an afternoon nap
by Arthur Yap
‘an afternoon nap’ by Arthur Yap explores the lacunae in the modern education system and how it results in anxiety and stress in students.
‘an afternoon nap’ by Arthur Yap explores the lacunae in the modern education system and how it results in anxiety and stress in students.
‘Equinox’ by Elizabeth Alexander is a heartfelt poem about death and how all living things are forced to contend with it. The speaker uses a creative metaphor comparing bees on the equinox to her grandmother.
‘The Sheep Child’ by James L. Dickey is a surprising and memorable poem that describes a half-sheep, half-human child that frightens the local farm boys into controlling their sexual lust.
‘August, Los Angeles, Lullaby’ by Carol Muske-Dukes is a contemporary poem about bringing life into the world and the worries that plague a mother after giving birth.
In ‘3 November 1984,’ Indian-English poet Sujata Bhatt shows how history plays a vital role in the process of writing poetry, and their interconnectedness.
‘A Long Journey’ by Musaemura Zimunya is based on the changes that came to Rhodesia, a small country in southern Africa, after British colonial rule. The speaker explores the positive changes and the negative.
‘A Pastoral’ by Agha Shahid Ali is a moving poem. In it, the poet reflects his love for Kashmir and his affection for his motherland.
‘A Slumber did my Spirit Seal’ by William Wordsworth is one of five “Lucy” poems that Wordsworth published in the volume Lyrical Ballads, that he co-authored with Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
‘A Stopwatch and an Ordnance Map’ by Stephen Spender explores the Spanish Civil War through the lyrical depiction of one man’s death. It is marked by a stopwatch, the olive trees, and the continued conflict around him.
Gillian Clarke’s free-verse poem ‘Advent’ depicts a lifeless winter landscape where everything is frozen to a state that instills despair and hopelessness in the speaker’s heart.
Stephen Spender’s poem ‘Air Raid’ depicts the impact of the Blitz or German Luftwaffe air strike on the United Kingdom.
‘Amethyst Beads’ by Eavan Boland alludes to Greek mythology and the suffering of a child, Persephone, after she was separated from her mother, Demeter.
‘An awful Tempest mashed the air’ by Emily Dickinson personifies a storm. The speaker follows it from its beginning to end and depicts how nature is influenced.
‘Answers’ by Elizabeth Jennings describes how one speaker compartmentalizes the big questions and answers in life in the back of her mind.
‘Ariel’ by Sylvia Plath is a deeply metaphorical poem. It focuses on the speaker’s experiences during a terrifying horseback ride.
‘Before the Mirror’ by Elizabeth Drew Barstow Stoddard describes the life of a woman trapped within her home and the shadows of the world outside.
‘Being Brave at Night’ is written by the American poet Edgar Albert Guest and it was published in his poetry collection Rhymes of Childhood. The speaker of this piece talks about how he is not afraid of anything that comes across to terrify him at night.
‘Beyond the Years’ by Paul Laurence Dunbar is a three section poem in which the speaker describes what one will, and will not, experience after death.
‘Break of Day in the Trenches’ by Isaac Rosenberg delves into the desolate feelings of alienation from the “other” that impacted soldiers in Word War I.
‘Consumption’ by William Cullen Bryant describes the fast-approaching death of a tuberculosis patient and her path to heaven.
‘Crow Sickened’ is a brilliant example of Hughes’ playful style, in which Crow attempts to work out the cause of his misery.
Wilfred Owen immortalized mustard gas in his indictment against warfare, ‘Dulce et Decorum Est.’ Written in 1917 while at Craiglockart, and published posthumously in 1920, ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ details what is, perhaps, the most memorable written account of a mustard gas attack.
‘Exile’ by Julia Alvarez is a narrative depiction of the poet’s childhood memories of leaving the Dominican Republic for the United States.
‘First March,’ written by one of the lesser known First World War poets, Ivor Bertie Gurney, is about a soldier’s emotional state while returning to his home.