Poems Essays

The poem Suicide Note by Janice Mirikitani introduces itself with a small paragraph explaining how an Asian-American student reportedly jumped to her death after being unable to obtain a perfect four point grade average. What follows is the girl?s suicide note, an apology to her parents in poetic verse, which …

The universal appeal of Bruce Dawe’s poems lie in the poet’s passion in speaking for those who have no means of speaking. In “The Wholly Innocent” Dawe challenges his readers through a wilful determination to terminate the pregnancy of a healthy foetus. And in Homecoming Dawe questions the validity of …

In her poem “Remittance Man”, Judith Wright focuses on the theme of living up to society’s unwritten code of conduct within England’s 19th century culture. She suggests that within a society so socially divided, there remains the idle rich who are obligated to abide by the incessant need for social …

Life in the United States was anything but heavenly for Asian Americans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As vividly described in Mary Paik Lee’s autobiography, “Quiet Odyssey”, a very large majority of the Asian American population residing in America during this time period “never had enough money …

This poem struck me with its vivid description of the hard life that people during the Depression suffered. This is not just a story of the burial of a child. This is a window into the hardships of a generation of people. The landscape is drawn as a harsh, barren …

“Piano and Drums” is a poem that accurately explores the trying conflict of merging a traditional culture with a new, modern civilisation. The author Gabriel Okara, who also doubles as the narrator in the poem, responds to the drums as his tribal heritage and the simplicity of youth, while he …

Ozymandias is a poem written by Percy Bysshe Shelley. The poem begins with a chance encounter and explores a theme of Universal truth. Ozymandias was a powerful leader who built alot of buildings in ancient Egypt and because of this he earned the nickname of “the builder”. He was extremely …

“The Deserted Village” by Oliver Goldsmith is a nostalgic poem about the passing of a simpler, happier rural past. It tells the story of a village which had once been happy and flourishing, but which is now quite deserted and fallen to ruins. As for George Crabbe’s “The Village”, can …

Edgar Allan Poe was a writer noted for consistencies in the dark and gothic style in his writing. Poe was a very popular for his short stories and poems which clearly shows his creative brilliance. He was renowned as the master of horror and also known, read, and appreciated for …

Upon first read, Craig Raine’s “A Martian Sends A Postcard Home”, that was written in 1979, may seem to be a poem about random happenings on Earth. However, while reading the poem in depth and interpreting the poem it can be read as a Martian that was unfamiliar with Earth …