Theodore Roethke's Elegy For Jane

“One Art” is a villanelle filled with sad sentiments of encouragement towards accepting loss. Elizabeth Bishop uses her tone to pull emotions from the reader that could be confusion and disagreement. Her tone deeply impacts the reader in such a way that it causes him/her to seriously think of accepting her opinion and advice. The capturing way she uses her tone in her word choice shows the reader her natural inflexion when she speaks. The tone of her work even affects her characterization. In “One Art,” Elizabeth Bishop uses tone to convey a character of false casualty, while also using it to emphasize the very heavy impact of her diction.

In poems it is essential to be a creative writer. The author uses many techniques from from exposing deep thoughts to giving humorous jokes throughout the sentence. As human beings, we all have a difficult time understanding others .We may agree or disagree depending our viewpoints on life. One of my Favorite poems is “The Ballad of Sue Ellen Westerfield” by Robert Hayden. My favorite poem is the type of poem that has some history and confusion. When getting the audience confused, it makes them want to know more and reread the whole passage again. Hayden’s poem is a fresh new opening that brought an old dimension, his creativity to open the minds of others and look back to the past.

In literature, themes shape and characterize an author’s writing making each work unique as different points of view are expressed within a writing’s words and sentences. This is the case, for example, of Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “Annabel Lee” and Emily Dickinson’s poem “Because I could not stop for Death.” Both poems focus on the same theme of death, but while Poe’s poem reflects that death is an atrocious event because of the suffering and struggle that it provokes, Dickinson’s poem reflects that death is humane and that it should not be feared as it is inevitable. The two poems have both similarities and differences, and the themes and characteristics of each poem can be explained by the author’s influences and lives.

Some other literary devices used in the poem are: repetition, imagery, and alliteration. For repetition the line: “It might have been otherwise” is used throughout the poem repeatedly to exaggerate the fact that anything could have happened. That line gives the poem a solemn, but still pleasant mood. Imagery is used in these lines: “I ate/ cereal, sweet/milk, ripe, flawless/peach” (4-7). Jane uses those lines to describe everyday foods as if they were something special. Alliteration is used in this line: “…my mate. It/ might...” (14). The “m”

Remembering memories is preferred, rather than living in reality. In the poem, we witness a woman remembering her high school idol, and she decides in the end to not go and talk to him. It is evident that the woman in the poem prefers her memory rather than the view that reality is showing her, this is shown when the woman refuses to go and meet the “hero she had as a girl”, despite giving herself a realistic reason why she should go and greet him, “you think how easy it would be to walk right over and tap him on the shoulder[, and] say hello” but she doesn’t. She doesn’t go and greet him because her memory remembers him as someone amazing, and admirable, “taller than the boys in your own class[,] taller even than your brothers”; where height is a reflection of her admiration. But her hero is now “fat and balding”, and to go greet him now would warp her perspective of her hero, from someone to idolise, to someone pathetic. In the end, she chooses to just remember him just the way she wants to, rather than remembering him the way reality does, showing that memories are preferred over reality. The woman also chooses not to talk to him because of her personal desire to retain her views and opinions of not only how she sees her hero, but also how

Construct a close reading of this poem that demonstrates your awareness of the poet’s body of work.

The opening lines of the poem show how strong her feelings are for her husband. Bradstreet shows this by the use of a great example of a paradox, “if two were one, then surely we.” This shows that the magnitude of her love and affection is so deep that she’s comparing two beings as one. She praises her love for her husband so much

In poems it is essential to be a creative writer. The author uses many techniques from from exposing deep thoughts to giving humorous jokes throughout the sentence. As a human being, we may have difficult times in understanding what is trying to be said. We may agree or disagree depending our viewpoints on life. One of my Favorite poems is “The Ballad of Sue Ellen Westerfield” by Robert Hayden. My favorite poem is the type of poem that has some history and confusion. When getting the audience confused, it makes them want to know more and reread the whole passage again. Hayden’s poem is a fresh new opening that brought an old dimension, his creativity to open the minds of others and look back to the past.

Now that you have read the poem and considered the meanings of the lines, answer the following questions in a Word doc or in your assignment window:

At the beginning of the poem, the speaker, a twelve-year-old girl, is instantly gripped by a strong feeling of lust toward this mysterious seventeen-year-old boy: the paperboy. She even goes on to describe him as a “gift. A fluke from God” as if she believes that she and this boy are destined to be together (2). From her vantage point, the girl instantly notices the boy’s physical characteristics, traits which the young girl appears to admire when she describes the boy’s “bicep in the twilight” (3). This intense, love-at-first-sight reaction to the boy’s arm shows how irrational the girl’s feelings are. She seems to simply lust after the idea of him. The girl has “no memory of language” from their nightly encounters, further showing how this “relationship” was merely visual and very one-sided (6). The boy, potentially, never even notices the girl; and if he does, he does not acknowledge her presence, let alone her strong emotions. The only memories the girl has are from “loitering, lingering far past curfew,” times in which she merely stares at the boy while he completes his daily paper route (7). The girl's depictions of her mother "lost in steam, stirring" and her father "asleep beside his Manhattan, the half-read mail" almost puts the reader directly into the house. The girl, meanwhile, lost her in her emotions, wanders around her yard "without knowing what I longed for" (16). The parents, both focused on other activities, leave the twelve-year-old speaker to do as she pleases in the night.

What is unusual about Pastan?s poem is the way she effectively conveys these sentiments by the

Elegy for Jane which is one of Roethke’s most famous poems was published in The Waking: Poems 1933-1953 (DiYanni). An elegy is defined as a poem written in memory of a deceased acquaintance (Dictionary.com). Throughout the whole poem there is a mournful and dreary mood being conveyed. Roethke describes the girl in the poem and mentions elements of nature, but neither are described or portrayed as beautiful. The first line Roethke wrote “I remember the neckcurls, limp and damp as tendrils” is not a very beautiful sounding description, and he mentions a wren and skittery pigeon neither of which are birds of beauty. In the poem the girl dies and the narrator, her teacher, is at her funeral feeling a little misplaced. Roethke

In W.H. Auden’s “Funeral Blues” (pg. 762), the poem takes place a short time after the speaker’s beloved has died and how the speaker feels that his life has been forever changed and that he will never recover. In Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art” (pg. 767), the poem takes place a short time after the speaker’s beloved has passed away and how she feels that she can master the feeling of losing someone the she loves. However, she seems to be in denial over her true feelings. Between the two poem’s, Auden’s “Funeral Blues” seems to do a better job than  Bishop’s “One Art”, in using rhyme, alliteration, and structure to show the reader the feelings and emotional state of the speaker after their beloved has died.

Love can be quite a difficult topic to write about, expressing one’s intimate and innermost emotions requires a great level of dedication and honesty. If done correctly, the outcome is truly stunning. John Donne’s “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” and Katherine Philips’s “To Mrs. M.A. at Parting” are two masterpieces of this genre. These poems depict the concept of true love so meticulously that the reader cannot help but envy the relationships presented. Perhaps the reason that these works are so effective is due to the fact that they are incredibly similar to each other. Although some differences are present when it comes to structure and gender concerns, the poems share the same theme of love on a spiritual level and show many parallels in meaning.

“Roethke was a great poet, the successor to Frost and Stevens in modern American poetry, and it is the measure of his greatness that his work repays detailed examination” (Parini 1). Theodore Roethke was a romantic who wrote in a variety of styles throughout his long successful career. However, it was not the form of his verse that was important, but the message being delivered and the overall theme of the work. Roethke was a deep thinker and often pondered about and reflected on his life. This introspection was the topic of much of his poetry. His analysis of his self and his emotional experiences are often expressed in his verse. According to Ralph J. Mills Jr., “this self interest was the primary matter of