StudentShare
Contact Us
Sign In / Sign Up for FREE
Search
Go to advanced search...

Choose two poems from the book Donkey Gospel and argue for a single theme supported by both poems - Thesis Example

Cite this document
Summary
Name 1 June 2011 Assignment Written by Tony Hoagland in the year 1998, Donkey Gospel is a collection of thirty five very bizarre but amusing short poems that have a great amount of in depth meaning attached to them. All the poems have very unique names with a cleverness sparkling through each and every line; the main themes that the poems mainly talk about so explicitly are things that are not spoken about in general…
Download full paper File format: .doc, available for editing
GRAB THE BEST PAPER95.9% of users find it useful
Choose two poems from the book Donkey Gospel and argue for a single theme supported by both poems
Read Text Preview

Extract of sample "Choose two poems from the book Donkey Gospel and argue for a single theme supported by both poems"

Download file to see previous pages

This paper gives an insight into two of his famous poems from the very collection, and how the two may be compared to each other on the basis of stark humour. The poet is not afraid to go all out and make comments about everyday things that might end up hurting others. This is because, he has tried to make everything simple and help people understand the spirit and jest hidden in everything. His writing style elucidates the kind of writing a man with an open conscience would be able to carry out well.

The two poems chosen for the purpose of analysis within this paper are ‘Jet’ and ‘Reading Moby Dick at 30,000 Feet’. Both the poems have the element of humour within them explained with the help of examples taken from life’s perspective. “On earth, men celebrate their hairiness, and it is good, a way of letting life out of the box, uncapping the bottle to let the effervescence gush through the narrow, usually constricted neck.” (Hoagland, Tony) These lines have been taken from the poem titled Jet, and they talk about the obviousness that a person must go through in life, in order to understand its true meaning.

Adept with deep humour, the lines talk about how a man has no choice but to celebrate the joy of life with what he has, even if it is his own bodily hair, and doing this is the best way by which one can let go of himself. He has tried to make an analogy of a person’s imagination and mind with that of champagne gushing out of the narrow neck of a glass bottle. The humour in the lines can be seen in the way Hoagland has tried to portray the simplicity of life; equipped with personal hair. He means to tell his readers that a person might not have much but even facial or body hair is enough to get him out of the rat race that everyone seems to be so inherently a part of.

In his other poem titled “Reading Moby Dick at 30,000 Feet, he writes, “I would estimate the distance between myself and my own feelings is roughly the same as the mileage from Seattle to New York, so I can lean back into the upholstered interval between Muzak and lunch, . . .” (Hoagland, Tony) Through these very lines, the poet has again tried to make humorous comparisons of life with analogies taken from everyday routines that people undergo. He has tried to depict how human emotions and feelings do not only play up when a person wants them to do so, against or for someone else.

Feelings are something that is strong enough to distance a man from his own self too. So in accordance to the same, he writes that his feelings are as far away from himself as the distance there is between Seattle and New York and the best part about embarking upon this long journey of figuring out what his feelings are actually, is that during the interim period, a person is able to relax into his calm sub conscious mind and make travels to and fro the various nooks and crannies in the corner of one’s mind (between music and lunch, or other aspects of daily living.) Both these poems thus are very similar to one another on the basis of the theme that they have been written in.

They both talk about certain fundamental questions of life and how to counter a person’s emotions. Both poems have strong analogies with a certain hint of humour equipped in them as well. Even though the poems might answer different questions altogether, they do fall into line while coming

...Download file to see next pages Read More
Cite this document
  • APA
  • MLA
  • CHICAGO
(“Choose two poems from the book Donkey Gospel and argue for a single Thesis”, n.d.)
Retrieved from https://studentshare.org/other/1424283-choose-two-poems-from-the-book-donkey-gospel-and
(Choose Two Poems from the Book Donkey Gospel and Argue for a Single Thesis)
https://studentshare.org/other/1424283-choose-two-poems-from-the-book-donkey-gospel-and.
“Choose Two Poems from the Book Donkey Gospel and Argue for a Single Thesis”, n.d. https://studentshare.org/other/1424283-choose-two-poems-from-the-book-donkey-gospel-and.
  • Cited: 0 times

CHECK THESE SAMPLES OF Choose two poems from the book Donkey Gospel and argue for a single theme supported by both poems

Romantic Poems Book Report/Review

both are very visible and yet quickly replaced by something else.... In order to flourish a person may need to be both very careful (cringing) and yet also quick to take advantage of any situation that offers reward (voracious).... Write an essay of 1000 words, in which you compare and contrast the treatment of the city in the following Romantic poem and extract from a Romantic poem: Mary Robinsons January 1795 and lines 624-41 from book Seven of The Prelude by William Wordsworth It is one of the great ironies of the Romantic period that writers in particular, and society in general, were becoming more aware of the wonders of Nature at just the time that the Industrial Revolution was starting to produce cities on a scale and influence that had never been seen before....
4 Pages (1000 words) Book Report/Review

Poems on the Icarus Theme

Three poems in particular have been selected, Musee des Beaux (poem1), Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (poem 2) and Brueghel in Naples (poem 3).... hellip; Even though they are all writing about the same painting all poems have the same ambiance, but their length and the point of view from which they are written are entirely different.... Throughout all three poems this is one thing that is common, the entire theme for all poems is relaxed....
6 Pages (1500 words) Book Report/Review

The Jungle Book

In the paper “The Jungle book” the author describes Kipling's method of using animals to preach morals and give life lessons through the use of animals in his The Jungle book.... The Jungle book contains much more inside of its pages than simply the Mowgli stories.... hellip; The author states that where many people think of the Jungle book as a story about a boy lost in the jungle, it is really much more than that, and also contains other stories that could have stood as stand-alone works....
5 Pages (1250 words) Book Report/Review

Freedom and Equality in the Poems of the 1930s

hellip; In the book A Twentieth-Century Literature Reader: Texts and Debates by Suman Gupta, Virginia Woolf is quoted to have said that the poets of the 1930s “feel compelled to preach, if not by their living, at least by their writing, the creation of a society in which everyone is equal and everyone is free.... The following three poems from Robin Skelton's Poetry in the Thirties will prove or disprove what Virginia Woolf says about the poetry produced during the 1930s....
9 Pages (2250 words) Book Report/Review

The Book Lost Christianities

The "Apocalypse of… The last book chapter contains the Acts of the Apostle Paul and Gospel of Thomas that has more about the teachings of Jesus. Erhman has indeed taken an extensive research to present his objectives through a respectful and more scholarly Apart from the book captivating the reader's mind, it presents a touch of the reader's heart too.... In this case, the reader is moved to a deeper, more informed and appreciation of Christianity from the book....
5 Pages (1250 words) Book Report/Review

Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg

The paper "Howl and Other poems by Allen Ginsberg" discusses the significance of responsibility and seriousness of poetry of Ginsberg who was a popular poet of his period and proponent of a counter-culture, and who made the best use of popular literature in to convey his ideas.... hellip; In the modern world, popular literature has become the centre of focus in many of the important and energetic debates and the poems of Allen Ginsberg offer an effective example of popular literature or the requisition of popular literature into more elite literary forms....
8 Pages (2000 words) Book Report/Review

Whether a Narrative - critical Reading of John Assists in the Interpretation of the Gospel

This paper ''Whether a Narrative - critical Reading of John Assists in the Interpretation of the Gospel'' tells about the John who wrote the book and it reflects the ideas and situations that happened during the last century of Christianity era when Christianity was under attack by the Romans, skeptics and other faithful.... hellip; the book presents an account of the ministries of Jesus in the public1.... the book opens with witnesses and affirmation of John the Baptist and it concludes with the crucifixion, burial, and resurrection of Jesus....
8 Pages (2000 words) Book Report/Review

Single Mothers and Social Support

o help the researcher unravel the mystery involved in the social support groups, research questions were framed to guide the researcher in the data collection and analysis of the phenomena from the data collected.... In the paper “single Mothers and Social Support” the author discusses the problem of an increasing number of single-parent families in the US as well as other regions in the world.... hellip; The author of the paper states that the disintegrated families live with single mothers who more often are left under the care of the children....
6 Pages (1500 words) Book Report/Review
sponsored ads
We use cookies to create the best experience for you. Keep on browsing if you are OK with that, or find out how to manage cookies.
Contact Us