Analyzing The Poem 'Poetry Of Departures'

Have you ever wonder how people survive and thrive in Antarctica? In the excerpt from the story Alone by Richard E. Byrd the narrator explains how a man lives in Antarctica for 5 months during the winter alone in -83°F weather. Being alone changes a person’s attitude and state of mind. When you are alone people tend to start to become more negative and have a gloomy mindset.

Lucille Clifton's poem "Move" deals specifically with an incident that occurred in Philadelphia on May 13, 1985. On that date, Mayor Wilson Goode, Philadelphia's first African American mayor, authorized the use of lethal force against fellow African Americans living at 6221 Osage Avenue. In her introduction to the poem, Clifton says that there had been complaints from neighbors, who were also African American, concerning the "Afrocentric back-to-nature" group that called itself "Move" and had its headquarters at this address (35). The members of this group wore their hair in dreadlocks and they all used their surname of "Africa." Clifton's poem suggests that it was these differences that cost the lives of eleven people, including

Death is a topic that unites all of humanity. While it can be uncomfortable to think about, confronting death in unavoidable. “Dying” addresses that discomfort and universal unwillingness to consider the inevitability of death. Pinsky’s use of imagery, symbolism, and tone create a poetic experience that is like death, something every reader can relate to. In “Dying,” Pinsky describes how people are oblivious and almost uncaring when it comes to the thought of death. Pinsky is trying to convince the reader that they shouldn’t ignore the concept of death because life is shorter than it seems.

While reading both stories, they both seemed to share the same theme. The theme that both stories shared is the dedication to do work even if it isn’t necessary. In, “Clearing Paths to the Past” The person states they have an obligation to clear their sidewalk so others can use the sidewalk to get somewhere. In, “To be of use” the person telling the poem explains how they love to be dedicated to doing work even when they do not need to do the work with any effort.

This very well-known poem ‘Sanctuary’ was written in the early ‘50s by Judith Wright. Judith was a prolific Australian poet, critic, and short-story writer. She was also an uncompromising environmentalist and social activist campaigning for Aboriginal land rights. She believed that the poet should be concerned with national and social problems. The poem ‘Sanctuary’ was written as a great expression of environmental concern from her. The poem begins with a shocker. Sanctuary, implicitly, is a place of habitation which is safe. However, the first lines of the first stanza, “The road beneath the giant original trees sweeps on and cannot wait” represents a contrast. Here the road is used metaphorically to symbolise today’s modern developments taking place at the cost of all round natural destruction. The poem then unfolds the gloomy mood of the poet in the description of dangerous driving in the night on the road through the Sanctuary to the city: “only the road ahead is true.” In the last line then she is simply sarcastic: “It knows where it is going: we go too.” In fact the road never knows where it is going, but we know where we are going! The poet subtly asks: do we know where we are going by destroying our own habitation, native forests, plants and animals?

The use of line breaks and symbolism in the two poems “The History Teacher” by Billy Collins and “Outdistanced” by Larry Rubin punctuate the shared theme that a willful lack of self-awareness can quickly lead to a greater societal ignorance of what should shape humanity.

The second poem I chose to react to is called “Close The Gate” by Nancy Kraayenhof. The first time I heard this poem I was at my grandpa’s funeral a couple of years ago. At the time it didn’t mean much to me because I was too young to understand the meaning behind it. I decided to reread it for this assignment and it really struck close to home because my grandpa was a farmer and my dad still is one. I think because I had also heard it and not read it the first time, I missed some important style and language differences that I think could have helped me understand it better the first time.

1. The poem "A Gentle Breeze" is about a breeze that starts off in the city and makes it way to the ocean where it meets its inevitable end. The poet was able to reflect this through its form because the poem follows the contour of how a breeze would be like. The poem starts off by "picking up a leaf", as it says in line 1: "It picked up leaves.". The poet is able to represent this by drawing a leaf around the word 'leaves'.

Life. Such a simple word; so much meaning. Life. Falling, I am on the ground life attacks me with the power of ten thousand volts, stretching my skin and contorting my body, letting me breathe only to do it again. Again and again. Over and over again, life comes and grips me and twirls me around, like in a dance, and makes me believe that I can actually survive it. Then, death, darkness, and everything else rears its ugly head. I think about it because it seems that, for a second, it would not come back. But of course, it always does; the nightmare is always there, and does not care whether I am prepared to face it or not"¦

The poem Beachy Head begins with a narrator who reclines “on thy [Beachy Head’s] stupendous summit” (1). After the narrator leads readers through the idyllic scene at Beachy Head and introduces a character the shepherd, curiously, this first person narrator “I” silently vanishes in the middle of the poem. The third person narrative henceforward dominates the rest of the poem. Instead of the narrator, a stranger, later in the poem referred to as the hermit, comes under the spotlight. Adding one more dimension, this binary narrative scheme thickens the texture of this poem and thus complicates it. Although the narrative revolves around the hermit once he appears, his identity remains ambiguous throughout the whole poem. While the disappearance of first person narrator and the simultaneous abrupt arrival of the anonymous hermit might tempt readers to believe that they are the same person and raise other speculations, the hermit is a breach through which we can understand other characters and the whole poem.

I absolutely love poetry. Poetry can have so much meaning written in the words. When I think of a poem, I think about someone pouring their heart out to me. They use rhythm and schemes to draw us into the words. We talked about “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love,” “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” “On My First Son,” “the Loveliest of Trees, The Cherry Now,” and “My Papa’s Waltz.” All of these poems were short and to the point. However, my favorite was “On My First Son” because it actually made me feel where the author is coming from the best. Yet, I will talk about all of these.

Often times we hear people say, “Whenever I _____, I’m going to leave this town and go somewhere new”. In fact, sometimes we are the ones saying this. This promise is especially heard in high school, when students discuss their college plans. But how many people actually end up leaving the state they live in? How many dare to venture out to different states and countries far away from home? In Poetry of Departures, Philip Larkin (the poet) states that there are only two types of people- those who leave, and those who stay.

Hyperbole and personification is used to indicate how difficult it can be to come to terms with loss and how alone one can feel. The hyperbolic orders in stanza four to take away the features of space and earth, such as ‘pack up the moon…’, which is impossible, is indicative that the narrator has not yet come to terms with the change. The absence of the objects producing light, such as ‘the stars…’, which are expressed through the visual imagery creates a sense of increasing darkness which is parallel to the absence and loneliness experienced by the narrator. The personification of the aeroplanes in stanza two is an aural declaration of how the narrator is feeling. ‘Moaning’ suggests the pain and agony of which the narrator is experiencing.

The narrator continues his idea of being a “poet” by confessing he wishes that “kids will know my headlines off by heart”, as though they were poems taught in schools. Finally, he reflects on “the poems of the decade”: “Stuff ‘em!” and “Gotcha!” In the 1980s these were defining headlines for key cultural moments, but as per the hack’s demand, they have been reduced entirely. Ironically, these have indeed become so well known that few people, certainly of that generation, do not know what they are about. To some extent, by writing the poem, Duffy is complicit in perpetuating them in the popular memory.

My eyes has never been the puffiest. I was sobbing, like a child, the night before my childhood best friend, Myka, leaves for college in the Philippines. She will not be coming back after she finishes college and so, family and friends gathered at the airport to say all our goodbyes. My friends and I gave her a book containing all the memories we’ve experienced together since we were children. We were drowning in tears because we were all going our separate ways. I tried to make people stop crying by being positive and cracking up jokes, yet I was the one bawling harder than anyone. My crying face is the most hideous, monstrous feature that I’m proud of because it made people’s stomach hurt from all the laughing.