Mary Oliver Crossing The Swamp

The black community is represented by the thin" soil, as it shows how small a minority they were at the time. The water represents the blooming white community, showing the ratio of blacks to whites. The water is seen to be eroding the soil, this represents how the black communities were treated, just as the water erodes the soil the whites drive away the blacks from many areas. I think that this view is well supported in the text and is appropriate for the time the piece was written and who it is written by.

Through the use of extended metaphor, Mary Oliver is allowed to express both the mentality and physicality when writing a poem, which is able to show the differences and similarities by comparison. The extended metaphor works to compare the process of writing poetry to that of building a house,

At the beginning of Le Thi Diem Thuy’s novel, The Gangster We Are All Looking For, water provides a refuge to the narrator and her family by functioning as a pathway to a new and secured life. This water signifies a new beginning and becomes a dwelling place where the narrator retreats when searching for answers. As the narrator progresses in the story, her understanding of life also develops, and water in the story becomes a barrier; it never truly provides the answers or fixes the issues that engulf the narrator’s family like a surf on the beach. Instead, the water reflects the traumatic reality within the narrator’s life, whether she realizes it or not. Essentially, in The Gangster We Are All Looking For, water functions as a pathway and a barrier which illuminate the trauma that the narrator and her family experience in their lives after Vietnam’s colonization.

In the poem from American Primitive, Mary Oliver illustrates a relationship between the speaker and the swamp that develops from an adversarial relationship into one of hope and success. Using sound devices, imagery, tonal shift, and allegory, Oliver establishes the dynamic relationship of the speaker and the swamp that describes the difficulties of life. In the beginning, Oliver describes the swamp as a struggle—a “pathless, seamless, [and] peerless mud” where the speaker is unable to gain a “foothold, fingerhold, [or] mindhold” of himself. By repeating “less” and “hold” in the descriptive lists, Mary Oliver emphasizes how frightening the swamp is, and that it is a mental obstacle as well as a physical one.

In addition, these lines also serve as a metaphor. The entire setting of the swamp can also be viewed as such. It is now not as imposing as before, but has grown along with the speaker and reader, into a learning experience. Within the entire section, alliteration

In “Crossing the Swamp”, Mary Oliver uses the Swamp as a metaphor for life’s struggles when she states “Here is swamp, here is struggle” and continues to expound on this metaphor throughout the poem. She relates the physical characteristics of the swamp to going through a struggle and her use of literary devices helps to drive this metaphor. Through her use of tone and imagery, Oliver is able to show the transition of the relationship between the speaker and the swamp(struggles) from one of hopelessness to one of hopefulness. At the beginning of the poem, the tone is very hopeless.

In the poem, "Crossing the Swamp," the poet Mary Oliver expresses her differentiating views on life. By utilizing descriptive imagery, metaphors, and distinctive tones, Oliver was able to develop a connection between everyday life to a swamp.

Most poetry authors give their poems abstract titles with deeper meanings within them, but Oliver did not choose to do that method. As soon as a reader sees the title of her poem, they will have an idea in their head of what the poem will be about. Doing this makes it more simple and easier to read, but at the same time relay an important message that Oliver wants readers to know. The poem revolves around the idea of oxygen and the life it brings to everything, and Oliver’s way of directly giving that hint to readers is in the

The appreciation of nature is illustrated through imagery ‘and now the country bursts open on the sea-across a calico beach unfurling’. The use of personification in the phrase ‘and the water sways’ is symbolic for life and nature, giving that water has human qualities. In contrast, ‘silver basin’ is a representation of a material creation and blends in with natural world. The poem is dominated by light and pure images of ‘sunlight rotating’ which emphasizes the emotional concept of this journey. The use of first person ‘I see from where I’m bent one of those bright crockery days that belong to so much I remember’ shapes the diverse range of imagery and mood within the poem. The poet appears to be emotional about his past considering his thoughts are stimulated by different landscapes through physical journey.

When describing the Amazon, Grann uses vivid imagery and combines multiple writing techniques to build suspense and intrigue for the reader. Grann describes the Amazon River as “the mightiest river in the world, mightier than the Nile and the Ganges, mightier than the Mississippi and all the rivers in China” (Grann 19). Grann compares the Amazon River to well known rivers such as the Nile to convey his point that the Amazon River is the largest and most powerful. This in turn makes the reader curious to learn about the person who would dare take on such a great force of nature. Grann also writes about how the rainy season causes the river to flood, describing the land surrounding it as “an inland sea” (Grann 21). But when the sun returns, the water quickly evaporates, and “the ground cracks as if from an earthquake” (Grann 21). By illustrating the extreme conditions of the Amazon, Grann causes the reader to wonder about how this will affect Fawcett and the hundreds of other explorers who venture into the jungle’s depths. Grann also combines short and long sentences to mimic the ebb and flow of the coursing Amazon River. Grann writes “Churning toward the plains below, the river has three thousand more miles to go to reach the ocean. It is unstoppable” (Grann 19-20).

The speaker also chooses her diction precisely, so that there is clear contribution to the overall idea that the poem is indeed about the quest for change and longing from escape from the swamp. Two very different forms of description are used to represent this source of dread: once by the simple name, swamp, and

In the passage “Two Ways of Seeing a River,” author Mark Twain attempts to share the feelings of loss he experienced after he was disillusioned to the beauty of the Mississippi River. Twain was a famous Nineteenth century author who had previously worked as a steamboat captain and who grew up along the river. The organization of the paragraphs in relation to each other is linear, and the content of each paragraph is dominated by a different rhetorical device.

The river and fishing made such a big impact on the Maclean family that it is the root of this book. The Macleans compared the river to life, went fishing to answer questions, and created a river that has a past full of memories. The river and fishing become metaphors for life by having a life of its own.

Immediately following the first statement, Oliver prompts that “You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.” The senseless wandering in a desert in harsh conditions is similar to the biblical story of Moses leading the Isrealites through the desert before reaching the Promised Land. By writing that the reader does not have to wander as a punishment leads into line four and five, where the speaker asserts that instead of being good, “You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” Instead of following what other’s want, the speaker proclaims that the only real necessity is to follow what your natural instincts, you animal, want. The speaker also declares inn lines six and seven that while you are talking about your despair, “the world goes on,” which proves that human traits of complaining and listening to others do not bring you closer to nature. In fact, the world continues as if you had not done anything at all. The poem then contrasts inert objects such as “the sun,” “the prairies,” and “the mountains” with objects that appear to be alive and move such as “the clear pebbles of the rain,” “the deep trees,” and “the rivers.” This compares the unmoving appearance of what society wants in the solid features of nature compared to the living and movement that is only sometimes perceived in the rain, trees, and rivers. The comparison can also be

Going up that river was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings . . . There were moments when one's past came back to one, as it will sometimes when you have not a moment to spare to yourself; but it came in the shape of an unrestful and noisy dream, remembered with wonder amongst the overwhelming realities of this