POETRY ESSAY PROMPT #1

Prompt: The following two poems are about Helen of Troy. Renowned in the ancient world for her beauty, Helen was the wife of Menelaus, a Greek King. She was carried off to Troy by the Trojan prince Paris, and her abduction was the immediate cause of the Trojan War. Read the two poems carefully. Considering such elements as speaker, diction, imagery, form, and tone, write a well-organized essay in which you contrast the speakers’ views of Helen.

A more H.D.-like Helen (portrayed by Sienna Guillroy)

A more Poe-like Helen (portrayed by Diane Kruger)

Helen

BY H. D.

All Greece hates   

the still eyes in the white face,   

the lustre as of olives   

where she stands,   

and the white hands.   

All Greece reviles   

the wan face when she smiles,   

hating it deeper still   

when it grows wan and white,   

remembering past enchantments   

and past ills.   

Greece sees unmoved,   

God’s daughter, born of love,   

the beauty of cool feet   

and slenderest knees,   

could love indeed the maid,   

only if she were laid,   

white ash amid funereal cypresses.

To Helen

By Edgar Allan Poe

Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicean barks of yore
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
The weary, way-worn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece,
And the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo, in yon brilliant window-niche
How statue-like I see thee stand,
The agate lamp within thy hand,
Ah! Psyche, from the regions which
Are Holy Land! 

Prewrite:
Poe devices: simile, alliteration, imagery, ab ab poem meter
H.D. devices: aa bb meter, simile, imagery, anaphora

Essay Response 1
       Although H.D. and Edgar Allan Poe each wrote a poem with the same name of "Helen," their views couldn't be more divergent. Poe conveys Helen's beauty and delicacy through the use of alliteration and imagery. H.D. conveys the opposite view and downsizes Helen's beauty with the use of simile and imagery. The commonality between these two authors is that they use her beauty as a tool to persuade the readers to either revere her or abhor through the use of literary devices.
       With a tone of revere and imagery, Poe portrays Helen like a goddess. Poe uses the simile and alliteration to show compare Helen beauty's to the emotions of a log that is traveling back to its homeland to be reunited. With the use of ab ab meter, he conveys a tone of respect because he is awe-struck by her beauty and she is his definition of beauty.
       H.D. contrasts with a tone of abhorrence and imagery that paints the picture of a monster. H.D. uses paralellism in the first two stanzas and anaphora to convey his attitude toward Helen is that of hatred and bitterness towards her beauty. The image that H.D. paints the image of Helen being on a funeral cypres and insinuates that that will bring peace and happiness to Greece. 
       H.D. and Poe have different views about Helen's beauty but they are similar in that they use her beauty to convey their opinions. Poe uses alliteration and tone to convey her in a prestigious light. While H.D. uses tone, parallelism and imagery to convey Helen in a not very flattering light.