I Have a Rendezvous With Death- Alan Seeger

In the poem, by Emily Dickinson, the speaker conveys multiple literary devices to show the complexity of the death of her friend on “The last night she lived.” The speaker utilizes juxtaposition in the first stanza in order to show an extreme pain towards the idea of death yet treat it as an understatement. Another emotion the speaker conveys through diction is how inevitable the death of her friend is, how she can do nothing about it other than be with her by her side. In the third stanza the speaker utilizes imagery when she talks about one room being filled with death and the other of those who will live. Lastly, the speaker facilitates diction to convey the jealousy for the woman who has died and no longer has to deal with emotions when she says,” A jealousy for her arose.” All of these emotions and actions all contribute to the complex attitude the speaker portrays in the poem.

The stanza summarizes the theme of the poem: The sluggish, difficult and sometimes painful process of standing by while we and the things we love inevitably decay and eventually die. The poet compares the shift of season to the termination of life as a consequence of the passage of time. Time is described through the powerful personification “the hour that sucks our life”. It “drops the late wasp from the pear”, a beatiful metaphor for death. The gradual nature of this process is illustrated in the final line of the poem through a metaphor describing how the “scent” in a “rose tree’s thread” gradually “draws thin” as winter approaches and eventually “snaps upon the air”, another beautiful metaphor for death. The image of death as a “snap” reminds the reader that although the process of decaying is slow and gradual, death itself happens in a split

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.

By the end of the poem there is another shift in tone. The tone takes on a more hopeful meaning. Now, Bryant uses the spring season to compare to a new age. He mentions, “The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes/ In the full strength of years, matron, and maid,/ The bow'd with age, the infant in the smiles.”(68-70) The rebirth of human life compares to nature in the sense that when nature is reborn in springtime everything turns green. The reader ends the poem with an enlightened sense of feeling instead of the dark and gloomy feeling they felt at the beginning of the poem.

The poem at first comes off as a simple poem about spring and winter, but there are many hidden meanings as well. As well as the fear of the end of the world.

Death is inescapable and shows no partiality or distinction. The author had his first encounter with death when he was four years old. About ten years later he would lose his mother to diabetes. Eighteen years later death struck again. He lost his dad to a battle with cancer over the course of four months. This happened two weeks prior to his wedding. Ten months later the author would deal with the deal of his mother-in-law.

Ironically, spring rain is not described to provide full rejuvenation to the roots, but rather as solely giving temporary nutrition. The association of spring with hopelessness indicates that a chance for mental rejuvenation and return of joy provides no solace or comfort to the war-torn society. In addition, the poet goes on to describe the Winter in the subsequent lines by stating:

Death is inevitable and the theme of this poem makes the reader come to an understanding that without appreciating the cathartic end of one’s life, we cannot truly live our lives. The structure of this poem

Alan Seeger’s life was full of possibilities until it tragically came to an end. The life story of Alan Seeger was tragic. He was born in the city of New York City; he knew what he wanted to do when he went to Harvard in 1906 which was a poet (Hart). After recently graduating Seeger spent two bohemian years living in New York City pursuing the poetic life. After New York Seeger moved to Paris at the beginning of World War I. Seeger enlisted in the French Foreign Legion and then was sadly killed at the Battle of the Somme (Seeger). The speaker of the poem is Alan Seeger, the tone of the poem is melancholy and the setting of the poem is a battlefield. The poem had two structures an internal and external structure which the internal structure of the poem is a reflective poem and the external structure of this poem is that it is a free verse poem with irregular rhythmic cadence which “has three stanzas of six, eight and ten lines that employ irregular rhyme” (Silet). Alan Seeger wrote the poem I Have A Rendezvous with Death when he joined the first World War. What Seeger was trying to convey throughout the Poem is that he is anxious with him coming face to face with death and Seeger also regrets leaving his behind his “past pleasures and loves, he does not fear or abhor death. Instead he is stoic making his rendezvous a matter of honor” (Poetry Foundation).

In the first stanza, the third-person semi-omniscient speaking voice establishes the conclusive paradigm of the poem: death by suicide. Though the death of the individual is a highly conventional type of tragic presentation, the way in which this presentation is established in the “Dirge” is. The absent function of any emotional signifiers is replaced by a parody of the numerical fluctuations of the stock market. The unnamed man’s death is never mentioned openly, and the circumstances resulting in his death are highly trivialized. Consistent with the market allusion, the reader is left to speculate exactly what sort of concrete events are occurring within in the first stanza. From the very start, the poem challenges any threnodic conventions by disassociating the “subject” of death from the human subject.

Emily Dickinson’s poem, “465 I Heard a Fly Buzz—when I died—”, uses its form to emphasize the distracting elements in a human’s life. In the case of this poem, the appearance of multiple caesuras throughout the poem asserts the distractions the speaker is experiencing. With the help of the caesuras, the readers get to experience death as real life and not like as it is seen in the movies and this shows that distractions are around us at all time. Along with caesuras, Dickinson structures her poem with four stanzas. Each stanza represents the speaker getting closer and closer to death. the third stanza, however, there is a shift. In addition to caesuras, the shift brings in to play the element of distraction, which is the main theme of the poem.

There is two characters, and one is Mother Nature and she is the one that is trying to get spring to stay and is starting spring at the beginning. Another character is Eden, he is referring to Eden as the garden in the Bible which was beautiful and perfect. Though in the poem " Eden sank to grief" it's talking about something perfect being down and gloomy.

The reader, Mankind, is influenced to look into his or her own perception of death. Mankind first thinks about the constant dread of death to come and take them from their life as they read the first few lines. These lines illustrate the behavior of fear in which him or her will “shudder, and grow sick at heart” (Bryant 13). Then the setting of death shifts to nature and equality, leaving mankind to be intrigued and to question whether what they believe is entirely wrong. In the last paragraph Bryant asks the reader to accept death and “approach thy grave, / Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch / About him and lies down to pleasant dreams” (Bryant 79).

The season that is taking place is spring, after a death you would expect the season and setting to be winter; cold, dark, and gloomy. This is how Chopin uses imagery to show Mrs. Mallards conflict with her

In the Great War, as it was called at the time, boys were drafted from nearly every country in Europe, but Seeger, an American, was a volunteer to fight against the Central Powers with the Foreign Legion because he felt so strongly about their cause. The idealistic rhetoric of a young man in his position is on full display here. However, he knows that this choice will most likely lead to his untimely demise. The speaker shares this when he says “When Spring comes back with rustling shade/And apple-blossoms fill the air— / I have a rendezvous with Death.” This presents a strange juxtaposition because as life is being renewed with the changing of the seasons, he expects that his own flame will be snuffed out. He is still sure that this is the correct path for him and he will not waver from his purpose. “I have a rendezvous with death,” he repeats, again and again. He knows where he is headed, but he “shall not fail that