The Buck in the Snow Poetry Explication Essay

Explain (tell me what image the poem brings to mind)She begins by describing the "death of winter's leaves".

The final stanza revolves around the nettles retorting to the father’s attacks. In the first line, the father is shown to give the nettles a funeral. This shows the father ending the troubles caused by the nettles. With effective choice of words, the poet describes how the ’sun’ and ‘rain’, representative of nature and its power, finally help the nettles grow. The word ‘recruits’ shows the enemy army was returning and regrouping. Furthermore, the word ‘tall’ depicts the nettles being stronger and healthier than before and their readiness for the battle. The final line states that the son would be hurt by the nettles soon and again. While problems won’t wane with time, despite all of the father’s efforts, the son will have to find a way to learn to adapt to the renewed struggles in his life.

In Woodchucks, a poem by Maxine Kumin, a gardener is having problems with woodchucks invading her garden. She attempts to kill the woodchucks with cyanide gas, but the Woodchucks wouldn’t die. The pacifist gardener, resorts to violence and shoots the woodchucks with a rifle. She was hoping for an easy solution but ended up going against her peace loving ways and turned violent. Throughout the poem, Maxine Kumin slowly reveals the underlying meaning of her writing. Kumin emphasizes that there are violent thoughts and tendencies in every individual by referencing real life events, by escalading the tone of the poem, and by using a series of literary devices.

In the poem “Woodchucks” by Maxine Kumin, the speaker is in her garden and is annoyed with some woodchucks that are eating and destroying the produce in the garden. The speaker in turn tries to remove the woodchucks by using humane gas to kill them and when that is unsuccessful, she resorts to more violent means. This poem uses the annoying woodchucks to signify the Jewish people during the Holocaust by the Nazi Party.

Death is something that at some point will come to each of us and has been explored in many forms of literature. “The Raven” and “Incident in a Rose Garden” are two poems that explore common beliefs and misconceptions about death. Though both poems differ in setting, tone, and mood there are surprising similarities in the literary tools they use and in the messages they attempt to convey. The setting and mood establish the tone and feel of a poem. In “The Raven” we are launched into a bleak and dreary winters night where a depressed narrator pines for his dead girlfriend.

Romantic poetry is characterized by its length and verbosity, its use of sentimental imagery and themes, and its wistful tone. Moreover, romantic poetry tends to romanticize the past, longing for a time that is more innocent and pure than the big bad future. The past can be relatively recent, as in the times of mothers and grandmothers; or the past may refer to the classical era of history and ancient civilizations. During a time of industrialization and urbanization, a more pastoral past also became a common subject for discussion. A return to a simpler life, and an appreciation for nature, were also themes shared by all the romantic era poets. John Greenleaf Whittier's poem "Snow-bound" fills all the criteria for romantic poetry, and may even be the quintessential American romantic era poem. In "Snow-bound," a family is trapped inside their New England cabin. They use the opportunity for self-reflection, musing on the past, and bonding over their experiences. Natural imagery pervades the poem, which is narrative in style and epic in scope.

In order to put an image in our mind of how harsh this time was the author of this poem uses imagery. He pays attention to the detail and writes “Through the lone night until the last snow-flake/has dropped from heaven upon the earth’s white breast”(McKay 9-10). This gives us a more detailed description of their struggle.

The poem describes the weather and its effect on cotton flower by pointing out the dying branches and vanishing cotton. The image of insufficiency, struggle and death parallel the oppression of African American race. The beginning of the poem illustrates the struggle and suffering of the cotton flower; which represent the misery of African Americans and also gives an idea that there is no hope for them. But at the end the speaker says “brown eyes that loves without a trace of fear/ Beauty so sudden for that time of year” (lines 13-14). This shows the rise of the African American race, and their fight against racism. The author used mood, tone and

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).

One main way the theme of death is illustrated is through symbolism of the deer, canyon, and river. The deer is a roadblock which must be dealt with before the man can continue on his journey. He cannot simply push death to the side of the road. Here, the deer would rot and fester; instead, as Stafford states in the first stanza, " it is usually best to roll them into the canyon" (line 3). The way to deal with this problem is to discard of it immediately and to not hesitate at all. Literally, this is true for the safety of other motorists. Furthermore, it is necessary to deal properly with this problem so one can continue on their path in life. The canyon, and river at the bottom, therefore come to symbolize the depth of our individual souls; we push problems into our souls, and slowly deal with them. By doing this, our problems and death, may be symbolically washed away.

Many people believe that this mimics Whitman's life. Living in a life of social separation much of the time, he still managed to succeed not only with his writing, but also in life itself. However, in line five Whitman goes on to say that he wonders how the tree could grow such joyous leaves while being alone. He himself says that he could not survive if put in the same situation. Whitman did however lead a joyous and happy life in many peoples opinion, even though he did not enjoy the social life many other had during his lifetime. His own opinion of himself not being lonely may be frayed in order to spare the image he proposes to the public in his writings. The next few lines are interesting because of the way they could possible spell out Whitman's life. In the poem, he breaks of a twig, wraps some moss around it, and takes it to he room and places it in plain view. This may parallel his life by way of his memory. The twig may represent pieces of his memory that were enjoyable to him. He then takes the twig and places it in his room signifying that he wants to be able to constantly see those fond memories. Again Whitman replies by saying he did not do this to remind him of his friends, but in reality he may have just said this to help keep a good report with his readers about his lifestyle.

. . should burn and rave at the close of day”(2). This means that old men should fight when they are dying and their age should not prevent them from resisting death. Another example of personification in the poem is “Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay”(8). This line personifies the men’s frail deeds by saying that they could have danced. This means that the potential actions of the men could have flourished and contributed greatly to their lives. The metaphor “. . . words had forked no lightning. . .”(5) is about how the men had done nothing significant with their lives. They had not achieved anything great or caused a major change. The simile “Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay” is about how even grave and serious men will fight against death for as long as they can. Another notable example of figurative language within the poem is “. . . blinding sight”(13). This oxymoron details how the men can see very well and it is very obvious to them that they will die soon, but they know that they can control how they will leave this world. There is an abundance of imagery within this poem, a few examples of which are “. . . danced in a green bay”(8), and “. . . caught and sang the sun in flight”(10) . These examples of imagery are both appealing to the sense of sight by using descriptive words such as “Green” and “danced” in the first example and words such as “caught” and “flight” among others. The second example also appeals to the sense of sound by

The third stanza introduces the fawn within the doe, a sharp contrast between the scene of darkness and death with life and birth. However, this concept of birth and life is nothing to be celebrated, for Stafford reveals this discovery in a negative tone:

This is significant because it emphasizes the melancholy and mournfulness that he depicts with imagery in the first stanza. Later on in the second stanza, he author describes the tree the narrator would have planted as a “green sapling rising among the twisted apple boughs”. The author uses visual color imagery of the color green to describe the sapling in order to emphasize just how young the newborn was when he died. Later on in the poem, the narrator speaks of himself and his brothers kneeling in front of the newly plated tree. The fact that they are kneeling represents respect for the deceased. When the narrator mentions that the weather is cold it is a reference back to the first stanza when he says “of an old year coming to an end”. Later on in the third stanza the author writes “all that remains above earth of a first born son” which means that the deceased child has been buried. They also compare the child to the size of “a few stray atoms” to emphasize that he was an infant. All of these symbols and comparisons to are significant because they are tied to the central assertion of remembrance and honoring of the dead with the family and rebirth.

Poems are like snowflakes. While no two are the same, they all have common structures and themes. One prevalent theme in poetry is that of death, which is present in both “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” by Emily Dickinson and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost. Dickinson perceives death as a gentleman, while Frost perceives death as loneliness, which provides insight on how the time periods of the poems, the genders of the authors, and the authors’ personal experiences influence literature.