Literary Devices In Poetry

Poetry is known to be a creative thought or impassioned feeling using language and is expressed in many places in the world. A poem can have many different meanings according to how an individual interprets it. Various literary devices are used to bring out that interpretation and the sense of what the person thinks that is going to happen. In the poem “Saturday at the Canal” by Gary Soto and “Nothing Better” by The Postal Service the theme is sometimes in life you may go through tough times but it is up to you whether they will continue. Some literary devices that show the coming up from tough times are figurative language, imagery, and the mood of the poems/songs.

In literature, themes shape and characterize an author’s writing making each work unique as different points of view are expressed within a writing’s words and sentences. This is the case, for example, of Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “Annabel Lee” and Emily Dickinson’s poem “Because I could not stop for Death.” Both poems focus on the same theme of death, but while Poe’s poem reflects that death is an atrocious event because of the suffering and struggle that it provokes, Dickinson’s poem reflects that death is humane and that it should not be feared as it is inevitable. The two poems have both similarities and differences, and the themes and characteristics of each poem can be explained by the author’s influences and lives.

Everyone will die one day. It is a true, but unpleasant fact. Since death is therefore universal, it is easy to understand why a theme of death occurs so often in films and literature. Poetry is no exception to this trend. Poetry is filled with references to death or dying, as death is one of the most significant human conditions. A number of poets in particular have used death frequently in their writing. Emily Dickinson and Dylan Thomas are two of those poets. Emily Dickinson was born in 1830 and lived in Massachusetts. Much of her work had strong themes of death and it is believed now that she was depressed. Her poetry consists mostly of slant rhyme or near rhyme, which is seen in her famous poem “Because I could not stop for Death”. Dylan Thomas was born in 1914 and was from South Wales. He struggled with alcoholism for much of his life. When he wrote his famous poem “Do not go gentle into that good night” his father was in the midst of a battle with cancer and it is believed the poem is about his father. These two poems both have a theme of death and explore human mortality, however each poet has a different approach to this theme.

“Life asked death, Why do people love me but hate you? Because you are a beautiful lie and I am a painful truth”. In “Death be not proud”, John Donne takes the abstract idea of Death and put it into a personified man. In which he speaks lowly of Death. Which makes the readers less fearful of Death. With his serious tone he makes fun of the fact that Death is not supreme over anything, actually says that he is a slave. The theme of the sonnet is that Death is not to be feared by anyone.

Writers are able to write their songs with so much meaning and thought because of the use of specific literary devices. These literary devices help to get the point across to the reader. Songs and poems today both use literary devices. An example of a song and a poem that have the same theme and tone, and both use literary devices are Just a Dream by Nelly, and Dreaming of You by Bobby E. Loanes. The song and the poem both express the writer's love for someone and how much he dreams of being with that person. Just a Dream is an example showing that song lyrics have become equal to poetry. Song lyrics have evolved and incorporate poetic devices, which make them an equal art form to poetry.

Author’s use their writing to discuss death in different ways. Robert Browning’s poem “Porphyria’s Lover” has few similarities with “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night” by Dylan Thomas. These authors have drastic differences when talking about death. Browning discusses how killing is a power play in a poem about the speaker gaining control, and Thomas talks about the transience of life in a poem about fighting death.

In the poem “Death be not proud,” by John Donne the poet personifies death as a person not worthy of the respect and feat that he receives. From the words used in the poem, the reader gets the idea that it was written a long time ago, that being said it does not take away from the meaning nor is it hard to understand what they mean since the poet uses them in the literal meaning. The poem constructed in a way that is looks and sounds as the though the speaker is talking to Death in person. It sounds as though the speaker pities death, and the role that he plays in life. The speaker almost goes as far as to taunt death saying, “Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.” (4) He obviously does not fear death, nor does he think others

In the first stanza of Holy Sonnet VI, Donne presents Death through the perspective of the speaker, as the very first line, conveys to the reader how the speaker dying. “This is my play’s last scene”. This metaphor of the play, acts as a euphemism, for the speaker’s slow death. Furthermore, Donne also uses a semantic field of measurement, to display the speaker’s deteriorating condition. “last mile”, “last inch” and “last pace”. This shows the reader, how Donne is presenting death, as gradually, eating away at the speaker, coaxing him to die. These measurements used, along with the lexical choice of “last” being repeated, demonstrates how the figure of Death, has power over the speaker and taking the speaker for his own. This is how Donne presents Death, in the first stanza, as a being with immense power and control, over life and destiny for all.

The progression of societal beliefs regarding our approach towards death is dependent upon the changing nature of both cultural and historical contexts. In Donne’s Holy Sonnet ‘Death be not proud’ he uses second person narration to address “Death” as “thou”, “thee” and “thy”, death is not considered conceptually but anthropomorphised as the poems fundamental pride. In ‘Death be not proud’, we see how the rumination of death is shaped by Elizabethan values. Through the subverted Petrarchan structure and style, Donne’s use of apostrophe denigrates the omnipotence of death and lowers its statue to the level of the poet. This corresponds with contextual religious values of certainty in external afterlife and death as a transitory stage. This

Fears are everywhere they can start at birth with the fear of the dark and even can be seen in the most confident and strong adults. There is one fear in particular that most everyone can say they have thought about, and that is death. In John Donne's sonnet “Death be not proud” the speaker can be seen gaining confidence through his confrontation of death and becomes more harsh, aggressive and meaningful. The speaker's points build off one another, growing into one cohesive thought and eventually completely dethroning death from the power he had over the speaker. The speaker uses the intricate duo of the personification of death and a striking metaphor comparing death to sleep to illustrate the comforting yet minimal importance of death to demonstrate the significance of living a life without the constant fear of dying and to seize the day.

Death has always been an intriguing topic in literature. Writers have been confounded by the idea of death and the unknown afterlife for centuries. Some people believe death is the end of all things because nothing can withstand it. In John Donne’s poem, “Death, be not proud,” the poet explains his personal understanding of death and its permanence. This poem is a narrative sonnet. Although this sonnet follows the rhyme scheme of an Italian sonnet (abba cddc effe gg), it also has the elements of an English sonnet because it has three quatrains and a concluding couplet. In the case of this poem, the three quatrains represent three examples of why Death isn’t as powerful as it seems and the couplet acts as a conclusion

The structure of this poem follows the structure of the Italian Petrarchan sonnet, which includes 14 lines divided into an 8-line stanza and a 6-line stanza. The rhyme scheme of the first stanza is ABBAABBA, and the rhyme scheme of the second stanza is CDDCEE. In the poem, the poet in Death, Be Not Proud which is a Holy Sonnet 10 (in a series of nineteen) in this fourteen lines poem, the poet attacked the invincibility of death as it takes people feeling proud to do that, in the same time, the poet took this chance to express and show his faith in the afterlife joy’s and events. The poet in this poem said that life will take every body’s life including himself, Donne used his power as a preacher with the Anglican Church to show his faith in the afterlife as he told that death should be mighty not proud of taking people’s lives. In a series of paradoxes, the poet describes the characteristics of death as the conqueror which brings rest more than sleeping that death brings the rest of bones and the soul’s delivery. The poet used the word “and” in many line to connect all his charges and accuses to death. Then the poet describes death and connects it to the most destructive things in life such as war, poisons, struggles and sickness and the poet attacks death again showing that some other drugs can do the job of the death to rest people and make them sleep. The couple of lines, with no rhyme couplet in which the poet ends his poem saying that the human beings die for a short of time and they wakes up again to live eternally and death will not be any more that death itself will die then and the human beings will come to live again eternally. In fourteen lines, Donne has carried out an effective rhetorical attack against the invincibility of death and, at the same time, has declared his

Sonnets have been used for centuries to describe popular topics such as love, sex, and religion. Many popular poets, like John Donne, embrace the Christian belief of the afterlife, but he does this in a very unusual way. John Donne uses “Death Be Not Proud” to reinforce his Christian beliefs of eternal life by standing up to the “playground bully” we call Death.

There are several ways to consider death. Some, as seen in Rupert Brooke’s 1915 poem “The Soldier”, choose to accept it, almost revel in it. Others, as evidenced in Dylan Thomas’ “Do not go gentle into that good night” (1952), fight and reject it. While these poems similarly center on death, more accurately the rebellion against it; both poems are written from opposite ends of the spectrum.

Everyone has fears, something that they avoid at all cost, something that makes them hide in terror. Fears are everywhere they can start at birth with the fear of the dark and even can be seen in the most confident and strong adults. There is one fear in particular that most everyone can say they have thought about, and that is death. In John Donne's sonnet “Death be not proud” the speaker can be seen gaining confidence through his confrontation of death and becomes more harsh, aggressive and meaningful. The speaker's points build off one another, growing into one cohesive thought and eventually completely dethroning death from the power he had over the speaker. The speaker uses the intricate duo of the personification of death and a striking metaphor comparing death to sleep to illustrate the comforting yet minimal importance of death to demonstrate the significance of living a life without the constant fear of dying.