MURTYMUSE

  POETICA : 7                                Poem of the Week Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening By Robert Frost [1874-1963] Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village, though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year. He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound's the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake. The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep. Theme Poetry and Image –II Robert Frost’s fanous poem is like a milestone in many ways. It points both backwards and forwards. And that is how T.S. Eliot defined tradition and individual talent in literature. No poem or work of art can be totally disconnected with the past literary tradition

  POETICA : 6                          20 Dec’ 20   Sun                      Poem of the Week By Ezra Pound*   The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough.   Theme Poetry and Image   It’s a big change from the emphasis on traditional devices of poetry like rhyme, stanza forms, metrical variations, to the modernist trend of rhymeless, punctuationless, ‘free form’ verse, often looking like or even presented as written prose. We saw some of these in our weekly quotes of modernist poems.   We are talking more of modernist poetry because it is closer to the spirit of our times. It has broken free from all the imposed devices of rhyme, stanza forms, regular metres – following a form and shape more akin to our spontaneous and free form of poetry. It is a kind of free verse becoming freer and more malleable in accordance with the freedom of the individual.   The only discipline it adheres to is its poetic value. It must be pure, unshackl

  POETICA - 5 13 Dec 20   Sun                                                                           Poem of the Week   May By Jonathan Galassi*   The backyard apple tree gets sad so soon, takes on a used-up, feather-duster look within a week.   The ivy’s spring reconnaissance campaign sends red feelers out and up and down to find the sun.   Ivy from last summer clogs the pool, brewing a loamy, wormy, tea-leaf mulch soft to the touch   and rank with interface of rut and rot. The month after the month they say is cruel is and is not.   Theme Rhyme or reason Rhyme (from Old French ‘rime’) is as old as poetry, because of its quality of memorability. This holds true for all poetry, in any language, anywhere. In simple terms, similar sounding words generally coming at the end of verse lines are called ‘rhymes’. Such ‘end rhymes’ can recur in the very next line, or in a designed pattern among the lines in a poem, thus creating a ‘ringing

    POETICA : 4 6 Dec 20   Sun   Poem of the Week   Between Walls By William Carlos Williams                          the back wings             of the               hospital where             nothing               will grow lie             cinders               in which shine             the broken               pieces of a green              bottle   Theme Poetry and Punctuation –II   Punctuation is a marker in syntax which is an important area in grammar. It simply means ‘connecting words in a meaningful order’. And punctuation is its handmaiden of syntax in this process of organization. What is important to see is that poetry communicates meaning by a different kind of grammar of the same language. It operates on a higher level of semantics. All the ingredients of language – clause, phrase, collocations, word-formation, etc - regularly used in prose, and fully organized according to the set rules of its grammar, change their