The Curse of the Poet in the Modern World: William Butler Yeats’s Poem “Adam’s Curse”

Sanam Shahedali

Professor Firouzeh Ameri, PhD

Contemporary English Poetry

4 July 2017

As members of the human society in the technology-dominated 21st century, those specializing in literature are often faced with these questions: What is the function of literature and poetry? How do literary-oriented minds contribute to the advancement of human good? What is the use of producing, reading, and analyzing various literary texts? Where does producing and studying literature stand compared to saving lives and promoting health through medical practices, putting bread on the tables through farming, or making houses to shelter people with the help of engineers? These questions must have been on the mind of the Irish poet William Butler Yeats when he composed the poem “Adam’s Curse” more than a century earlier in 1902.

Rumi’s Popularity in the United States of America: An Investigation

Sanam Shahedali

Professor Akram Pouralifard, PhD

Iranian and Islamic Literature in English Language

3 June 2017

Over the past few decades, there has been great enthusiasm and admiration for the Persian poet Rumi in the United States of America. This paper investigates the reasons behind Rumi’s tremendous popularity in this country and how Rumi’s character and poetry have been modified to suite the spiritual taste of Americans. Investigations reveal that the Rumi that has been introduced in the US as one removed from his religious and cultural background. What is emphasized in popular translations and renditions of Rumi’s poetry is the universal, albeit mysterious and enigmatic, message of love, ecstasy and spirituality.

The Morning is Full of Storm by Pablo Neruda: A Short Analysis

 The poem “The Morning is Full of Storm” by Pablo Neruda sets out to draw vividly with the brush of imagination that which cannot be directly witnessed, namely, the wind. This mysteriously invisible though powerful natural element moves about everywhere leaving its mark on everything that comes its way: from the clouds that resemble handkerchiefs being waved in its hands as they drift here and there, to the sound the wind makes “above our loving silence”, to the trees, which, stirred by the wind, gain the power of speech with a “language full of wars and songs”, to the dead leaves swept across the ground by the wind’s unseen broom, to the birds whose shooting flight is deflected by its resisting energy, to the sea that is toppled as the wind knocks it over, and finally to the fires whose flames lean sideways as the wind blows upon them.