An amazing poem about the human spirit

One of the best poems about the human spirit is Whittier's Barbara Frietchie. It's about a woman's refusal to surrender her belief in the Union during the Civil War as Confederate troops marched through her town. Whittier's lines flow with the steadiness of the marching Confederate troops; further, he doesn't saturate his lines with words that mask the poem's meaning. Instead, he's "upfront and personal," enabling readers to peer over his shoulder as he comments on the action.

Here are the poem's first six stanzas:

UP from the meadows rich with corn,
Clear in the cool September morn,

The clustered spires of Frederick stand
Green-walled by the hills of Maryland.

Round about them orchards sweep,
Apple and peach trees fruited deep,

Fair as the garden of the Lord
To the eyes of the famished rebel horde,

On that pleasant morn of the early fall
When Lee marched o'er the mountain-wall;

Over the mountains winding down,
Horse and foot, into Frederick town.

You can read the rest of the poem here.

Two levels of irony

In yesterday's blog post, I shared the poem Roger Heston by Edgar Lee Masters. In it, Masters integrated the literal and imaginative realms in a seamless way. It's an example of double irony. Masters used two levels of irony to subtly indicate to his readers that he wrote the poem with "tongue in cheek."

Irony results when a writer twists the meaning of his words. A poem can contain two levels of irony. For example, at Roger Heston's base level, the speaker unexpectedly gets gored to death by a cow he was observing; At its higher level, the person writing about the speaker's untimely demise is none other than the speaker himself. A bit of afterlife communication.

A poem as transparent as glass

I prefer to read poems that are transparent, that don't require me to strain my brain to decipher the poem's meaning. An example of such a poem is Roger Heston.

Roger Heston by Edgar Lee Masters

Oh many times did Ernest Hyde and I
Argue about the freedom of the will.
My favorite metaphor was Prickett's cow
Roped out to grass, and free you know as far
As the length of the rope.
One day while arguing so, watching the cow
Pull at the rope to get beyond the circle
Which she had eaten bare,
Out came the stake, and tossing up her head,
She ran for us.
"What's that, free-will or what?" said Ernest, running.
I fell just as she gored me to my death.

After reading the poem, I wondered whether a cow can have horns. I've seen many cows and can't remember any having horns, especially ones sufficiently large to gore someone to death. However, a Google search informed me that I was wrong. In several cattle breeds the females have horns, including the Texas Longhorn. On the other hand, in some cattle breeds not even the bulls have horns. One such breed is the Angus. And even if you see a hornless cow, it doesn't mean that its horns haven't been removed. Horns can be dangerous both to other cattle and to humans, as the speaker in Masters' poem discovered.

Masters concluded his poem with a twist. Its final line states that "I fell just as she gored me to my death." Yet, after his unfortunate demise, the speaker was able to share, in writing, how he met his end. A miraculous ending to an excellent poem.

Connecting sentences in a paragraph

Good writing makes connections, not just between paragraphs but also between sentences within a paragraph. In this blog entry, I reveal three different ways to connect two sentences within the same paragraph.

In the next paragraph, quoted from the New York Daily News, can you tell how its author, Adam Rubin, connected its second sentence to its first?

Pitching coach Dan Warthen said Johan Santana’s chances of starting Opening Day in Cincinnati are “almost nil.” Warthen instead is eyeing the season’s second series against the Marlins, and is adamant Santana shouldn’t miss a turn in the rotation.

The second-sentence word that builds the bridge is "Warthen." By repeating the pitching coach's name and then revealing something about him, the author created a logical relationship between the sentences.

Here's another example, exactly as it appears on the Brooklyn Cyclones website.

The Blog is the lighter side of the Cyclones. It's where we share inside jokes, make obscure pop culture references, poke fun at each other, tell stories, and find out what really happens when seven strangers behind the scenes.

In the above example, the word that connects the paragraph's second sentence connects to the first one is the pronoun "It's."

Finally, here's a third way you can connect two sentences:

Everyone seems to be more concerned about Johan Santana's health than Santana himself. The Mets' star pitcher has kept the same demeanor throughout this latest crisis, and keeps insisting that he will be there for his Opening Day start on April 6.

In the above example, which is from Ed Coleman's WFAN blog, a key element of the first sentence is Johan Santana. Coleman connects his second sentence to his first by referring to Santana as the "Mets' star pitcher."