Summary Of Linda Pastan, John Donne And James Wright

One of the most difficult, yet rewarding roles is that of a parent. The relationship between and parent and child is so complex and important that a parents relationship with her/his child can affect the relationship that the child has with his/her friends and lovers. A child will watch their parents and use them as role models and in turn project what the child has learned into all of the relationship that he child will have. The way a parent interacts with his/her child has a huge impact on the child’s social and emotional development. Such cases of parent and child relationships are presented in Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz” and Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy”. While Roethke and Plath both write about a dynamic between a child-father relationship that seems unhealthy and abusive, Plath writes about a complex and tense child-father relationship in which the child hates her father, whereas Roethke writes about a complex and more relaxed child-father relationship in which the son loves his father. Through the use of tone, rhyme, meter, and imagery, both poems illustrate different child-father relationships in which each child has a different set of feelings toward their father.

Pastan displays a parent remembering when his or her daughter was being taught to ride a bicycle in lines 1-10. They were guiding the bike while running next to the girl, when she started to pull away and ride for herself. This represents how throughout the first years of a girls’ life she is being guided by her mother or father, but when she reaches a certain age she is no longer in need of their help. In lines 11-17, the parent is nervously waiting for his or her daughter to crash, but the daughter is still peddling, getting faster and more dangerous as she rides along. In life as a girl grows up she starts to do things alone, and the parent feels like they are losing their daughter. This worries the parent who is no longer next to her to catch her if she falls. Then, in lines 18-24, the girl riding the bicycle is having a great time, and the parent knows that he or she is too far away to catch her fall. In “For a Daughter Leaving Home,” it shows the view of the girl from the perspective of the mother or father as she rides away in the lines that read, “the hair flapping / behind you like a / handkerchief waving / goodbye.” As

In Father and Child, as the persona moves on from childhood, her father becomes elderly and is entertained by simple things in nature, “birds, flowers, shivery-grass.” These symbols of nature remind the persona of the inconsistency of life and the certainty of death, “sunset exalts its known symbols of transience,” where sunset represents time. Both poems are indicative of the impermanence of life and that the persona has managed to mature and grow beyond the initial fearlessness of childhood moving onto a sophisticated understanding of death.

“And I their Mapp, who lie Flat on this bed”. He describes his body as a map, a metaphor for his life being a journey, which his doctors attempt to read in order to discover his illness and his suffering and ultimately where his journey ends. In reference to Cartography, Donne refers to bearings, using the imagery of a map to point out that what we see on the western edge of a flat map is also to be found on the eastern edge, showing that he believes life and death are connected to each other. In the final stanza, Donne feels joy at the though of death as he feels he will recover his identity by reuniting with the lord. In the final stanza, he returns to the idea of the first stanza, summing up the poem’s central message with the use of a paradox. “Therefore that he may raise the Lord throws down.” This paradox shows that to rise up to heaven, one must be thrown “down” by death, so therefore one must suffer to be accepted and united in a place where one’s identity is established. His extreme suffering has purged and prepared him for paradise.

Style is the special way an author creates his or her work. Gabriela Mistral exploits an informal style in her poem “Ballad”. The poem discusses the poets feelings and is written in first person point of view validating its informality; “My heart’s blood.”-Line17 using ‘my’ and describing her heart confirm this. Diction contributes to style in an extensive way. Repetition is a form of diction that is heavily spread out through the poem. “Saw him pass by.”-Lines 2/6, “He goes loving.../...in bloom”-Lines1-2/11-12, and “He will go.../through eternity.”-Lines 19-20/23-24. The repetition emphasizes the authors style an diction. In this poem diction is displayed through negative connotation. Choosing to describe her emotional state as “,wretched,”-Line 5, instead of sad or unhappy, and by adding a

When deconstructing the text ‘W;t’, by Margaret Edson, a comparative study of the poetry of John Donne is necessary for a better conceptual understanding of the values and ideas presented in Edson’s ‘W;t’. Through this comparative study, the audience is able to develop an extended understanding of the ideas surrounding death. This is achieved through the use of the semi-colon in the dramas title, ‘W;t’. Edson also uses juxtapositions and the literary device, wit, to shape and

John Donne’s poems are similar in their content. They usually point out at same topics like love, lust, sex and religion; only they are dissimilar in the feelings they express. These subjects reflect the different stages of his life: the lust of his youth, the love of his married middle age, and the piety of the latter part of his life. His poem,’ The Flea’ represents the restless feeling of lust during his youthful days but it comes together with a true respect for women through the metaphysical conceit of the flea as a church in the rhythm of the sexual act.

The metaphysical era in poetry started in the 17th century when a number of poets extended the content of their poems to a more elaborate one which investigated the principles of nature and thought. John Donne was part of this literary movement and he explored the themes of love, death, and religion to such an extent, that he instilled his own beliefs and theories into his poems. His earlier works, such as The Flea and The Sunne Rising, exhibit his sexist views of women as he wrote more about the physical pleasures of being in a relationship with women. However, John Donne displays maturity and adulthood in his later works, The Canonization and A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, in which his attitude transcends to a more grown up one. The

John Donne’s diction, detail, point of view, metaphysical format, and tone used in “Holy Sonnet 10” convey both a feeling of cynical and domination, and also a sense of mockery of death. The effects on the reader include assurance and confidence in facing death.

Hayden utilizes diction to set a dark and solemn tone throughout the poem. Like the various examples of imagery, there is also a strong use of underlying symbolism. In the first stanza, the words “cold” (1. 2) and “fires blaze” (1. 5) are used, which introduces a conflict. This is emphasized in the second stanza when the word “cold” (2. 1) is used again, later followed by the word “warm” (2. 2). In the last stanza, the father eventually “had driven out the cold” (3. 2). Yet the father had not ridden the house of the cold air until the end of the poem, which symbolizes how it took his son several years later to recognize the behaviors in which his father conveyed his love for him.

John Donne was to most, considered a metaphysical poet, or a poet who finds their inspiration on expressing the world not as it would be universally revealed but in the world as science and philosophy account it. The poem "The Apparition" lacks many of the general characteristics that distinguish metaphysical poetry but continues to be classified as a metaphysical representation (Norton, 1). "The Apparition" contains at least three transformations of feeling. The manifestation success of this relationship gives the speaker so much pleasure that he revokes the suggestion he suggested in the beginning, the idea of threatening his lover into more agreeable behavior because he believes he would enjoy her chastisement more than her reformation.

To this day John Donne is still considered to be one of the greatest love poets from England. He was born to a Elizabeth Heywood and John Donne, some time between January 24th and June 19th in 1572. His mother Elizabeth Heywood was the youngest of her siblings and the grand-niece to the Catholic Martyr Thomas More. His father John Donne was a prosperous London merchant, but his actual father died when Donne was only four and was believed to be a descendant from an ancient family in Wales. The family was Roman Catholic and this was a very anti-catholic period in England and this would greatly affect Donne in many ways throughout his life.

Donne even goes so far as to command God to destroy the person he has

John Donne was born in 1572 in London, England and is known as the founder of the Metaphysical Poets. Donne was born into a Roman Catholic family and later moved to the Anglican Church. He was appointed later on as the Chief Secretary to the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, however, his secret marriage caused him to lose his job. Thus, he lived in poverty about a decade until he published his first book “anti-Catholic polemic ‘Pseudo-Martyr’”. Now Donne mainly writes romantic poetry that reflects his childhood in the Catholic faith and often uses figurative language to describe his poems.

John Donne’s metaphysical poetry is where theology crosses with sexuality. The connection between spiritual love and erotic love becomes apparent. Throughout his whole life Donne found love in everything. In his early life his focus was on the love of women, and then it transitioned to the love of his wife, and ultimately the love of God. His work defines the unity of these contrasting ideals in every man and woman. ‘Batter my Heart’ and ‘The Ecstasy’ displayed the connection that can be found between erotic love and divine love. There are also characteristics with each piece of Donne’s work that can be identified as crossovers from erotic and divine.