Leningrad Cemetery Winter Of 1941 Analysis

In the poem “Song of Napalm,” it is a straight narrative of what it is like to live with memories from such a horrible war. “Song of Napalm” follows a Viet Nam soldiers' memories of a scene he once saw. His mind tries to distort the image of a girl getting bombed and burning in front of his eyes into a pleasant scene. The effort to make the scene pleasurable is the mind's way of trying to protect itself from the horrific incident that actually happened.

Trees are important not only physically but also spiritually and for many this fact is lost. Physically trees provide humans with beauty and a healthy ecosystem. Spiritually trees provide humans a connection to nature. Their importance has been lost in our modern times as humans further separate themselves from nature. While forgotten by many, their actions still resonate. The two modern poems “The Tree Agreement” by Elise Paschen and “Living Tree” by Robert Morgan trumpet the value trees hold in comparable ways. In the poem “The Tree Agreement” the speaker argues for the benefits of the Siberian Elm against a disagreeing neighbor. By structuring the poem in this manner, the poet highlights how people are blind to the services trees provide while simultaneously highlighting said services. The tree is portrayed almost as a friend or ally to the speaker. The speaker describes not only to the significance of the tree to humans like the neighbor and the speaker but also to the other living creatures surrounding them. The poem “Living Tree” focuses on the actions performed by trees in cemeteries. This poem follows a more spiritual route when compared to Paschen’s poem. This poem describes the process those who have been buried go through and the role trees play in this process. The trees in this poem are portrayed as lightning rods for the chemicals and spirits of the dead. This relationship is portrayed positively, as the trees are a monument to the passing of life. These poems

Imagery techniques in this poem consist of key words, an example is “They’re rolling them out of the deep-freeze locker on the tarmac” this gives the readers an image of dead bodies being rolled out of an aeroplane onto the runway. By using a visual approach in the poem, the poet can better express his feelings on war to the reader(s).

During times of war, it is inevitable for loss to be experienced by all. In the poems “The Black Rat” and “The Photograph” written by Iris Clayton and Peter Kocan respectively, the idea of loss is explored through an omniscient narrator recalling a soldier’s involvement in warfare. While Clayton writes of a soldier’s abrupt loss of hope and how this experience negatively affects his life, Kocan explores how the loss of a loved one affects a family sixty years later. While both poems incorporate similar techniques in imagery and narration, the time setting for each poem is different as “The Black Rat” is set in Tobruk, Libya during World War 2 and “The Photograph” is set during World War 1.

In Kenneth Slessor’s 1942 poem ‘Beach Burial’ he also comments about survival in war and the power in distinctively visual ways through particular words. He relies upon adjectives, personification and the use of imagery to describe the suffering.

Imagery: The author uses imagery to describe the Russian prisoners’ lives in the camps. This imagery makes them look pathetic and frail, causing the reader to feel empathetic and sorry for them. Also we see the same idea of imagery within the hospitals and what happens in them. The description of gore and fear emphasizes the theme of death

The poem Sorrow by Martin Dejnicki shares many similar themes with The Things They Carried by Tim O'brien. Both works of writing display war as a painful and and traumatizing experience. However, this poem reflects the message in The Things They Carried chapter, “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong” most accurately. Both the chapter and the poem share the theme that war can take away a person’s humanity. In the lines, “We've dug a hole, called a trench, Humanity is gone, replaced with stench” (Dejnicki) the author is trying to convey that a soldier in war can have their humanity striped away and uses the symbolism of “stench” to describe the foul persona that may replace it.

The poem “Hhomecoming” written by Bruce Dawe in 1968 is about the dead and their neglectful treatment by their living comrades. The poem effects its audience deeply by giving them a view into how the dead soldiers were treated like objects, which comes out through the poem in lines such as ‘...rolling them out of the deep freeze lockers…’ and ‘they’re tagging them…’. The poetic techniques used throughout the poem was repartition by using these poetic technique it gave the reader a deep understanding into how the poem portrays war as terrible, harsh and depressing and the mistreatment of the dead by repeating. By using the simple word ‘they’re’ it gives the audience the understanding that it wasn’t just one person it was many. ‘they’re zipping

In “September, 1918”, Amy Lowell shows her readers an interesting and illuminating poem. That war can be an ugly time and the people that experience it often seems to live in a “broken world” (19). To fight an evil, sometimes war is needed, nonetheless it is still costly to the people living through the war. Some in a literal sense, like soldiers fighting in a war, while some in a physical sense by the world that they now see and live in. I find the poem truly interesting though, in how the author shows that even in war we can still hold onto hope for more promising days. Lowell portrays a melancholy mood throughout her poem that makes her readers thinking about war but also the hope of it being over.

In “Old Solider”, Charles Simic portrays a ten-year-old boy who is trying to escape the harsh realities of war through his imagination. Simic uses metaphors, descriptive phrases, and irony to further develop his poem with an aspiring, grim, and mischievous tone. This piece of work is told from a ten-year-old civilians point of view who is the midst of chaos. The author was born in 1938 in Yugoslavia just before the start of World War II in 1939. The war continued through 1945 causing numerous fatalities and injuries. Consequently, young Simic was forced to be surrounded by the bloodshed which left an everlasting imprint on his life. Simic is a realistic poet; therefor, most of his poems were influenced by his environment.

War is one of the most controversial topics in today’s society. However, because poetry tends to focus on the experiences of the author, it is quite widespread. Grief, fear, and pain are some of the most prevalent emotions in literature. In his poem, “Facing It,” Yusef Komunyakaa tells his experience with war and how it has affected him. The poem begins with the author experiencing a loss of identity as he is at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Then, he experiences nostalgia whilst reminiscing his past. Lastly, he experiences flashbacks that deter his ability to distinguish the past from the present. Komunyakaa wastes no time in loading his poem with themes. He touches on grief, war, gaining control, acceptance, and sentimentality. The

The author uses many different poetic tools, such as imagery and structure, to convey the theme of facing memories. In the beginning of the poem the narrator looks over the names of fallen comrades in the stone wall of the Vietnam War Memorial. From the very first lines

The destruction of war causes so much pain in most people’s hearts. When people picture the destruction of cities and landscapes from wars it’s a lost feeling inside of hopelessness. War has an emotional and physical devastation that cannot be rivaled. In the poem “Facing It” by Yusef Konmunyakaa shows more of an emotional side of wars compared to “Six National Guards Blown Up Together” by Peg Lauber shows more of a physical and emotional side. This writer is contrasting both of the poems based on the imagery of the destruction of human life.

Poets frequently utilize vivid images to further depict the overall meaning of their works. The imagery in “& the War Was in Its Infancy Then,” by Maurice Emerson Decaul, conveys mental images in the reader’s mind that shows the physical damage of war with the addition of the emotional effect it has on a person. The reader can conclude the speaker is a soldier because the poem is written from a soldier’s point of view, someone who had to have been a first hand witness. The poem is about a man who is emotionally damaged due to war and has had to learn to cope with his surroundings. By use of imagery the reader gets a deeper sense of how the man felt during the war. Through the use of imagery, tone, and deeper meaning, Decaul shows us the

In the opening stanza of War Photographer, references to religion, ‘light is red’, ‘church’, ‘priest’, ‘Mass’, ‘All flesh is grass’, are very prominent and symbolic. The photographer is metaphorically described as a priest preparing to say Mass, with the names of countries in war instead of words of a service, and with the red light of the darkroom symbolizing the church tabernacle lamp. This metaphor reminds us of the transience of life, when one death can mean so little. Likewise in Lament, the repetition of ‘For’ at the start of each verse brings a chanting-like effect, which reflect religion and ritualism. The entire poem is almost like a song, a desolate tune of mourning for the lost lives. In addition, ‘pulsing burden’, also suggests a rhythmic and regular beat to the poem. This phrase in itself is a paradox, where pulsing represents energy and liveliness, whereas burden represents a weight and unpleasantness; it reflects the burden of war on the country, repressing animals and humans who try to