E. E. Cumming's Poem 'A/L/Iness'

Hardy initially uses similes to illustrate the bleak landscape, referring to the “sun [as] white” and leaves as “grey”, to emphasise his sorrowful opinion of love. Specific diction of bleak words strongly communicates his message of love being hopeless and sorrowful. He also uses personification of “starving sod”, to allude that the earth is frozen and desiring nutrients which it lacks. This creates an undesirable setting and mood of despair and sorrow expressing how he perceives love. In contrast, Browning orientates an inviting, cheerful setting through the use of similes. The scene is vibrant with “little waves that leap” and “warm sea-scented beach[es]”, allowing the reader to perceive it as joyful. This illustrates how he regards love as an uplifting experience, which brings people together. He structures his poem with no stanzas, allowing for the reader to follow the radiant journey of love. In contrast, Hardy includes stanzas allowing him to express his message though new topics. They consist of the bleak setting, his former partners eyes, her bitter smile and his message of how all love disappoints. He includes an enclosed rhyme scheme, presenting the entrapment of love, expressing no freedom and joy in relationships. In opposition, Browning uses anaphora of “and” to express how the speaker’s mind is not in the moment, looking ahead to the future where they reunite with their lover. It is evident that Hardy conveys his message of love as sorrowful and full of despair, in contrast Browning message reveals love as gracious and

The tone of despair and loneliness is carried on to the proceeding stanzas, and is more evident in the last two. By saying that “Water limpid as the solitudes that flee

In ‘I kneel to pick frail melancholy flowers among ashes and loam’ a tone of loneliness and sadness is established as the persona enters. Harwood describes the violets as ‘frail’ and ‘melancholy’, terms that arn’t usually associated with flowers. This is also explored in the juxtaposition of ‘ashes’ and ‘loam’. Ash is symbolic of death and decay which contradicts the ‘loam’, symbolic of life and birth. The persona’s dark and unpleasant perceptions reveal their uncertainty and state of mind. The present tense indicates the persona’s adulthood and their sense of longing and unsatisfaction conveyed through the nostalgic delivery of

Better said, those swallows and honeysuckles existed only because of that romance that just ended. And when the poet uses the simile "…drops of dew… like tears of the day," it also symbolizes the ending of the love affair.

The seasons in the poem also can be seen as symbols of time passing in her life. Saying that in the height of her life she was much in love and knew what love was she says this all with four words “summer sang in me.” And as her life is in decline her lovers left her, this can be told by using “winter” as a symbol because it is the season of death and decline from life and the birds left the tree in winter. The “birds” can be seen as a literal symbol of the lovers that have left her or flown away or it can have the deeper meaning that in the last stages of our life all of our memories leave us tittering to our selves.

EE Cummings was and is still one of the most well-regarded and unique poets of all time. His poems were unusual, but his strange way of writing is what grabbed people’s attention and made him so special. Many incidents in Cummings’ life affected his poetry, his experiences and his personality, which could clearly be observed in the poems he wrote. Cummings became such a well-known poet due to the effect of his life events on his poetry, his peculiar writing style and his strong connection with the topics of love and lust. The struggles and successes of his life developed his poetry in a huge manner.

What it means is that sometimes meaning has no meaning. Its meaning is meaningless. It’s only meaning is what you see and what you hear. Take for example Document A, titled “l(a”. The poem shows various centrally focused letters, each one in pairs of two but three phrases. “One”, “l”, and “iness”. Together they’d spell out “oneliness”. Not a genuine word, is it? How could this hold any meaning? They don’t. It’s up to you to interpret it. The way I see it, there’s an isolated “l” before the parentheses. The parentheses are later closed off, meaning the “l” isn’t part of it. The isolated “l” from the word “loneliness”? Ironic. And what’s inside the parentheses? The phrase spells out “aleaffalls”. Rearrange it, and you acquire “A leaf falls.” “Loneliness.” This creates imagery, a vivid picture in your mind, showing a single leaf, gently falling, swaying back and forth, along with the words. That’s not what the poem described, though. All it said was the word loneliness and stated a leaf was falling. Yet the formatting of the words, it appealed to my senses, it let me create an image in my head that wasn’t even

Reflections Within is a non-traditional stanzaic poem made up of five stanzas containing thirty-four lines that do not form a specific metrical pattern. Rather it is supported by its thematic structure. Each of the five stanzas vary in the amount of lines that each contain. The first stanza is a sestet containing six lines. The same can be observed of the second stanza. The third stanza contains eight lines or an octave. Stanzas four and five are oddly in that their number of lines which are five and nine.

Many people believe that this mimics Whitman's life. Living in a life of social separation much of the time, he still managed to succeed not only with his writing, but also in life itself. However, in line five Whitman goes on to say that he wonders how the tree could grow such joyous leaves while being alone. He himself says that he could not survive if put in the same situation. Whitman did however lead a joyous and happy life in many peoples opinion, even though he did not enjoy the social life many other had during his lifetime. His own opinion of himself not being lonely may be frayed in order to spare the image he proposes to the public in his writings. The next few lines are interesting because of the way they could possible spell out Whitman's life. In the poem, he breaks of a twig, wraps some moss around it, and takes it to he room and places it in plain view. This may parallel his life by way of his memory. The twig may represent pieces of his memory that were enjoyable to him. He then takes the twig and places it in his room signifying that he wants to be able to constantly see those fond memories. Again Whitman replies by saying he did not do this to remind him of his friends, but in reality he may have just said this to help keep a good report with his readers about his lifestyle.

The speaker refers to the night as his acquaintance. This implies that the speaker has a lot of experience with the night, but has not become friends with it. Thus, because even the night, which has been alongside the speaker in comparison to anything or anyone else, is not a companion to the speaker, the idea of loneliness is enhanced. In addition, “rain” (2) is used to symbolize the speaker’s feelings of gloom and grief, because there is continuous pouring of the rain, which is unlikely to stop. In line 3, “city light” is used to convey the emotional distance between the speaker and society. Although the speaker has walked extensively, he has not yet interacted with anyone – thus distancing himself even further from society. Moreover, the moon, in lines 11 to 12, is used as a metaphor of the speaker’s feelings. The speaker feels extremely distant from society that he feels “unearthly.” The idea of isolation and loneliness in this poem is used as the theme of the poem; and the use of the setting and metaphors underscores the idea that the speaker feels abandoned from society.

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

Throughout “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” William Wordsworth shows his relationship with nature through his choice of diction, fantastic descriptions, and shifting mood of his poem. There are also many words and phrases that Wordsworth included into his poem that shows how he feels about nature. These phrases are well written, extremely descriptive, and show how Wordsworth is influenced by the wild: “I wandered lonely as a cloud”, “When all at once I saw a crowd, a host, of golden daffodils", “Continuous as the stars that shine and twinkle on the milky way, they stretched in never-ending line along the margin of a bay: ten thousand saw I at a glance, tossing their heads in sprightly dance”, “The waves beside them danced; but they out-did the sparkling waves in glee”, “I gazed—and gazed—but little thought what wealth the show to me had brought”, and “For oft, when on my couch I lie in vacant or in pensive mood, they flash upon that inward eye [...] and then my heart with pleasure fills, and dances with the daffodils.” Another phrase, which indicates that the flowers were so beautiful that no true poet could be sad in their presence, also builds upon Wordsworth’s relationship with nature. These particular lines in “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” show how Wordsworth’s mood shifts from somber and lonely to joyous and content. The lines also show how the gorgeousness of nature sticks with

Poetry Pairing 2 - “Sestina: Like” You probably, like, don’t realize it, but the word “like” is extremely overused in the english language today. The New York Times Poetry Pairing “Sestina: Like” covers the excessive use of “like” and the changes in linguistics over time. A.E Stallings’ poem “

Some times Cummigs will forgot to place spaces between words on purposes. This uses is seen in Cumming’s poem “Buffalo Bill”. In this poem man of words are jumbled together to create something new: “onetwothreefourfive” (Cummings line 6). By jumbling words together Cumming creates a fast paced verse that pushes the poem along. This fast paced attitude in this poem show just how quick Buffalo Bill’s life and other people’s lives can be. An example of a conventional with Cumming’s distinctive mark barely noticeable would be “Anyone lived in a pretty how town”. This poem displays how uninformed people can become: “Anyone lived in a pretty how town, (with up so floating man bells down)” (Cummings line 1-2). The only display of E.e.Cumming’s distinctive

By examining the poetic devices and how Whitman uses them to heighten the sense of death and different facets of grief it becomes obvious that while both poems intimately explore death, grief, and morbidity, When Lilacs last in the Dooryard Bloom'd presents a more generalized, transcendental, mournful representation of grief, the poem Out of the Cradle Endlessly rocking confronts the reader with the stark pain and reality of death