So This Is Nibraska

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 sentence structure of this poem is unlike a lot of poems that you might see where the lines are of equal length and contain the same amount of sylables. Rather than taking that approach, Blanco's poem contained senteneces, and lines that were all of different length. For example, in the second stanza blanco included two very long lines that included dashes and comma's because he was creating a list. Some of the very short lines feautured throughout the poem occur beacause the sentence was too long to fit into the line before and was continued in the next line.

The poem begins with using “melodies” as an image. In the first phrase, “Like melodies draw it to me softly through the mind,” the word “melodies” seems to be symbolic of thoughts or memories. These melodies are like a tune that you cannot get out of your head, a memory that he is unable to forget.

Hirshfield writes this poem in second person to give life to the poem so that the poem speaks to the reader. The poem starts by accusing the reader of letting the redwood grow near the house. “It is foolish” (line 1) lets the reader know that nature should not be growing this close to your home. Hirshfield takes the liberty to talk straight to the reader through the speaker in telling them that it is nonsense to let nature be so close to a material object such as a house. The reader can visually see a “young redwood// grow next to a house” (line 2, 3). The tree starts to symbolize the beauty of nature growing against the materialistic world.

In the first stanza the reader is introduced to the two characters in the poem. The reader is also made aware of the time of the year and day. The first stanza reveals a lot of information. It tells the reader who, when, and where. It also appeals to the sense of touch and sight when it describes the father's hands and also when he "puts his clothes on in the blueblack cold." One could almost feel the "cold" and see the "cracked hands."

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.

Apart from that, the poem consists of a series of turns that reflect different parts of the speaker’s feelings and the experiences he had. The significance of these turns is made possible through the use of stanza breaks. For example, the first

In the first stanza(,) rhyme is used to point out the emotional state of the speakers outlook,

The poem progresses from mourning of the deceased to praising of his achievements and fate to die before his glory withered. Therefore, the tone shifts from somber and quiet to upbeat and positive. Such shift of tone is achieved by Housman’s use of sounds. In first two stanzas, Housman describes the funeral procession as he remembers the time when the young athlete was proudly brought home after he won a race. Then, he solaces the mourners by reminding them it is better that the athlete “slip betimes away from fields where glory does not stay” (lines 9 and 10) because the laurel “withers quicker than the rose” (line 12). The soft “s” sound stands out especially in second and third stanza and it creates a sense of calm and quiet tone and evokes an image of townspeople mourning the death of their “hero”; Consonance of “s” sounds is present in words “shoulder, set, threshold, townsman, stiller, smart, slip, betimes, fields, does, stay, grows, withers, and rose.” In addition to consonance, soft sound alliteration in “road all runners” (line 5) helps to create a quiet tone. As the poem progresses into praising of the young athlete in stanzas four through seven, the consonance of hard “c”, “t”, and “f” sound become prominent. Readers can immediately detect

     The structure of the last three stanzas leaves us hanging from each one. If there was a song to this as music would rise in volume and pitch at each of the final stanza lines. If you read the poem right, the lines seem to echo in your head and slow your progress to the next stanza.

In the next stanza, the line "Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay", the poet is now using imagery with the waters, however it can also be a metaphorical representation of life due to

In the third stanza, a lot of imagery is used. The significant ones are present in the seventh and eleventh lines. In the first line, the poet writes, "A

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.

The poem begins with two lines which are repeated throughout the poem which convey what the narrator is thinking, they represent the voice in