美国诗歌鉴赏

the wild honey suckle（Philip Freneau）

As is displayed in this poem, honeysuckle, instead of rose of daffodil became the object of depiction; it is “wild” just to convey the fresh perception of the natural scenes on the new continent. The flowers, similar to the early Puritan settlers, used to believe they were the selects of God to be arranged on the abundant land, but now have to wake up from fantasy and be more respectful to natural law. Time is constant but the time of a life is short; any favor is relative but change is absolute; with or without the awareness, nature develops; flowers were born, blossomed and declined to repose, and human beings would exist in exactly the same way. A philosophical meditation is indicated by the description of the fate of a trivial wild plant. Thanatopsis(william cullen bryant)

Thanatopsis”is a meditative poem of eighty-two lines, granting consolation for human mortality through mankind`s unity with nature. The poem is a wonderful literary work which explores the often controversial questions of death. Within his well written lines Bryant attempts to show the relationship between death's eternal questions and the ongoing cycle of nature and life.Thanatopsis (1817), shows the deep Romantic spirit of Bryant in his youth. Bryant’s view is that death is the absolute end of the individual. Nature has a kind of healing effect. Nature can share your happiness. The image of death is definitely not horrifying, because you will be melted into nature. At first, this “view of death”might seem a cold and terrifying thought. But, as he explains in later poems, the life of man is part of the wonderful life of nature as a whole. The individual soul is not alone but, as he says in A Forest Hymn, part of “the soul of this wide universe”. Almost all of his poetry expresses his excitement at the idea of being part of something so vast.

to waterfowl(william cullen bryant)

The poem is a big success in presenting the beautiful and enchanting natural scenery. the usage of apostrophe by the poet creates a sense of intimacy between the waterfowl and us. this poem vividly presents for us a solitary and weary waterfowl flying in the distant rosy sky. the poet was actually asked himself where he should go, where was his eventual destination. And this relation between the bird and the poet paves the way for his moral teaching. From the waterfowl, the poet was teaching us the importance of struggling, of fighting against difficulties and harshness. Although the dark night was near, although the atmosphere was cold and thin, although the waterfowl was tired, the bird did not rest.

To helen(Edgar Allan Poe)

The theme of this short poem is the beauty of a woman with whom Poe became acquainted when he was 14. Apparently she treated him kindly and may have urged him–or perhaps inspired him–to write poetry. Beauty, as Poe uses the word in the poem, appears to refer to the woman's soul as well as her body. On the one hand, he represents her as Helen of Troy–the quintessence of physical beauty–at the beginning of the poem. On the other, he represents her as Psyche–the quintessence of soulful beauty–at the end of the poem. In Greek, psyche means soul. As is typical with many of Poe's poems, the rhythm and rhyme scheme of "To Helen" is irregular but musical in sound. The poem consists of three stanzas of five lines

each, where the end rhyme of the first stanza is ABABB, that of the second is ABABA, and that of the third is ABBAB. Poe uses soothing, positive words and rhythms to create a fitting tone and atmosphere for the poem. His concluding image is that of light, with a "brilliant window niche" and the agate lamp suggesting the glowing of the "Holy Land," for which Helen is the beacon.\

The raven

Poe wrote the poem as a narrative, without intentionally creating an allegory or falling into didacticism. The main theme of the poem is one of undying devotion.The narrator experiences a perverse conflict between desire to forget and desire to remember. He seems to get some pleasure from focusing on loss.The narrator assumes that the word "Nevermore" is the raven's "only stock and store", and, yet, he continues to ask it questions, knowing what the answer will be. His questions, then, are purposely self-deprecating and further incite his feelings of loss.Poe leaves it unclear if the raven actually knows what it is saying or if it really intends to cause a reaction in the poem's narrator.The narrator begins as weak and weary, becomes regretful and grief-stricken, before passing into a frenzy and, finally, madness.Christopher F. S. Maligec suggests the poem is a type of elegiac paraclausithyron, an ancient Greek and Roman poetic form consisting of the lament of an excluded, locked-out lover at the sealed door of his beloved.

Annabel lee

Poe set the scene in a kingdom by the sea and uses some images like sepulcher and tomb, which add some Gothic touch to the poem. With the repetition of some words and phrases, the poem has a nostalgic tone and gives us a mournful feeling. The mysterious tone of the poem makes us feel that only in mysterious and ancient time does such kind of love exist. Besides the content, the poetic structure of this poem is also what I appreciate. It is composed of six stanzas with lines at different length, which gives me a feeling of the waves of the ocean. When I read it, the rhyme and the different length makes it has a musical effect and it is like telling a story to someone.

A psalm of life(henry wadsworth longfellow)

A psalm of life reveals the optimistic theme－time is fleeting,act in the living present.It appeals to the world′people :to act now,to fight for free,to be a hero.A psalm of life shows a spirit of generality、encouragement、and optimistic attitude.To a large degree,it is also the American′s westward movement,territory enlargement and overseas expansion.It also encourage people to fight for their country′s indenpondence.It is widely read for its positive and courageous tone and influences generation and generation.It is a great poem of Longfellow′s and the world

My lost youth

The poem's first stanza tells how the speaker meets a fellow "nobody" — a friend. Together, the two nobodies can enjoy each other's company and their shared anonymity. In the second stanza, the tone of the poem changes. The speaker sounds confident. Perhaps it is her discovery that there are other people like her —other "nobodies"-- that makes her feels strongly that being a "somebody" isn't such a great idea. She realizes that having a friend who understands you and accepts you as you are is more important than being admired by a lot of people or being in the "in"

crowd. In the poem's second stanza, the speaker also makes a strange comparison. She says that being a somebody is like being a frog. What does this simile mean? Aside from Kermit, there aren't many celebrity frogs around.

I'm Nobody! Who are you?

The poem's first stanza tells how the speaker meets a fellow "nobody" — a friend. Together, the two nobodies can enjoy each other's company and their shared anonymity. In the second stanza, the tone of the poem changes. The speaker sounds confident. Perhaps it is her discovery that there are other people like her —other "nobodies"-- that makes her feels strongly that being a "somebody" isn't such a great idea. She realizes that having a friend who understands you and accepts you as you are is more important than being admired by a lot of people or being in the "in" crowd. In the poem's second stanza, the speaker also makes a strange comparison. She says that being a somebody is like being a frog. What does this simile mean? Aside from Kermit, there aren't many celebrity frogs around.

a Station of the Metr o

1. This is the much-quoted masterpiece of Pound and a representative of the Imagist poetry.

2. In form, the poem is similar to the Japanese haiku, a two-line couplet with rhymes. Pound's poem reminds the Chinese of two lines by a Tang poet, Bai Juyi. When describing the sad yet beautiful face of Yang Huifei, a Tang emperess, the poet wrote,

The beautiful face, lonesome with tears;

A pear branch, radiant with rain.

3. The poem is a representative of Imagist poems in that the image of petals on a wet, black bough best represents the picture of those lovely faces in the crowd and that the image is dominant in the poem---the image itself is the poem.

The Road Not Taken（Robert Frost）

According to the literal and more common interpretation, the poem is inspirational, a paean to individualism and non-conformism. The ironic interpretation, widely held by critics, is that the poem is instead about regret and personal myth-making, rationalizing our decisions. The Road Not Taken tells about life choice. Man’s life is metaphorically related to a journey filled with twists and turns. One has to consider a lot before making a wise choice. Though the diverged roads seem identical, they actually lead to different directions, which symbolize different fates. A less than rigorous look at the poem may lead one to believe that Frost’s moral is embodied in those lines. The poem is taken as a call to independence, preaching originality and Emersonian self-reliance. The poem deconstructs its conclusion stanza by stanza.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

This is a deceptively simple poem in which the speaker literally stops his horse in the winter twilight to observe the beauty of the forest scene, and then is moved to continue his journey. Philosophically and symbolically, it stems from the ambiguity of the speaker's choice between safety and the unknown. )symbol:This poem suggests deep thought about death and about life.

The strange attraction of death to man is symbolized by the dark woods silently filled up with the coldness of snow. Frost frequently uses the technique of symbolism in his poetry. Some critics think that the "village" stands for the human world, "woods" for nature, "horse" for the animal world, and "promises" for obligations. The poem represents a moment of relaxation from the burdensome journey of life, an almost aesthetic enjoyment and appreciation of natural beauty which is wholesome and restorative against the chaotic existence of modern man.

Chicago（Carl sandburg）

The poem presents a striking and impressive description of the vigor and vitality of Chicago primarily by means of personification, images and metaphor. In the first five lines, Chicago is compared to "hog butcher", "tool maker", "stacker of wheat", "Players with railroads", "the National Freight Handler" and "the Big Shoulders", all of whom are powerful and vigorous. By using this metaphor. The poet highlights the vigor of Chicago. In the next 13 lines, the poet agrees that Chicago is wicked, crooked and brutal in a straightforward way by assuming a talk between the poet and the personified city, but hegoes on to develop the theme of the poem by stating that Chicago is "alive and coarse and strong and cunning". Then in the last 21 lines, the poet delineates the images of "a tall bold slugger", "a dog lapping for actions" and "a savage pitted against the wilderness". They are all incarnations of power, strength, vitality and action. So, the use of these images further emphasizes the vigor of Chicago. It merits notice that the poet conforms the language style of the conveyance of the theme. One eye-catching characteristic of the poem is that verbs take up a very high proportion and therefore create in the reader's mind a sense of mobility and vitality. Moreover, the varied syntactic pattern and changeable rhythm also reveal the mobility, energy, and vigor of Chica

The Harbor（Carl sandburg）

The poem uses literary elements combined with imagery to depict a contrasting view between the huddled and ugly nature of the urban Chicago with the veering and wheeling free, unobstructed exquisiteness of the lake. The city life has created invisible walls that has life compacted in it. Carl Sandburg wrote the poem in two sections to shows distinction between the two ways of lives. The first section conveys the idea of caged city life. The city life sure does holds an important status, and provides the citizens with sufficient elements to drive the life force but it steals away the freedom. Some people are hunted with shadows of the social order, and deprives them of the real thrill of life. The second section expresses the feelings of an escaped individual from an imprisoned life. Coming out to the lake and walking under the sun, presents the free life. Leaving the cage behind any soul would feel like on the fluttering storm of gulls on the shore.