Poetry exploring frustration often expresses a sense of exasperation and discontent. Such poems echo with the tension of unmet expectations, stalled progress, or recurring obstacles.
The poet uses vivid imagery and raw language to articulate this vexation, creating a palpable atmosphere of irritability and impatience. These verses enable the reader to connect with the universal experience of frustration, validating their own struggles and offering a cathartic release for pent-up emotions.
The ‘Hymn to Aphrodite’ by Sappho is an ancient lyric in which Sappho begs for Aphrodite’s help in managing her turbulent love life.
It is easy to feel frustrated for Sappho in 'Hymn to Aphrodite,' as the poet seems fed up that all of her love affairs go sour eventually. She also seems frustrated that she has to ask for help from the gods in keeping love in her life. However, above all Sappho is infectiously frustrated that no love ever seems to go her way, no matter what she does.
‘My Mother Would Be a Falconress’ by Robert Duncan explores a son and mother’s relationship through the lens of a falcon breaking free from his handler.
The speaker's frustration with his mother and with himself is at the crux of this poem, adding emotional complexity to every word. While the speaker seems ultimately most frustrated with his domineering mother, even after her death, he battles thoughts of how he angrily lashed out at her and left her.
My mother would be a falconress,
And I, her gay falcon treading her wrist,
would fly to bring back
from the blue of the sky to her, bleeding, a prize,
Wordsworth’s ‘The Tables Turned’ asks readers to quit books and rediscover the natural world’s beauty and wisdom.
This poem is persuasive, convincing you to change your mindset regarding knowledge and education. However, this implies the speaker's mindset is entirely different from the reader the speaker is trying to convince. Therefore in this comparison poem, you can feel the frustration as the speaker tells you the benefits he finds obvious. Yet, the open-ended response at the end of the poem, allowing the reader to choose their path, implies the speaker felt their argument was sufficient enough to change the reader's mind.
‘Those Annual Bills’ by Mark Twain is a humorously bleak poem that bemoans the insufferable and unsatiated onslaught of bills the speaker is confronted with each year.
The speaker of Twain's poem is consumed by their frustration over their annual obligation to pay their bills. This sentiment is expressed via both the poet's diction and imagery. However, they also wrestle with the fact that everything they pay for is far less permanent than its cost.
Lowell’s ‘Night Sweat’ portrays his struggle with writer’s block and profound distress, finding solace in his wife’s comforting presence.
The frustration in the speaker's heart surfaces in the lines, “But the downward glide/ and bias of existing wrings us dry—”. He cannot jerk off the feeling of dying from his mind. Though his body is a priceless “urn,” the “animal night sweats” literally burn his creative spirit.
Work-table, litter, books and standing lamp,
plain things, my stalled equipment, the old broom---
Tennyson’s ‘The Lady of Shalott’ narrates the tale of the cursed Lady entrapped in a tower on the island of Shalott, who meets a tragic end.
The Lady is frustrated in a life of confinement. She is trapped in her tower, with a looming curse hanging over her. Her frustration peaks when she exclaims, 'I am half sick of shadows,' revealing her deep dissatisfaction with her isolated existence. Deprived of emotional connection and true freedom, the Lady lives life as if trapped in a golden cage, embodying Victorian women's domestic entrapment outside the world's affairs. The Lady's bubbling frustration ultimately drives her to brave the curse, not caring about the consequences.
Gunn’s ‘The Man with Night Sweats’ contrasts past vitality with present fragility, capturing the intimate pain of AIDS.
In ‘The Man with Night Sweats,’ Gunn talks about the frustrating experiences of a speaker who has been suffering from night sweats. He wakes up cold, sweaty, and with a clinging sheet. What is more frustrating is that he has to change them daily, knowing the same episode will occur the next day.
‘Boots’ by Rudyard Kipling is a memorable poem. In it, Kipling uses repetition to emphasize the struggle of soldiers on a forced march.
'Boots' stands as one of poetry's most powerful portrayals of mounting frustration. The soldiers' increasing frustration with the endless marching builds through each stanza, from physical complaints to psychological torment. The refrain "There's no discharge in the war!" perfectly captures the helpless frustration of being trapped in endless repetition. The poem's use of dialect and fragmented rhythm makes this frustration viscerally real.
We're foot—slog—slog—slog—sloggin’ over Africa!
Foot—foot—foot—foot—sloggin’ over Africa—
(Boots—boots—boots—boots—movin’ up and down again!)
Stevie Smith’s ‘Not Waving but Drowning’ is a tragic account of a dead man whose cry for help is mistakenly regarded as a mere greeting.
It is rather a frustrating experience when people make something else of what is actually intended. This frustration and regret is always there in the man’s heart. He is largely misunderstood for most of his life. Even in his death, nobody is there to attentively notice his plight.
‘My Parents’ by Stephen Spender is a poem based on bullying and the desire to make friends.
The speaker’s willingness to forgive the rough children and their unwillingness to smile back causes frustration. This emotional conflict, which is caused by the unkindness and lack of reciprocation, demonstrates the speaker’s internal turmoil.
My parents kept me from children who were rough
Who threw words like stones and wore torn clothes
Their thighs showed through rags they ran in the street
And climbed cliffs and stripped by the country streams.
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 1, ‘From fairest creatures we desire increase,’ appeals to the Fair Youth to procreate and preserve his beauty.
The speaker is frustrated with the Fair Youth's refusal to procreate, which would waste his beauty instead of preservation. He is agitated due to his irresponsible behavior, which would lead to famine from an abundance of beauty. He berates him for feeding his light with 'self-substantial fuel.' His brimming frustration, such as in lines like 'And, tender churl, mak'st waste in niggarding,' makes readers ponder the Fair Youth's frivolousness.
Breaking away from Victorian diction, T.S. Eliot presents the distinct realities of his time in the stream of consciousness by experimenting with poetic form.
The poem teases the reader from the beginning as Prufrock introduces his intention of asking the "overwhelming question." The readers anticipating the moment of the question experience frustration as Prufrock keeps on procrastinating the climactic action while constantly digressing into fragmented thoughts which are difficult to understand.
‘The Minotaur’ by Ted Hughes explores familial strife, emotional turmoil, and the cyclical nature of violence within relationships.
The poem brings out the emotion of frustration through its vivid portrayal of conflict and inner turmoil. The characters' struggles and regrets evoke a sense of helplessness and desperation, fueling feelings of frustration. The poem's intense imagery and emotive language convey the overwhelming weight of unresolved emotions, leaving the reader with a palpable sense of frustration and unrest.
‘Paraphrase on Anacreon: Ode to the Swallow,’ is a translation of a Greek lyric poem in which the speaker explains that love constantly (and annoyingly) inhabits their heart.
In this poem, the speaker's frustration with their own proclivity for loving other people is apparent. Love, to the speaker, is like a bird that nests and mates in one's heart, never allowing the space to become empty. While the speaker seems content to have one love, the bird keeps multiplying and reproducing, crowding the speaker's heart with incessant chatter.
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