The Landmine And Rope In Melissa Range's Poems

The third stanza is the inevitable ?fall from grace? as our speaker has finally ?taken off the gloves? and resorts to the vengeance of cold steel. The speaker utters one last phrase of motivation as he/she eerily takes pleasure in holding the tool of his nemesis? destruction. ?The food from our mouths, I said, righteously thrilling to the feel of the .22, the bullets? neat noses.? The killer now takes a moment to lament on his/her course of action, acknowledging that her pacifism is a thing of the past; that he/she was once comparable to Darwin and his pension for non-violence. However, this does little to dissuade he/she from swiftly taking the life of the pests. ?I, a lapsed pacifist fallen from grace puffed with Darwinian pieties for killing, now drew a bead on the little woodchuck?s face. He died down in the everbearing roses.? This stanza marked the turning point of the narrative as our speaker has been pushed beyond their boundaries into an unfamiliar realm of pleasure. A side of them has been exposed that has remained dormant for what appears to be the duration of their life. It is now a newfound sensation that has thrilled them beyond

Loving relationships are presented in the two poems. The wife in 'The Manhunt' helps her husband to come close to her again, whilst the father in 'Nettles' unhappily realises he can't protect his son from life, no matter how hard he tries. Both poems use the same semantic fields. War and pain are expressed in both poems. The words ‘regiment’, ‘recruits’, ‘bullet’, and ‘parachute silk’, all relate to war whilst the words ‘tender’, ‘blisters’, ‘blown...jaw’, ‘fractured...shoulder blade’ and ‘broken ribs’ all relate to pain. In both poems the relationships are both shown as being damaged by a war, whether it be emotional or physical, which has destroyed the two relationships. In Conclusion, both poems present vulnerability in relationships, not only is the person in pain vulnerable but the partner is also, due to an uncontrollable desire to help. This has been shown through their partners account of pain and through war

The poem’s tone in the first stanza is inquisitive, yet not in the way of curiosity, but the in the grieving sense of asking why, if the government is supposedly so omnipotent, do acts of violence still occur in author’s homestead. Surveillance seems like a useful tool and works to prevent domestic terrorism and violence from outside its network, but simply and routinely neglects the violence within its network caused by its own citizens (Nelson 165). It is in this vein that Giovanni later remarks, “Who saw what I heard/Who knows how to make sense of it (101)”, in order to highlight the discordant nature of her surveillance. While her family may be safe from the violence of radicalized ideologists, why doesn’t the same surveillance protect her mother from the hands of her father, a much simpler and directed

In Natasha Trethewey’s poetry collection Native Guard, the reader is exposed to the story of Trethewey’s growing up in the southern United States and the tragedy which she encountered during her younger years, in addition to her experiences with prejudice and to issues surrounding prejudice within the society she is living in. Throughout this work, Trethewey often refers to graves and provides compelling imagery regarding the burial of the dead. Within Trethewey’s work, the recurring imagery surrounding graves evolves from the graves simply serving as a personal reminder of the past, to a statement on the collective memory of society and comments on how Trethewey is troubled with what society has forgotten as it signifies a willingness to overlook the dehumanization of a large group of people.

Whether it’s war or terrorism, children who want to grow securely is living amongst the affected nation. War is obliterating those talented individuals in their childhood who can radically transform the world itself. The two disputed countries may also have justifications to protect the welfares of their own people. There can be wealth and nuclear weapons to demolish this world as a whole. However, peacefully negotiated approach is coveted to compromise on each other. No country can rationalize weapons of mass obliteration and debacles. Often, it is a foolish decision of the pioneers of the country, making it a pretext for the combat. It’s the upright soldiers and their families who need to survive the demise and serious injuries from the weapons. For the last centuries, the spontaneous overflow of poetry has portrayed human emotions concerning wide range of universal issues. Both the poets Donald Bruce Dawe and Wilfred Owen exemplify this cataclysm of losing your families and the conditions the soldiers face, through their notable poems Homecoming and Dulce et Decorum Est.

In Rudy Francisco’s poem “Rifle II,” the author uses diction and irony to express resentment towards both society and himself. The overall message of the poem is clear: a criticism of the glorification of violence. However, it is harder to pin down Francisco’s exact attitude about how the glorification of violence has affected him personally. A closer examination of the language and devices he uses reveals an underlying bitterness about what society has made him into, and who he has become.

“The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” by Randall Jarrell is able to accomplish so many thing with so little lines-mainly through the use of metaphor and diction. It explains the terrors of wars in gruesome detail and explains the ways in which wars, in a sense “breed” and “birth” death. To some, this poem is seen as the ultimate poem of war, and rightly

The line ‘driven like stakes into the earth’ is a simile and can be interpreted in two different ways. It can be seen as the fact that man is trying to build a city of impermanence, and the other is the literal meaning of mans crucification of the earth with buildings. Robert Gray also uses contrasting juxtaposition of imagery extensively in the poem. ‘On a highway over the marshland...cars like skulls, that is rolling in its sand dunes.’ This not only emphasises humankind’s assault on nature and the urbanisation that is contaminating natural spaces, but also compares the two landscapes as existing together. It once again forces the responder to visualise the situation, one of which they may be able to relate too and question life’s morals. The poem shows the destructive nature of mans actions, which is an issue in society that is prevalent.

Ross Gay’s book Against Which, portrays his poetry to readers allowing them to gain understanding of the cruel world that one lives in. Moreover, the unusual brutalities that people are inevitable confronted with in life. The common denominators within Gay’s poems such as violence, love, fear, and loss allows the reader to visualize characters’ transformation within his poems. In a world of calamity, Gay has created poems that portray the corporal conforming to gender and sex but also human development. Using a reader-response criticism lens, I will be demonstrating my interpretation of Ross Gay’s poems and the meaning that I believe to be a common interpretation of his work. Within, Gay’s poems, “It Starts at Birth” and Angels Out of Reach” one is able to see a pattern of human transformation. By experiencing pain, love, loss, fear, and wisdom one is able to see Gay’s characters evolve through the narrators and readers gaze. In doing so, one is able to reflect on Gay’s poems and gain wisdom themselves.

The collection of poems “Theater”, “Water”, and “Safe House” by Solmaz Sharif shows the varied viewpoints of how war affects the speakers and how death is all too common in the midst of warfare. The author uses a spectrum of literary techniques to enhance the experience of the reader, so we can fully grasp the severity of each speaker’s plight. All of Sharif’s poems differ in form with the use of white space and indentations in “Theater”, colons in “Water”, and a style of abecedarian using the letter S in “Safe House”. While her diverse use of forms generate different emotions from the reader, they share the same notion of how violence is problematic. Each poem has a unique outlook to the sight of war: “Theater” being in the position of a victim and an assailant of war, “Water” explaining a war mission and fatalities in terse terms, and “Safe House” as an observer of an activist against war. Sharif’s strategy to exemplify the effects of how war affects the victim and the civilian is particularly critical because mass media tends to hide the collateral damage of war and only illustrates why we should attack the “enemy”. Another approach the author uses to critique the speakers central conflicts is by arranging words from the US Department of Defense 's Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, to concur with the message of the several ways war influences the lives of those who are unwillingly encompassed by it. Sharif uses poetry as an outlet to show the underlying tone

In “September, 1918”, Amy Lowell shows her readers an interesting and illuminating poem. That war can be an ugly time and the people that experience it often seems to live in a “broken world” (19). To fight an evil, sometimes war is needed, nonetheless it is still costly to the people living through the war. Some in a literal sense, like soldiers fighting in a war, while some in a physical sense by the world that they now see and live in. I find the poem truly interesting though, in how the author shows that even in war we can still hold onto hope for more promising days. Lowell portrays a melancholy mood throughout her poem that makes her readers thinking about war but also the hope of it being over.

Tom Lux’s “The People of the Other Village” was written shortly after the first Iraq war and gained popularity after the 9/11 attacks.   The poem’s voice comes from an indifferent narrator whose unnamed village is at war with the people of an “other” unnamed village.  The exact reason that started this war is unclear; however, as the war escalates, the battle tactics evolve and are depicted in an alternating line structure that mimics the back and forth nature of reciprocal violence.  Ultimately, the author presents a poem that comments on human nature without committing to a judgment of that nature through subject matter, structure, and narrative voice.

The Landmine says, “I’m a fox in a foxhole” giving us a hint of something beautiful then ends it with “primed to bite.” He does it again with “children” and “my harvest” having these words make it sound pleasant and bearable, but the words around those like “You’re my fuse” and “I only need a toe or two” are ugly and unattractive to us. The Landmine has one job. To sit and wait till someone steps on him, it could be anything, while The Rope could have a couple jobs, some that he likes and some that he loathes. Making the poem into two parts. It starts out with death and goes into detail with “Mostly men. I have held the breathe of women, too, and children” and the other half with the warmth of happiness of all the wonderful jobs it could have. The Rope didn’t want us to end with death and sadness, but with a smile on our face, and the image of “tie me to an old tire, and let the children swing.” Even though The Rope has more death than The Landmine, I think The Rope fills me with more warmth and happiness than the Landmine. The Landmine leaves you with death and pain, while the Rope shows sympathy for your emotions, and ends it with a beautiful

The poem “The Minefield” by Diane Thiel is about a man that struggles with memories of a war from many years ago. As an adult he still speaks to his family about the incident that happened with him and his friend when he was only fourteen years old. The author starts very relaxed and with a pleasant tone, but then the narrator pains an ugly picture of the father’s personality. The fathers tone shifts to darker, heavier language and angrier tone. The narrator first pictures a scene of two happy boys running from town to town.

Throughout life, people go through a number of relationships, all of which affects the lives of others. However, relationships are not always healthy, and they can be rather negative and toxic to all parties involved. Throughout “They are hostile nations,” Margaret Atwood alludes to an unhealthy relationship through deliberate word choice, meter and rhythm, and other poetic and literary devices. Reflected through war-like imagery and diction, the poem touches upon the evolution of a relationship that hurts and both isolates the speaker and their referenced partner from society. Margaret Atwood focuses upon using imagery and carefully chosen diction to convey her message, and the first part of the poem mirrors many of these elements.