easy poems to write an essay on

Poetry Contests

The Ten Best Poems to Analyze

by Adam Sedia

The Roman poet Horace famously set forth the twofold purpose of poetry: to teach and to delight. The sheer aesthetic and imaginative language of poetry is often on its own enough to delight, but in analyzing the poem teaching and delighting converge. The reader both unearths the deeper, hidden meanings of the poem and at the same time derives an intellectual satisfaction at the discovery.

Not all poems contain the same analytical depth, however. Some are “tougher nuts to crack” to arrive at their analytical core or contain multiple layers or facets of meaning that are equally valid from the face of the text. The list below collects ten of these analytically-intensive poems to provide a basic illustration of this type of poem.

Selecting a poem as analytically “deep” is not meant to disparage other poems. Many fine poems excluded from this list sacrifice analytical depth for directness of message, beauty or innovativeness of language, or narrative drama. All of these legitimate poetic goals justify at times sacrifice of analytical depth, and that does not detract from the poem’s merit. Consequently, this list is not to be construed as a sort of “best poems” compilation. Analytical depth alone is not the “be all and end all” of poetry.

It is also necessary here to set forth three qualifications. First, and most obviously, the poems selected are confined only to those written in English. Textual analysis is serious work, able to be undertaken seriously only in the native language of the text. Many great poems in other languages have at least the same level of analytical depth as those presented here, but doing them justice would require presentation in their native language and discussion of their subtleties in the original, which is far beyond the scope of this compilation.

Second, this list omits epic poems from consideration. The best epics have an analytical richness derived from a combination of the language and the narrative structure, and including them would crowd out lyric poems from the list that often have analytical depth as their primary feature. Accordingly, the list focuses exclusively on lyric and short narrative poems.

And finally, the list is confined only to classical poems—that is, poems written in meter according to form. Modernist works like those of William Butler Yeats, T.S. Eliot, and Ezra Pound are written in a hyper-elusive cubist style that demands exhaustive analysis, usually without any particular meaning intended. It can even be said that in modernist and contemporary poetry, analysis, not aesthetics, serves as the primary poetic end. Including modernist poetry in the list would be to give it an unfair advantage in the field of analytical depth.

In many ways, analytical depth is harder to achieve in a classical poem, where formal strictures demand unity of language and structural coherence, and do not allow for a stream-of-consciousness presentation of images that characterizes modernist poetry. This list, then, presents the best analytically deep poems that achieve their depth within the confines and exquisiteness of classical form.

1. Sonnet 142 by William Shakespeare (1609)

Love is my sin, and thy dear virtue hate, Hate of my sin, grounded on sinful loving: O, but with mine compare thou thine own state, And thou shalt find it merits not reproving; Or, if it do, not from those lips of thine, That have profan’d their scarlet ornaments And seal’d false bonds of love as oft as mine, Robb’d others’ beds’ revenues of their rents. Be it lawful I love thee, as thou lov’st those Whom thine eyes woo as mine importune thee: Root pity in thy heart, that when it grows, Thy pity may deserve to pitied be. ⁠ If thou dost seek to have what thou dost hide, ⁠ By self-example mayst thou be denied!

All of Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets are masterpieces, and many contain many facets and layers of analysis, so selection from among them was difficult. Sonnet 142, though, comes first because of its striking use of contrast and innovative use of form. Shakespeare transforms love into sin and hate into virtue; below the superficial curse is an urging to pity. The structural analysis is also intriguing: although the rhyme scheme is Shakespearian, the presentation of the solution at the beginning of the third quatrain resembles more the Italian form of the sonnet.

2. “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” by John Donne (1633)

As virtuous men pass mildly away, And whisper to their souls to go, Whilst some of their sad friends do say, ⁠“Now his breath goes,” and some say, “No.”

So let us melt, and make no noise, ⁠No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move; ‘Twere profanation of our joys ⁠To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th’ earth brings harms and fears; ⁠Men reckon what it did, and meant; But trepidation of the spheres, ⁠Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers’ love ⁠—Whose soul is sense—cannot admit Of absence, ‘cause it doth remove ⁠The thing which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refined, ⁠That ourselves know not what it is, Inter-assurèd of the mind, ⁠Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one, ⁠Though I must go, endure not yet A breach, but an expansion, ⁠Like gold to aery thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so ⁠As stiff twin compasses are two; Thy soul, the fix’d foot, makes no show ⁠To move, but doth, if th’ other do.

And though it in the centre sit, ⁠Yet, when the other far doth roam, It leans, and hearkens after it, ⁠And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must, ⁠Like th’ other foot, obliquely run; Thy firmness makes my circle just ⁠And makes me end where I begun.

Donne’s style is labeled “metaphysical” for its philosophical treatment of its subjects, and this “Valediction” is regarded as one of the finest examples of metaphysical poetry. Here, Donne weaves together conceits (extended metaphors), ultimately comparing the union of souls to the ends of a compass, with each soul’s path likened to the infinity of the circle. Along the way, Donne introduces several metaphysical ideas, including a discussion of astronomy (“trepidation of the spheres” and “sublunary”) and the nature of the soul. What is ostensibly a love poem is actually a deep philosophical contemplation of the human soul.

3. “The Sick Rose” by William Blake (1789)

O Rose thou art sick, The invisible worm That flies in the night, In the howling storm,

Has found out thy bed Of crimson joy: And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy.

From Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience , this short, eight-line poem has been called “one of the most baffling and enigmatic in the English language.” It lends itself to myriad interpretations, from the ravages of syphilis on the eighteenth-century nobility to the effect of experience on the human condition. Its open metaphors and laconic tone make the interpretive possibilities endless.

4. “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood” by William Wordsworth (1815)

The Child is father of the Man; And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety.

I. There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight, To me did seem Apparelled in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream. It is not now as it hath been of yore;— Turn wheresoe’er I may, By night or day, The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

II. The rainbow comes and goes, And lovely is the rose; The moon doth with delight Look round her when the heavens are bare; Waters on a starry night Are beautiful and fair; The sunshine is a glorious birth; But yet I know, where’er I go, That there hath passed away a glory from the earth.

III. Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song, And while the young lambs bound As to the tabor’s sound, To me alone there came a thought of grief: A timely utterance gave that thought relief, And I again am strong. The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep; No more shall grief of mine the season wrong; I hear the echoes through the mountains throng; The winds come to me from the fields of sleep, And all the earth is gay; Land and sea Give themselves up to jollity, And with the heart of May Doth every beast keep holiday. Thou child of joy, Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy shepherd-boy!

IV. Ye blessed creatures, I have heard the call Ye to each other make; I see The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee; My heart is at your festival. My head hath its coronal, The fulness of your bliss, I feel—I feel it all. Oh evil day if I were sullen While Earth herself is adorning This sweet May morning, And the children are culling On every side, In a thousand valleys far and wide, Fresh flowers, while the sun shines warm, And the babe leaps up on his mother’s arm: I hear, I hear, with joy I hear! —But there’s a tree, of many, one, A single field which I have looked upon, Both of them speak of something that is gone: The pansy at my feet Doth the same tale repeat. Whither is fled the visionary gleam? Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

V. Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The soul that rises with us, our life’s star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar; Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home. Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing boy, But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, He sees it in his joy; The youth, who daily farther from the East Must travel, still is nature’s priest, And by the vision splendid Is on his way attended; At length the man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day.

VI. Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own; Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind, And even with something of a mother’s mind, And no unworthy aim, The homely nurse doth all she can To make her foster-child, her inmate man, Forget the glories he hath known, And that imperial palace whence he came.

VII. Behold the child among his new-born blisses, A six years’ darling of a pigmy size! See, where ‘mid work of his own hand he lies, Fretted by sallies of his mother’s kisses, With light upon him from his father’s eyes! See at his feet some little plan or chart, Some fragment from his dream of human life, Shaped by himself with newly-learned art— A wedding or a festival, A mourning or a funeral; And this hath now his heart, And unto this he frames his song. Then will he fit his tongue To dialogues of business, love, or strife: But it will not be long Ere this be thrown aside, And with new joy and pride The little actor cons another part, Filling from time to time his ‘humorous stage’ With all the persons, down to palsied age, That Life brings with her in her equipage, As if his whole vocation Were endless imitation.

VIII. Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie Thy soul’s immensity; Thou, best philosopher, who yet dost keep Thy heritage, thou eye among the blind, That, deaf and silent, read’st the eternal deep, Haunted for ever by the eternal mind,— Mighty prophet! seer blest! On whom those truths do rest, Which we are toiling all our lives to find, In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave; Thou, over whom thy immortality Broods like the day, a master o’er a slave, A presence which is not to be put by; Thou little child, yet glorious in the might Of heaven-born freedom on thy being’s height, Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke The years to bring the inevitable yoke, Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife? Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight, And custom lie upon thee with a weight, Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!

IX. O joy, that in our embers Is something that doth live, That nature yet remembers What was so fugitive! The thought of our past years in me doth breed Perpetual benediction: not indeed For that which is most worthy to be blest— Delight and liberty, the simple creed Of childhood, whether busy or at rest, With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:— Not for these I raise The song of thanks and praise; But for those obstinate questionings Of sense and outward things, Fallings from us, vanishings; Blank misgivings of a creature Moving about in worlds not realized, High instincts before which our mortal nature Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised: But for those first affections, Those shadowy recollections, Which, be they what they may, Are yet the fountain light of all our day, Are yet a master light of all our seeing; Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make Our noisy years seem moments in the being Of the eternal silence: truths that wake, To perish never; Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavor, Nor man nor boy, Nor all that is at enmity with joy, Can utterly abolish or destroy! Hence in a season of calm weather, Though inland far we be, Our souls have sight of that immortal sea Which brought us hither, Can in a moment travel thither, And see the children sport upon the shore, And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

X. Then sing, ye birds! sing, sing a joyous song! And let the young lambs bound As to the tabor’s sound! We in thought will join your throng, Ye that pipe and ye that play, Ye that through your hearts to-day Feel the gladness of the May! What though the radiance which was once so bright Be now forever taken from my sight, Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower? We will grieve not, rather find Strength in what remains behind; In the primal sympathy Which, having been, must ever be; In the soothing thoughts that spring Out of human suffering; In the faith that looks through death, In years that bring the philosophic mind.

XI. And O ye fountains, meadows, hills, and groves, Forebode not any severing of our loves! Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might; I only have relinquished one delight To live beneath your more habitual sway. I love the brooks, which down their channels fret, Even more than when I tripped lightly as they: The innocent brightness of a new-born day Is lovely yet: The clouds that gather round the setting sun Do take a sober coloring from an eye That hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality; Another race hath been, and other palms are won. Thanks to the human heart by which we live, Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears, To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

Typically Wordsworth’s poetry is clear and direct, easily understandable on a first reading. Highly atypical of Wordsworth, the “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood” is a discursive, deeply philosophical poem that requires an understanding of Platonism to grasp fully. At its core, the poem views the human soul as originating in the realm of the ideal, and the conflict of life is to return to that ideal despite its loss as the world makes its impressions on the developing mind. The poem’s length allows for several detailed elaborations of this idea.

5. “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1818)

This sonnet packs in multiple layers of meaning. The most obvious reading addresses the futility of human grandeur, but closer reading reveals a message about art and artists, and how artistic portrayal turns perception into reality. Combine this with a complex, double-layered narrative structure and historical allusions to Napoleon, and the reader has a deep and multidimensional work to enjoy.

6. “My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning (1842)

That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall, Looking as if she were alive. I call That piece a wonder, now; Fra Pandolf’s hands Worked busily a day, and there she stands. Will’t please you sit and look at her? I said “Fra Pandolf” by design, for never read Strangers like you that pictured countenance, The depth and passion of its earnest glance, But to myself they turned (since none puts by The curtain I have drawn for you, but I) And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst, How such a glance came there; so, not the first Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, ’twas not Her husband’s presence only, called that spot Of joy into the Duchess’ cheek; perhaps Fra Pandolf chanced to say, “Her mantle laps Over my lady’s wrist too much,” or “Paint Must never hope to reproduce the faint Half-flush that dies along her throat.” Such stuff Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough For calling up that spot of joy. She had A heart—how shall I say?— too soon made glad, Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er She looked on, and her looks went everywhere. Sir, ’twas all one! My favour at her breast, The dropping of the daylight in the West, The bough of cherries some officious fool Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule She rode with round the terrace—all and each Would draw from her alike the approving speech, Or blush, at least. She thanked men—good! but thanked Somehow—I know not how—as if she ranked My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name With anybody’s gift. Who’d stoop to blame This sort of trifling? Even had you skill In speech—which I have not—to make your will Quite clear to such an one, and say, “Just this Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss, Or there exceed the mark”—and if she let Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse— E’en then would be some stooping; and I choose Never to stoop. Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt, Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands; Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands As if alive. Will’t please you rise? We’ll meet The company below, then. I repeat, The Count your master’s known munificence Is ample warrant that no just pretense Of mine for dowry will be disallowed; Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed At starting, is my object. Nay, we’ll go Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though, Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity, Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!

Along with “Porphyria’s Lover,” this is one of Browning’s most well-known dramatic monologues. The speaker is an actual historical figure, Alfonso II, Duke of Ferrara (1533-1598), describing his deceased last wife, Lucrezia de’ Medici (1545-1561), to the ambassador of the Austrian emperor, whose daughter he plans to marry next (see images above of Alfonso and Lucrezia). The duke’s monologue offers a psychologically rich profile of paranoia and narcissism, all of which must be considered in light of the audience to whom Browning has him speaking. This short monologue provides one of the best examples of psychological analysis in literature.

7. “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe (1845)

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore — While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. “ ’Tis some visiter,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door — Only this and nothing more.”

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December; And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly I wished the morrow; — vainly I had sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow — sorrow for the lost Lenore — For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore — Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain Thrilled me — filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating “ ’Tis some visiter entreating entrance at my chamber door — Some late visiter entreating entrance at my chamber door; — This it is and nothing more.”

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer, “Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore; But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping, And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, That I scarce was sure I heard you” — here I opened wide the door; —— Darkness there and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before; But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token, And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore?” This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!” — Merely this and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning, Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before. “Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice; Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore — Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;— ‘Tis the wind and nothing more!”

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter, In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore; Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he; But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door — Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door — Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore, “Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no craven, Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore — Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!” Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly, Though its answer little meaning — little relevancy bore; For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door — Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door, With such name as “Nevermore.”

But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour. Nothing farther then he uttered — not a feather then he fluttered — Till I scarcely more than muttered “Other friends have flown before — On the morrow he will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before.” Then the bird said “Nevermore.”

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken, “Doubtless,” said I, “what it utters is its only stock and store Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore — Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore Of ‘Never — nevermore’.”

But the Raven still beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door; Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore — What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore Meant in croaking “Nevermore.”

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom’s core; This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining On the cushion’s velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o’er, But whose velvet-violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o’er, She shall press, ah, nevermore!

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer Swung by seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor. “Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee — by these angels he hath sent thee Respite — respite and nepenthe, from thy memories of Lenore; Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!” Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil! — prophet still, if bird or devil! — Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore, Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted — On this home by Horror haunted — tell me truly, I implore — Is there — is there balm in Gilead? — tell me — tell me, I implore!” Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil! — prophet still, if bird or devil! By that Heaven that bends above us — by that God we both adore — Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn, It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore — Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.” Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

“Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!” I shrieked, upstarting — “Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore! Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken! Leave my loneliness unbroken! — quit the bust above my door! Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!” Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door; And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming, And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor; And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor Shall be lifted — nevermore!

Poe’s reputation as a master of the macabre does this poem serious injustice. Far more than just a creepy tale, “The Raven” represents the inward battle with nihilism as hinted in the raven’s mantra, “nevermore.” The raven itself presents a masterful use of personification of an idea, and Poe draws the reader into the inward psychological battle raging in the speaker as he confronts nihilism personified.

8. “Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold (1867)

The sea is calm tonight. The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits; on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. Come to the window, sweet is the night-air! Only, from the long line of spray Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land, Listen! you hear the grating roar Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, At their return, up the high strand, Begin, and cease, and then again begin, With tremulous cadence slow, and bring The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow Of human misery; we Find also in the sound a thought, Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.

As with Browning, Arnold offers a poem of psychological depth by presenting a monologue with an identified speaker (a woman, the object of the speaker’s professed love). And like “The Raven,” the poem offers an analysis of the individual reaction to nihilism. The speaker quite literally “stares into the abyss” and ponders what remains when faith and the certitude it gives have been lost. Along the way the poem presents several complex metaphors and Classical allusions. Ostensibly the poem ends by seeking solace in love, but the resolution—likely intentionally—seems an inadequate self-delusion.

9. “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost (1923)

My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound’s the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.

Stylistically, this poem is classic Frost: direct in its description, with simple, almost laconic language. But the simple surface presents a rich series of metaphors: the woods, the horse’s presumed thoughts, and the “sleep” referenced at the end. On one level, the speaker is transfixed by the beauty of the scene, but on another, like “Dover Beach,” the speaker here stares into the abyss and confronts the mystery its darkness presents.

10. “We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks (1959)

The Pool Players. Seven at the Golden Shovel.

We real cool. We Left school. We

Lurk late. We Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We Die soon.

At a mere eight lines and twenty-four syllables (all of monosyllabic words), this poem packs the most punch into its sparse form with an explosion of rhyme, alliteration, anaphora, and staccato-like meter. The poem imagines pool players at a bar making various boasts, each one alluding to the Seven Deadly Sins, and offers a Biblical warning at the end: “The wages of sin is death.” Who are the cool-seeming “Pool Players” today and what do they do? What may be their end? The poem naturally leads to a host of ominous reflections and avenues for analysis.

Adam Sedia (b. 1984) lives in his native Northwest Indiana and practices law as a civil and appellate litigator. In addition to the Society’s publications, his poems and prose works have appeared in The Chained Muse Review, Indiana Voice Journal, and other literary journals. He is also a composer, and his musical works may be heard on his YouTube channel.

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The Society of Classical Poets does not endorse any views expressed in individual poems or commentary.

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11 responses.

Wow! Adam. Grand slam. Great selections and terse, cogent, summary analyses that could serve as an introduction to a master class on poetry for college level students and even high school if the teacher were as enthusiastic about the subject as you are! Ask, “Choose one of the described poems and write a three-page reflection on its possible meaning(s) and how it might relate to your own life, thoughts and experience.”

If I were to suggest an additional poem it would be any number of those written by Emily Dickerson, many of which are provocativly enigmatic and multi-layered in meaning.

Excellent and eloquent as always, Adam.

Thank you! I thought it best to keep my summaries terse. Providing too much of my analysis would ruin the fun of analyzing the poems on one’s own.

I agonized over this list. I wanted to provide a nice array of styles and time periods, so I had to omit some poets and poems that would have fit well in this list.

I liked this compilation a lot, Adam. “Dover Beach is one of my all-time favorite poems, which I never tire of re-reading. Another favorite of mine is Dylan Thomas’ “A Refusal to Mourn…,” which also lends itself to deep analysis, Robert Frost’s dictum that to much explaining can ruin a poem notwithstanding.

This articulate, informative, and straightforward post by Adam is one of the reasons why the SCP is growing in popularity every single day. The teaching of good literature in the American public schools is now virtually dead or corrupted by left-liberalism and wokeism. Adam shows what real education in literature is supposed to do.

If any English teacher were to attempt to put together a syllabus for a poetry class using these ten excellent poems, and to explicate them with Adam’s succinct clarity, he would be chastised and dismissed by his supervisors. Even Brooks’s excellent “We Real Cool” would be off-limits as subject matter, because it presents “a negative, racist, and stereotypical picture of black ghetto life.” (No kidding — that’s the kind of thinking that dominates English departments today.)

You touch on an important point. Pedagogy is crucial, and our children are being deliberately kept from civilization’s greatest works. How is intellectual starvation any less a crime than physical starvation?

Once upon a time I wanted to be an academic but knew I would never survive in academia. Turns out, I learn later, that law has become just as woke. I really would like to turn back to my original passion and teach the world about great poetry. The SCP is doing a marvelous job on that with its “best of” series. I also hope to contribute more essays here.

Adam – Thank you for this marvelous and highly educational compilation. Amazingly, the one time that I studied poetry – for a two week period in a high school freshman English class – the last three poems on your list, along with “Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes, were the poems that stayed in my mind forever, and gave me the idea to try writing poetry a full fifty years later. This terrific work is indeed a brilliant example of SCP’s uniqueness.

Thank you for sharing your story. It’s not so much a case of “great minds think alike” as great poetry being immediately recognizable (it’s pretty wild that three of these poems were taught in your class). Reading great poetry was what inspired me to try my hand at it as well. Nothing is as inspiring as reading great work.

Adam, thank you for this stimulating contribution. My first guess at the poems that would be included was “My Last Duchess.” Imagine my delight to see that you agree! Does “We Real Cool” allude to all seven of the Deadly Sins? I recognized only pride (real cool), wrath (strike straight), sloth (left school), avarice (thin gin), and lust (jazz June).

The remaining two (gluttony and envy) had to be excluded from Brooks’s composition for aesthetic reasons. Her description is of young men who live the “fast life,” and who come to youthful death as a result of their living in a world of macho swaggering, wenching, drinking, and fighting.

Gluttony would not fit here, as it is not the most typical sin of such young men — and besides, gluttony is a more fitting subject for a comic poem. Envy is also not suited to the poem, since it is not an immediately visible sin, and is therefore not easy to depict. Besides, tough young guys are mostly known for their pride, arrogance, and truculence, while envy is usually associated with quiet little nerds.

Every decision in writing a poem is primarily based on aesthetic effect before anything else.

Adam, what an admirable job you’ve done with the choices made and the write ups… just enough information to intrigue and engage, but plenty of room left to explore. Wonderful!

Wow! It was as though we were walking through the forest and watching all the leaves change color and picking out which color is the best one holding your breath in wee of the view in the forest.