Black Walnut Tree

The mood of the speaker changes to guilt as the speaker and her mother realize they would "crawl" with "shame" and leave an "emptiness" in their father's heart and yard. The author negatively connotes "crawl," "shame," and "emptiness" to invoke a more serious and shameful tone. The beginning of the conveyed a more matter-of-fact and pragmatic tone, but changes into a more sentimental one by the end to convey family is more important than the money. The symbol of the tree represents the family, and connects it to their father's hard work and dedication to the family. If they were to cut it down, it would be symbolic of their betrayal. Imagery of the tree is used to describe the freedom and beauty of the tree as it "swings through another year of sun and leaping winds, of leaves and bounding fruit." The tree represents their family bond and how strong it is even through the "whip-crack of the mortgage."

Most poetry authors give their poems abstract titles with deeper meanings within them, but Oliver did not choose to do that method. As soon as a reader sees the title of her poem, they will have an idea in their head of what the poem will be about. Doing this makes it more simple and easier to read, but at the same time relay an important message that Oliver wants readers to know. The poem revolves around the idea of oxygen and the life it brings to everything, and Oliver’s way of directly giving that hint to readers is in the

Jane Hirshfield connects to nature at her home in Marin County, California this is where she gets her inspiration for her poems. Hirshfield published “Tree” in 2000 as a free verse poem, divided into 4 stanzas and 4 sentences to convey the nature world. The poem represents a “young redwood” (line 2) growing near a house, near a kitchen window. The redwood is already scraping against the window frame of the house, reminding the reader of the “foolish” (line 1) idea of letting it grow there. Humans were created to be one with nature, but as they evolved as a species, they were obligated to choose between the materialistic world or the world of nature.

The diction in the excerpt is an essential component to the dramatization of the plot’s central incident. Jewett uses rich language to intensify the simple nature of the main character Sylvia’s journey up a “great pine-tree.” For example, in describing the tree, the narrator uses personification as he mentions the “huge tree asleep yet in the paling moonlight.” The use of personification harkens back to those universal moments in childhood in which everything alive had human feelings, and creates an emotional attachment between the reader and the tree. Jewett also uses other figurative language, like similes, to relate the grandeur of the tree to the audience. She writes, “It [the tree] was like a great main-mast to the voyaging earth…” In comparing the tree to the great mast of a ship, the author invokes feelings of awe at its size.

Secondly, the speaker of the poem can be described as underprivileged, and this is shown throughout the entire poem. For example, line 1 of the poem it states "some are teethed on a silver spoon” and line 5 it states "some are swaddled in silk and down”. This shows that the speaker is not the same as the person who is teethed on a silver spoon or cared for very carefully. This inclusion also shows that the speaker was not born into a wealthy family and so the speaker must fight for what they need pertaining to themselves and the family.

The first stanza, which contains the son’s childish speech, is short, only three lines. However, by the stanza which contains the son’s angry talkback, the stanza is double in length, having four lines. Each line represents a literal level of maturity and growth that the son has gained. As time moves on, he is able to gain more and more experience in life. As his experience accumulates over time, so does his hostility. His terse, childish begging for his father to simply read another story turns to an angry speech about how he no longer beleievs in his father as an authority figure. Despite this, the son’s psyche changes back, as all this maturation is played out in the father’s head, and when he returns, he is back to his childish self, bu this stanza is the longest in the poem. This suggests that when someone is able to mature enough, they are able to comprehend more of the world than they did before, and are able to act

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.

From her childhood, Hillam grew up with the lilac tree blooming around her mother’s birthday. After her father’s death, her family moves into their grandmother’s house for fear of deportation. She sits with her mother and brothers “And I wanted to see the lilac tree, imagining it full of blossoms. I had always liked the fragrance of lilacs…There was no lilac tree, and Papa was not here to sing his songs of love” (36). She associates the lilac tree with the happiness of her old life. She misses her father and wants desperately to get back to the time where they were all together and life was normal.

The story has two main settings. First, the family’s house symbolizes union but not quite right. The family was tired of the grandmother. There was an atmosphere of oppression and manipulation by the grandmother. For example, from the beginning of the story the author stated, “You all ought to take them somewhere else for a change so they would see different parts of the world and be broad” (O’Connor 485). The grandmother uses this setting to suggest that the grandmother is very demanding. Finally, into the wood O’Connor uses the setting of tall, dark and deep wood to represent something that is difficult to deal with. O’Connor also mentions that “Behind them the line of woods gaped like dark” (490). It explores the dark consequences of death, where the family encounter strangers in the wood and we only learn what’s happening from the noise people make, gunshots and screams. The setting in this story is very good which states expression of mood and it helps us to know the meaning of the

Oliver’s use of gruff and straight to the point stanzas immediately drew me into the poem because I personally enjoy poems that do not beat around the bush. But rather say exactly what they want to convey, making it easier for the reader to interpret. Oliver states “You want to cry aloud for your / mistakes. But to tell the truth the world / doesn't need any more of that sound” (1-3). In these stanzas, Oliver start off the poem by

Predominantly, Oliver structured this poem so that every line (aside from the last) began with a repetitive phrase. The repetition of the phrase “I believe” suggests that the speaker is going through a process of figuring out what circumstances had marred the quality of life for the dead person during their lifetime. Repeating, “I believe” also implies that the speaker is not hesitant but rather confident about their premonitions of the person who has died. With every line, the speaker identifies a different reason that has contributed to the corrosion of the grief-stricken person’s life. The fifth and sixth lines of the poem

end of line six going on to line seven it says “then leaving up the

Immediately following the first statement, Oliver prompts that “You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.” The senseless wandering in a desert in harsh conditions is similar to the biblical story of Moses leading the Isrealites through the desert before reaching the Promised Land. By writing that the reader does not have to wander as a punishment leads into line four and five, where the speaker asserts that instead of being good, “You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” Instead of following what other’s want, the speaker proclaims that the only real necessity is to follow what your natural instincts, you animal, want. The speaker also declares inn lines six and seven that while you are talking about your despair, “the world goes on,” which proves that human traits of complaining and listening to others do not bring you closer to nature. In fact, the world continues as if you had not done anything at all. The poem then contrasts inert objects such as “the sun,” “the prairies,” and “the mountains” with objects that appear to be alive and move such as “the clear pebbles of the rain,” “the deep trees,” and “the rivers.” This compares the unmoving appearance of what society wants in the solid features of nature compared to the living and movement that is only sometimes perceived in the rain, trees, and rivers. The comparison can also be

Furthermore, the narrator in “What Lips my Lips have kiss” by Edna St. Vincent Millay evidently is another victim of abandonment. Although she has had multiple men lie with her emotionally unattached, she’s never acquired a true love. This may be why the men seem to blur altogether at once and why she doesn’t even recall their physical appearance or much of those vague, meaningless nights. Millay incorporates the use of a metaphor of a lonely tree to indirectly characterize herself, evoking the readers’ sense of sight, painting an image of a unaccompanied tree, perhaps in a place full of dead weeds and despair to which all the birds have spread their wings, and flown from. The tree doesn’t bear in mind exactly the amount of birds or how many

The big idea of my poem is how one simple place can have such an important meaning in one's life. In this poem, I used the poetic device of Anaphora with the words “The tree.” I believe this enhances my poem because it really emphasizes how meaningful the tree in throughout the entire story and how no matter where the two boys are in their life, they both seem to find their way back to the tree. Also, I used the poetic device of an oxymoron when I wrote “alone together.” Using these words show that as young kids, Hassan and Amir didn’t need anyone else, they were best friends that all they needed was each other and one and others company. Another poetic device I used was personification when I wrote “the tree that learned” and “the names of the bark split apart and went their separate ways.” Using personification in this poem helped to show that other people/things realized how strong the two boys friendship was and that they almost became one. Also, I used the simile “grew like seeds planted in the ground” because this relates the boys to the tree in the way that they come from a seed in the ground. This creates more of a bond between the boys and the tree because it makes it feel like they are more of equals. Finally, I used alliteration when I wrote, “late loving lifelong…” and this conveys multiple of the feeling Amir has for Hassan.