JUDAS

JUDAS

              This poem was written by Mervyn Eustes Morris a Jamaican poet. Morris usually stresses upon the importance of nation and its language through his verse. He wants to redefine the aspect of Jamaican culture and their Creole language. In the first stanza it had told that the master gave Judas a mocking smile. But actually Christ simply smiled at Judas , but in these lines Morris has exaggerated the smile into a mocking smile. The word 'mocking' seemed to be the striking word and therefore poet wanted to highlight the 'mocking glance' of the master.

            The poet explains the Judas feeling of being partial by his master who had given the priority for John to sit in his right. This was again the poets’ partial feeling even in his own homeland by the colonizers. He has said that the truth which is in the side of colonized is always complicated in the foreign eyes. also the colonizer is the ''knowing judge of man''  in the sense whatever they say is believed by the world.

           On the whole the poem 'Judas' by Mervyn Morris is nothing but a representation of history by the point of view of the victim. He had deconstructed the real and the past i.e. deconstructing the already existing ideas. Also he wanted to say that the colonized people's ideas and life thoughts are not accepted whereas the colonizers ideology, life and thoughts were accepted. The poet uses the word 'master' and 'lord' for Christ in order to avoid the religious conflict. Though he describes the pathetic condition if 'colonized' people in the poem the comparison used in this poem is quite controversial however the poet tried to escape of controversies through his careful selection of words and diction.

I Have a Dream essay

I Have a Dream  
The speech took place at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington,D.C. and was given by Martin Luther King Jr.In his speech he used metaphors,similes,a little personification, and allusions to describe the treatment of colored people by whites and the actions that colored people had to take to right the wrong.He mentioned four documents,one being a song:The Declaration of Independence,the Emancipation Proclamation,the Bible, and the song America:My Country 'Tis of Thee.His unspoken message in mentioning and quoting from the documents is quite clear:It wasn't equal in America as three out of the four documents claimed.The themes of the speech are equality,the four documents;their message,his dream,freedom and segregation.

     King used repetition when mentioning specific states in the South:Georgia,Mississippi,Alabama,and South Carolina.Those were some of the most racist states back then.He also mentioned California,New York and New Hampshire to convey that his dream included all states,from the Pacific coast to the Atlantic coast.King's uses the Declaration and Proclamation because they are both documents promising freedom,justice and equal rights to all people--white or otherwise.He describes slavery and people being in mental chains and implies that the documents weren't being taken into effect.

     The purpose of this speech was:to inform people that living together peacefully as friends and family was possible;To expose the cruelties against colored people and people of different religions;To put the idea of freedom,equality and a future with no segregation in peoples' head.

Summary:-

On August 28, 1963, King gives his speech for freedom. He begins his speech with the emancipation of the slaves, issued by Abraham Lincoln, and later mentions that after being freed from slavery, blacks are still not free. King claims all men were issued a check and a promise of freedom, yet for black men and women that check has come back with “insufficient funds.” The members of the civil rights union issue a check to America, they return America’s unkept promise with one they are sure to keep: the continued pursuit of justice. King, along with his many supporters, demand their freedom now, they demand things to change with a sense of urgency and without procrastination from the oppressor. They do not want to see slow change over time; they would rather see significant change immediately. King roars, “now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.” However, King hopes to obtain equality through non-violent movement. He tells fellow black people to not have hatred or bitterness in their heart or turn to guns and fists. He knows that violence to obtain peace only leads to an endless cycle of fighting, unnecessary death, and cruelty. Also King believes blacks must not let this one incident lead them to hate all people of different races and nationalities. He knows that only leads to the same kind of discrimination he is fighting against with his “I have a dream” speech. Black people are not fighting for their own satisfactions, to fight until they feel content with what they have accomplished. Black people are fighting for continuous freedom and equality, not just to be stopped with King’s 1963 speech

A Far Cry from Africa Essay

 "A Far Cry from Africa"
 "A Far Cry from Africa" is poet Derek Walcott's cry of pain over the situation in Kenya in the 1950s. At that time, Kenya was still a British colony, and local Kenyans chafed under the long term injustices of British rule. A nationalist uprising of Kenyan nationalists called Mau Mau led to the death of about 13,000 people, most of them Kenyan, along with a huge number of animals.
In the poem, Walcott decries man's inhumanity toward man in trying to enact justice through slaughter, and compares it unfavorably to nature and the animal kingdom. He also expresses anger at the way the deaths are reduced to statistics or abstractions. This obscures the reality of the dead and their suffering, whether they are white or so-called "savages."
Walcott, in his second stanza, then expresses how torn he feels in his loyalties. He is from a British Caribbean colony, so he understands the plight of a colonial, but he also perceives himself as British. He is frustrated with both sides over the violence.
Because he is writing this in the Caribbean, his title is a pun. He is physically "a far cry" from Africa, but he is also hearing a cry of pain that has reverberated far and wide across the earth.
It is the heartfelt emotional intensity of the poet's voice, as well as the vivid natural imagery, that gives this poem its power.

If You Want to Know Me By Noémia de Sousa Poem & Essay

If You Want to Know Me

-Noémia de Sousa

If you want to know who I am,

Examine with careful eyes

That piece of black wood

Which an unknown Maconde brother

With inspired hands

Carved and worked

In distant lands to the North.

Ah, she is who I am:

Empty eye sockets despairing of possessing life

A mouth slashed with wounds of anguish

Raised as though to implore and threaten

Body tattooed with visible and invisible scars

By the hard whips of slavery

Tortured and magnificent,

Proud and mystical,

Africa from head to toe,

-ah, she is who I am!

If you want to understand me

Come and bend over my African soul,

In the groans of the Negroes on the docks

In the frenzied dances of the Chopes

In the rebelliousness of the Shaganas

In the strange melancholy evaporating

From a native song, into the night …

And ask me nothing more

If you really wish to know me…

For I am no more than a shell of flesh

In which the revolt of Africa congealed

Its cry swollen with hope

About the Poet:

Noémia de Sousa (aka Vera Micaia) was born in 1927 in Maputo, Mozambique.  She lived in Lisbon working as a translator from 1951 to 1964 and then she left for Paris where she worked for the local consulate of Morocco.  She went back to Lisbon in 1975 and became member of the ANOP.  In the early years of the liberation struggle she was very active.  She later left and lived in exile.  Noemia's background was Portuguese and Bantu and in much of her poetry she explores the idea of Africa and her heritage.  

Her poem below is phenomenal.  It’s angry and inspired and that final stanza—where she proffers her body as a medium for Africa’s struggle for freedom--wow, powerful.  And she ends her poem without a period, perhaps because her last word is ‘hope’ and what is more hopeful than an undefined end?  

Essay 

If you want to know me, by Noemia De Souza, has ruefully used literary devices. It is seen to have a mysterious and carefree title. Only after reading the poem will one realize and understand the depth of the feelings that have been expressed in the poem. That is where the power of the poem lays, in its words, images of wounds, untold stories and so on. She is seen to have written this poem in defense of the colonization of Africa and oppression. It portrays the physiological and psychological impact of colonization. It also showcases the struggle for cultural and political autonomy along with hybridity.

In the beginning of the poem, she establishes her lost identity due to colonization and uses the image of “empty sockets”. The eye is one part of the body that best expresses emotions and that very part itself is seen b devoid of its function/life. She is unable to see her past experiences and life and is now blind to it but despairs her present life. She goes on to tell us the harsh past experiences and marks that she has to live with for the rest of her life. The marks all over her body seem like tattoos that last forever leaving marks of slavery, which will always be part of her and he life no matter what. She uses language as a device to protest against slavery and gain liberation. Her usage of words like magnificent and torture together, beautiful and marred shows her resistance and only form of voicing her opinions.

 She proudly goes on to say “Africa from head and foot and this is what I am”. The colonization, slavery, all forms of violence, abuse, every single experience that she has ever gone through is what gives her identity. Even though it has distorted her life to a great extent, she still proudly believed in liberating her country and also for being an African. This powerful poem has well described and contributed to the identities of all Africans, created a bond against the hegemonic colonizer.

A Prayer for my Daughter' by W.B.Yeats

A Prayer for my Daughter' by W.B.Yeats

      This is a poem in which Yeats prays for the happiness and well-being of his daughter, who has just been born.  The poet is slightly upset as he thinks with apprehension about the collapse of modern civilization.  While the poet's mind is stormy with this fear the child is calmly sleeping in the cradle.  The thought about the dangers awaiting the child frightens him.  The poet listens to the ominous howling of the storm in his mind as he thinks of the dangers his daughter may be exposed to. The gloomy poet walks up and down and prays for his daughter.  As he listens to the stormy wind he thinks the prophetic vision described in his poem "The second Coming" is at hand.

          

  Then there follows a skillful description of the kind of beauty that is not desirable in a woman – beauty that makes a stranger crazy or that makes a woman exult at her reflection in the mirror.  The poet prays that his daughter may have beauty, but not excessive beauty.  He knows that too much beauty in a woman will land her in danger.  He knows that fabulous beauty goes with an empty mind.  The poet makes suggestive allusions to Helen who had "much trouble from a fool" and Venus who chose "a bandy-legged smith" as her husband.  From both these stories the poet draws a realistic and at the same time entertaining moral:

                        It's certain that fine women eat

                        A crazy salad with their meat

                        Whereby the Horn of Plenty is undone.

           

 So the poet wishes and prays that his daughter may be granted moderate beauty. Yeats's next prayer is that his daughter should grow up like a laurel tree with linnets singing on its branches.  The laurel tree represents luxuriant growth and peace and harmony.  While the birds stand for joy.  She should bring joy to those around her just as the birds provide joy to people.  The poet wants her daughter to become free from hatred.  The poet knows that intellectual hatred is great evil and can make the mind hollow.  The soul is the fountain of joy and peace and so if she can attune her will to the will of God, she need not have any fear about anything.  As the radical innocence of the soul is the highest form of spiritual development, Yeasts asks his daughter to recover it.  It is a gift from heaven and no earthly temptations can subdue her.

            Yeats's next wish is that his daughter should not become a political fanatic.  Fanaticism will create hatred and ill will and a woman with these vices will become incapable of using the gifts conferred on her.  No doubt, the poet is referring to Maud Gonne, the talented and beautiful lady whom Yeats loved.  She rejected him and married John Macbride, another political fanatic.  According to the poet, she wrecked her life and caused misery to her friends and relatives.  It was vanity and hatred that threw her life into confusion.  It is Yeats's wish that his daughter should not devote herself to any impersonal cause, sacrificing all other values in life.

      Yeats prays that her daughter be endowed with courtesy which he considers as the queen of all virtues.  Courteous behaviour can win over hearts.  Ceremoniousness is another quality that the poet wishes her daughter to possess.  According to him ceremony alone will engender innocence and beauty.  The poet makes references to Maud Gonne in several places in the poem.  This shows the poet's inordinate love foe her.  She rejected his love and chose to dedicate herself to the cause of Irish Independence.  Later though she married another political fanatic, John Macbride, she did not have a happy married life.  It is the poet's prayer that his daughter should not have similar experiences.

            The poem contains many heart-warming lines expressive of affection, humanity, generosity, optimism, good cheer, amiability etc.  Besides, we find several examples of the felicity of word and phrase: "the murderous innocence of the sea", "an old bellows full of angry wind", "rooted in one dear perpetual place" etc. are examples.  We also get a bit of moralizing which has its own appeal:  "an intellectual hatred is the worst."

                        "Ceremony's s the name for the rich horn

                        And custom for the spreading laurel tree."

            "A prayer for my Daughter" is a poem full of practical wisdom, moral philosophy and beauty.                        

CHURCH GOING- Philip Larkin

CHURCH GOING- Philip Larkin

            “Church Going” is one of the best of Philip Larkin’s poems.  The title itself is puzzling. It gives us two different meanings. One meaning is that it is a regular visit to a church. The other shows the decline of the institution because people lost faith in God and religion. His greatest virtues are clarity and close observation of social life, perfect control over feeling and tone. The language is always simple and lucid and the idiom has great variety. Through his poetry Larkin advises us not to be deceived by illusions or ideals.  He asks us to have a better awareness of man’s weaknesses. Larkin is called a sceptic poet. He enters the church as a sceptic who does not have any faith in the church. But he slowly realizes the truth that church fulfils a deeply felt human need and that it is “a serious house on a serious earth it is”.

            Making sure that nothing is going on inside, the speaker of the poem enters the church and closes the door behind him. He finds that it is just like any other church.  He also notices the furniture, furnishings such as the plate, the pyx, prayer books, the Bible, flowers cut for Sunday holy Mass, matting, seats, the baptismal font and the organ. There are no worshippers in the church and the silence tensed him. He looks around him with contempt and he feels a bad smell when he stands staring at the altar where the church services are conducted. Having observed these details, the speaker takes off his cycle-clips in an act of mock-reverence. He did not wear a hat.

            The speaker then moves forward and touches the baptismal font with his hands. He notices that the roof looks almost new but he does not know whether it has been cleaned or restored because he is not a regular church-goer. Then he mounts the lectern and began to read out a few verses from the Bible.  After that he comes back to the door and signs the visitor’s book and donates an Irish six pence which has no value in England. Thus all his activities and manners inside the church show that he is a sceptic who has no faith in the church service. Finally he thinks that his time is wasted, because the place is not worth visiting at all.

            But the speaker could not avoid the church. Over and again he visited the church and each time his skeptical attitude grew less and less. This time he stood inside the churching thinking about its future. As science and technology began to develop, people lost faith in the institution of church. In future, churches will become empty and completely out of use.  A few cathedrals may be preserved as museums for future generation because of its great art and architectural value. Their parchment, the plate and the pyx may be kept in locked cases. But other church buildings will become sheltering centers for sheep and other animals and poor people during rainy time. Sometime people may avoid such places as unlucky because of its graveyard. The speaker of the poem thinks that perhaps the church will become the centre of superstitions in the coming years. But if faith disappeared, naturally superstition will also be disappeared because both are connected with each other. Finally the church buildings will tumble down and only its concrete pillars would be standing as silent witness of the past glory of the church. The church path will be over grown with grass, weeds and creepers. It will become a deserted place. In course of time future generation will forget even the shape of the churches.

            Now the speaker of the poem reflects who will be the last person to visit the church for its purpose. It may be a lover of antiquity who is eager to see very old things or some Christmas-addict who visits church only on important occasions such as the Easter or Christmas and he wants to enjoy the smell of myrrh burnt, the flowers, the choir music, the dress worn by the choir and the priest and the music of the organ.

            Finally the speaker realizes that the church is a serious house on a serious earth. A church is a symbol of man’s sincere search for the ultimate meaning of life. Science and technology cannot solve his spiritual needs. That is why the speaker himself comes to the church again and again when he is tired of the problems of life. A church is equipped with baptismal fond, flowers and the graveyard where “all human glories are buried” with his bones. Thus the ceremonies of most important events in man’s life such as birth, marriage and death are conducted in the church. In this sense we can say that this is a religious poem. Thus the first meaning of the title “Church Going” is affirmed. The poem underlines the truth that the power and the glory of God cannot be destroyed by the advancement of science and technology. On the other hand the church will continue to be the centre focusing universal love and peace and giving spiritual solace to man’s problems and sufferings in his life.

Strange Meeting- Wilfred Owen

Strange Meeting- Wilfred Owen

                 Wilfred Owen is a war poet. His poems express the pity and anger he felt towards war. His poem, "Strange Meeting" is also a record of war. According to George Sampson, "Strange Meeting is the most memorable poem of the period of the first world war." "My subject is war", Owen wrote, "and the pity of war. The poetry is in the pity." Indeed, Owen discusses war as a tragic and pitiful experience. His approach is realistic and he stresses the waste and devastation caused by war.

           

In Strange Meeting, the narrator, after his death, meets one of the enemy soldiers he had killed in the war, in the hell or in the underworld. The miserable experiences in the war helps him to understand the naked truth that the enemy in war is one-self. The soldiers are the victims of the war. This knowledge makes the narrator and the stranger he met, friends.

            The opening line is a reflection of the idea that death is but an escape for a soldier from his miserable life. The escape is to the underworld, described as a long tunnel. The tunnel is full of sleepers. While probing along the sleepers, suddenly, one of them springs up. He looks at the poet in sympathy. For, it is the German soldier, whom the poet has killed on the previous day. The poet wonders, why there are marks of sorrow on the face of the soldier.

            According to the apparition, his distress is due to the loss of chance to warn the world about the truth of war. The consequence of each war is deterioration. It will tuck a nation from progress. The speaker wishes to rush to the battle field and to wash the clogged wheels of the chariot with the pure water of brother hood.

            However, the speaker realizes that human beings will only continue the course. They will either be satisfied or adjusted with the ruins made by the war; or they may be discontented. If discontented, they will turn into greater violence. The speaker had courage, knowledge, wisdom and ability, yet could not stop the course. Wilfred Owen speaks with a prophetic vision, when he says; there is no escape for men from modern war. The speaker, after his death wants to reveal this truth to the human world. For that, he wishes to pour his spirit. He wants to avoid wounds and cess of war. Owen here represents himself as a pacifist.

            To conclude, through the poem, Owen gives stress to the need for peace. Each nation fails to realize the fact that they are marching backwards while indulging in war. The real service of an individual to his nation will be his retreat from the battle. The soldiers are also warned that they are their own enemies so long as they fight.