美国文学诗歌赏析

1. Analyze the poem “The Wild Honey Suckle”

Understand the title: 1.The name honeysuckle comes from the sweet nectar that the flower produces to intoxicate the greedy bee. Its powerful fragrance seduces the human senses as it pervades the air. The perfume o f this passionate plant may turn a maiden’s head, hence wild honeysuckle is a symbol of inconstancy in love.2. The word “wild” implies her living place; she lives in wilderness not in paradise or house; so she will not be appreciated by others and feels sorrowful. Also it implies the nature, so we can say the writer is describing the nature.

2. Analyze Whitman’s “Song of Myself” (Over 200 words)

"Song of Myself" is all about the human experience. The human experience, here, means what men of the past, present and future have seen, touched, smelt, and heard. In this poem Whitman is explaining how all of humanity is like one living organism, and no one part is more important than the other. In section 44 of "Song of Myself" Whitman says, "We have thus far exhausted trillions of winters and summers, There are trillions ahead, and trillions ahead of them. Births have brought us richness and variety, And other births will bring us richness and variety. I do not call one greater and one smaller, That which fills its period and place is equal to any." It is clear that Whitman had a perspective of the human race and its history that escaped most writers. More specifically, Whitman speaks of equal contribution to the human experience in section 42: "Here and there with dimes on the eyes walking, To feed the greed of the belly the brains liberally spooning, Tickets buying, taking, selling, but in to the feast never once going, Many sweating, ploughing, thrashing, and then the chaff for payment receiving, A few idly owning, and they the wheat continually claiming. This is the city and I am one of the citizens, Whatever interests the rest interests me, politics, wars, markets, newspapers, schools, The mayor and councils, banks, tariffs, steamships, factories, stocks, stores, real estate and personal estate. 3. Emily’s “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” (Over 300 words)

The poem begins with a leisurely image. At first, the protagonist feels totally at ease and the usually frightening death is described as if a familiar friend, gentle and polite. Continuingly, the poem is developed upon a basic metaphor that life is a journey. It was truly rather old a comparison, but Dickinson enriched it with her creativity and imagination: "School, where Children strove" --childhood; "Fields of Gazing Grain"--maturity; and "Setting Sun"--old age. Then “the Dews drew quivering and chill-” makes the protagonist feel terribly cold, which may mean that they are getting nearer and nearer to the tomb. But at last, his companions, Immortality and Death, finally desert him and leave him alone to go toward Eternity.

So it seems that though death cheats him and at the same time deserts him, the experience of death itself is not painful. Emily Dickinson’s poems just explain this kind of essence of life, which then lead you to a world of imagination and thinking.

4. Appreciate the poem “In a Station of the Metro”.

The poem is essentially a set of images that have unexpected likeness and convey the rare emotion that Pound was experiencing at that time. Arguably the heart of the poem is not the first line, nor the second, but the mental process that links the two together. "In a poem of this sort," as Pound explained, "one is trying to record the precise instant when a thing outward and objective transforms itself, or darts into a thing inward and subjective." This darting takes place between the first and second lines. The pivotal semi-colon has stirred