Snark (Lewis Carroll) Snark (Lewis Carroll) The snark is a fictional animal species created by Lewis Carroll in his nonsense poem "The Hunting of the Snark". His descriptions of the creatures were, in his own words, unimaginable, and he wanted that to remain so. According to Carroll, the initial inspiration to write the poem – which he called an "agony in eight fits" – was the final line, "For the snark was a boojum, you see". Carroll was asked repeatedly to explain the snark. In all cases, his answer was he did not know and could not explain. Later commentators have offered many
The Nightingale: A Conversation Poem idea of nightingale as melancholic, the poem relies on the tradition and gothic descriptions to guide the poem. Eventually, the nightingale is what brings the narrator back to his topic after diverging from it in a manner similar to John Keats's use in "Ode to a Nightingale". Unlike tradition, the nightingales represented an experience that Coleridge had with his friends, the Wordsworths. During the moment within the poem, a female is described that seems to be a combination of Dorothy and the title character of "Christabel". There is no mention of Coleridge's wife, Sara, which separates "The Nightingale" from the