Poetry essay

In his poem, Flames and Dangling Wire, the first line immediately sets the scene allowing us to have a sense of where we are. The use of a simile in “The smoke of different fires in a row, like fingers spread and dragged to smudge” implies the filthiness of the tip and the smoke rising from the fires. This also causes the air to

      Yet this darker revelation is quickly eclipsed by one last happy irony, a revelation of sorts: the poem so artfully represents it subject, its conspicuous ingenuities of form so undulate and glitter like the mist of mayflies, that the poem itself becomes the mayflies?or means to come as close as language can take it.  As a special way of seeing, the poem means to breech the gulf between seer and thing seen and thus forge a connection to the object world, the speaker?s own absence from which he ostensibly laments.  That this attempt is successful seems implicit in the last lines of the poem.  There, it occurs to the speaker that his sense of separateness and mortality can be allayed by the idea that he has been ?called? to be a poetic seer, ?one whose task is joyfully to see/ How fair

In the poems ‘How to Eat a Poem’ by Eve Merriam and ‘Introduction to Poetry’ by Billy Collins, important ideas are presented about how poetry should be experienced and enjoyed. The poets used the techniques extended metaphor, repetition, metaphors and personification to show me how these ideas is important.

Previously in the commencement of my essay, I had posed a question along the lines of “How did Wordsworth and Muir come to this point of pure and utter infatuation with the nature that surrounds them?” Throughout the close analysis and investigation I have done studying the two, I have come to discover that these masters in their craft of writing have an interesting point-of-view that differs from the average individual; they simply have a deeper rooted connection to their environment whether that be due solely to the fact that they just love nature or that they approach life in a more literary manner to the point that even the most mere blade of grass can be surrounded by just the right words to be glorified in such a way that it sounds even

“And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.” (line 15) There are shifts of perspective that display the constant back and forth between the speaker and the object of his affection. “This is a poetry of thought rather than of feeling ; or rather, a poetry that reflects on the intimacy of thought and feeling” (Perez-Firmat).

For example let us take the poem 
“Spring in New Hampshire” in which McKay describes the beauty of the Spring that comes to New Hampshire. But this admiration of nature is not done so in admiration, but rather of longing desperation. This motif is something that is present throughout many of McKay poems. “The stars too gloriously bright, For me to spend the evening hours, When fields are fresh and streams are leaping, Wearies, exhausted, dully sleeping.” When looking at the other poems in Harlem Shadows it clear to see the admiration for nature that was instilled in McKay through his childhood in

With the abundance of nature symbolization, the speaker relays the otherworldly, and yearning atmosphere of the poem. With phrases like “wrangles over gutters with dark reek of moss,” and “the speckled road, scored with nuts, smelling of mold,” the speaker

Wordsworth illustrates this idea of nature by personifying nature itself and describing it as living entity, “This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; the winds that will be howling at all hours” (lines 5-6). Wordsworth depicts the wind as wildly “howling” and the sea as daringly revealing herself to the moon, which expresses the romantic belief that nature is wild and changing. Furthermore, in the next line Wordsworth contrasts this romantically vivid and untamed depiction of nature with the next line, describing nature as being “… up-gathered now like sleeping flowers” (line 7). This calm and placate description of nature expresses how rationalist beliefs of nature being precise and orderly restrains nature by gathering it up like a “sleeping” flower subdued. The juxtaposition of these two contrasting depictions of nature demonstrates how Wordsworth saw rationalist ideals of reason and logic as constraining the wildness and changing qualities of

Yet, when he turned away from his chores, he realized his world was crumbling around him. His family members grew sick, his children died and, consequently, his marriage grew more distant. As reflective of his personal life, he saw nature as beautiful and full of hope, yet also random and chaotic.

The opening immediately sets the reader at a starting slate, with “forests and highlands” as the kick off visual for the poem (Shelley, line 1). Following this description, Shelley goes on to describe all who are there, heeding Pan’s song as he sings (“winds in the reeds . . . lizards below in the grass” is one of multiple verses that contains these descriptive qualities) (Shelley, lines 6 – 11). They rapidly piece together in a rushing crescendo to bombard the reader with images as they scan along the poem, to absorb and envision the full impression of the work. Another ideal example is the second to final verse, which paints a picture of a universal image; the comparisons between life and death, heaven and hell and such as those (“. . . And Heaven . . . I pursu’d a maiden and clasp’d a reed” goes further on to list these comprehensive topics) (Shelley, lines 27 –

Humans are inherently tied to the natural world. From changing the way they think to affecting the way they act, nature tends to have a certain degree of power over the lives’ of all people. Two poems, “The Widow’s Lament in Springtime,” by William Carlos Williams, and “River- Merchant’s Wife,” by Ezra Pound, use the strife of people experiencing sentiments of loss to explore the intricacies of the relationship that people share with the natural world and its effect on them. In “Widow’s Lament in Springtime,” a widow mourns the loss of her late husband by utilizing the image of her yard as an extended metaphor to describe how she is feeling internally. Only through analyzing her own perceived changes in the natural world around her is she able to adequately cope with the sense of sadness that consumes her. In “The River Merchant’s Wife,” a young woman writes a loving letter to her husband who has temporarily left, in which she describes her longing for him while commenting on the state of the natural world around her to represent her feelings. The two woman both experience a sense of loss and isolation in the absence of each of their respective significant other as well as a deep connection to the natural world through this sentiment. The contrast arises, however, with the way in which each of them feels about this regard. Their different attitudes raise questions about the impact of the natural world on not only the psyches’ of the two women but also the impact of the

Percy Shelley opens his poem, “Mont Blanc” by noting how imperative the human mind is in regard to nature. The first few lines establish a relation that is essential to all life. With these lines alone, Shelley is pulling from many of the inclinations made by William Wordsworth in his poem, “Tintern Abbey”. There is however an expansion made on Wordsworth’s affections toward nature and its aweing power; while Shelley agrees that there is only a small amount of those who can truly grasp the full intention of what the natural world teaches, he largely finds nature in defiance with man’s own predilections and perceptions regarding its behavior and influence. “Mont Blanc” seeks out nature’s sublime instead of its lovely and simplistic benevolence. In some ways, “Mont Blanc” is a deeper examination and deconstruction of what “Tintern Abbey” constructs as a beautiful but surface level and thus shallow perception of what nature is capable of at its most powerful, and then asks how that influences the creative human mind.

Both these extracts show a creative, imaginative response to a particular scene, and show contrasting ways in which a poet can use diction to capture his mood and provoke a reaction in the reader. Devices such as rhyme, rhythm, alliteration, and assonance combine to form a structure of mood, a structure recognisably literary.

Poetry. A literary element mainly designated to impose feelings and emotions upon the reader themselves. Not only is poetry just some writing on a piece of paper, it conveys the charm and the drive for those who truly enjoy literature. Poetry builds the canvas and then begin to paint the masterpiece by using several different literary and poetic elements to trigger the imagination of the reader and have their minds run wild envisioning the work being presented right in front of their eyes, through words. Poetry for many may be thought of as just rhyming but rather there is a much deeper and more developed meaning to why and how it is written. In her work, “You’re in the dark, in the car”, Claudia Rankine shows the audience a

William Wordsworth’s poem, I wandered lonely as a cloud, is about how nature had a direct impact and connection with the speaker. As the speaker was wandering aimlessly “as a cloud” (1), the speaker encountered a field of daffodils adjacent to an beauteous lake, where everything seemed to be “fluttering and dancing in the breeze.”(6) The experience that the speaker undergoes displays what kind of perspective the speaker has. As the speaker describes the view using similes, “continuous as the stars that shine”, hyperbole, “they [daffodils] stretched in never-ending line”(9), and by using vocabulary with positive connotations, such as “glee”, “gay”, “bliss”, the speaker gives the impression that his perspective towards nature is romantic. Romantic nature is separate from society, uplifting and restoring, and a cure to the modern issues,