The Weary Blues Droning a drowsy syncopated tune, Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon, I heard a Negro play. Down on Lenox Avenue the other night By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light He did… Read More ›
Essays
The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the author.
~Roland Barthes
Christian Symbolism, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Godot
Waiting for Godot burst on the scene, or rather stage, in 1953. Written by Samuel Beckett on the heels of WWII, which finally ended with a literal bang when the atom bomb was unleashed on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, post-modernism and… Read More ›
Jekyll Gives Birth to Prufrock
Robert Louis Stevenson first published his short novel, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, in the year 1885. Technically, Stevenson is considered part of the Victorian Era, the period of time between Romanticism and Modernism when Queen… Read More ›
Prufrock’s Love Song
When the word modern is uttered, the initials T.S. come to mind. When the word poetry is mentioned, the name Eliot follows. T.S. Eliot, in a word, exemplifies what modern poetry is all about. Eliot began one of his greatest… Read More ›
Sylvia Plath: The Death of Daddy
In the late fifties, a new form of poetry was taking shape. These poems were of a personal nature, and the more personal, the better. This unrestrained, autobiographical poetry was coined “confessional” by M.L. Rosenthal in 1959 (Bawer 7). Sylvia… Read More ›
In the Waiting Room
“In the Waiting Room” is a poem written by a girl reflecting on a past experience of waiting in the reception room of a dentist’s office, looking at a 1918 issue of National Geographic (noted for its articles on anthropology, nature, and… Read More ›
Watt and Nietzsche: Meaning Versus Truth
The most intriguing and dangerous characteristic of postmodernism explored, precisely and to an uncanny degree in Watt, is the idea that truth is not objective as previously believed but subjective. This idea of subjectivity regarding truth, which plays out through the… Read More ›
Watt’s Garden
Samuel Beckett’s novel, Watt, is a perfect example of postmodernist literature. From the unreliable narrator (an inmate at an insane asylum certainly qualifies) to the temporal shifts (the story’s beginning does not appear in chapter one), Beckett takes the reader on… Read More ›
Morning Pages 