That winter, the dead could not be buried.The ground was frozen, the gravediggers weak from hunger,The coffin wood was used for fuel. So they were covered with somethingAnd taken on a child’s sled to the cemeteryIn the sub-zero air. They lay on the soil,Some of them wrapped in dark clothBound with rope like the tree’s […]
Leningrad Cemetery, Winter of 1941 by Sharon Olds Read More »
I’ve known rivers:I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than theFlow of human blood in human veins.My soul has grown deep like the rivers.I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above
The Negro Speaks of Rivers by Langston Hughes – Analysis Read More »
Thus she had lain, sugarcane sweetdeserts her hair, golden her feetmountains her breasts, two Niles her tears.Thus she has lain, Black through the years.Over the white seas, rime white and coldbrigands ungentle, icicle boldtook her young daughterssold her strong sonschurched her with Jesusbled her with guns.Thus she has lainNow she is rising, remember her painremember
Africa (By Maya Angelou) – Analysis Read More »
Derek Walcott was born in St.Lucia in the West Indies in 1930. His father was English and his mother was African. He has written poems, plays and is a painter. The time will comeWhen, with elation,You will greet yourself arrivingAt your own door, in your own mirror,And each will smile at the other’s welcome, And
Love After Love by Derek Walcott Read More »
(for a Caribbean island man in London who still wakes up to the sound of the sea)Morning and island man wakes upto the sound of blue surfin his headthe steady breaking and wombingwild seabirdsand fishermen pushing out to seathe sun surfacing defiantlyfrom the east; of his small emerald islandhe always comes back groggily groggilyComes back
Island Man by Grace Nichols Read More »
Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;My sin was too much hope of thee, lov’d boy.Seven years tho’ wert lent to me, and I thee pay,Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.O, could I lose all father now! For whyWill man lament the state he should envy?To have so soon ‘scap’d world’s
Epigrams: On my First Son by Ben Jonson Read More »
Leanor Catton is a phenomenal author. Her first novel, The Rehearsal, was a gloriously impossible to miss and in fact ideal story of a story inside a story – or stories, really – that had the peruser’s brain turning with the intricacies of its account development. The plot – a gathering of adolescent young ladies
The Luminaries – A Review Read More »
The story “The Shadow in the Rose Garden” throws light on the emotional tension of a woman. She loves one man but marries another one out of necessity. In the end, both the husband and the wife are disillusioned but continue living together with a sense of actuality. They accept their new situation in the
The Shadow in the Rose Garden by D. H. Lawrence Read More »
The story “The Duchess and The Jeweler” demonstrates the tussle between the rational and emotional forces in the mind of man. Whenever the emotional forces burst out, they take away everything, and man’s experience and reason cannot withstand them. It also depicts that the high ups are coming down facing moral decadence, and the commoners
The Duchess and the Jeweler by Virginia Woolf Read More »
The English story “The Necklace” by Guy De Maupassant deals with the irresistible temptation to outshine and drastic limitations. What is the summary of the story of the necklace? Matilda is the central character of the story. She herself suggests that there is a very narrow margin between safety and disaster. A mere stroke of
The Necklace by Guy De Maupassant Read More »
