Essay on In Memory of Jane Fraser

Along with the death of a loved one or the loss of a significant piece in one’s life comes a time of mourning. How gradually one heals and recuperates from sorrow is personal and cannot be dictated by another’s schedule. In “Snowbanks North of the House,” one significant component is how Bly uses the natural world to represent the continuation of life after death. “And the sea lifts and falls all night, the moon goes on / through the unattached heavens alone” (Bly 19-20). Nature continues on despite someone’s personal anguish. This poem encourages people to relinquish their agony and to return to normal life because the universe pays no attention to you. Sometimes this is easier said than done, as Gonzalez writes in “1999.” The alleviation of despair is not immediate following loss. As shown in this poem, even years after a tragedy, there are lasting effects on people. The speaker tells of the years that have passed since the sibling’s death. “Then the year / my stomach hurt all year, & then / the year no one spoke of you” (Gonzalez 15-17). The speaker explains that as the years pass, people begin to accept the reality of the death and recover. However, the speaker has a sorrowful tone about him or her. After all the years that have gone by, the speaker continues to feel grief and is heartbroken over the death. The speaker is frustrated that no one else seems to reciprocate the

Explain (tell me what image the poem brings to mind)She begins by describing the "death of winter's leaves".

     Frost?s poem delves deeper into the being and essence of life with his second set of lines. The first line states, ?Her early leaf?s a flower.? After the budding and sprouting, which is the birth of nature, is growth into a flower. This is the moment where noon turns to evening, where childhood turns into maturity, and where spring turns into summer. At this very moment is the ripe and prime age of things. The young flower stands straight up and basks in the sun, the now mature teenager runs playfully in the light, and the day and sunlight peak before descending ever so quickly into dusk. The second line of the second set states, ?But only so an hour,? which makes clear that yet again time is passing by and that a beginning will inevitably have an end.

Opportunities for an individual to develop understanding of themselves stem from the experiences attained on their journey through life. The elements which contribute to life are explored throughout Gwen Harwood’s poems, At Mornington and Mother Who Gave Me Life, where the recollection of various events are presented as influences on the individual’s perception of the continuity of life. Both poems examine the connections between people and death in relation to personal connections with the persona’s father or mother. By encompassing aspects of human nature and life’s journey, Harwood addresses memories and relationships which contribute to one’s awareness of life.

The poem “The Widow’s Lament in Springtime” is a poem about a women who has lost her husband of thirty five years. Williams writes in the voice of a grieving woman instead of in his own voice. Now that her husband has died, the widow cannot find joy in her yard that she used to love. The widow may even be considering suicide. Williams, writing in free verse, writes a metaphor comparing the grief of a widow to her blooming yard in the springtime setting a tone of great sadness for the widow.

This poem brought me back to my home town and the wonders and beauty that it brings around winter time, and made me nostalgic with memories of past winters with my family and slightly saddened for those who have never seen the magical ability snow has. This poem reminded me that there are people who live in states where their change in seasons is not as noticeable, as the ones that I grew up with and have come to miss. Similar to many of the romantics, natures true beauty can transform the mundane into a work of art that would never have existed

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.

In stanza 12, she tells us that he has “bit her pretty red heart in two.” Next, she states that he died when she was ten, and when she was twenty years old, she attempted suicide - “…I tried to die, to get back back back to you.” In stanza 13 is where she starts talking about her husband. She says that instead of dying, her friends “stuck her together with glue,” and since she could not die to get back to her father, she would marry someone who was similar.

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.

The environment that one is living in can supply hope. Todd Davis showed this through a seasonal metaphor. The narrator of the poem talks about weather changing and getting better, providing the metaphor. The weather getting warmer and the arrival of spring symbolizes new life and a new start. The narrator ponders, “I’m not sure/ why he couldn’t wait,” then later talks about blossoms opening (Davis 787, 4-5). This quote and other hints about spring are discussing how the new season is bringing new hope for many. The narrator says that “we understand/ the ones who decide to leave us in February” (Davis 787, 5-6). This is discussing how during the winter, life can feel so

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 begins with the poet noticing the beauty around her, the fall colors as the sun sets “Their leaves and fruits seemed painted, but was true, / Of green, of red, of yellow, mixed hue;” (5-6). The poet immediately relates the effects of nature’s beauty to her own spiritual beliefs. She wonders that if nature here on Earth is so magnificent, then Heaven must be more wonderful than ever imagined. She then views a stately oak tree and

Analyzing and interpreting poetry takes time and effort due to the variety of elements each poem may possess as well as understanding those elements chosen and used in the piece of work. In addition, one’s life experiences may influence how one perceives the poem. However, in the poem “Alzheimer’s” by Kelly Cherry, published in 1997 and written during a time of personal struggle for Cherry and her dad, a couple of poetic elements appear more prominent than any others. These are the tone and imagery. Cherry begins the poem with a feeling of insensitivity but by the end transforms the feeling in to one of pity or sadness. Through her careful choice of words and use of similes and metaphors Cherry establishes the tone and imagery throughout the poem in a realistic way regarding this disease and its tug on the emotions one feels when caring for someone with this illness.

In the second stanza of the poem the poet presents the reader with a funeral setting. The mourners are all seated, and a service begins. The poet describes this service as being quite intense ("like a Drum (that) Kept beating—beating"). The intensity of the service causes the poet’s mind to go numb. The numbness represents the death of her mind.

Figuratively, in stanza three, the poem symbolizes the three stages of life: childhood represented by “Children strove” (l. 9), youth represented by “the Fields of Gazing Grains” (l. 11) and the end of the life represented by “the Setting Sun” (l. 12). On the way of her journey, the speaker views children struggling to win in the race in School. She also sees cereal grasses collectively in the field, and at last the speaker perceives with her eyes that the sun is setting on the way of her journey. This stanza gives us a clue of her passing by this world; however the speaker is not able to figure out that she is dead. She simply thinks the sun is setting on a regular basis.