(DC) Lesson Topic 4: Lyric Poems
Lesson Topic 4: Lyric Poems
A lyric poem expresses thoughts and feelings about a subject in a brief but musical way.
Lyric poetry makes its impact in a very brief space. It is often quite memorable. In these and several other ways, lyric poems resemble two other kinds of things with which we are quite familiar: songs and television commercials. Both of these aim, in extremely brief time, to be memorable. To achieve this, both use internal forms of repetition.
For example, look at this poem by e.e. cummings:
"maggie and milly and molly and may'
maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach(to play one day)
and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles, and
milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;
and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles: and
may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.
For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea
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