Distancing And Undistancing : The Ideas Of Man

The excerpt from Mary Oliver’s “Building the House” serves as a way to describe what happens during the poetry writing process. Although Mary Oliver believes that writing poetry is hard work, she uses extended metaphor, juxtaposition, and point of view to describe the writing process in comparison of building a house, which shows that Oliver sees poetry as something that involves mental labor which is a different challenge than physical labor .

What does avoiding problems lead to? Generally speaking, it won’t do anything, if not it will make matters worse. Avoidance or ignorance of a problem will only hinder the truth and we will find ourselves stuck in a mutt. Miss Brill in Katherine’s “Miss Brill” and Sandra in Connie’s “The Man Who Followed His Hand” go through similar experiences of isolation. They are faced with many difficulties, but they turn their heads and look the other way. The problems only follow their steps and catch up to hit them even harder than they would have.

Poetry can sometimes allow one to explore the unknown. However, in some works of poetry, one can realise that some known ideas or values remain relevant to current society. This is certainly applicable to T.S. Eliot’s poems, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Rhapsody on a Windy Night. Eliot’s manipulation of poetic techniques in both these poems allows the responder to realise that some ideas prevail in both modern and post-modern society. These poems explore the unknown phenomena of the obscurity regarding the purpose and meaning of life. This unknown phenomena causes the persona in both texts to resort to a sense of isolation or alienation. Eliot uses poetic techniques such as metaphors and personification to convey his ideas.

In the romantic era, British authors and poets focused on nature and its influence. Two of those poets, Charlotte Smith and William Wordsworth, wrote many pieces on the beauty of nature and their personal experiences with the beaches of England. In “Far on the sands” and “It is a beauteous evening,” Smith and Wordsworth describe their respective experiences on the shore at sunset. Both authors use structure, theme, allusions, and imagery to effectively convey their perceptions of nature. While the sonnets share a setting and the topics of nature and tranquility, Smith’s has a focus on introspection and Wordsworth’s is centered around religion. These have different focuses which achieve different effects on the reader.

`In Robert Gray’s poems, he uses language to capture human experiences. In two of his poems; old house and late ferry, gray has effectively captured human experiences by his varies poetic languages and through insight and feeling. Throughout both texts late ferry and old house, gray’s main message in the poems, with his critical analysis, is the destruction of nature by mankind.

He thought poetry was an art of association, it inspires readers' imagination with symbolism rather than direct imitation of life, and hold the reader's feelings and arouse them to act with passion. His style throughout the 19th century formed the mainstream of American poetry”(1).

Dillard never fully states how or why she has decided to adopt this quality she learned from an animal, but instead discusses the topic more broadly in order for the idea to have more expansive applications. When discussing purity, necessity, and persistency, Dillard states, “I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you.” Not defining her necessity in life or the necessity she believes we should grasp tightly to, directly contributes to the intricacy of this essay. This statement could make her audience think, “How could I relate this to my life?” One could relate this idea to relationships in general, spiritual relationships, or relationships with themselves. The possibilities are endless. Dillard has used her personal experiences to communicate a compelling message of “living as we should”. In some ways, David Searcy also uses these methods to indirectly portray these thoughts of “living in the moment” in his essay “The Hudson River School.” Uncovering the title of Searcy’s essay is substantial in order to find meaning. The Hudson River School was a mid-nineteenth century American art movement by landscape painters whose aesthetic views were influenced by romanticism. A story about the death of a bothersome coyote prevails, but the same idea of connection to the world—rather than our

“Contemplations” by Anne Bradstreet is a poem of thirty-three seven-line stanzas. It has an ABAB CCC rhyme scheme. This complex poem exists as a justification of writing as a unity with God that ends with the questioning of humanity’s placement in the hierarchy of the universe. The theme is presented as a tightly woven structure of different concepts, nature and religion go hand and hand. The poet is conflicted because she has hopes of being able to glorify God, but is hindered by a sense of her own insufficiency. The word contemplation is another word for meditations; therefore, this poem provides the reader with several different scenes of meditation. Some of the scenes include the poet mediating on how God made nature and how it is supposed to mirror Heaven. The poet believes that humans need to meditate on this fact on a daily basis and remind themselves of their placement within the universe. “Throughout the poem the poet ultimately resolves that God alone is eternal and human-made objects, designs and history will fade eventually”

Much of the appeal surrounding science fiction is the fact that a lot of the genre exists far from what we experience in our own world, and far from what exists within our own imagination. The phrase, “cognitive estrangement” has been used to describe the way that a lot of science fiction makes us feel. In his essay, “Estrangement and Cognition,” Darko Suvin describes cognitive estrangement and its relationship with Science fiction as a genre. He writes, “Thus it is not only the basic human and humanizing curiosity that gives birth to SF. Beyond an indirect inquisitiveness, which makes for a semantic game without clear referent, this genre has always been wedded to a hope of finding in the unknown the ideal environment, tribe, state, intelligence, or other aspect of the Supreme Good (or to a fear of and revulsion from its contrary). At all events, the possibility of other strange, covariant coordinate systems and semantic fields is assumed,” which explains that the strange is what drives interest in Science Fiction. He emphasizes that it’s the weird that sets science fiction apart from other genres, including fantasy. This sentiment has been echoed by many other writers. In the same essay, Suvin writes, “The effect of such factual reporting of fictions is one of confronting a set normative system—a Ptolemaic-type closed world picture—with a point of view or look implying a new set of norms; in literary theory this is known as the attitude of estrangement.” This statement

The book Transforming the Inner Man gave me a greater understanding that were very helpful to me. In chapter three on Performance Orientation on page 44, John and Paula Sanford talked about performance orientation which refers neither to the work we do nor the things we accomplish, but to the false motives which impel us. I learned performance orientation is an attitude not a set of behaviors. It is an acceptance of lies about myself, built into myself from infancy. I realized I am angry that I must perform to earn everybody's (including God's) love, affection, appreciation, admiration and acceptance. I realize I will never be good enough, smart enough, attractive, worthy, deserving, or lovable enough to earn it. I realized my anger is often suppressed and I may rebel by sabotaging successes in order to fail.

Through a careful interpretation of A Defense of Poetry by Percy Bysshe Shelley and Democratic Vistas by Walt Whitman, one can gain a holistic sense of poetry, what it is and what it does, that can be applied to literary texts of all times. One can better understand Allen Ginsberg's "America" through an examination of the aforementioned texts as well. The literary merit of the poem is best recognized through Walt Whitman's Democratic Vistas, although Percy Bysshe Shelley's A Defense of Poetry also contributes some very critical parallels to the poem and its characteristics.

Robert Frost’s poetic techniques serve as his own “momentary stay against confusion,” or as a buffer against mortality and meaninglessness in several different ways; in the next few examples, I intend to prove this. Firstly, however, a little information about Robert Frost and his works must be provided in order to understand some references and information given.

Written by the poet Wallace Stevens, “The Plain Sense of Things” creates an atmosphere of imagination, reality and symbolism of natural progression. Stated by POETRY FOUNDATION, Wallace Stevens is one of America’s most respected poets (Wallace Stevens, 2017). Wallace Stevens work is known for its imagination and relates to both English Romantics and French symbolists and is considered one of the major American poets of the century (Stevens, Wallace 2014). In “The Plain Sense of Things”, it is evident that imagination is a huge aspect within the poem.

“The relationship between the energies of the inquiring mind that an intelligent reader brings to the poem and the poem’s refusal to yield a single comprehensive interpretation enacts vividly the everlasting intercourse between the human mind, with its instinct to organise and harmonise, and the baffling powers of the universe about it.”

In her poem “Patchwork”, built of nine stanzas varying lengths, Boland’s persona finds herself in her dining room late at night working on a sewing project while contemplating the universe. Utilizing various stylistic and structural techniques, Boland’s intent is to reconcile the tension between chaos and order for the purpose of ascertaining the meaning of existence.