Category: Ode

Do we get to choose? Do we get to live or do we get to die? Quite an indecisive argument that every individual holds up at a certain point in life continuously living in the ruins of time. Every Leaf turns brown, every youth wrinkles away and every bone cracks its age. Nothing is immortal—— immortal is the soul, immortal is the way of existence, immortal is the mark we leave behind.

‘Ode to a Nightingale’ was carved by one of the pioneers of Romantic poetry, John Keats in the spring of 1819. Somewhat running through eighty lines, it is the longest of Keats’s odes( which includes poems like ‘ Ode on a Grecian Urn’ and ‘ Ode on Melancholy’). ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ is a poem believed to have been written either in the garden of the Spaniards Inn, Hampstead, London, or, according to Keats’ friend Charles Armitage Brown, under a plum tree in the garden of Keats’ house at Wentworth Place, also in Hampstead.

Halting in the dark lonely forest adoring a beautiful Nightingale singing a mesmerizing song entraps the poet’s mind which is lost in the deeper aspects of life. Provoking meandering meditation on time, death, beauty, nature, and human suffering something which every man wants to escape. Being torn on the thought as to whether the poet should find solace in the Nightingale’s song Which would metaphorically bring him closer to the Nightingale or probably when the bird flies away, will leave him in a trance as to question himself was it an experience, “a vision” Or a reverie, just a “daydream”.

Having a glimpse of ‘immortality’ in the singing Nightingale —- a creature that, the poet believes, is neither plagued by human suffering, anxiety, emotional stress, strings of earthly attachments, or familial pressure nor is ever drawn to the cold sands of the grave rather whose song keeps coaching through the centuries from wide and across.

The poet’s ability to embrace the world is damped by the inevitable truth that nothing lasts forever. Perhaps, why the speaker is paradoxically “too happy” Of having heard a bird’s song in the first stanza. This happiness in a sense is already over and thereby also feels excessive to him. Every mortal being gives way to mortality. Beauty fades, youth ages, and young grow old in a way that everyone is on an impending march to the dark wooden cage.

“ Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes

Or new love pine at them beyond tomorrow”.

Teaching a very great truth the poet says that neither beauty will be forever beautiful nor new love will always be new. Everything gives its way to the upcoming news. Old has to succumb to the dark for the unborn to see the light. The immortality of the bird lies in its song as being the same old song being sung and heard in times immemorial and even biblical. But this is to say is just an exaggeration as the night angle is not really immortal but it’s just its song, its achievement over time and death and only temporarily—- Distracting the poet from stress, anxiety, and sorrow about the fleeting nature of earthly things.

Finding relief in intoxication, the poet wonders as to how this will help him in the sorrow and escape the suffering. Though claims not to be envious of the bird the “happy” Nightingale—- which doesn’t seem pathetic in the same manner as him—– the bird serves as an alert that the poet can’t truly escape human awareness. At the beginning of the poem, the speaker peers into the woods from outside and tells the nightingale, “Whoa, dude, I’m jealous that you get to live in there. How can I get a place like that?” Imagining that the bird is living it up in the forest like a pleasure-seeker in the sun-soaked Mediterranean, he compares the forest to the humdrum of the world, the place where most humans live, suffer each day, cries for their mere bread, every man die every single day carrying out duties which makes the outside world look like the site of endless death and decay. Talk about a skewed perspective! He ignores all the good parts of the human world. Night angle and the beauty of its song represent liberation from the limiting, isolating confines of the tortured human mind.

Using poetry as a medium to partake in the nightingale’s world deep in the Woods, where the moonlight could hardly touch the forest floor. The poet is unable to spot any Flowers or plants around him or neither can he smell them. Thereby it would eventually be and useless task to give up on your life knowing that no one is around except for the enchanting night angle.

‘Ode to a Nightingale’ Highlights the never-ending relationship between two different shades of beauty; the world of art created by mankind and the rich variety of life created by nature. The poem does present an important question ask whether the night angle and its song represent a beauty created by nature greater than anything humans can carve. The poem both begins and closes with the poet’s drowsiness suggesting that the speaker finds consciousness exhausting. In the flight of the bird, the poet is left behind in a dilemma was this whole elopement to his Wonderland and experience, a real vision or he was just dreaming and he has to return to the same mundane life?

Three main thoughts overrun the ode. First being—- Keats’s evaluation of life; that life is a tale of tears and torture. The happiness which Keats hears in the song of the nightingale has made him happy momentarily but has been succeeded by a feeling of torpor which in turn is succeeded by the conviction that life is not only painful but also intolerable. Ironically the happiness which he derives from the song of the bird has specifically made him aware of the unhappiness of the world. Surely Keats wants to escape life, but not through the means of intoxication but by a more powerful agent, the imagination. Imagination has no boundaries, and no limitations, we can wander to distant lands irrespective of any topographical alterations. Nothing holds us back, nothing forbids us, and nothing seems wrong.

The second meaning thought rather than the main theme of the poem is Keats’s wish that he might die and it will be an end altogether, provided that the death would be easy and painless so that he could fall asleep. In many respects, Keats’ life had been unsatisfactory for some time before he wrote the poem. His family life was shattered by the departure of one brother to America and the death from tuberculosis of the other. His second volume of poetry had been harshly reviewed. He had no gainful occupation and no prospects since he had abandoned his medical studies.

The third thought is the power of imagination or fancy. Rejecting the need for any wine or intoxication he uses the power of imagination to fly away from the stressful life to a land of happiness of beauty with no suffering and no pain where every individual is free from familial ties and responsibilities when no one has to fight for earning the daily bread nor is anyone sick or ill. But soon reality dawns on the poet that imagination no matter how strong and powerful it cannot lead you to that world of fancy, ultimately we all are left behind to deal with our sufferings in the real world. As the bird flies away again back into the forest the poet is left to contemplate that all this while what he was doing, was all a mere fancy a Daydream, and nothing is really all which is real is that every man has to sweat to earn his bread and that’s what is decided from above is the ultimate and real.

In examining the ways in which odes and biographies challenge established concepts of authority, with reference to Phillis Wheatley’s ode ‘On Being Brought from Africa to America’ and Alice Walker’s ‘In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens’, context must be explored. The eighteenth-century was a time of societal interest in European colonial practice and Enlightenment imperialism. The long history of racial prejudice in Anglo-American society influenced oppression within the black community, which encouraged their exclusion from the established western literary tradition and Eurocentric canon. As the first published African-American slave, Phillis Wheatley challenges concepts of white superiority and colonialism by appropriating the elevated ode form; thus, she establishes her own rhetorical authority in a hegemonic tradition. As Betsy Erkkila observes, ‘A black woman reading, writing, and publishing poems was in itself enough to splinter the categories of white and black, and explode a social order grounded in notions of racial difference’. Indeed, following the 1739 Stono Rebellion, a South Carolina slave uprising that took place before the American Revolution, legislators made literacy in black slaves punishable by law. Enlightenment thought viewed writing as the principal form of genius and most salient expression of reason.

Thus, the Anglo-African literary tradition challenged established concepts of authority by confronting Enlightenment beliefs that held people of colour as incapable of reason and, therefore, suited to inhumane treatment. As Dwight McBride notes, ‘Given the prevailing thought about Blacks during the Enlightenment, especially during the height of…the slave trade, Wheatley’s very life as a literary figure could be read as a profound resistance to oppression’. Thus, whilst propriety prevented black slaves from criticising slavery, Wheatley affirms her authority to write and publish abolitionist poetry within western tradition. She does so through use of satire and traditional elitist forms familiar to her white audience.

Consequently, white, patriarchal superiority within the literary canon galvanised resistance from oppressed women of colour during the twentieth century. This literary oppression amongst black women is described by Richard Yarborough: black women sought to ‘establish the credibility of their literary voices and thus their view of reality’, and biography/autobiography proved more effective ‘in the battle to gain a hearing for the true version of the Afro-American experience’. Indeed, black essayist Alice Walker turns to biographical literary criticism in an effort to subvert the ‘Great Men’ theory of life-writing. Walker’s biography turns to the absence of black women and their literary heritage in history, encouraging readers to look ‘low’ (and not merely toward a culture of life-writing long dominated by monied and propertied white men) for examples of creative expression. As biographer, Walker searches for a literary space for black women within a traditionally androcentric, Anglo-American canon.

Walker employs anecdotal narrative throughout her biography (thus forming a selfconscious autobiography) to legitimise black female experience. As Laurie McMillan observes, ‘autobiography allows scholars writing from traditionally marginalized positions to simultaneously assert the legitimacy of their viewpoint…such a gesture is political in itself (given that) it challenges ideas about who is allowed to speak’. Subsequently, Walker acknowledges Virginia Woolf as her literary foremother, making reference to the essay A Room of One’s Own. Walker’s feminist rhetoric challenges the restrictions of white feminism that Woolf represents; Woolf’s metaphor of ‘a room of one’s own’, so representative of middle-class white women searching for the privacy to create literature, seems too exclusive for marginalised black women. Thus, both Walker and Wheatley, as this essay will demonstrate, challenge such established concepts of authority in a transgressive and revolutionary way.

In Phillis Wheatley’s ‘On Being Brought from Africa to America’, the authority of a black female slave is asserted within a western, androcentric literary tradition. Wheatley employs a rhetoric of epistemic authority through titular capitalisation, which implicates equality between Africa and America: ‘On Being Brought from AFRICA to AMERICA’. In doing so, Wheatley recognises the influence of American literary tradition on her African sensibility, but also subverts the established concept of American authority and superiority over her African self. In the first quatrain, the speaker wields a rhetoric of irony and double meaning, which serves as a bold critique of Christianity: ‘Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land, / Taught my benighted soul to understand / That there’s a God, that there’s a Saviour too’. Here, the poet speaks directly to her oppressors through an ironic quasi-identification with her white readership. The use of italicisation implicates satire, which presents ‘Saviour’ as separate from God and acts as a rebuke of the Christian notion of redemption. Additionally, the pejorative adjective ‘benighted’ is indicative of the speaker’s indictment of accepted white superiority, given its connotations of both moral and intellectual ignorance and the dichotomy between light and dark.

Wheatley understands that her freedom to speak must be permitted by her white patrons and publishers and, as a result, her work may be viewed as a platitude for her white readership. Indeed, it is the employment of satire and double meaning that successfully inscribes seditious intent. As Carmen Birkle observes, it is in this way that Wheatley ‘cross(es) the border between slavery and citizenship in the new nation, between the private sphere of a black woman and the public realm of a published and accepted poet’. Thus, within the Revolutionary society of eighteenth-century America, Wheatley subverts what Audre Lorde calls the ‘mythical norm’ (defined as those white writers operating within a western canonical tradition) through double consciousness: appropriation of a neoclassic, Anglo-European voice and her own African expression. Additionally, the established concepts of authority and white supremacy within eighteenth-century American society were maintained through literary criticism. Indeed, any acclaim that Wheatley receives often characterises her poetry as an exception to the established standard of African-American writing, observing the ‘unusual’ creative and intellectual abilities of this black slave poet. As William J. Long notes, ‘Here is no Zulu, but drawing-room English…colourless imitations of Pope…she sings like a canary in a cage, a bird that forgets its native melody and imitates only what it hears’. Such reference to ‘colourless imitations’ is telling: Long’s indictment of Wheatley’s efforts to position herself within a western literary sphere, and his description of such an effort as ‘colourless’, emphasises the widely held belief that such classical verse (within the ode tradition) must be recognised as white poetry. However, this observation of poetic imitation is reductive. Whilst Wheatley acknowledges her assimilation of elevated language and the ode tradition as necessary for publication (permitted by her white patrons), she challenges established concepts of white authority. Wheatley encourages racial awareness and the cessation of the slave trade by referring to her African culture and heritage, drawing attention to black kinship and her ‘sable race’. Thus, Wheatley’s readership will come to accept a new authority: the authority of experience, that of the black, female poet.

Subsequently, Alice Walker, in ‘In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens’, challenges the established Eurocentric tradition of life-writing by reclaiming such an androcentric heritage to create a literary space for African-American women. Walker subverts the accepted authorial voice by using anecdotal narrative techniques to explore the literature of black women and her literary foremothers. In this way, Walker legitimises the black matrilineal oral tradition as a form of literature. Walker writes: ‘Virginia Woolf, in her book A Room of One’s Own, wrote that in order for a woman to write fiction she must have two things, certainly: a room of her own…and enough money to support herself. What then are we to make of Phillis Wheatley, a slave, who owned not even herself?’. Here, Walker questions Woolf’s assertion that female writers require privacy and monetary aid. Walker uses Wheatley as an example, as well as ‘those millions of black women who were not Phillis Wheatley’, to challenge the restriction of Woolf’s remote room. Thus, Walker creates a communal space for marginalised writers whose creative attempts may seem futile to those who view privileged environments (or such a ‘room’) as the only legitimate means of producing literature. Indeed, Woolf recognises the invisibility of women in history: ‘One knows nothing detailed, nothing perfectly true and substantial about her. History scarcely mentions…middle-class women…these infinitely obscure lives remain to be recorded’. However, like Wheatley, the African-American oppression that Walker details is more serious than the wrongs inflicted upon the white middle-class women of Woolf’s text. As Sarah L. Skripsky observes, ‘As a once impoverished daughter of Georgian sharecroppers, Walker’s sensitivity to embodied expression may understandably exceed Woolf’s, at least in terms of marginalised subjectivities of race and class’. Thus, in creating an alternative to Woolf’s solitary room (as a space critical to women’s creative expression), Walker defines the site of creative production as technical to the fields that are home to slaves (some of whom are her relatives) and her mother’s garden: ‘(my mother) labored beside – not behind – my father in the fields…She planted ambitious gardens…I hear again the praise showered on her because whatever rocky soil she landed on, she turned into a garden’. In doing so, Walker challenges the codes established by the western literary tradition and recognises that scenes of physical labour may become equally legitimate sites of creative expression.

Consequently, like Wheatley, Walker challenges the authority of a monolithic white literary tradition through recontextualising Woolf’s representation of the female experience in history. Walker writes: ‘Virginia Woolf wrote further, speaking of course not of our Phillis, that “any woman born with a great gift in the sixteenth century would certainly have gone crazed…a highly gifted girl who had tried to use her gift for poetry would have been so thwarted and hindered by contrary instincts [add “chains, guns, the lash, the ownership of one’s body by someone else, submission to an alien religion”]’. Here, Walker moves beyond Woolf’s assumed margins for working class women and embraces the poorest examples of marginality. By rewriting the words of a feminist foremother, Walker creates a space for the voiceless black woman; her insertions speak to the history and experiences of Phillis Wheatley, alongside the many black women unable to write or publish poetry, those ‘who died with their real gifts stifled within them’. As Matthew A. Fike notes, Walker subverts Woolf’s paradigm of white female heritage: ‘instead of ‘Emily Bronte,’ ‘Zora Hurston’; instead of ‘wise women,’ ‘root workers’. Walker’s intention, then, is not so much to exclude white women writers as to include previously unknown black women, to supply “the missing parts” of the canon so that it might tell “the whole story” of women’s artistic tradition’. As Wheatley does with odes, Walker uses biography to subvert a form traditionally controlled by male writers. In this way, Walker brings to light the experience of the voiceless black women, enslaved in a foreign land, some of whom were her literary ‘mothers and grandmothers’. These oppressed and enslaved black women – ‘the mule(s) of the world’, for whom literacy was punishable by law, kept alive their creativity by bequeathing such spirit to their daughters. Like Woolf, through the imagined Judith Shakespeare, Walker lends a voice to silenced women in a (black) female literary tradition.

Like Walker, Wheatley continues to affirm her rhetorical authority in the second quatrain of her ode through challenging established colonial assumptions: ‘Some view our sable race with scornful eye, / “Their colour is a diabolic die,” / Remember, Christians, Negros’ (ll. 5-7). For such Calvinist Puritans, with whom Wheatley lived, the colour black became associated with heathenism and bestiality, whilst white represented the blessings of Christianity and Calvinist philosophy of predestination. This established dichotomy between light and dark was especially opportune for slave traders, who saw such a doctrine as evidence of black paganism and a justification of colonial enslavement. The pejorative adjective ‘sable’ is indicative of Christian assumptions associated with the colour black. However, this definition undermines connotations of nobility and dignity. Thus, in one line, Wheatley radically challenges traditional proslavery views of the African race. Later, the neoclassic representation of ‘our sable race’ is replaced by the contemporary and derogatory term ‘Negros’. As with the italicisation of ‘Christians’, the speaker’s emphasis establishes the difference between Christian philosophy and Christian practice. As Sondra O’Neale observes, ‘Wheatley challenged eighteenth-century evangelicals in their cherished religious arenas by redeploying the same language and doctrine that whites had used to define the African, thereby undercutting conventional colonial assumptions about race and skin colour’. Additionally, the pronoun ‘some’ in line five places such hegemonic Christians in an inferior position and undermines their authority; an authority now indicative of oppression and hypocrisy. Wheatley’s readership is encouraged to accept the authority of the speaker, an authority representative of the redemptive power of Christianity.

Once again, Wheatley’s challenge to established concepts of colonial authority is represented through double meaning. In the ode’s closing lines, black oppression through the triangular trade is symbolised: ‘“Their colour is a diabolic die,” / Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain / May be refin’d, and join th’ angelic train’. The speaker employs double meaning to emphasise the injustice of colonial practice: products such as sugar cane and indigo dye were acquired as a result of black slave suffering and such oppression is represented here, alongside the pun in the closing line representative of sugar refineries. Consequently, like Walker’s use of biography, Wheatley appropriates the ode form to assert her authorial power in a western tradition. As Ralph Cohen notes, ‘The turn to the sublime ode was undertaken by learned university poets’. As a black slave writing in an androcentric Anglo-American canon, Wheatley sought to subvert the colonial philosophy that held Africans as uncultivated barbarians. Whether Wheatley had the ability to write such learned poetry herself was judged by a panel of august gentlemen. Wheatley’s judges thought her qualified to have written such accomplished poetry and, thus, wrote an ‘Attestation’ letter ‘To the Publick’ which features as the preface to her book. Without this published approval, few Americans would believe that an African slave could have written such poetry herself. As Paula Bennett notes, ‘Through her poetry’s spiritual power, embodied in the western concept (of the ode), Wheatley gives back her ‘Afric’ speaker-self the powers, privileges and agency ‘snatch’d’ from her in life’. In this way, Wheatley successfully challenges established concepts of colonial power and literary authority.

Whilst Wheatley appropriates the sublime ode form, Walker introduces the metaphor of quilting as a representative of African-American tradition to challenge traditional concepts of ‘high’ art. For Walker, creative expression does not require approval from ‘legitimate’ artistic institutions, such as canonical tradition and museums. In many ways, patriarchal society, rather than suppressing women’s creative culture, introduced gardening and quilting as alternative means of artistic expression. Instead of asking why women were unable to produce great art, as white upper-class Woolf does, Walker reconceptualises the definition of ‘art’: ‘We have constantly looked high, when we should have looked high – and low…in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D. C., there hangs a quilt…the work of a person of powerful imagination and deep spiritual feeling…it was made by “an anonymous Black woman”…an artist who left her mark…in the only medium her position in society allowed her to use’. Just ask Walker uses biography to reclaim an androcentric tradition and make it a medium through which to express the African-American female voice, quilting and gardening become a metaphor of challenging established concepts of legitimate art and creative authority. Art, then, is defined through a woman’s response to ‘rocky soil’, rather than the privacy and privilege of a room of one’s own.

By appropriating a form traditionally used by men, but discussing the experiences of black women, Walker, like Wheatley, asserts her authority and gives voice to those women who have been silenced in history and literature. As Hermione Lee notes, ‘Western biography has its origins in such educational stories of remarkable men…But you did not have to be Nelson in order to contribute to the national story, and you did not have to be the subject of a three-volume Life in order to be remembered’. Whilst Woolf claims that ‘the life of the average Elizabethan woman’ fails to be recorded throughout history, Walker creates a new literary space for the more marginalised black woman. In this way, Walker’s biography represents a revolutionary AfricanAmerican tradition, one in which oppressed black slaves move from silence to speech and escape the ‘canary in a cage’-like confines of a male-inscribed canon.

Ultimately, both Wheatley and Walker challenge established concepts of authority in revolutionary ways. Wheatley assimilates the English language and appropriates the sublime ode form to dismiss the false authority of colonial practice and transgress the margins of her limitations as both slave and woman. Wheatley’s ironic use of double meaning and elevated diction, able to satisfy those publishers who insisted that slave writing must be in no way subversive, is indicative of Christian hypocrisy and, thus, challenges established perceptions about race. Similarly, Walker’s biography subverts the traditionally androcentric form by giving a voice to marginalised black women and producing for them a new literary space and social ground. Thus, by reconceptualising Woolf’s idea of the voiceless woman, Walker legitimises the art of black women and claims that Woolf’s solitary and privileged room is in no way sufficient for the African-American woman to assert her authority in a patriarchal canon.

The speaker opens with a declaration of his own heartache. He feels numb, as though he had taken a drug only a moment ago. He is addressing a nightingale he hears singing somewhere in the forest and says that his “drowsy numbness” is not from envy of the nightingale’s happiness, but rather from sharing it too completely; he is “too happy” that the nightingale sings the music of summer from amid some unseen plot of green trees and shadows.

In the second stanza, the speaker longs for the oblivion of alcohol, expressing his wish for wine, “a draught of vintage,” that would taste like the country and like peasant dances, and let him “leave the world unseen” and disappear into the dim forest with the nightingale. In the third stanza, he explains his desire to fade away, saying he would like to forget the troubles the nightingale has never known: “the weariness, the fever, and the fret” of human life, with its consciousness that everything is mortal and nothing lasts. Youth “grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies,” and “beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes.”

In the fourth stanza, the speaker tells the nightingale to fly away, and he will follow, not through alcohol (“Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards”), but through poetry, which will give him “viewless wings.” He says he is already with the nightingale and describes the forest glade, where even the moonlight is hidden by the trees, except the light that breaks through when the breezes blow the branches. In the fifth stanza, the speaker says that he cannot see the flowers in the glade, but can guess them “in embalmed darkness”: white hawthorne, eglantine, violets, and the musk-rose, “the murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.” In the sixth stanza, the speaker listens in the dark to the nightingale, saying that he has often been “half in love” with the idea of dying and called Death soft names in many rhymes. Surrounded by the nightingale’s song, the speaker thinks that the idea of death seems richer than ever, and he longs to “cease upon the midnight with no pain” while the nightingale pours its soul ecstatically forth. If he were to die, the nightingale would continue to sing, he says, but he would “have ears in vain” and be no longer able to hear.

In the seventh stanza, the speaker tells the nightingale that it is immortal, that it was not “born for death.” He says that the voice he hears singing has always been heard, by ancient emperors and clowns, by homesick Ruth; he even says the song has often charmed open magic windows looking out over “the foam / Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.” In the eighth stanza, the word forlorn tolls like a bell to restore the speaker from his preoccupation with the nightingale and back into himself. As the nightingale flies farther away from him, he laments that his imagination has failed him and says that he can no longer recall whether the nightingale’s music was “a vision, or a waking dream.” Now that the music is gone, the speaker cannot recall whether he himself is awake or asleep.

Like most of the other odes, “Ode to a Nightingale” is written in ten-line stanzas. However, unlike most of the other poems, it is metrically variable—though not so much as “Ode to Psyche.” The first seven and last two lines of each stanza are written in iambic pentameter; the eighth line of each stanza is written in trimeter, with only three accented syllables instead of five. “Nightingale” also differs from the other odes in that its rhyme scheme is the same in every stanza (every other ode varies the order of rhyme in the final three or four lines except “To Psyche,” which has the loosest structure of all the odes). Each stanza in “Nightingale” is rhymed ABABCDECDE, Keats’s most basic scheme throughout the odes.

With “Ode to a Nightingale,” Keats’s speaker begins his fullest and deepest exploration of the themes of creative expression and the mortality of human life. In this ode, the transience of life and the tragedy of old age (“where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs, / Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies”) is set against the eternal renewal of the nightingale’s fluid music (“Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird!”). The speaker reprises the “drowsy numbness” he experienced in “Ode on Indolence,” but where in “Indolence” that numbness was a sign of disconnection from experience, in “Nightingale” it is a sign of too full a connection: “being too happy in thine happiness,” as the speaker tells the nightingale. Hearing the song of the nightingale, the speaker longs to flee the human world and join the bird. His first thought is to reach the bird’s state through alcohol—in the second stanza, he longs for a “draught of vintage” to transport him out of himself. But after his meditation in the third stanza on the transience of life, he rejects the idea of being “charioted by Bacchus and his pards” (Bacchus was the Roman god of wine and was supposed to have been carried by a chariot pulled by leopards) and chooses instead to embrace, for the first time since he refused to follow the figures in “Indolence,” “the viewless wings of Poesy.”

An ode can be defined as a ‘ceremonious lyric poem on an occasion of dignity in which personal emotion and universal themes are united’ (Ode, 2012). Although hiphop music is usually known for it’s violent, and often, masculine lyrics, ‘Dear Mama’ the first single from Tupac Shakur’s album, “Me Against the World” produced in 1995, can be considered to be a modern ode. Tupac Shakur, popularly known as 2Pac is one of hip-hop’s most influential rappers. He wrote this song out of the respect he has for his mother. ‘Dear Mama’ is a song written and produced in 1995, it contains a lot of literary elements that allows us readers to be able to analyze it from a literary point of view. Unlike other gangster rappers, 2pac sought to raise awareness for the respect of single mothers everywhere. Like many other young individuals, 2pac did not see or appreciate what was right in front of him and learned when it was too late, the sacrifices mothers make to ensure that those they care for are fed, sheltered, educated, and loved. ‘Dear Mama’ (1995) is not used as a way to express regret, but is rather used as a way to make amends for the wrongs he did to his mom in the past, and he tries to correct his mistakes by taking care of his mother financially.

One of the literary devices Shakur successfully used in ‘Dear Mama’ is symbolism. A lot of the symbols in the lyrics are references to the success 2pac has been able to enjoy through his work and art. For example, 2pac’s success means that he is not only able to pay the rent when it’s due ‘I love payin’ rent when the rent’s due but also being able to give his mother gifts ‘I hope you got that diamond necklace that I sent to you’. Additionally, many of the tropes 2pac integrates into the lyrics are symbolic of ‘thug life’ and street codes. 2pac contends that it was much easier to make money selling drugs and associating with thugs than it was to provide for a family through legitimate means. Shakur raps, ‘I hung around with the Thugs, and even though they sold drugs/They showed a young brother love/I moved out and started really hangin’/I needed money of my own so I started shaggin’/I ain’t guilty ’cause, even though I sell rocks/It feels good puttin’ money in your mailbox’. Consequently, Shakur raps, ‘I finally understand for a woman it ain’t easy/Tryin’ to raise a man you always was committed/A poor single mother on welfare, tell me how ya did it’.

2pac’s use of theme in the lyrics of ‘Dear Mama’ (1995) establishes the song as poetry. The overarching theme in ‘Dear Mama’ (1995) is appreciation. Shakur wants to thank his mother for everything that she has done and the countless sacrifices she made in order to ensure that he and his siblings would never lack. Shakur recognizes his upbringing was not easy and even though he did not agree with his mother all the time, he appreciates everything that she did for him. ”Cause when I was low you was there for me/And never left me alone because you cared for me/And I could see you comin’ home after work late/You’re in the kitchen tryin’ to fix us a hot plate/Ya just workin’ with the scraps you was given/And mama made miracles every Thanksgivin’/But now the road got rough, here alone/You’re tryin’ to raise two bad kids on your own/And there’s no way I can pay you back’. Throughout the song, Shakur kept repeating how much he appreciates his mother.

Another establishment of poetry in the song is the lyrical tone. At the beginning of the song, 2pac appears to be resentful of the possessions he did not have: ‘I shed tears with my baby sister/Over the years we was poorer than the other little kids’. However, once 2pac takes responsibility for his actions and behavior, and became financially stable to take care of his mother like she took care of him, the tone of the lyrics changed to been gracious and appreciative. 2pac acknowledges, ‘When I was young, me and my mama had beef/Seventeen years old kicked out on the streets’. (Shakur, 1995). He contends that regardless of this ‘beef,’ he grew to understand the sacrifices his mother made and how he has benefitted from it. Looking back, Shakur (1995) recognizes ‘and who’d think in elementary/Hey! I see the penitentiary one day and running from the police?’ and ‘even as a crack fiend, mama/You always was a black queen, mama/I finally understand/For a woman it ain’t easy to raise a man.’

Shakur’s lyrics also showcase a personal transformation, which supports the internal narrative structure of the ode. Shakur (1995) raps, ‘I was low you was there for me/And never left me alone because you cared for me’ and comments on his mother’s seemingly supernatural ability to provide for ‘two bad kids on [her] own…working with the scraps [she] was given…and making miracles every Thanksgivin’.’ By actually seeing and understanding what his mother did for him, 2pac was able to restore his faith in both his mother’s abilities and sacrifices and in God, because ‘even though I act crazy/I gotta thank the Lord that you made me/There are no words that can express how I feel/You never kept a secret, always stayed real’.

Through the song’s format and theme, alongside the literary devices and narrative 2pac shows, ‘Dear Mama’ is perfect example of literature’s influence in popular culture and in hip-hop. ‘Dear Mama’ allows Shakur to express his emotions and thus fulfills Walt Whitman’s (1800) definition of poetry: ‘For all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.’ Because Shakur does not hold back and is sincere with his desire to thank his mother for everything she has done and is honest in his approach, he can be known and labeled as an inspirational and legitimate poet.

John Keats’s writing style is consistent of vivid, life-like imagery embodying many literal devices. But, what stands out is his theory of negative capability which plays a vital role in his odes. The crucial part of negative capability is not about being doubtful, hesitant, or about making confusing arguments. It is about encouraging compassion, understanding, and most importantly thinking outside of the box, outside their comfort zone.

To begin with, in his ode, “Ode to a Nightingale”, Keats uses the theory of “negative capability” to detach himself, his illness and the reflection of mortality by identifying with the bird in the ode. In the first stanza, the poet contrasts his illness and mortality, “heart aches” … “drowsy numbness pains”, and suggests that the bird’s melody brings the joy of summer, “singest of summer in full-throated ease”. The poet also expresses his desire to enter into the bird’s mind and be as happy and joyful as the bird. To “… drink, and leave the world unseen, and thee fade away into the forest dim”, meaning to run away from reality. In the following stanzas he combines his knowledge with the imagery that is evoked by the beauty of nightingale’s melody, contrasting it with his own world, full of darkness. What we can understand so far is that Keats “is using the word ‘negative’ not in a pejorative sense, but to convey the idea that a person’s potential can be defined by what he or she does not possess – in this case a need to be clever, a determination to work everything out. Essential to literary achievement, Keats argues, is a certain passivity, a willingness to let what is mysterious or doubtful remain just that.” “Ode on a Grecian Urn” presents another poem in which Keats uses “negative capability”. There are a lot of things, ideas, happening in this poem, nature of permanence, eternity, choice, art, love, all of these sorts of things. But the set up is simple, the basic idea is that there is this urn, vase like, with a picture, painting on it. That is the Grecian Urn. The beginning, “Thous still unravish’d bride of quietness, thou foster-child of silence and slow time”. The first stanza is like a walk through, describing the urn, it is in a sense and there is the woman on it “unravish’d bride of quietness”. One of the basic idea here is that an art work in any art work is basically a frozen moment in time that lasts forever and in that there is something terrifying and heroin that there is this kind of permanence that is going on that is frightful in a sense because it never stops and than in this permanence there is both something awesome, and beautiful, and amazing because it goes on forever but at the same time that is terrifying. In the following stanzas of the poem the idea of permanence is more pronounced. The idea here is that there is music in the picture, somebody is basically playing some kind of instrument but that music, that melody, will never be heard. This silent song is going to be going on forever “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;”. In the other stanzas Keats talks about the “unravish’d bride” and the bold lover. How he is so close to kissing her, he is right there but he will never be able to do it. The idea of constant anticipation which is common of art. Which brings us to the last two lines of the poem “beauty is truth, truth beauty,-that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” Making a direct link between what is beauty and what is truth and saying that they are in a sense equivalent and where u see beauty that is where u see truth and where u see truth u see beauty.

To conclude, “Ode to a Nightingale” and “Ode on a Grecian Urn” give us an example to what “negative capability” illustrates. In order to achieve “negative capability” the poet most thing outside of the box and come outside of his comfort zone so he can give up his identity and go into the realm of imagination which is what negative capability is all about.

The conflict between life and art mimics that of a double-edged sword. Art is made to imitate life, simultaneously enhancing it while being elevated by it. In contrast, art inspires life, and life is ameliorated through the performance of art. The binary contrasts of life and art are broadly explored within the literature of the nineteenth century – particularly in poetry. Lord Alfred Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott”, and John Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn”, though two vastly different stories, both bring to light the clash between life and art. Tennyson, through the eponymous Lady of Shalott, presents the artistic life as one detached from the mundane life and reality. The Lady’s curse to die upon gazing out her window, towards lively Camelot, is synonymous with the conflict between an artist’s inclination towards social involvement and their doubts about whether it is possible to attain for someone dedicated to their art. On the other hand, Keats, through his interaction with an ideal Grecian urn, values art for its immortality, its permanence and existence beyond the mortal life. Through the poet’s dialogue with the urn, Keats celebrates the ideal beauty of art; art is superior to life as experiences captured in art resist decay and are forever perfect whereas life fades away. Both poems position art as either opposite or above human life, possessing an unpleasant disposition towards it, even though life is equally important and necessary for art to thrive.

The heroine of Tennyson’s poem is cursed to a life of seclusion in a tower on the island of Shalott, away from the busy lives of the citizens of Camelot. The mysterious curse separates her from the outside world through “four grey walls, and four grey towers” (Tennyson 1.15) and a river. Her alienation is further increased by her tower window, which she is forbidden to look through and a magical mirror that displays images of the outside world. Restricted to a life of observation, the Lady sits by her loom and weaves “these shadows of the world” creating a “magic web with colors gay” (Tennyson 2.38-39). Traditionally, an artist is said to surrender themselves to a higher power. This belief is synonymous with the invocation of a poet’s muse, where a poet performs a prayer to one of the nine muses of Greco-Roman mythology asking for the inspiration and skill to accomplish a great literary work. However, in the Lady’s case, her surrender is not voluntary. She weaves as there is nothing else for her to do; it is her only outlet of expression. Her weaving, and thus, her curse, becomes her identity.

In the beginning, it appears that her solitude secures an existence of peace and possesses its own allure, depicted by a long, winding river surrounded by fields of barley and rye, and plains that seemingly touch the sky (Tennyson 1.1-4). Yet it becomes clear that the peace of the landscape is only attributed to the Lady’s perspective. The “reaper weary” (Tennyson 1.33) suggests that the scene would appear quite different from a different point of view. Also, the reaper’s whisper, “Tis the fairy / Lady of Shalott” (Tennyson 1.25-26) indicates that the Lady is an unknown figure in the land of Camelot. It starts to become clear that the Lady cannot have both a place in society and be an artist. The Lady is a dedicated artist. As a weaver, she spends her days and nights, creating a magical and beautiful tapestry. However, her curse prohibits her from an active role in society. “But who hath seen her wave her hand?” (Tennyson 1.24) shows that the Lady and her weaving are unseen and equally unknown, existing solely in the shadow of her tower.

The poem can be read for the isolation-bound life of an artist. As expressed by the following line, “She knows not what the curse may be, / And so she weaveth steadily, / And little other care hate she” (Tennyson 2.42-44), despite her isolation, the Lady’s weaving keeps her content. However, in translating the reflections of the real world to the medium of her loom, she struggles to balance herself between the living world and her world of art. Her constant weaving suggests that the Lady is being overwhelmed, ostracized from the happiness and sorrows of human life. It is not until she views the reflection of two lovers that she commences her rebellion declaring, “I am half sick of shadows” (Tennyson 2.71). With the introduction of Lancelot, the conflict between the Lady’s world of shadows and the real world of human passion is brought into focus. Lancelot enters, emanating radiance, clad in armor “like one burning flame together,” sitting up top his “thick-jeweled [shining] saddle leather” (Tennyson 3.92-94). It is the attraction of human connection that induces the Lady to defy her curse, leaving her tower to enter the mortal world of time, change, and ultimately, death.

The poem presents the conflict between an artist’s need for withdrawal and the demands of human connection. Leaving her tower, the Lady renounces her art, and the web is torn from the loom and her mirror breaks:

She left the web, she left the loom

She made three paces thro’ the room

She saw the water-flower bloom,

She saw the helmet and the plume,

She look’d down to Camelot.

Out flew the web and floated wide;

The mirror crack’d from side to side;

‘The curse is come upon me,’ cried

The Lady of Shalott. (Tennyson 3.109-117)

She abandons her art for an active life, outside the realm of her loom. But it is important to note that she does not abandon art entirely. Tapestry turns into a song that is both mournful and holy, and both loud and low (Tennyson 4.145-146), expressing the complexities and contradictions that life offers: the result of the Lady’s entrance into life and her journey towards death. Here, the poem can be read to suggest that an artist cannot achieve fulfillment until they participate in the chaos of everyday life. Although art imitates life, art is merely a reflection of it. It is equally dependant on society and cannot exist without it, just as the Lady’s life could not have existed in the absence of art. This delicate balance was off from the beginning. The Lady’s isolation has taken away her identity and character. Weaving was all that was left of the Lady’s identity and upon defying the curse, that too was taken away. As such, as the Lady drifts towards Camelot and slowly dies, the citizens of Camelot do not recognize the Lady as an artist. She is reduced to nothing and then into a “lovely face” (Tennyson 4.169) as Lancelot gazes upon her body. Here, the Lady who has spent her life creating art is reduced to an object of art that obscures any recognition of the Lady herself. Without the delicate balance of life and art, an artist is at risk of losing their artistic identity and of unsatisfying the human necessity for social connection. Both are necessary for the other to thrive.

The conflict between life and art is portrayed differently in John Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” In this poem, Keats contrasts the temperance of life to the permanence of art. The poet expresses the attainment of immortality through art, and representation in art, addressing the urn he speaks of, “When old age shall this generation waste, / Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe” (Keats 5.46-47). A Grecian urn is a relic of the classical Greek era that records the ancient Greek life. Upon laying eyes on the urn, the poet’s imagination is put to motion. He addresses the urn as an “unravish’d bride of quietness” and a “foster-child of silence and slow time” (Keats 1.1-2), whilst contemplating the various scenes unfolding on the surface of the urn. He sets his eyes on the depiction of a God and his worshippers, surrounded by the beautiful walls of accompanying temples. He visualizes the passionate pursuit of love as lovers meet. These various images invoke a stream of questions whose answers can only be satisfied by the imagination: “What men or gods are these? What maidens loth? / What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? / What pipes and timbrels? / What wild ecstasy?” (Keats 1.8-10). Through speculation, the poet’s mind is overcome with wonder and astonishment as he observes the life-like expressions of the figures depicted on the urn. It is at this point that the conflict between life and art first emerges: the superiority of art over life.

The piper’s voiceless melodies fuel the imagination. In life, even the most beautiful tune must come to an end thus, the poet expresses “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard / Are sweeter” (Keats 2.11-12). In the world illustrated by the urn, music is eternal and so is love. Immortalized on the clay is a scene of men chasing after the lovers. Though the lover “never canst kiss [the maiden]” (Keats 2.17), they will never exist separate from one another. They will always exist, at that moment, bound to one another. Trees will never shed their leaves and the scene of sacrifice will never move past its climax. The lives presented on the urn are forever fixed, and though no scene ever plays before the eyes, the poet’s imagination visualizes it realistically. Keats presents the parallel worlds of life and art in this ode: the former is that of the human world and the latter is that which is fulfilled by the imagination. Keats presents the same concept in “Ode to a Nightingale”, a musing on art and life, inspired by a nightingale’s song. The bird’s song and the poet’s happiness are juxtaposed to the fleeting natural elements of human life, such as youth and beauty. The narrator considers death and old age, lamenting how both are certain for humans yet art remains unaffected and thus, the nightingale, and its song, never need to worry about it. Here, Keats treats the duo of art and life with an unpleasant disposition: holding art to a standard that that life nor reality could ever attain. Similarly, human emotion and happiness are transient, but art can enshrine all with an ideal beauty that is forever fixed.

Art, in Keats’ perspective, does not preserve the remains of a dead artist. Instead, it is the granted wish for immortality. The sculptor of the urn lives in the depictions they have etched onto the clay. It is important to distinguish that John Keats’ longing for immortality encompasses not only the immortality of a man but also the immortality of love too. While a mortal love ends and leaves the heart “high-sorrowful and cloy’d” (Keats 3.29), the love portrayed on the urn is permanent. In contrast to Psyche, whose curiosity causes her to lose her lover, the curiosity of the urn keeps the lovers together. Art is the most successful attempt humans have made in the quest for everlasting life. The concept of eternity is prevalent in Keats’ overall belief in art, so much so, that he believes that humans could never fully comprehend it. Keats states that the “silent form” of the urn “dost tease us out of thought / As doth eternity” (Keats 5.44-45). The idea that an artist can be preserved in the form of their art, for as long as that artwork exists, is an abstract concept that is difficult to comprehend. As such, Keats describes the urn as a “cold pastoral,” (Keats 5.45) envious of its eternal preservation.

Near the end of stanza one, Keats asks many questions of the urn. With each question he voices, he is met with silence. Keats wishes to uncover the secrets of the urn, how it, with its engravings, possesses the secrets of immortality. Above all, the underlying question is this: In its eternal silence, what is the urn telling its admirers? Keats ends the ode with the answer he receives, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty” (Keats 5.49). These two lines present many complexities, depending on how they are interpreted. However, in its simplest form, the message is clear: beauty and truth possess longevity greater than that which art, and its preservation, provides. Upon first glance of the urn, an observer may be puzzled. However, the figures that grace the surface of the urn slowly become more intelligible as the observer relates the scenes to their own experiences. The poem is introduced with a stanza full of questions; it concludes with a stanza with none. The urn possesses the ability to speak to all who contemplate it and it remind the observer of our own dilemma as mortals who exist in a finite dimension. The urn surpasses the test of time because it is beautiful and its beauty is judged by what the observer deems as true. And truth, in general, or in urn alone, is beautiful.

It is often expressed that life cannot exist without art. In the absence of art, people lead limited lives, devoid of imagination. To truly “live” requires the touch of art, as a life lacking art is not a life at all. As with the Lady of Shalott, art is an expressive outlet. In a more generally applied sense, it can be a refuge from daily troubles and concerns, and the monotony of everyday life. As with the Grecian urn, art is a vessel for imagination. Imagination pervades our entire existence. It influences our thoughts and ability to create as well as elaborate thoughts, dreams, and knowledge. Simultaneously, as highlighted by each poem, art must also be detached and distant from reality. It should always be a reflection of reality, and thus of life. Art is made better and cannot exist without society, just as life cannot, and should not, exist in the absence of art. Neither can triumph if the other does not. And so, the trick to wielding the double-edged sword of life and art is balance.

With Power Comes Responsibility

In the greek mythology play, The Three Theban Plays, Sophocles entails the story of Antigone, a daughter who rebels against Creon and his rules of the city in order to bring justice and glory to her brother. But through this journey, King Creon’s character develops from a cold hearted figure of authority, to a humbled and remorseful king. He finally stands down under the Gods and their power, that soon, the entirety of Thebes comes to fear and greatly respect, as is foreshadowed by the Chorus in the second ode. Not only does Creon get what is coming to him, but he also learns a valuable lesson about ego, and the difference between pride, and true authority.

The first stanza of the ode warns Creon about his cruel punishments, and reminds their Theban citizens how “Blest, they are the truly blest who all their lives have never tasted devastation. For others, once the Gods have rocked a house to its foundation from one generation on throughout the race like a great morning tide…(657-662).” Possibly foreshadowing Creon’s future, this ode reminds him that his future lies in the hands of the Gods, not in the hands of authority. They worry that perhaps Creon is making a mistake by punishing Antigone for burying her brother who died a sorrowful death, all the while going against the laws of the Gods. Of course, Creon justifies these doings by the enormous pride he feels, although the ode testifies against this moral, describing Oedipus’s fate before he died, and how he brought a curse upon his family that can never be broken through generations.

To show the true effects of the God’s powers, the ninth stanza describes how neither sleep nor time can overcome their power, to say that no matter how much man tries to postpone their forthcomings, their fate will always be determined by the power from the Gods. They show this by stating that, “Zeus, yours is the power… Power that neither sleep, the all-ensnaring no, nor the tireless months of heaven can ever override… And throughout the future, late and soon as through the past, your law prevails: no towering form of greatness enters into the lives of mortals free and clear of ruin (676- 688).” Although it is ironic how Creon forcefully ensues his power over Thebes, and threatens his men with death if they do not conform to his law, yet in all actuality his authority means little in the eyes of the Greek Gods, especially Zeus. This can also be tied to the punishment Creon later receives after exiling Antigone, where he remains suffering the loss of Haemon and his wife Eurydice.

Finally, the last stanza of this ode uses a metaphor to explain how mankind can often get too invested into themselves and their pride, especially with “… our dreams, our high hopes voyaging far and wide bring sheer delight to many, to many others delusion, blithe, mindless lusts, and the fraud steals on one slowly… unaware till he trips and puts his foot into the fire (690-693).” These materialistic values that people often become engulfed in can be a result of their need to control the way others perceive them, as well as to maintain their reputation. However, with the story of Antigone, the Gods show the citizens of Thebes that they cannot afford to be prideful, or ignorant in the way that they blindly follow greedy rulers such as Creon. Because of this, mankind is lead into a fiery flame of punishment from the Gods, and ultimately end up with a terrible fate that cannot be changed no matter how they try to fix their wrongdoings.

And so, by exposing these superficial parts of mankind, Sophocleaus aims to remind the people of Greek Mythology, that the Gods have true power and authority. Just as nature will always take its course, the God’s will always hold man’s fate. No matter how many times the Chorus rebukes the Gods, and fear their power, they still follow Creon’s law and rule without question. Afraid of the death or torture that Creon may ensue on them, his people suffer in silence, until a tradegy strikes them down and continues on through generation after generation. Overall, this ode from the Chorus exemplifies how fragile life can be, when one abuses their power and authority, an equal punishment is bound to come back around.

The political representation in genre in both Keats’ ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ and Rankine’s Citizen collection are vastly different, with Rankine’s poetry aiming to convey specific political messages to her readership on cultural issues such as sexism and racism. Keats’ ode – and, indeed, the majority of his own poetry – is based on the Romantic poetic movement which has strongly influenced his work and his own style of writing. Nevertheless, the topic of gender and the role of the female in his poems is rather revealing, especially in ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ which, upon first inspection, does appear to directly contradict that of Rankine’s own views on how society treats women. There is a time gap of two centuries between the two poets which is a very strong reason behind why these two offer such differing perspectives – the zeitgeist of the early nineteenth century, in which Keats wrote his poetry, and the zeitgeist of the modern early twenty-first century era do suggest a society that has been shaped by time, as the work of these two poets illustrates. Yet it is not only the subject matter that demonstrates a change over time but also the genre of lyric poetry that both Keats and Rankine make full use of and how they both manipulate their poetry as an art form in order to politically represent their chosen topics to educate their readership.

Genres are a frame of expectation framed by the imagination of the reader. Lyrical poetry, particularly in the cases of Keats’ and Rankine’s poetry, influence the readers significantly. The use of a poetic persona is especially prominent in lyrical poetry, as in the case of Keats’ ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’, as it forges a synthetic personalisation (Fairclough in Language and Power, 2001, calls it ‘a compensatory tendency to give the impression of treating each of the people ‘handled’ en masse as an individual’ ) binding the reader and persona in what could be construed as an intimate setting wherein the persona is given poetic license to perhaps manipulate the reader for the duration of the reading. The abundance of apostrophes and exclamatives in this five-stanza ode, for instance, highlights a persona who is thoroughly impassioned with the concrete subject matter of the Grecian Urn and it is this passion that further enflames the abstract concepts and imagery used to influence it. The repetition of ‘happy, happy boughs!” seems to almost literally personify the ‘cloyed’ heart – the persona appears to directly persuade and influence the reader to remain ‘happy’ themselves. This might illustrate a case of instrumental power wherein the persona influences the reader as the repetition graphologically creates a united front, coupled with the fact that it appears at the start of Stanza III and is an exclamative, highlighting the emphasis in this manner. The persona, however, does appear to get more revelatory and meaningful as the poetry progresses when, in the final stanza, the final lines, seemingly spoken aloud as a recital of dialogue: ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty, – that is all/ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’ This, alongside the archaic second person pronoun ‘ye’, which would have been considered dated even in 1819, establishes the persona as an almost wise, aged professor or someone of equal knowledge – and the reader as a student, being educated. This idea could be linked to the line in the final stanza, ‘when old age shall this generation waste’, and the deixis of ‘this’ suggests the persona could be referring to themselves.

This idea, of the persona in a position of educated authority and the reader as a student, is not dissimilar to that in Rankine’s own lyrical poetry, particularly the passage: ‘Yes, and this is how you are a citizen. Come on. Let it go. Move on.’ The use of the second person pronoun again draws upon that personal relationship between the reader and poetic persona as well as illustrating the issues surrounding cosmopolitanism and of national identity . Rankine’s persona identifies a far superior controversy in contrast to Keats’ ode which has both benefits and drawbacks. Lerner, in his novel The Hatred of Poetry (2016), offers an argument in favour of Rankine’s poetic style and genre: ‘The “lyric” is traditionally associated with brevity, intensely felt emotion, and highly musical verse; Rankine’s writing here is purposely none of those things; to claim it as lyric would baffle Keats’ . However, depending on the reader and their own political representation and viewpoint of the topic, this can either exclude or include the reader based on the subtle manipulation through influential power and Rankine’s focus on the politics of representation and genre.

There is a key focus on the representation of gender in both Keats’ and Rankine’s lyrical poetry. Keats’ Ode on a Grecian Urn primarily correlates the idea of femininity and beauty, meanwhile Rankine’s Citizen collection features a much more negative portrayal of how women are stereotypically treated in a sexist manner, as she writes from her own experiences of the matter. Keats’ final couplet of his ode features one of his most infamous lines: ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty, – that is all/ye know on earth, and all ye need to know,’ which suggests the respect Keats had for a beauty typical of women. This notion of reverence for a particular topic is a classic feature of the Romantic period, of which Keats was a second-wave Romanticist . Stanza II further exemplifies this notion in the lines, ‘She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss/For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!’ Stanza III with the ‘all breathing human passion’ as a direct reference to the dichotomy of mortality and immortality, further emphasising the beauty in life – a beauty Keats also associates with women.

Rankine’s poetry collection, upon first inspection, appears to be nothing except a piece of prose and essays, instructing humanity on how to be better, mimicking the change in the reader from basking in the excited imagination of the persona towards the true reality of real life. A sample from her collection details an example of the invisibility of women is suggested here: ‘In line at the drugstore it’s finally your turn, and then it’s not as he walks in front of you and puts his thing on the counter ‘. The third person pronoun ‘he’ replaces the proper noun of the man’s name, creating an illusion that it is all men who behave in such a manner towards women. There is a constant theme of mischaracterisation of both men and women in Rankine’s poetry, as later in the same poem the persona adjusts their perspective by adding, ‘When he turns to you he is truly surprised./Oh my God, I didn’t see you./You must be in a hurry, you offer./No, no, no, I really didn’t see you.’ The intensifier ‘really’ in the man’s repeated declarative emphasises his claim that he did not see her, further illustrating the claim how women are almost invisible to the eye. However, due to the man’s apologetic nature in this poem, Rankine is not making the point that it is men who do this to women but rather what society has deemed women to be: invisible and inferior.

However, much as in the same way as Rankine’s Citizen, Keats single-minded narrowness in his categorisation of women as simply objects of beauty could also be construed as an act of sexism by today’s standards, especially in Rankine’s own poetic standards. In a letter to Benjamin Bailey in 1817, Keats claimed that, ‘I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart’s affections and of the truth of Imagination – what the Imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth’ . This depiction of the unnamed ‘she’ is a commonplace occurrence in Keats’ poetry with the females typically presented as ‘Beauty’ – so much so that Keats could be considered to be collectively objectifying women as objects of ‘Beauty’ and nothing more. The opening line makes use of this idea of the inferior woman: ‘Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness/Thou foster-child of silence and slow time’, as though the woman is simply a ‘bride’ and a ‘child’, both derogatory terms, and the removal of her voice creates an image of powerlessness. The perceived powerlessness is a topic that is very much explored within Rankine’s work as well Keats, with Rankine using her political representation to manipulate her audience into subverting this stereotypical sexism in modern day life whilst Keats is simply using women as ways in which to express his beauty in life and truth, as per the Romantic movement.

In addition to the focus on sexism in Rankine’s Citizen collection, the role of racism in this modern day depiction of real life is equally as significant. Keats’ poetry does not make any mention of racism in either his genre or political representation through his language, due to the changing ideals of society and how different concepts and issues become socially aware. The class situation in early nineteenth century Britain is perhaps the equal to the early twenty-first century struggle in racism. Rankine’s poetry is perhaps more obvious in expressing the problems in society and representing them in her poetry, with the problem of racism ever present both in society and in Rankine’s poetry. This is particularly prominent in one poem: ‘You have an appointment? she spits back. Then she pauses. Everything pauses… I am so sorry, so, so, sorry. ” The second person pronoun ‘you’ in this instant has an effect of being both inclusive and exclusive depending on the reader’s own exposure to racism. This is rather atypical of the standard ‘you’ that is expected in modern American poetry.

The medium in which the majority of Rankine’s poetry is delivered is also unusual in that it could be considered to replicate a social media post – highlighting Rankine’s desire to subvert the issues of racism and national identity in a medium that would be best to educate and influence a modern readership. Rankine wishes to subvert the issues of racism and of biased, systematic characterisation – issues that are at the forefront of her poetry in a way sexism is not, as evidenced by the fact that it is an unnamed ‘she’ who commits the racist act by immediately judging the persona based on their skin colour. The political representation Rankine desires to get across to her readership demonstrates that racism is the biggest issue in modern day America and that, no matter what, racism cannot be forgiven simply with an apology.

Poetry and politics would initially appear to make an unlikely pairing yet Rankine – and Keats, albeit to a lesser extent – manages to prove through her collection that poetry can be used to represent a political viewpoint to her readership in a desire to subvert these typical societal standards she believes are in use in the modern world. Meanwhile, Keats’ own ode is perhaps more of a representation of the Romantic movement and the importance of imagination as opposed to controversial political topics Rankine mentions in her poetry. The standards of their lyric poetry have also been proven to change over time with Rankine’s mimicking more of a social media post in order to connect more with a modern day readership, however, whilst Keats’ poetry might do well by recital or even just with singing, so does Rankine’s poetry appear graphologically as a type of written music. The representation of politics in both poets’ offer differing reasons as to why they are composing poetry yet the fact remains that they both wish to convey to a wider readership their own thoughts and ideals on a society they find to be inferior.