Word: poignant
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Haydn songs were gems. Works of his maturity, they are joyous without being flippant, poignant yet optimistic. The first of the two sets of Brahms waltzes is the more widely known, perhaps because it has fewer solo passages and thus is more often performed by choruses; perhaps also because it maintains a gayer, more spontaneous mood than the second set, composed five years later. It is this second set, however, which left the more profound impression. Its gloomy, anguished texts convey a dramatic unity not present in the other and the musical treatment is appropriately more intense. Although...
...Brazil's greatest man of letters, Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis would doubtless have relished the irony of this posthumous foreign recognition for a novel whose hero is a garrulous ghost, bent on describing his own small genius for failure while alive. Dom Casmurro is a more poignant and more muted Epitaph of a Small Winner, but anyone with a slight case of TV-jeebies can find a good evening's entertainment...
...Shades Valley High School [TIME, Feb. 9]. Possibly there is some value in the continuing existence of fraternities and sororities in our colleges and universities, but in secondary schools they are simply abominable . . . The unhappiness that is caused by children's being "left out" is particularly poignant at their...
Poetry occupies several pages in this Advocate and most of it is good if not exceptional. David Chandler's Sonnet achieves a poignant, sustained effect from a careful control of visual images and brilliantly worded passages. Neither the cadence, sound, nor form interfere with his feelings on growing up. The poem advances smoothly and communicates directly. Southampton Beach, by Charles Neuhauser, relies more on sense impressions and reflections inspired by them. In places, the impressions seem redundant, yet the transitions to reflection are expertly handled. It is sometimes difficult to know exactly what Neuhauser is saying, however, because he uses...
...sincerity and authority. Yet his feelings tend to overshadow some of his work, the flame obscures the value of the poem as a whole. Selections from Frescoes for Mr. Rockefeller's City (1932) and Public Speech (1936) have this blemish, although they contain, vivid imagry. MacLeish's thought is poignant and direct; but one becomes exhausted with sheer oratory...