Literary Analysis Archives

Prose Poetry: What’s the Point?

10/05/202102/24/2023
by Hannah Huff

LET’S INVESTIGATE PROSE POETRY – THAT OXYMORONIC, SLIGHTLY OBNOXIOUS LITERARY FORM

Prose poetry. It sounds like an oxymoron. Like jumbo shrimp. Or plastic silverware. Or a soothing Lithuanian folk song. But it does indeed exist, having been wrought into existence by the exceptional creativity or pure boredom of writers. But why? Why taint the dainty lines of poetry with the blocky bulk of prose? Let’s find out by looking at the form’s history, major works, essential characteristics, and a literary analysis of Robert Bly’s prose poem “Warning to the Reader.”

Literary Analysis

Netflix’s “Rust Valley Restorers” is Unexpectedly Poetic

10/02/201902/24/2023
by Hannah Huff

A POET’S ANALYSIS OF THE CAR RESTORATION REALITY SHOW SET IN TAPPEN, BC

A Classic Classic Car Show

Recently released on Netflix after originally airing on Canada’s History Channel, Rust Valley Restorers (August 2019) fits right into the ubiquitous car fixer-upper reality genre. It showcases a grungy old guy who owns lots of classic cars that need some serious restoring, but he’s running out of time and money to fix them all. So he opens a restoration shop — Rust Bros Restorations — to catalyze the automotive revivals and bring in money.

Literary Analysis

Here’s Why These 5 Creative Book Titles Work

11/01/201802/24/2023
by Hannah Huff

A Brief Literary Analysis of Book Names that Resonate

Book titles beckon: from spines and covers, they yoo-hoo in froufrou fonts to prospective readers. Titles are oracles: they augur what unread pages contain. Titles identify: they turn paper piles into cohesive things, heaps into sheaves. Titles are thresholds: readers can’t enter texts without crossing the titular line. Titles frame: in minimal words, they explain what it all meant, why it was all so blue or golden or so on. Titles, though they precede, follow: texts gain names only once they’ve been written. Titles connote: they’re word clusters that conjure up paragraphs read while sick in bed on a cold winter day as the dog yipped in the yard and the world continued on in distant horns and smog. Titles can trick: bad texts sometimes bear creative book titles, and the best books can be rather brusque in their names. Above all, book titles promise: a story, a secret, a journey, a love, a moment.

Despite all this, even literary readers tend to grant a book’s title only a second’s thought before moving on to another text, or to the first page. Today, we’re going to pause and analyze, taking our time with 5 creative book titles that resonate with me for very different reasons.

Literary Analysis

Historical Erasure & Common Moments in Brooks’s ‘Maud Martha’

10/21/201802/24/2023
by Hannah Huff

A LITERARY ANALYSIS OF THE NARRATIVE IMPLICATIONS OF THE VIGNETTE STRUCTURE OF GWENDOLYN BROOKS’S 1953 NOVEL

The only novel written by poet Gwendolyn Brooks, Maud Martha (1953) is structured as a series of 34 vignettes/chapters that range from 2 to 20 pages, with the average less than 10. The poetic narrative traces the life ray of Maud Martha Brown from around age six, up until her pregnancy with a second child (she seems to be in her late twenties by the final chapter). This ray is formed both through the content that is present — the described action in the vignettes — and the content that is absent — the unsaid that happens between the vignettes. In the rapid passage of time “off-stage,” and the pausing on often seemingly banal activities, Brooks’s fragmented structure exposes history’s relentless erasure of marginalized narratives, and reveals the corresponding therapeutic importance of paying attention to the feat of surviving everyday moments as Maud is marginalized as a young black woman.