Analysis Of Billy Collins In Once More To The Lake

I gained a new perceptive during class, when reading “George Saunders Explains How to Tell a Good Story”. The reading of this article help me understood how to use more details to makes my story’s more meaningful. The reading of this article help me build up my paper on “No such Things” to use details to descipbe a story. Through the reading of the article, it help me to use experience through my life to build on my topic “…memory is an unreliable traveling companion through the years”. The reading of the article help me to create a meaningful story to blend it in with experience in my life and also to blending in with the topic of my paper.

E. B. White's story "Once More to the Lake" is about a man who revisits a lake from his childhood to discover that his life has lost placidity.  The man remembers his childhood as he remembers the lake; peaceful and still.  Spending time at the lake as an adult has made the man realize that his life has become unsettling and restless, like the tides of the ocean.  Having brought his son to this place of the past with him, the man makes inevitable comparisons between his own son and his childhood self, and between himself as an adult and the way he remembers his father from his childhood perspective.  The man's experience at the lake with his son is the moment he discovers his own

“Once More to the Lake” is an essay that was published in Harper’s Magazine in 1941 by author E.B. White. The author tells the story through a first-person point of view and describes his experience at a lakefront camp in Maine. The essay shows White going through an internal conflict between perceiving the lake and acting as he did as a child and observing the lake and acting as an adult. White’s experience and views as an adult almost seem identical to his experience as a child until it is effected by his recognition of the technology difference in the boats. Certain moments, such as when the author and his son are fishing, reminds White of when he spent those moments with his father. These nostalgic moments help White realize that even though human life is transient and insignificant, but experiences are eternal. The author sees that even though his revisit is slightly different, his son still has the same experience that he had when he was young.

The memories in the poem maintain a cohesiveness and continuity of experience through repeated motifs such as the violets and the ‘whistling’. Memories also give us a recovered sense of life, as shown through the final line of the poem ‘faint scent of violets drifts in air’. This example of sensory imagery also creates a rhythmic drifting sense linked closely to the “stone-curlews call from Kedron Brook”. It echoes images of the speaker’s mind drifting into reflection and aurally creates transience between the present and the past.

The author has shown his desires in the first verses of the poem. One of his wishes being that “[Students should] walk inside the poem’s room” with this stanza he states that a way to connect with a poem is if students would take in every detail of the poem’s words and structure the way they do when they are in a friend’s house for the very first time, to look around each word. After stating his desires, Collins is more realistic when describing how students treat poems. He illustrates that “[Students] torture a confession out of [the poem]”. This demonstrates that when people misunderstand the purpose of a poem, the poem itself feels tortured by students forcing its purpose. Collins has shared his desires and the reality of a poet through the use of personification by stating how a student should connect with a poem (by walking through its rooms) and how they treat the poem

Memory is a powerful concept. Often when an individual undergoes a traumatic situation, the ramifications of these actions seep into an individualfs psyche unknowingly. In effect this passes through memory and becomes sub-consciously buried within a personfs behavioural patterns generally. The Reader by Bernhard Schlink explores the concept of a young mans subconscious desire for a woman whom he gcanft remember to forgeth (1Memento) as she is so deeply inlaid within his soul.

The two texts, "Excerpt from Martin Sloane: A Novel", by Michael Redhill and "Ode to a Box of Tea" by Pablo Neruda have several things in common. These things relate to how the authors of each text talk about their memories and the objects that go along with those memories.

Memory is used as a powerful conduit into the past; childhood experiences held in the subconscious illuminate an adult’s perception. Harwood uses tense shifts throughout her poetry to emphasise and indicate the interweaving and connection the past and the present hold. By allowing this examination of the childhood memories, Harwood identifies that their significance is that of an everlasting memory that will dominate over time’s continuity and the inevitability of death.

Authors often create texts that share common themes to teach readers importance of certain aspects and hardships of life. Theme may be expressed through an author’s use of rhetorical devices and many other contributing factors such as figurative language and repetition. The essay, “Once More to the Lake” written by E.B. White and the poem “Forgetfulness” written by Billy Collins, both contain a theme of identity loss. In “Once More to the Lake” E.B White connects to a lake at young age and when returning with his son years later is unable to identify himself. In similar theme “Forgetfulness” describes different factors of human life and everyday things being forgotten and lost. Both White and Collins use repetition and metaphors to further push the theme of identity loss throughout the texts.

Additionally, the diction and devices found in both “‘Once More to the Lake”, and “Forgetfulness” helps to show how time is moving and how it affects people. The poem states, “... the memories you used to harbor decided to retire to the southern

Billy Collins uses dark rooms, oceans, hives, color slides and mouse mazes to describe his poem “Introduction to Poetry”, but also a way to analyze poetry in general. Growing up, students are advised by teachers how to analyze poetry. The speaker of Introduction to Poetry, Billy Collins, attempts to guide the readers by teaching them a unique and appropriate way to analyze poetry. The use of personification and imagery, by the author, gives the readers a new perspective to interpret and find the significance in poetry. In this particular poem, the speaker does not want the reader to listen to the teachers of the reader’s past, “tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a

From controversial events to ordinary life stories, Billy Collins writes about various topics in different perspectives just like a chameleon, changing its colors to fit with its surrounding. Collins talks in a gentle, yet humorous way; he illustrates a profound understanding through a clear observation. His writing style blends humor and solemnity in one entity. Throughout his poetry, Collins demonstrates, in a witty and satirical voice, his insightfulness towards the objects, using numerous poetic devices, especially allusions and metaphors to effectively convey his messages, most of which revolves around the theme of death.

While reading the poem “Introduction to Poetry,” Billy Collins sends a message to the readers that they should be patient and impartial when it comes to analyzing a poem in order to see the true meaning behind the without being over analytical. There is a revieting situation that takes place because Billy Collins is delivering his message to all readers about the way that one should be able to read a poem. This poems educates the reader on how to be able to read and plunge into a poem, through using many techniques like mood, tone, and literary devices to do so. In the first two lines Collins demands that we tackle a poem with a invigorating eye. There should be an exploration of what the poem means to us. How does this poem apply to our

Often times in life, people begin to appreciate relationships when reflecting on one’s previous actions and regretting what one has done. In “Those Winter Sundays,” Robert Hayden describes how a son remembers his father’s sufferings and sacrifices that he did not appreciate in the past. Hayden uses visual and auditory imagery, personification, alliteration, and drastic shifts in tone to show how the son recognizes his father’s physical and emotional pain, and regrets his former indifference.

Collin’s purpose of evoking emotion to the reader and signifying the continual process of forgetting is revealed through small attention to detail such as the common diction and personification. Collins uses very clever and witty images to describe the process of forgetting to ironically make it seem that memories are not as important, although they are significant in individuals lives: “the memories you used to harbor decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain.” Here Collins plays on the idea of an older person retiring not only from a job, but retiring from his or her own mind. Collins reaches out to the older audience saying that forgetting is a normal process of life, one that must be accepted. Collins also personifies the phrase “the quadratic equation pack(ed) its bag” to explain that important facts are decreasing, showing that the mind has no control later in life. He also uses personification to give the writing more variation and to