so that no one can repeat his story, a story of failure and paralysis.

Figures of speech have a great help in describing the events and objects in the poem. The figures of speech that are used by Eliot are as follows:

“When the evening s spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherized upon a table;” - Simile

“Streets that follow like a tedious argument

Of insidious intent” – Simile

“The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,

The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,” – Personification

“I should have been a pair of ragged claws

Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.” – Metaphor

“Though I have seen my head brought in upon a platter.” – Allusion

“To say: “I am Lazarus, come back from dead,

Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”-” - Allusion

“Disturb the universe.” – Synecdoche

“To have squeezed the universe into a ball

To roll it toward some overwhelming question” – Hyperbole and Metaphor

“Before the talking of a toast and tea” - Alliteration

Imagery consists of words and phrases that appeal to any of the five senses and that help the reader imagine precisely what the writer is describing. Eliot uses powerful images to convey complex ideas and emotions. Here are some examples of imageries that can be inferred from the poem:

“In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo” – Auditory

“Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys

Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap” – Kinaesthetic

“Time to turn back and descend from the stair,

With a bald spot in the middle of my hair”- Visual

“Is it perfume from a dress

That makes me so digress?” – Olfactory

“Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,” – Gustatory

The tone of the poem is serious and somber. The poem offers to its readers a delicate insight of what a particular man feels that’s why it’s serious. Its tone is also somber because it exemplifies a gloomy life of the unprogressive.

The theme of this poem, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, is man’s inability to take progress remains on his choice. Man is stagnant if there is no innovation for his life, just like Prufrock. Man must be equipped with tremendous vigor and enthusiasm to incorporate it in a conversation. This fact about life is the central purpose of the poem.

The Great Poetry

The great poetry is determined to be The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. The words were appropriate to convey the central purpose of the poem. As a reader you need to dig deeper in this kind of poem. It uses allusions that create a different bite and way in conveying its theme. This poetry is excellent and its significance is universal and timeless. This poem engages the whole person – senses, imagination, emotion, intellect; it does not touch us merely to entertain us but to bring us – along with pure pleasure – fresh insights, or renewed insights, and important insights, into the nature of human experience. In short, it has topped on its significance and perfection.

Sources:

Applebee, Arthur. et. al. ed.”The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” The Language of Literature. McDougal Littell. Houghton Leifflin Company. Evanstor, Illinios. 1941. Pp. 846-852

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