Title

The title alerts us to its purpose: it is a poem in praise of socks. The ode is a poem of celebration or exultation. Originally odes were elaborate and stately compositions sung in public in honor of a great personage, event, or season. The form dates back to ancient Greece. The poet Pindar, who lived in the fifth century B.C.E., composed poems of praise or glorification in highly structured, patterned stanzas. The odes of the Roman poet Horace who lived in the first century B.C.E used a simpler lyric form. European Renaissance odists Pierre de Ronsard and Andrew Marvell wrote in both Pindaric and Horatian form. The odes of nineteenth-century English poets such as John Keats and Percy Shelley tended to be freer in form and subject matter than the classical ode. However, the ode in general is primarily formal in style and...