Mary Oliver, a Pulitzer Prize winning author/poet, uses her essay “Of Power and Time” describes to readers the creative process that goes along with writing, and the obstacles associated with it (Poetry). She then explores various contexts in which creativity exists, or should/should not exist. Although many readers can appreciate what Oliver has to offer, she mainly directs her writing towards people who yearn for creativity but cannot find the time to develop it. Oliver uses a specific word choice, anomalous organization, elaborate analogies, bias, and a connection to religion in order to convey the idea that creativity takes time and effort. The word choice Oliver uses is very specific to this essay and her argument.
Throughout her writing, she uses very descriptive language in her various analogies. Some examples of this are “silver morning,” “white spider belly,” “stained with light,” etc (Oliver 620-623). This vivid language allows readers to visualize and get the full effect of Oliver’s main idea. She also uses poetic language at moments, which makes sense with her very successful poetry background, which includes various awards (Poetry). Examples of this are found throughout her essay. For instance, in paragraph five, Oliver says, “I am, myself, three selves at least,” (Oliver 620). This creative use of words provides readers with pleasant contrast from most formal writings. Overall, Oliver’s word choice was unique to her essay and provided a unique
Time is constant. No one has the power to stop it or to go back in it. Time cannot be changed for it is timeless. With time being everlasting there is a mystery within time’s boarders; why cannot one change time? Arcadia by Tom Stoppard explores the lives of many individuals in two different time periods but within the same setting, Sidley Park, which is a stately home. Within the first four scenes of the play there is a shift between the two time periods 1809 and contemporary time period. Time is omnipresent throughout the play, whatever happens will happen and time is constant regardless how you measure it. In Geraldine Cousin’s Playing for Time, Cousin explores the mystery of time’s immutability. She also explores the ideas of how the past always has a lingering effect on the future. Then in John Fleming’s Tom Stoppard’s: Arcadia compliments on how time is equally woven between the past and present. He also provokes the idea that one could split the play into two plays by splitting up the two times. The mystery behind time in Stoppard’s Arcadia is well defined. Time is inevitable and connected, you cannot have the past without the present and future. Tom Stoppard depicts that tie overlaps itself in order to show how chaos enables freewill.
In Power and Social Change, Richard Healy and Sandra Hinson explore the term power in social change between the world and people. The topic about power was interesting because there are two distinct perspective of power. The most common view of power is power-over. The less common view is power-within. In organizing for social justice, it is important to realize that using power-within will lead to successful achievement to instigate compliance of demands listed by the minorities. Furthermore, there are three criteria of power implement in organizing for social justice, which are direct political involvement, organizational infrastructure, and ideology with worldview. Each criterion plays an important role to the success of establishing a
Mary Oliver is a well known author that has written books and poems like “A Thousand Mornings”, “The House of Light”, and many others. Oliver grew up in Ohio and went to Ohio State University and Vassar College. Oliver published her very first poem when she was 28 called, “ No Voyage and Other Poems”. The passage Of Power and Time comes from the book “Blue Pastures”, written in 1995. Mary Oliver, since becoming a writer, has won the Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book Award. In the passage, “Of Power and Time”, Mary Oliver grasps the attention of aspiring writers by talking about the interruptions in life, her three selves, and the ordinary versus extraordinary aspects of life.
Most poems, new and old, almost always have an important message to teach to all those who take the time to read it. Authors use poetic devices to get their message across in creative, yet effective ways. For example, Mary Oliver carefully uses several poetic devices to teach her own personal message to her readers. Oliver’s use of the poem’s organization, diction, figurative language, and title aids in conveying the message of how small, yet vital oxygen is to all living and nonliving things in her poem, “Oxygen.”
In her article “I Stand Here Writing”, Nancy Sommers examines the writing process and formulating ideas for writing in a more empirical manner. She states that before she found her creative zeal/ niche her writing was often undisciplined, unmethodical, and sloppy. Sommers reveals that in college she was less known for her writing and more for her long hair and misapplication of phrases. She found her true inspiration while writing her Senior Thesis on Emerson’s “Eloquence.” Throughout the entire essay, Sommers provides the reader with advice about writing. A key point that she mentions is, “If I could teach my students about writing it would be to see themselves as sources, as places from which ideas originate, to see themselves as Emerson’s transparent eyeball, all that they have read and experienced-the-dictionaries of their lives circulating through them.”
As I reread and discussed this poem in class, I noticed the sexual language and meaning behind the poem, which deepened my appreciation for the poem. I believe my experience shares many of the same types of emotions as the sensuality Mary Oliver is describing, only in a different context. Oliver writes about how, “fear shouts, / excitement shouts, back / and forth” (7). This description applies to both sexuality and experiencing great and awesome acts of nature. This relates to one of Oliver’s themes, experiencing nature and its parallels to our experiences.
Throughout the passage, Oliver’s symbolism of death and life is used to express her thoughts upon nature. Nature can represent how life has a double-meaning where, although death may seem lovely and sweet, the chance it gets, it will rip you layer by layer. Oliver strives to illustrate an image that there is always an ugly truth behind the most prettiest things. Oliver’s style conveys the complexity of her view of nature, as she defines the thin line between life and death, and its ruthless
Overflowing her poem with the details of her vision, Oliver effectively transports the reader into the story being told. “My bones knock together at the pale joints, trying for a foothold, finger hold,” (line 13). The speaker in this story is struggling for what seems like endlessly, describing to the reader the exact torture that his/her body is experiencing.
Staring at the screen, the young author sighed in frustration, her fingers once again failing her as she was distracted by the din of the news on TV. Resigned, she shut it off and turned back to her blank document wishing for the ability to channel her emotions towards the high expectations placed before her, as well as the stigmas. She was growing tired of the starkness of the world around her.
Everyone knows what writing is to one extent or another, but we all have different definitions of how it should be done and varying degrees of seriousness about the art. We all have a process of writing, but each is unique to ourselves and our own experiences. Annie Dillard and Stephen King are two well known authors who have published many pieces, two of which describe how they view the writing process and let their readers get a peek of what goes on through their minds when they write. These two pieces are Dillard’s The Writing Life and King’s “What Writing Is.”
During the course of a person’s life, a decision is made as to which direction their life should follow. Most people are encouraged by their loved ones to make this choice for themselves. When Kelly Cherry was twelve, she announced to her musically devoted, string quartet violinist parents that she was going to quit piano lessons and become a writer, in response, “[her] mother said that she would rather kill [her] than have [her] turn out like [her] big brother, a beatnik. She ran to the kitchen to get [a] butcher knife” (“Kelly Cherry”). Needless to say, she was not supported in this career path. Throughout the course of her early writing career, she would hear that she “had no talent for writing” (“Kelly Cherry”). Still, she continued to write, occasionally quitting again and again, like a smoker, only to pick it up again (“Kelly Cherry”). Continually she told herself, “You are not a writer” until one day she revised this to, “If you don’t write your books, no one else will” (“Kelly Cherry”).
To start, is how Oliver had believed that Kunitz was like Merlin when it came to writing poetry. It seemed to her that Kunitz was this amazing poet and it was effortless, just like magic. For example Oliver stated, “but their own good lives,/ where petals float upward,/ their colors exploding,/ and trees open their moist/ pages of thunder(8-12). These lines in the poem had been in the first stanza, when Oliver had first misunderstood Kunitz’s work ethic. When
The creative process is affected by many things, and if harbored correctly, amazing and impressive things can come to fruition. Harriet Stowe’s novel was in no doubt a very controversial book, but the fact that her novel was a success is inarguable. In Uncle Tom’s Cabin Forty Years After, a review written by Francis A. Shoup, she writes, “The public caught it up and in a few days ten thousand copies were in the hands of eager readers. Before the year was out,
In 2009, America was pulling out of the second “Great” depression. The market crashed and the money burned. In the midst of all the havoc, the world found peace in creativity and music, and the arts flourished. Elizabeth Gilbert, author of best selling book Eat, Pray, Love gave her speech, “Your Elusive Creative Genius”, at the annual 2009 TED conference in Long Beach, California, to encourage reflection upon the times. Gilbert is known for her humor in her written memoirs, novels, and speeches. In Elizabeth Gilbert’s 2009 TED speech, “Your Elusive Creative Genius”, she uses rhetorical devices including: tone, metaphors, and allusion to take a humorous approach to bring light to the darkness of writing and encourage writers to never give up on their own writing.
The last element of importance in Oliver’s writing style is imagery. Imagery is the use of descriptive words to create mental images in the reader’s head relating to the scene. Oliver often uses imagery in an effective way to hook the reader so that they can visualize what is going on in their mind. An example is when Samantha is just starting to decipher what is going on in the day she relives her death. “I had the craziest feeling that it had all happened before, down to the smell of the orange my mom was peeling and the exact reflection of the trees in the surface of the water.” With this, the reader is able to picture what is happening, and maybe even be able to smell the orange. Later that day, Samantha is driving with