Philip Levine: A Large, Ironic Whiteman Of The Industrial Heart Home

Childhood is portrayed as a time of safety that is often looked back upon with nostalgia from an adult perspective. Monosyllabic words are used to show the simplicity of childhood life, for example in the line “the thing I could not grasp or name”. The ‘spring violets’ are ‘in their loamy bed’ and are no longer frail and melancholy, and the memory takes place on a ‘hot afternoon’ in contrast to the ‘cold dusk’ that represents the present. Childhood is represented as a joyful, vivacious time in one’s life, and the value of a stable family life is conveyed. The unexpected integration of Australian vernacular in the line ‘it will soon be night, you goose’, adds a sense of freedom and relaxation to the otherwise formal discourse and more rigid structure of the poem, once again reflects the simplicity and innocence that is associated with childhood. The use of

The poem focuses around the author’s childhood memory of his school day. However, there is a much deeper meaning to his typical school day as he remembers vividly the repetition of events surrounding him in the classroom. He remembers the day being dark, gray, and rainy, instantly setting the tone of the poem. With dark images like the gray sky, continuous rainfall, and the continuous children’s choir

Throughout the poem, the speaker uses specific details that show the conflict between the speaker’s son and his parents. In the first stanza, the speaker recalls exchanges of dialogue between the speaker and his or her son. For example, the speaker’s son exclaims, “I did the problem / and my teacher said I was right!” (Nye 3-4). The child validated his teacher’s opinion but ridiculed his parents’ opinion. This is further explained through more details in a later part of the same stanza. The mother explains how the son believed his parents were “idiots / without worksheets to back us up” (Nye 9-10). The speaker’s son had entrusted his teacher and thought of his teacher as highly intelligent, but believed that way because of foolish reasoning. In addition, the speaker lists examples of minor mistakes the parents made that caused the son to be embarrassed of them. Through distinct details, the speaker describes how the son’s “mother never remembers / what a megabyte means and his dad fainted on an airplane once / and smashed his head on the drinks cart” (Nye 10-12). By choosing to include these particular details, the poet outlines the foundation of the conflict between the son and his parents.

The visual’s background is formed by a dark and starry night sky; stretching across the image and transitioning into a sunny day sky. This is a representation of the passage of time, life, death, and the power of memories. The nighttime depicts ageing and adulthood, whereas the daytime represents youth and life. In the poem, the narrator describes the sky, ‘Ambiguous night, ambiguous sky,’ which is symbolic for the transience between adulthood and childhood. An ambiguous sky is a sky which is unclear or undecided. The faded transition from the night sky to the day sky reflects this notion and the uncertainty of memories; displaying how the poem

In the poem the speaker tells us about how his father woke up early on Sundays and warmed the house so his family can wake up comfortably. We are also told that as he would dress up and head down stairs he feared ¨the chronic angers of that house¨, which can be some sort of quarrel between his father and his mother in the house. This can also lead the reader to believe that the father may have had been a hard dad to deal with. However the father would polish his son's shoes with his cracked hands that ached. This shows the love that the father had for his son and now that the son has grown he realizes what his father did for him. The sons morals and feelings have changed him because as he has grown to become a man he has learned the true meaning of love is being there for one's family and not expecting it to be more than what it is. Consequently this teaches him a lesson on how much his father loved him and how much he regrets not telling him thank

Two themes the poem has is death and time. The poem displays the theme of time, because it starts out telling the story of a man who is from, and raises his children in, a noble and rich family. As his children get older, 2 of them died, and the others, to quote the poem “all were gone, or broken-winged or devoured by life”. He had lost, essentially all of his children, and as we find out his wife. The poem shows how he went from a great man with a happy family, to a lost man who is all alone. The next theme the poem shows is death. Death is all throughout the poem. It starts with a man living a good life, but as it goes on his first child leaves, his next 2 children die, and the next 3 become incredibly unsocial and that’s not even it! Near the end his wife, the mother of all 6 children, dies. “I sat under my cedar tree, till ninety years were tolled.” The poem ends with the man dying, after everything he had lost; he died in his favorite place to be, under his cedar tree.

The last eight line of the poem, “Starlight,” by Philip Levine, paints a powerful and moving

Although there is no clear evidence given for this conclusion, phrases such as, “He remembers himself […] Things he must do,” identify that the speaker knows the man closely and after reading the poem, it seemed clear that the writer best describes her father. So, in conclusion, this poem demonstrates a glimpse of the frustration and pain felt by those whose love ones are affected by

As for Olds, the interpretation of the theme with her use of imagery is demonstrated through the perspective of a small boy. “They gather in the living room— /short men, men in first grade /with smooth jaws and chins”. (2-4) Olds gives an image to the readers that a even as children they begin to have the structure of older people in their faces. Olds also in the poem uses imagery to paint a picture in how the children already carry adult chatteris in the way they talk perhaps in an sophisticated manner but it gives a sense on the language and posture in the future when they are much older.

He would wake up the household when the house was warm and the children still spoke indifferently to him even though he warmed up the house and even polished the children’s shoes. The child describes the family as ungrateful for what the father does for them. The theme of Those Winter Sundays is hard to determine. Because there is more than one theme. The poem explores themes like ungratefulness and love. The love theme is not upfront and easy to identify because it is not really portrayed, one can see it in the father as he does these things for his family. Ungratefulness is easier to see because they do not thank the father for anything he does. The tone of this story could be regret because the speaker regrets not showing any appreciative towards his dad. The poem also comes with the elements of speech such as internal rhyme, imagery, and personification. Internal rhyme can be found in the first stanza line 5 when he says “banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.” The rhyme is in the words banked and thanked. Imagery is also found in the first stanza line 2 when he states “put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, then with cracked hands that ached.” And finally, personification is found in the second stanza the last line when he says “fearing the chronic angers of that house.” This is personification because they are giving the house the emotion of being angry.

The stanzas of this poem displays different situations, objects, and people that affect his life. However theses lyrics could be related to all. For example, the first stanza talks about a truck which symbolizes the memories and the times with his dad. In addition, the influence that only this truck can give. Even when offered the newest and latest, his standards and recollections are worth more.

The poem immediately begins with the poet’s headmaster bearing tragic news to him regarding his father’s death. Lucie-Smith describes the headmaster’s bald head as a ‘shiny dome’. This detailed description gives us inkling that when somebody is grief-stricken, their surroundings instantly become conspicuous. This is proven when the poet notices the headmaster’s ‘brown tobacco jar’ as well. We think that grief is a gradual process in one’s childhood, and the first stage of it would be heightened awareness of one’s surroundings because as a child, the moment he learns of the loss of his father, is when he

Robert Hayden’s poem describes the relationship between a father and a son by speaking about what occurs on Sundays during the winter. It’s filled with dark words such as “blueblack,” “cold splintering,” “chronic angers,” and “lonely (offices)” to describe the narrator’s father and the atmosphere around his house. The father seems to give off a feeling of regret and tiredness, could be with his life or the position he is in at the moment. Right off the bat, the man the narrator describe reminded me of my grandfather. A lovable and caring man but often caught with a straight face and came across in a harsh, strict manner. And just like the narrator comes across, I thought he wasn’t the kind man everyone saw him as. I thought of him as a hard

Throughout the poem the narrator uses a motherly tone to presents the idea of being able to remember all things that have brought us

Stafford furtively conceals the profound meaning of his poem behind a story of the narrator, who stops alongside the road to care for a deer. The genius behind poem is better understood when the superficial meaning is expressed deeply.