Mark Strand’s poem, “Poor North” depicts the life of a married couple facing countless struggles during a harsh winter. It tells of a man working in an unsuccessful store while his wife sits at home, wishing for her old life back. The way the wife copes with her sadness is both intriguing and perplexing; she misses her old life, even though it is described to have been nothing special. Despite the wife’s obvious misery, she stays by her husband’s side and they stroll in the cold together, bracing the wind. The poem represents the disappointments that life presents and the sadness that consumes individuals, leaving them with a somber outlook on life as a whole. The way the north is described as the “poor north,” in both the title and at the …show more content…
A dark light is shed on nature, with the use of words such as “soiled” to depict the clouds in the sky (3). Normally, one would appreciate nature for its beauty and ability to create peace in its observers, but clearly the speaker feels resentment and disgust towards the environment. What happened to create this negative feeling towards a seemingly harmless and normally appreciated thing? The wind is described like a bird, flying and “beat(ing) around in its cage of trees,” wanting to be set free (2). The personification of the wind gives the normally less powerful force more shape and life, as though it is capable of great destruction. Similarly, the “starlings peck at the ice,” trying to break through (3). There is a theme of breaking free from confinement in these two lines, which is an interesting concept when the reader is introduced to the wife in the second stanza. She “stays home and stares from the window” at the outside world, which is clearly a depressing scene due to the harshness of the winter …show more content…
The tensions surrounding the couple and their struggles seem to temporarily dissipate as the sun goes down and the day comes to the end. The wife is comforted by the presence of her husband, as they walk together and “lean into the wind” (13/14). There is parallelism in the way the couple braces the cold weather together by “turn(ing) up their collars,” and the way they approach their struggles. Despite their lack of success and happiness, both carry on, push forward, and refuse to give up. They serve as one another’s support system and seem to relax in one another’s presence. Breathing serves as a release. The last line of the poem says, “the small puffs of their breath [were] carried away,” ending the poem with a sense of relief. This contrasts drastically with the tense and sad tone that the poem began
Mark Strand’s poem, “Poor North” depicts the life of a married couple facing countless struggles during a harsh winter. It tells of a man working in an unsuccessful store while his wife sits at home, wishing for her old life back. The way the wife copes with her sadness is both intriguing and perplexing. She misses her old life, even though it is described to have not been special; however, the wife may be a person who never feels satisfied or fulfilled by the external world due to internal conflict. Despite the wife’s obvious misery, she stays by her husband’s side and they stroll in the cold together, bracing the wind. As a means of escape from life, she peers into her past in order to find hope in the present.
In the poem there is also an idea of man verses nature, this relates to the survival of the fittest. John Foulcher shows this through the use of first person point of view. For example in the second stanza “Then above me the sound drops” this again possesses sensory imagery creating a deeper human aura throughout the poem. Foulcher further uses a human aura to build a sense of natural imagery for example in the last stanza : “I pick up these twigs and leave them” adding closure
“Winter nights” by jake paul merch is a succinct dedication to the human condition. Employing exacting and florid metaphors. Paul lulls us to a rather anticlimactic end in just a few lines. The power of the poem is felt in its economy and word choice. In ” winter nights”, jake paul merch portrays the idea that, the measurement of one’s success is not defined by others.
The description of the tree and the birds is a metaphor for her and her ex-lovers, respectively, that reveals her feelings of helpless in the process of aging. The personification of the tree as it “stands” and “knows” confirms that the tree metaphor for the speaker’s experiences (9, 10). Just as a tree cannot control the seasons that it goes through, the speaker cannot control the process of aging and the subsequent loss of beauty she experiences with it. The poem’s use of the adjective “lonely” to describe the tree further contributes to its gloomy tone (9). The metaphor continues by emphasizing the point that the speaker never got to truly know her lovers.
The Novel “Into the Beautiful North” by Luis Alberto Urrea specifically has really many amazing examples of how terribly Mexico generally has been affected with economic and social justice that mostly runs throughout every definitely mexican trying to pretty much better themselves equally in a fairly major way. Economic and social justice runes hand in hand and encourages people to generally push actually past boundaries and basically accomplish their definitely own pretty personal goals in a definitely major way.
In the second stanza it is the semantic field of cold: ‘winter’, ‘ice’, ‘naked’, ‘snow’. All these lexical items give us a feeling of cold which evokes loneliness, unknown, fear.
One of the more beautiful things about nature is that it is constantly changing and hold so many mysteries that we don’t understand. Each day brings new beauties and scenes that weren’t there yesterday. Having grown up on the east coast might have caused me to have a greater appreciation for all of the seasons, but one of my favorite things about season is being able to witness the changing over form one to the next. How each plant knows that the change is coming and they all magically start to prepare themselves for the new setting they’re going to create. The romantics capture the mysteries of nature in some of the most beautiful poetry. They delve deep into the possible meanings of what nature could be attempting to tell us or simple what they find beautiful about what they see in nature. One piece that stuck with me this quarter was The Snow Storm by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Winter has always been one of my favorite season since I was a little girl and have always anxiously awaited that first snow fall, dreaming of a white Christmas that year. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s The Snow Storm brought back nostalgic memories of snow filled days in my childhood and made me appreciate having actually experienced snow in real life and the beauty
The poem is written in a unhappy tone somewhat similar to “The Seafarer”. “The Wanderer shows loneliness and a generally dark view of the world. Just like “The Seafarer” the speaker gives many images such as frost and cold weather to show “The Wanderer’s” sorrow. Both “The Wanderer” and “The Seafarer” use weather to show how the character feels in the poem. Likewise of the common things in “The Wanderer” and “The Seafarer”,” The Wife's Lament” also has some of the same similarities
Life in the North appeared to be ideal. There were many push and pull factors that influenced their actions. Inequality and discrimination was one of the most notable push factors. Besides being treated
In this poem, the narrator opens up with a serene scene of a winter night – or so it seems. Although the narrator describes an externally cozy, peaceful scene, he unveils a discordant heart, as suggested by the restless tone he uses. During this silent night, the narrator watches a piece of soot flicker over the fire: “Only that film, which fluttered on the grate, / Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing. Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature / Gives it dim sympathies with me who lives, / Making it a companionable form” (15-19). In other words, the narrator associates himself with
Disgusted, the speaker sees how society has morally degraded itself in exchange for wealth and greed. The frustrated tone of the poem becomes further elevated when the speaker exclaims, "We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!" (4). Blinded by the daily drudgeries of life, people have become impervious to nature, despite some of the grand displays that one can behold. The speaker describes beautiful images of nature such as the sea, howling winds, and flowers that no longer create an emotional response in people. Since the world has become so out of touch with nature, mankind is no longer able to appreciate the drama that takes place between the wind and the moon. Additionally, the speaker claims that society has become so indifferent to nature that, "Little we see in Nature that is ours;" (3).
“Those Winter Sundays” is a short lyric poem. It is written in a simple language and is clear and precise. Its metaphors are those of everyday life. The opening stanza of the poem, which refers to “my father,” establishes a first-person speaker. It also shows that the speaker is recalling a time when he was a child. The speaker presents us with the atmosphere around which his father worked. For example in lines one and two, “Sundays too my father got up early/blueblack cold” (1-2). Here the “Sundays”, and the “early” signifies the great devotion of speaker’s father. He gets up early even on Sundays,
In the poem “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden, the speaker is reflecting on his past with his father, but mainly the Sunday mornings he experienced during his childhood. Throughout the poem, there also happens to be a very dark and possibly even somber tone, which is shown by using several different types of literary devices. Hayden utilizes strong imagery supported by diction and substantial symbolism comprehensively. Furthermore, there are various examples of both alliteration and assonances. The poem does not rhyme and its meter has little to no order. Although the father labors diligently all day long, and he still manages to be a caring person in his son’s life. The poem’s main conflict comes from the son not realizing how good his father actually was to him until he was much older. When the speaker was a young boy, he regarded his father as a callous man due to his stern attitude and apparent lack of proper affection towards him. Now that the son is older, he discovers that even though his father did not express his love in words, he consistently did with his acts of kindness and selflessness.
The man describes an identical situation at the end of the poem, saying, “Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season” (76). The concept of nature as a source of order is based on its function as a cycle. The old man waits for the cycle to deliver him from his spiritually dry state to a place of fulfillment. But nature brings no change to the man and leaves him in the same arid condition in which he began. The failure of nature to provide a cycle is supported by the natural, stationary images in the poem, such as, “Rocks, moss, stonecrop, iron, merds” (12), and the “Gull against the wind, in the windy straits” (70), which shows nature forcefully impeding the progress of the bird, just as its lack of cycle reinforces the stagnation of the old man’s mind, body, and spirit.
Judith Wright extensively uses the structure of her poems to convey many ideas and themes. The structure of a poem is crucial to delivering its key message as it determines both the tone and how the poem is read. She shows the reader throughout the poem how the dust, which is symbolic of the barren emptiness that has “overtaken… dreams” of beauty and comfort as well as financial dependence, will consume the earth if the current environment is not conserved and protected. Wright’s use of title emphasizes this point in the clearest way she can and re-enforces her major concept to the audience. Another example of how structure is used in this poem is juxtaposition. The first and second stanzas are strategically placed next to each other because of their greatly opposing descriptions. In stanza one, the new world of dust and wind, many negative adjectives are used, such as “harsh”, “grief” and “steel-shocked”. Stanza two, which talks about the past, contains a wide range of positive adjectives such as “good”, “kinder” and “beautiful”.