The poem “To my Dear and Loving Husband” by Anne Bradstreet, is not just an exceedingly felt expression of a wife’s marital love and commitment to her husband, as it is about a puritan women who is supposed to be reserved but she makes it her obligation to enlighten her husband of her devotion. A thorough analysis of the poem’s paradox, hyperbole, imagery and repetition reveals how she conveys her message.
Anne Bradstreet's poem, To My Dear and Loving Husband, shows her profound love and undying affection for her husband. For a Puritan woman who is supposed to be reserved, Bradstreet makes it her obligation to enlighten her husband of her devotion. She conveys this message through her figurative language and declarative tone by using imagery, repetition, and paradoxes.
Moreover, women get their perspectives of love, and men in general, from their past experiences or from what they’ve seen around them. One loses hope on being happy when a traumatic event in a relationship of any kind happens. Rooney remarks: “A feminist isn’t born a feminist; she is born from her understanding of the world and how her parents conducted themselves with each other…experiences are the platforms in which any life is held by” (15). Despair is the perfect way to describe how one feels when life doesn’t turn out the way one thinks it will. Sexton’s poem shows her view on the world and the reader can tell that she has a sort of grudge with happiness.
In this stylistic analysis of the lost baby poem written by Lucille Clifton I will deal mainly with two aspects of stylistic: derivation and parallelism features present in the poem. However I will first give a general interpretation of the poem to link more easily the stylistic features with the meaning of the poem itself.
The poem, ‘Starry Night’, by Anna Sexton, which was interpretation of a personal view for Van Gogh’s artwork, “Starry Night”. The prophetical nature of Anne Sexton 's spiritual poetry, Starry Night, ensues the melancholy of humanity. The poem depicts Sexton 's interpretation of the immense psychological suffering of a "religious" human being. By addressing, Van Gogh 's work caught with a deep understanding of an emptiness of the soul and also the familiar warfare of his mental distresses. Sexton showcases the shared tiredness of life, by describing religion as an example of extreme emotional desperation. However, the poem dilutes the attention of many optimistic people who do not share its attire, instead an interpretation must be attained by those who can have a glimpse of their own eternal suffering. Although, the poetry has tragic finishing, it re-opens for me personally, the divinity of melancholy.
The poem “I Am Learning to Abandon the World” by Linda Pastan is closely similar in context with Sharon Olds’ “Still Life in Landscape.” Each of the two poems narrates an ordeal with the persona being the writer of the poem. The persona directly speaks to the audience. However, these two works differ in the number of lines, the length and appearance of each line and the entire apparition of the poems. The two authors employ a similar tone as both use a melancholic and reflective tone. The poets present their thoughts in a simple diction and understandable language. It is evident that both authors have an impeccable interest in narrating their story.
Love can be quite a difficult topic to write about, expressing one’s intimate and innermost emotions requires a great level of dedication and honesty. If done correctly, the outcome is truly stunning. John Donne’s “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” and Katherine Philips’s “To Mrs. M.A. at Parting” are two masterpieces of this genre. These poems depict the concept of true love so meticulously that the reader cannot help but envy the relationships presented. Perhaps the reason that these works are so effective is due to the fact that they are incredibly similar to each other. Although some differences are present when it comes to structure and gender concerns, the poems share the same theme of love on a spiritual level and show many parallels in meaning.
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.”
The poem starts with the statement, “a woman who loves a woman is forever young” (Sexton 1-3). These beginning lines set a common theme of eternal youthfulness and lesbian desire. In her introduction, Sexton also plays on the imagery of old versus young in her descriptions of “old breast against young breast”
In Julia Alvarez’s poem “On Not Shoplifting Louise Bogan’s The Blue Estuaries”, the poet uses poetic devices to convey the speaker’s discovery of a poem that catches her attention so much that she feels a rush of excitement that wants to hold on to as long as she can. She discovers about herself how captivated she can be from a poem and how she would even shoplift to keep the rush. The exciting tone is revealed through the entrancement of the girl.The smooth, calming imagery shows how impacted she was by the poem and how uncertain she was about her situation. The selection of detail shows how the book was unique and how she eventually saw who she was becoming.
The poem, “For That He Looked Not upon Her” by George Gascoigne exemplifies how the speaker suffered from love, something that many people believe one should feel positive about. The title delivers a despairing tone by allowing the audience to believe that the speaker can no longer look the woman he loved in the eye. Conflicting with the despairing tone, the speaker develops a complex attitude with the use of structure, metaphors, diction, and desire.
Gwen Harwood’s poetry endures to engage readers through its poetic treatment of loss and consolation. Gwen Harwood’s seemingly ironic simultaneous examination of the personal and the universal is regarded as holding sufficient textual integrity that it has come to resonate with a broad audience and a number of critical perspectives. This is clearly evident within her poems ‘At Mornington’ and ‘A Valediction’, these specific texts have a main focus on motif that once innocence is lost it cannot be reclaimed, and it is only through appreciating the value of what we have lost that we can experience comfort and achieve growth.
She explains that “the strict and inviolable regard [he] [has] ever paid to truth, gives [her] pleasing hopes that [he] will not swerve from her dictate…” What she means by this is that John should not ignore the truth, and it should be the main basis of his life. She gives “truth” human characteristics as she shares her hopes that he will not disregard “her”.
“My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning and “ The Rape of the lock” by Alexander Pope are two poems that convey a theme of love and objectification towards women.For instance, both poems are similar in their use imagery and metaphors to grasp their audience attention. For example, in “My last duchess” the author shows the wife in the poem as an item controlled by her husband and uses his love for her as an excuse to abuse his power. Her life is ruled by him and she would have to deal with his insane jealousy because his obsessiveness is dominating his reality of his relationship . In this poem the male role has many characteristics one of them being paranoid and not helping him reflect on reality by him owning shrine of items that belonged to all his earlier wife’s. His late wife is shown as a piece of imagery where she is kept on a wall trapped not able to leave his sight or be allowed interact with others. (Browning,1-2) In “ The Rape of the Lock “ the poem starts off with Belinda,the main character, in a dream sent to her by her guardian Sylph. The dream sends a message to Belinda that she must be careful with all men in her life once she has received the message she awakens to a love letter at her sight and forgets the dream in its entirety. Throughout the course of the poem Belinda’s Sylphs are required to protect her chastity and help her contain her purity.. The man in her life is using her as an item and not as a human being.Pope encourages these characteristics
Several poems in the anthology explore the intensity of human emotion. Explore this theme, referring to these three poems in detail and by referencing at least three other poems from your wider reading.’