The poem “Her Kind” written by Anne Sexton is about the effects depression has on a person, particularly a woman. This poem elaborates on how this awful disorder makes one feel and how it ruins their life. Although this poem is dark, cruel and melancholy there is a small shrivel of hope in the past tense reference in the last line of each stanza. In the poem “Her Kind” by Anne Sexton, she uses irony, repetition, and a metaphor to portray her personal experience with depression and how it never gets better all while maintaining no meter- a rhythmical pattern, number, and types of stresses. In the first stanza Sexton talks about her as a woman and how the world around her is suffocating her mind and soul. There are many different kinds of …show more content…
These are a few of many examples in this poem. Also, the mood of the poem gives a sense of imagery, the sense of depression. The mood of the majority of this poem is gloomy which corresponds with imagery by affecting the five senses. “Black air” (Line 2) ignites the sense of sight by expressing the color of the surroundings, which you see through her perspective of depression. The next example of imagery also sets off the sense of sight of Sexton’s surroundings. One pictures a “plain house” (Line 4) when told through this poem. The last and final example is “warm caves” (Line 8), this triggers sight and touch by the temperature and location. These examples of imagery are portrayed through the tone of the author. The tone of the author is significant because through his tone the audience notices the imagery clearly. In partnership with imagery personification is showed in this poem, in line 18, the poem says “where your flames still bite my thigh” this is also a form of symbolism. This symbolizes her reaching her climax and breaking her state of depression. It shows that she is a survivor and that she healed from the scars that were
Imagery is used in this poem an abundance of times, such as how Ray used music as a form of art to describe certain visions. In the lines 9 and 10, it explains imagery clearly by saying “A vision exquisite. Yet who can match…”(9). In this sentence, it's going back to an image or vision in one's mind that is beautiful and like nothing else seen before. The following line saying “The sunset’s iridescent hues? Who sing…” (10). This finishes line 9 saying how can a vision match like the sunsets luminous colors that seem to change when you look at it from different angles, almost referring to the rainbow. For example, whenever we go with our loved ones to the beach, we usually sit together and watch the sunset go down; it brings a wave of emotions like love, life, happiness, and for some maybe even sadness, however, once the sun sets all those emotions to disappear with it because it was for that split second that we felt a certain type of
As evident by the title of this poem, imagery is a strong technique used in this poem as the author describes with great detail his journey through a sawmill town. This technique is used most in the following phrases: “...down a tilting road, into a distant valley.” And “The sawmill towns, bare hamlets built of boards with perhaps a store”. This has the effect of creating an image in the reader’s mind and making the poem even more real.
The poem starts with the statement, “a woman who loves a woman is forever young” (Sexton 1-3). These beginning lines set a common theme of eternal youthfulness and lesbian desire. In her introduction, Sexton also plays on the imagery of old versus young in her descriptions of “old breast against young breast”
The last literary element that was used was imagery. Imagery was shown in “In what distant deeps or skies”, and it helps you to grasp the setting and background. The words, “distant” and “deep” give you pictures in your mind, and that helps you to understand or grasp a certain mood. The tone throughout the poem has shown to be dark, with the feelings of violence and fear. These tones were developed through diction, syntax, figurative language, and imagery.
Anne Sexton was a poet and a woman, but most importantly, she was an outcast. Subjected to nervous breakdowns and admitted to a neuropsychiatry hospital, Sexton must have been all too familiar with the staring eyes and the judging minds of the public. Just being a woman in today's world often can be enough to degrade a person in the public's eye, let alone being labeled as a crazy woman. But Anne Sexton did not let society remain unchallenged in its views. She voiced a different opinion of women through poetry. In Anne Sexton's "Her Kind" the speaker of the poem embraces society's negative stereotype of modern, liberated women and transforms it into a positive image. Two voices, the voice of
The imagery used in this verse appeals to the sense sight. This helps the reader visualise what the writer is taking about. It also allows the reader to relate and connect more to the poem.
The three poems show exile and keening, but the poems also show tactile imagery. The Wanderer show tactile imagery in line three, “wintery seas,” describes the setting is in this poem along with the tone. The Seafarer show’s tactile imagery as well, in line nine, “in icy bands, bound with frost,” the tactile imagery in this line describes the coldness of the thoughts in the lonely man’s head. In The Wife’s Lament the tactile imagery is shown in line forty seven, “That my beloved sits under a rocky cliff rimed with frost a lord dreary in spirit drenched with water in the ruined hall.” The wife in this tactile imagery is show how her husband is suffering just
able to get rid of. At the end of the poem Sexton admits the thoughts of suicide are something you can never get rid of, “and yet she waits for me, year after year” (line 25). Sexton justifies the reasons for her suicide by saying that her thoughts and bad memories will never stop coming back because this has been happening for years and years now there is no going back for Sexton. She leaves us with the last stanza filled with unfinished things. This could be a metaphor for her life that is unfinished because of her death occurrence.
Everyone is vulnerable and susceptible to the usual heartbreak of life. Anne Sexton ' suicide was only one of many who desperately wanted to achieve an unrelenting wave of relief. For these existences, depression is like a war, you either win or die trying (Live or Die). "This is how I want to die"(). Anne Sexton is foretelling her battle with morbid sadness that continues to slowly consume, until the person drowns into a sea of burning anguish."....where one black-haired tree slips up
These three lines are perfect examples of the imagery within the poem because they contain an image of a river with its small peeks and waves trembling and glistening in the afternoon sun. All the while it equates the natural beauty of the river to the beauty that the young man sees in the youthful maiden.
Imagery is a common form of technique used in poetry in which the author uses visualization to demonstrate a vivid scene for the readers. In the poem, “Digging”, he discusses his father’s aging figure and recreates the feeling of the passage of time by mentioning his grandfather digging in a similar fashion. When Heaney says, “Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds; Bends low, comes up twenty years away”, he is most likely referring to a past memory of his father, indicating he has passed away twenty years ago. Heaney vividly remembers his father digging, and compares his father’s digging to his own penmanship when he says at the beginning of the poem, “Between my finger and my thumb/ The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.”, and at the end of the poem when he says, “Between my
Inspired by their true-life memories, Plath and Sexton explore a variety of themes in their poems. They both have different aspects of the relationship between a father and a daughter. The fathers in Sexton and Plath’s life had a major position and made an influence on their life and in their
The poem “Her Kind” by Anne Sexton describes different scenarios of a woman. In the poem, Anne Sexton uses three different characters to explain that she has been each of them in some way. Society places a gender role on what women are allowed to be and how they should behave, condemning the women who do not conform, trying to change them into society’s perfect view of what a woman should be. While this poem shows the author describing herself in terms of the supernatural, it ultimately shows that rebellion against societal norms for women comes at a cost, sparking judgement from a society that sees women as common housewives. Her imagery in the poem represents how she is seen as a disfigured and
Every author, poet, playwright has a subtle message that they would like present to their audience. It may be a lifelong struggle that they have put into words, or a multiple page book that took a lifetime to write. A poet by the name of Anne Sexton sought out to challenge society’s views of women by writing “Her Kind”. A poet, a playwright, and an author of children’s books, Anne Sexton writes about the conflicts of a social outcast living in modern times. She voices the hardships she faces through three different speakers in her poem. At the end of the poem, the woman is not ashamed nor afraid of whom she is and is ready to die in peace. In Anne Sexton’s poem “Her Kind”, the main idea the speaker is depicting is the multiple stereotypes placed on a woman, by society. Sexton’s vivid use of imagery paints a picture of the witch, house wife, and mother cliché, while also implying the poem is autobiographical as Sexton went through her own personal struggles during her life.
In chapter one, also known as ‘the hurting’, the author focuses on trauma that people have dealt with such as sexual abuse from a father or relative, failed relationships with parents, and difficulty with one’s self-expression. One of the poems in chapter one states that the girl’s first kiss was by the age of five and was carried out in an aggressive manner by the young boy, she assumes that he had picked that up from his father’s interactions with the mother. In the poem it says “He had the smell of starvation on his lips which he picked up from his father feasting on his mother at 4 a.m.” It is insinuated that the father uses forceful actions towards the mother during times that should be gentle and affectionate. In that specific poem she felt as if that was when she was taught that her body is only for giving to those who wanted out of satisfaction but she should feel ‘anything less than whole’. In another poem in chapter one, there is a family setting during dinner in which the father orders the mother to hush. This represents how women are constantly oppressed in their own