Hi, can anyone help me out like categorizing the themes of all the poetry, if possible, like love, death, hate, etc.

There are as many themes of poetry as there ideas that occur to mankind. That is to say, almost an infinite variety. So I am not exactly sure I know what you desire.

Still, one could list different types of poems, such as narrative, heroic, epic, dramatic, lyric, tragic, light verse, vers de société, melic,
comic, ode, monody, threnody, dirge, elegiac, epigram, elegy, idyll, eclogue
georgic, bucolic. hymn, psalm, shanty, lay, ballad, war poems and the like.

Or, reverting back to ancient Greek ideas, there were the nine Muses. I guess that relates to themes. They were Erato (lyric poetry and mime), Euterpe (lyric poetry and music), Terpsichore (dancing and choral singing), Polyhymnia (sacred song and oratory), Clio (history), Calliope (epic poetry), Melpomene (tragedy), Thalia (comedy and pastoral poetry), and Urania (astronomy)

Not all of them have to do with poetry, and there is some duplication, but one could select Thalia, Calliope, Erato and Euterpe for those relating only to poetry.

Not exactly what you want, I feel sure. Taking the questions often posed here, they seem to fall into patterns of:

Aging, death, bereavement, mortality, hope, faith, grief
Celebration, compassion, courage, inspiration, prayer, reflection
Friendship, love
Fun, joy, youth
War, peace

And, of course, poetry itself. Not much help, you say? Sorry, that's all I've got.







Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/09/2021 03:02PM by Hugh Clary.

That's great. Thank you, it is great start.

Thanks Hugh,
Wish I had your grasp of the subject!
Ginnyfly

Asking to categorize poetry is like asking to categorize life.


Les

I think Hugh must have covered about every major theme - Though Laura Riding does say there is only one story worth the Telling
ginnyfly

Riding or Graves?

[wuzzle.org]

To Juan at the Winter Solstice

There is one story and one story only
That will prove worth your telling,
Whether are learned bard or gifted child;
To it all lines or lesser gauds belong
That startle with their shining
Such common stories as they stray into.

Is it of trees you tell, their months and virtues,
Or strange beasts that beset you,
Of birds that croak at you the Triple will?
Or of the Zodiac and how slow it turns
Below the Boreal Crown,
Prison of all true kings that ever reigned?

Water to water, ark again to ark,
From woman back to woman:
So each new victim treads unfalteringly
The never altered circuit of his fate,
Bringing twelve peers as witness
Both to his starry rise and starry fall.

Or is it of the Virgin's silver beauty,
All fish below the thighs?
She in her left hand bears a leafy quince;
When, with her right she crooks a finger smiling,
How may the King hold back?
Royally then he barters life for love.

Or of the undying snake from chaos hatched,
Whose coils contain the ocean,
Into whose chops with naked sword he springs,
Then in black water, tangled by the reeds,
Battles three days and nights,
To be spewed up beside her scalloped shore?

Much snow is falling, winds roar hollowly,
The owl hoots from the elder,
Fear in your heart cries to the loving-cup:
Sorrow to sorrow as the sparks fly upward.
The log groans and confesses
There is one story and one story only.

Dwell on her graciousness, dwell on her smiling,
Do not forget what flowers
The great boar trampled down in ivy time.
Her brow was creamy as the crested wave,
Her sea-blue eyes were wild
But nothing promised that is not performed.

Robert Graves

Hi Hugo,

I was actually thinking about Laura Ridings book, The Telling. As I'm sure you know they worked together - I think they parted on bad terms -Riding claiming that Graves plagiarised her work . Thank you so much for typing up the Graves poem, I love his poetry - it was reading the White Goddess that really inspired my love for poetry and fascination with the triple aspect of the Goddess. I would love to find The Tillaquils' I think that's the title - another Laura Riding poem.
Ginnyfly

please i need a theme and analysis for the poem "city planners" by margaret atwood

ndidi, you will have a better chance of getting help if you enter your question as the start of a separate thread. Also if you post a copy of the poem.

The City Planners


Cruising these residential Sunday
streets in dry August sunlight:
what offends us is
the sanities:
the houses in pedantic rows, the planted
sanitary trees, assert
levelness of surface like a rebuke
to the dent in our car door.
No shouting here, or
shatter of glass; nothing more abrupt
than the rational whine of a power mower
cutting a straight swath in the discouraged grass.

But though the driveways neatly
sidestep hysteria
by being even, the roofs all display
the same slant of avoidance to the hot sky,
certain things:
the smell of spilled oil a faint
sickness lingering in the garages,
a splash of paint on brick surprising as a bruise,
a plastic hose poised in a vicious
coil; even the too-fixed stare of the wide windows


give momentary access to
the landscape behind or under
the future cracks in the plaster


when the houses, capsized, will slide
obliquely into the clay seas, gradual as glaciers
that right now nobody notices.


That is where the City Planners
with the insane faces of political conspirators
are scattered over unsurveyed
territories, concealed from each other,
each in his own private blizzard;


guessing directions, they sketch
transitory lines rigid as wooden borders
on a wall in the white vanishing air


tracing the panic of suburb
order in a bland madness of snows



To prove she dislikes the neatness of a planned city, as opposed to the normal urban sprawl, she writes a sloppy poem? Hey, I hate it when they ding my car doors in the parking lot too, Madge. I'm with you on that part.

Reminiscent of this song.

pam

Little Boxes
by Malvina Reynolds
Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes made of tickytacky
Little boxes on the hillside, little boxes all the same
There's a green one and a pink one and a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same.

And the people in the houses all went to the university
Where they were put in boxes and they came out all the same,
And there's doctors and there's lawyers, and business executives
And they're all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same.

And they all play on the golf course and drink their martinis dry,
And they all have pretty children and the children go to school
And the children go to summer camp and then to the university
Where they are put in boxes and they come out all the same.

And the boys go into business and marry and raise a family
In boxes made of ticky tacky and they all look just the same.