To what extent is a focus on metaphor and symbol central to an analysis and understanding of Douglas Dunn’s poetry? (The Kaleidoscope/Sandra’s Mobile/Second Opinion)
It is considered more difficult for a poet to grab the attention and imagination of an audience than it is for an author. The use of metaphor and symbol in poetry means that the poet can say one thing and invoke a whole range of possibilities, be it love, anger, jealousy or envy; an old memory or a new wish. The use of metaphors and symbols enables the audience to see what they believe Dunn meant, by imaging his true meaning of a word. The three poems I have chosen to study are: ‘’The Kaleidoscope’’, ‘’Sandra’s Mobile’’ and ‘’Second Opinion’’. These are all part of the
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Throughout the poem, Dunn recollects and remembers the memories, however, the use of the word ‘’wait’’ could symbolise the wait involved in grieving, finally accepting that your loved one is gone and beginning to piece your life back together. The repetition of ‘wait’ in line 13, in reference to an absurd forgiveness shows us that Dunn blames himself for his Wife’s death, and it symbolises the amount of guilt he is carrying, especially when combined with the line above in which Dunn begins to resort to desperation through the use of the verb ‘offering me’ followed by the triad ‘my flesh, my soul, my skin’ which could symbolise the ultimate sacrifice. In line 7, ‘A symmetry of husbands, each redesigned’ shows the imperfections that Dunn believes he has, not even symmetry, the idea of an exactness to two halves, could stop Dunn being redesigned. It could also symbolise, through the idea of husbands, the huge workload that was placed on one man. This links with the triads placed in the poem, the idea of constant simultaneous actions, ‘stand, and wait, and cry’, ‘foresight, prayer and hope’, having to juggle the knowledge of The ‘tray’ mentioned in line 1 and line 10, could symbolise the idea of slavery, to be carrying a tray, responding to every movement and request, and yet, the reader can see that Dunn does what he does out of love, he puts himself through unimaginable turmoil to prolong the time
The absence of meaning in both Carroll and Lear’s poems is significant, even though it may seem like the opposite. When reading these poems for the first time, the reader may be
Dunbar and Randall both use interesting imagery in their poems to display how the character truly feels. In the “Ballad of Birmingham,” stanzas
Poetry can sometimes allow one to explore the unknown. However, in some works of poetry, one can realise that some known ideas or values remain relevant to current society. This is certainly applicable to T.S. Eliot’s poems, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Rhapsody on a Windy Night. Eliot’s manipulation of poetic techniques in both these poems allows the responder to realise that some ideas prevail in both modern and post-modern society. These poems explore the unknown phenomena of the obscurity regarding the purpose and meaning of life. This unknown phenomena causes the persona in both texts to resort to a sense of isolation or alienation. Eliot uses poetic techniques such as metaphors and personification to convey his ideas.
In the poem “Thou Blind Man’s Mark” by Sir Philip Sidney, the speaker is struggling with his desire for someone or something. They are fighting this feeling for control over his thoughts and mind. It is shown that both the speaker and desire are constantly fighting, with neither fully able to take control. This fact is evident through Sidney’s use of violent diction, personification of desire, and oxymorons.
Although it seems paradoxical to love someone and then kill him, Brooks makes it easy for readers to believe that this is what the speaker actually did. She writes of those special moments that only a mother can understand: “scuttle off ghosts…control [the mother’s] luscious sigh…return for a snack of them with gobbling mother-eye” (8-10). A mother will brave ghosts and monsters (real or imagined) for her child, and sometimes it takes amazing self-control to simply stop staring in disbelief at the beauty of the child you have created. When my son was a baby, I used to sit behind him and just breathe in his lavender baby-smell. I felt like I could “gobble him up,” and I still do – but he, of course, won’t let me now. At 8-years-old he is a “big boy.” Brooks has somehow made the reader remember and re-live the good and beautiful aspects of having a baby; and yet, the poem is about abortion. By creating such a nostalgic mood in the reader, Brooks again takes the focus off of the terrible act of murder and waits until the second stanza to address the speaker’s regrets. With the nostalgic mood carrying over from stanza-one, the shift in stanza two works because the reader has already forgiven the persona for her sins. And yet, in answer to the readers who still have a difficult time accepting the harsh reality of the poem, Brooks makes a convincing argument in this second stanza, claiming that she still thinks about her babies, she
“Introduction to Poetry” and “Traveling Through the Dark,” are poems written by Billy Collins and William Stafford. The poem’s, “Introduction to Poetry”, main conflict is a teacher who tries to get his students to read and appreciate a poem, but what all the students only care about is figuring out what it means. The conflict is highlighted through the many uses of metaphors to help us understand how he wants the students to look and decipher a poem and how they only focus on finding the meaning instead of taking their time to listen and see the art of poetry. William Stafford’s poem, “Traveling Through the Dark,” describes a driver’s dilemma of deciding whether to throw a dead pregnant deer into the river, or leave it laying on the road where it can cause an accident. In both poems, the use of literary devices such as metaphors, personification, imagery, and diction are effective in making and building up the conflict and reaching the resolution.
In the poem “Ballad of Birmingham”, by Dudley Randall, many different things can be analyzed. The difference in the two translations; one being a literal translation, telling the true meaning of the poem, and the other being a thematic translation, which tells the author’s theme and symbolism used in his/her work. Another thing that all poets have in common is the usage of poetic devices; such as similes, metaphors, and personification.
symbolic richness, but at the same time the poem supplies the reader with a wide
The use of figurative language such as symbolism and metaphors help poets to convey what they want to represent in the poem to the readers. This is very important because it can help readers relate to the poem more. A poet uses a metaphor when he wants to make a comparison between two things without using the words like or as. On the other hand, a symbol is when a word or a parts of a poem serves as a meaning or idea for the entire poem itself. In both the poems “Oranges” by Gary Soto and “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” by Wallace Stevens, both poets use many symbols to express what the poems mean to the readers and to themselves.
symbolic richness, but at the same time the poem supplies the reader with a wide
Poetry has a role in society, not only to serve as part of the aesthetics or of the arts. It also gives us a view of what the society is in the context of when it was written and what the author is trying to express through words. The words as a tool in poetry may seem ordinary when used in ordinary circumstance. Yet, these words can hold more emotion and thought, however brief it was presented.
In Langston Hughes’ “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” used rivers to describe African American people and I agree he described them to be equal, using metaphors, similes, and allusions. Langston Hughes wrote this poem in 1921 when racial issues between Caucasian and African American people were a significant problem. The poem is written in “free verse” and uses anaphora to give the reader the effect that he is the one telling the poem. The poem gives the reader the understanding that African American people have been around for as long as Caucasian people and are equally intelligent. The rivers give us a great meaning to the history of African American people and the narrator has known their struggle. There is a feeling of death towards the end of the poem. This gives the reader the impression that we are still struggling to be equal and it has withered him until his death.
In Stephen Dunn’s poem The Sacred, students mention what places are sacred to them, specifically, the car. On a deeper level, the poem depicts what teenagers value as an escape and what they try to escape from.
“The relationship between the energies of the inquiring mind that an intelligent reader brings to the poem and the poem’s refusal to yield a single comprehensive interpretation enacts vividly the everlasting intercourse between the human mind, with its instinct to organise and harmonise, and the baffling powers of the universe about it.”
It is certainly true that one of the distinguishing features of poetic texts is the use of figurative or non-literal language – this essay highlights the fact that metaphors do contribute to the understanding of a poem. Ted Hughes’ poem, Sketching a Thatcher, is loaded with vivid imagery and ample metaphorical constructions which aids to validate this fact. In order to uncover the message behind this poem, one must take a closer look at the arguments, focus expressions and tenor/vehicle constructions of at least six local metaphorical constructions