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Poetry Literary Analysis
Abdulla Ahmed
Mrs. Timm
12F
29-11-2011
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Outline Literary Analysis
I.
Introduction
A.
"I desired my dust to be mingled with yours" (12)
B.
The River-Merchant's Wife (A Letter)
C.
Li Po
1.
Chinese
2.
Supreme master of poetry
D.
Ballad poetry
E.
Li Po's ballad brings a strong balance of controversy and intriguing
imagination which contributes to a firm literary analysis.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
Meter and rhythm
A.
Iamb
B.
No meter
Stanza
A.
Mixed Stanzas
B.
May be differently viewed
Sound Devices
A.
Alliteration
B.
Consonance
Imagery and Figurative Language
A.
Personification
B.
Detailed emphasis
Conclusion
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Poetry Literary Analysis
"I desired my dust to be mingles with yours." (12) This line of poetry comes from one
of Li Po's ballads. It has great meaning. Coming from a newlywed little girl, it portrays her
life. This Chinese little girl desires to be physically joined with her husband. She is in love
with him. Li Po was an amazing Chinese poet. He is considered to be a supreme master of
Chinese poetry. Li Po was very spirited and graceful. Easily we can see a display of his
character in all aspects of his writing. They are simple in context but have strong meanings.
The meanings tend to be strong as well as controversial. Li Po's ballad brings a strong
balance of controversy and an intriguing imagination which contributes to a firm literary
analysis.
The meter is the regular patter of stressed and unstressed syllables in each poetic line.
There is more than one type of meter which are based on how the syllables are arranged in
the line of poetry. We can strongly say that the meter in this ballad is an iambic meter. The
meter starts with an unstressed syllable and ends with a stressed syllable. The joined pair of a
stressed proceeded by an unstressed syllable is called the iambic foot. In this ballad the feet
per line count fluctuates with a rough average of four feet per line.
While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead (1)
I played about the front gate, pulling flowers. (2)
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse (3)
Line one of the poem has the start of our iambic meter. The line has six feet in it. Line
two of the poetry has five beets. Line three also has five feet. If we take this into an ideal
consideration, we can say that there will be a pattern throughout the whole poem. This status
is has a low probability of being achieved in this case. Due to increment of variation, when
the ballad was translated from Chinese to English by Ezra Pound, some of the words were
replaced by a single word and vice versa. This disturbs the natural balance of the poem. If we
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were to study an English poem we would have found coordination between all the lines and
hence we would have had a pattern. Similarly if we take this exact poem in the chinese
language, we will find the missing pattern.
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums (4)
And we went on living in the village of Chokan: (5)
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion. (6)
These lines demonstrate the distortion of balance; line four, of the ballad, has five feet
and a half. Furthermore; line five of the ballad has six feet and a half which is one foot and a
half more than the supposedly pattern with the corresponding line two. Also, line six has six
feet instead of only five feet.
The stanza is a group of lines in a poem which is seen as a unit. There are many types
of stanzas. Most poems have only one stanza in them. This poem shows a mixture of stanzas.
Stanzas are most commonly names after the number of lines they have in them.
In the ballad, there are three different stanzas:
Lines (1-6) are a sestet. They are formed of six lines. Li Po was smart and so he had a
part of the girl's life in this stanza. Lines (7-10) are a quatrain. They have only four lines.
Like the stanza before them the too talk about an era in the girl's life. Lines (11-14) form
another quatrain that tells another story. Finally lines (15-28) join up to form some sort of
cluster that talks about the final stage in the girl's life.
Li Po is a genius. He used the structure of the poem to play with the content. As the
stanzas change, a new part is told. Instead of having the 6-4-4-5-5-4 set of stanzas for the
structure to be more general he joined what could have been the last three stanzas into one.
This is good when we look at the content. The structure has been hurt a bit, but the content
compensates for that lack.
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Li Po uses only two main sound devices in the poem. First he uses consonances.
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours (12)
In the twelfth line of the ballad we find a consonance. Li Po uses the (ed) sound twice in the
line.
Also the author uses alliterations:
While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead. (1)
I played about the front gate, pulling flowers (2)
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead. (18)
Alliterations are sound devices which involve the repetition of initial consonant sounds. In
the above three lines some letters were repeated. The letter s and the letter w were repeated in
line one. The letter p was repeated in line two. The letter m was repeated in line eighteen.
These sound devices are important because they add joyful emphasis to the poem. They are
like magnets to the listener's attention.
The author was quite vague on his use of images and figurative languages. As a fact, it is
quite difficult to see all the images that are present. In line twenty-five of the poem:
They hurt me. I grow older (25)
The butterflies do not inflict pain and hurt people. This is a human action. The author gives
the butterflies and their adjustment to the changes in weather the power to have hurt the old
woman. Also to draw a beautiful image the author has emphasized on his details. The
changes in the seasons are linked to the girl turning into a young lady and finally into a senior
citizen. The timeline of the girl's life is drawn with beautiful words in a vague manner.
To conclude, Li Po was one of the best Chinese poets. He provides strong arguments for his
poems and leaves the reader in a state of unexplainable joy. The River-Merchant's Wife (A
Letter) brings the basis to a uniquely extravagant literary analysis.