Lots of violent, gory imagery. However, the protagonist enjoys grossing out people and seems to really want to murder Nazis. While she is victim (the Nazis do kill her) she doesn't act scared and Plath doesn't try to make her sympathetic.

The protagonist is cynical, rude and uses crass, casual language. She seems to be a little sick of looking after her brothers. She also is a bit sick of pious people and she throws some shade at the Illiad.

This a poem that glorifies soldiers and their sacrifices. It presents the idea that death can be noble. This poem is sometimes associated with other patriotic ideals such as "the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots." A more negative reading my instead consider this story of a good example of patriotism being a virtue of the vicious.

The funeral in this is a metaphor, not a simile. This stands out as a particularly strong literally device as she uses similes at other points. The language is also odd because she speaks about many elements of a funeral and death in a rather cold, emotionless manner (her head becomes her brain, and her coffin is just a "box").

She also likes to play with ideas about identify. She references her brain, soul, senses, reason and being. It is sometimes hard to tell which of these things best represent the speaker and which are things she is losing.

Browning wanted to make a point, but was worried no one wanted to listen. How did he try to get attention? SHOCKING VIOLENCE. Browning believed that it is worse offending someone's sensibilities if it gets them thinking about issues.

Most the language is relatively naturally for the time period, but perhaps a little formal. This because a gentleman committing violence is more surprising to an audience. The poem also mimics bits of romantic poetry. If asked half way through, most readers would think they are reading a love poem.

Browning begins to describe Porphyia undressing and talking about how she may no longer resist "her passions". He clearly is trying to get the audience to think about sex, but he then kills the character before things any more clothes come off. The murderer seems to love Porphyia as a pure person, and he wants to "protect" her (but only in one of the most creepy, sexist and patronising ways possible). Simpy put, the murderer would rather Porphyia be pure than alive.

Written as romantic/comedic poem. Part of the humour is meant to come from the initial set-up. The speaker is so thirsty (I'm using this slang correctly, right?) that they are grasping at straws and trying to find some way to convince their partner to have premarital sex with them. He is so desperate, he starts arguing that the mingling of their blood in the flea is basically a bigger deal than getting married.

Naturally, his partner isn't having this. She murders that flea, but the speaker than argues "if destroying this thing I care about (our mingled blood in the flea) is so unimportant, than maybe something you care about (your virginity) isn't that important either?

For a poem that focuses so much on sex, it is interesting that Donne is never explicit. This is basically a whole poem built on double-entendre

Have politics ever pissed you off? Ginsberg was probably angrier. Think about you average American from the 1950s. White, suburban, racist (in less of a neo-nazi way and more of a cross-the-street-if-someone-of-a-different-colour-is-walking-past-but-don't-think-of-yourself-as-racist way), sexist and old-fashioned. Ginsberg didn't fit in. He hated that life style.

Ever heard of a "real-American", "real-Australian" or "real-INSERT NATIONALITY"? You mostly hear this from politicians. This is a tactic politicians use to ignore criticism or ideas from people they don't agree with. A politician's job is to listen to the people, but people don't mind if you ignore the "America-haters, "latte-sippers" or any other dumb nickname for a group the politician doesn't agree with. Being a guy with some communist views, and unusual thoughts on drugs, war, religion and sex, Ginsberg often felt ignored as an "America-hater".

This poem is Ginsberg letting out all his frustrations towards the people of his country who always ignored him. He wants everyone else like him to start flexing their own political muscle. He misses the things he used to do, but he admits that his own apathy is part of the problem. In the end, he decides to get out there and try to start a change in his country.

He uses personification on America, but then talks to it like he is disappointed in it. Note the speaker isn't afraid to blame himself as well as the country. He also asks the country to be angelic and naked. Maybe he thinks America can be pure and good. Maybe he thinks America needs to be comfortable being a little more vulnerable to be able to be good. The "eggs to India" line is the speaker acknowledging that America could have helped to end the Bengal Famine in 1943, but it didn't. In Ginsberg view, the best, most powerful country in the world is the one that helps the most people, not the one that is able to kill the most.

In many way, this poem is already a deeply intertextual piece. Not only does Sappho make reference to The Illiad, the plot of this poem also seems quite familiar to the sequel of that story, The Odyssey. In The Odyssey, the protagonist's wife is left at home, waiting for husband to return from a violent and dangerous adventure, and is waiting for her son to become a man and help her beat back all of the men on their island who are trying to take their family's power. In this poem, Sappho is waiting for one of her brothers to come back from his "adventures" and waiting for her other brother to grow up and start acting like an adult. Unlike Penelope in The Odyssey, who constantly prays for help, Sappho is sick of relying on the gods to inspire others to act.

The use of first person invites the audience to imagine being Lady Lazarus. On the one hand, this is bizarre as she is a grotesque victim, but on the other hand, this character is also a powerful, violent and angry force of nature that can't be stopped, even in death. This is a character who enjoys her power and doesn't see the harm done to her as a real threat.

A story from Lady Lazarus' point of view should make the audience feel powerful, strong, confident, creepy and weird. Conversely, a story from someone else seeing her should be completely terrifying and disgusting.

There is a fair bit of repetition. This technique is common in war hymns so it makes sense to see it here.The metaphors in this describe the enemy as "death" and "hell". This a common stylistic feature of war cries even today, e.g, "Marines never die, we just go to hell and regroup." It is also worth noting that the poet attributes the death of the 600 to the cannons, but not the actual Russian or Cossack soldiers. The "sabring" implies that the 600 killed their enemies themselves, but never directly hear about a person using the artillery. This helps emphasise the nobility of the 600. It makes it sound like overpowering force killed them, not enemy troops.

The poem also makes sure to describe the soldiers as returning from Death and Hell. It doesn't say retreat. It doesn't call this event Pyrrhic victory, it describes as an example of the nobility and bravery of the English soldiers. It also presents the willingness of these soldiers to be part of a bad strategy as an example of their patriotism. Again, we still see elements of these ideas today, such as the Gurkha joke about parachutes and their motto, "better to die than to be a coward".

This poem is incredibly structured and has a consistent rhyming pattern. This helps make it easier to recite. A transformation should still feel structured with clear purposes to each paragraph. Refrains may also be a good way to try to recreate this element of the poem.

'Blah, blah, blah,
bring him home safe and free of warts,”
or blubbering, “Wah, wah, wah, thank you,
thank you, for curing my liver condition.”'

This is an example of a comedic trope often referred to as "Arson, murder and jaywalking". The humour comes from the idea that one of the issues or items in a list is being treated with the same seriousness as other things which clearly are more serious.

"Good grief, gods do what they like.
They call down hurricanes with a whisper
or send off a tsunami the way you would a love letter.

If they have a whim, they make some henchmen
fix it up, like those idiots in the Iliad."

Here we see an example of allusion. Sappho is at first just referencing The Illiad and then directly insult the heroic characters in it. This similar to modern comedians making fun of superhero or fantasy characters having problems.

"If for once
he’d get off his ass, he might make something of himself.
Then from that reeking sewer of my life
I might haul up a bucket of spring water."

The last stanza makes it quite clear that the speaker isn't exactly too great herself. She seems unhappy, cynical, and is quick to blame her unhappy life on her brothers. Hypocrites can be a source of laughter as well as anger.

You can also read this poem as a semi-biographical piece. Plath nearly drowned at age ten and attempted suicide later in life. These could be the first two instances of rebirth she refers to in the poem, and that would then have interesting impacts on the next the next future rebirth she refers to at the end. Perhaps Plath previously felt like a victim in life, but now, she has decided to approach with anger, passion and defiance, as represented by the phoenix imagery at the end.