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Auden draws on the Afro-Caribbean tradition of calypso music in shaping this poem, borrowing its repetitions and “driving” rhythms as well as its typically loose, freewheeling spirit.

Perhaps it is the musicality of the poem that inspired the famous composer (and Auden’s close friend) Benjamin Britten to set it to music, along with the other four “Cabaret Songs” in the book Another Time, for the English singer Hedli Anderson. In this letter, written in 1939, Benjamin Britten thanks Auden for sending along the song.

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This seems like an oblique reference to Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “A Defence of Poetry”, where Shelley speaks of “The Poet” as the individual who revivifies old and dead words by the introduction of new and original metaphors.

See also Emerson’s “The Poet”:

The poets made all the words, and therefore language is the archives of history, and, if we must say it, a sort of tomb of the muses. For, though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency, because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture. Language is fossil poetry.

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Another striking metaphor that plays against–resists–the inarticulacy it’s lamenting. Morrison describes violent young people who communicate with bullets rather than words, enriching this otherwise common image through paradox (“voice of speechlessness”) and the elegantly precise verb “iterate,” which captures the cold, mechanical repetition of firing a gun. These children are trapped in a repetitive cycle of violence that leaves them unable to express themselves properly.

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A striking and complex metaphor. Morrison describes “statist language” (the language of governments and bureaucracies) as an empty suit. A common enough image–but she revivifies it by turning it into a knightless suit of armor, which despite its hollowness “glitter[s]” (is exceptionally polished, superficially attractive) and is “smitheryed” (shaped as a smith shapes metal) to serve its cynical purposes. Notice also that a knight-in-armor reminds us of war, aggression, patriarchy, obedience to the state, etc.–but the knight himself, who has “departed” this suit, seems to stand in for chivalry, romance, pursuit of an ideal, and so on.

Through her virtuoso wordcraft, Morrison implicitly shows off the power of poetic language–the language that resists lazy, manipulative cliché.

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Morrison here quotes Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.

“Graveyard” is no exaggeration: approximately 2.5 percent of the American population died in the Civil War. That would be the equivalent of roughly 7 million Americans dying today.

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A griot is a traditional West African storyteller, historian, singer, and/or bard. As upholders of an oral tradition, griots are a vital link to centuries' worth of West African culture.

Image via

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Rupert Brooke’s most famous poem of the WWI era.

This poem, a sonnet, (see below) is notably Edwardian in its formal setting. It is thematically patriotic and offers a sentimental image of the soldier dying at war. These elements serve to separate this work from that of other, more modern poets who wrote during World War I, such as Wilfred Owen or Sigfried Sassoon, who were more critical of the way the war was conducted by the Generals and politicians.

Brooke, who died early in the war, perhaps embodies a poetic style that encapsulates pre-war patriotism. His early death adds poignancy to the poem, which may account for its enduring popularity.

Some, however, find its jingoism difficult to take, and are less tolerant of the poet’s youth and innocence. It shouldn’t be forgotten that Brooke lived at a time of terrible poverty, slums and disease in sections of English society. For those living in such conditions a rosy view of one’s country was more difficult to sustain.

For comparison read The Road to Wigan Pier, by George Orwell. Though published in 1937 that poverty still existed.

Structure
The poem is in sonnet form, comprising a single fourteen line stanza made up of two sections, an eight line octet or octave, a ‘turn’ or volta in which changes the subject of dying for one’s country into the nature of that country.

The metrical rhythm is iambic pentameter, that is, five metrical feet or iambs per line, where a iamb comprises one unstressed followed by one stressed syllable.

There is a regular rhyme scheme typical of the sonnet form, ABAB, CDCD, FGHFGH.

The effect is to create a feeling of formality, solemnity and idealism, suitable for the subject of dying for one’s country.

Statue of Rupert Brooke in the grounds of the Old Vicarage in Grantchester, near Cambridge, England

MORE ON SONNETS
A Sonnet is a poem which expresses a thought or idea and develops it, often cleverly and wittily. It is made up of 14 lines, each being 10 syllables long. Its rhymes are arranged according to one of the following schemes:

  • Italian, where eight lines consisting of two quatrains make up the first section of the sonnet, called an octave. This will open the the poem with a question or an idea. It is followed by the next section of six lines called a sestet, that forms the ‘answer’ or a counter-view. This style of sonnet is also sometimes called a Petrarchan sonnet.

  • English which comprises three quatrains, making twelve lines, followed by a rhyming couplet. Shakespeare’s sonnets follow this pattern. Edmund Spenser’s sonnets are a variant.

At the break in the sonnet — in Italian after the first eight lines, in English after twelve lines — there is a ‘turn’ or volta, after which there will be a change or new perspective on the preceding idea.

Rhyme Scheme
Rupert Brooke follows the classic rhyme scheme. There are variations in English sonnets, for example Elizabeth Browning in ‘How do I love thee’ chose a rhyme pattern ABBA, ABBA, CDCDCD

Language
The classic metre is iambic pentameter, formal, elegant and rhythmic, that conveys an impression of dignity and seriousness. Shakespeare’s sonnets follow this pattern.

Note: for comparison see Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 which also deals with enduring love. For a modern poem (and description of love as precious and powerful but fleeting) see Carol Ann Duffy’s Hour. Elizabeth Barrett Browning uses one of Shakespeare’s ideas — that of love enduring beyond death — and recasts it for her own sonnet, a device known as intertextuality.

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Compare this passage in Walden, by Henry David Thoreau (who was friends with, and heavily influenced by, Emerson):

Spending of the best part of one’s life earning money in order to enjoy questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it, reminds me of the Englishman who went to India to make a fortune first, in order that he might return to England and live the life of a poet. He should have gone up garret at once.

Thoreau is warning against taking a “real” job that will delay the pursuit of your passion, whereas Emerson is warning against delaying the pursuit of anything by remaining a perpetual student or apprentice. The point is the same in each case: go and do the thing rather than preparing for it forever.

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Emerson here uses “fatal” not in the sense of “deadly” but in the archaic sense of “proceeding from or decreed by fate; inevitable.”

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This shows that he knows he will be shunned by women from now on–or will isolate himself from them out of shame at his own disfigurement.

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