Willie Thomas Crossing the Swamp By Mary Oliver In the eloquent and vivid poem “Crossing the Swamp” by Mary Oliver, the composer correlates the endeavors of life to the skirmishes and hassles of trying to travel through a swamp. The definition of a swamp can be described as a wet tract of spongy land, often having a growth of certain types of trees and other vegetation. The aspiring writer Mary Oliver compares this marshland to the struggles of life. In this descriptive poem she uses many lucid and keen adjectives and other poetic devices to compare the two objects. In this art, Mary Oliver uses this entire poem as a metaphor to compare the struggles of escaping a thick and murky swamp to the hard knock lives of people in the world.
19 May 2011 Explication of Theodore Roethke’s “Root Cellar” A popular theme of a variety of art and media, life and death are often focused on individually. In the poem “Root Cellar,” Theodore Roethke creates a vivid depiction of life fighting for survival. To give a sense of the struggle life is facing, the poet uses a vocabulary that conveys a sense of unease and degradation. Perhaps drawing on his upbringing, Roethke shows a contrast of existence amidst backdrop of downtrodden cellar in the throes of decay, giving readers an insight into the intrinsic power of life’s resilient capabilities. The poem opens with heavy imagery to show the difficulty that one would expect life to have surviving in a root cellar.
Mary Oliver's "Crossing the Swamp" is a poem calling to focus the struggles and hardships throughout life. By deploying several poetic techniques the author manages to create a firmer relationship between the swamp and the reader, utilizing the effects of allegory, imagery, structure and tonal change. The entirety of the poem is a allegory for the struggles that life brings, comparing them to swamps, which are very dark, murky, and dangerous places to pass through. Much like life, one must make sacrifices, work hard, and understand that you will fall flat occasionally, but there is always a light at the end of a tunnel to work towards. Life is battle against yourself, others, and nature and a swamp provides all of those elements to contend with.
What connections have you found between the ways in which Plath and Hughes write about the seasons and/or time of the year in their poems? In Plath and Hughes poems, the use of seasons and time is often used in order to represent the narrator’s inner world of feelings. Furthermore, they are used to set the tone of the poem and therefore inflict emotion upon the reader. In Plath’s ‘Spinster’, Spring is shown to cause uncomfortable feelings within the narrator, leaving them in “disarray”. The confusion and therefore discomfort within the reader is evident as a result of the “irregular babble” of the birds and the “tumult”.
This further implies that the author uses formal diction and an informative tone to disregard the evil lurking in the swamps by only giving facts that establish an illustration of a perfect swamp. In Passage 2, the complete opposite, exhibits Okefenokee Swamp as a “hellish zoo.” After reading
Even though both passages refer to the nature of the Okefenokee Swamp, it is undoubtable that both writers had a different purpose. Passage one’s purpose was to inform and to be objective, while passage two focuses on how horrendous and repugnant the swamp is. Both texts are informative in the author’s point of
Also, the use of visual and auditory imagery allows the reader to depict vividly the surrounds of the slave times and the seriousness of the struggles they are faced with. The sound is shown in the phrase “voice high-sounding o’er the storm” and the visuals are shown in the line “Saw, salient, at the cross of devious ways”. The poet concludes with the use of pathetic fallacy in the phrase “lonely dark”. This is used to evict emotion onto the reader with the depiction of the state of loneliness. Overall, Dunbar makes clear the message, as well as fulfils the purpose of this poem for readers of all
This shows that the narrator is in shock and there for his use of language is less considered than in other parts of the narrative where a higher register has been employed. The minor exclamatory also shows the danger of the situation Marlow is currently in, therefore creating more of a tense atmosphere and showing the Congo in a new and dangerous light. Conrad frequently uses dynamic verbs, such as ‘lifting’, ‘stamping’ and ‘champing’ to emphasise the violence of the environment that they are situated in. Additionally these verbs are employed to describe the black helmsman’s actions on the boat and this can be seen as zoomorphism, dehumanising the character and creating a further danger, one which is arguably far more sinister than any presented by the environment. It also shows that these animalistic features can relate to ‘reined-in horse’ this means that the actions he is doing can be seen as ferocious and somewhat protecting the territory that is theirs by making himself look big and strong.
In The poem “Root Cellar”, Theodore Roethke describes the environment inside a dark, wet, and unkempt root cellar in which you would not expect life to be able to thrive. He describes this environment using a variety of descriptive words throughout the poem which would indicate a particular distaste for the cellar in all its filth, but it is not until the final lines in the poem that the reader learns that the speaker is, in fact, amazed by the existence of life in this place. Roethke uses imagery, alliteration, and personification to portray his attitude that although he indicates throughout, a thorough dislike for the cellar, life in the cellar, amazingly, is surviving and thriving despite deplorable conditions that would suggest the opposite result. Roethke uses imagery to show his attitude that life in the cellar, is defying the odds by describing the cellar and its inhabitants in the first eight lines of the poem as something repulsive indicating that the cellar is “Dank as a ditch” (1) with a “Congress of stinks” (6) and plant life that is “Lolling obscenely from mildewed crates” (4) thus creating a scene in which everything is at its most undesirable state through the use of negative verbs such as dank, stinks, lolling, obscenely, and mildewed, all of which bring to mind the worst possible environment one could be in, and makes it seem to the reader that Roethke does not have a very high opinion of the cellar. The speaker also uses alliteration to show his attitude toward the cellar as being that of loathing but amazement by using the hard sound of the “D” to show the filth of the cellar.
By interspersing ballad poems throughout the text yet leaving them unaddressed by the characters, Munro creates silences between the reader and the world in her story. Since the poems give clues to Heather Bell’s disappearance, the silence created forces the reader to delve into what is not written in order to makes sense of the story. The intertextuality is also jarring to the reader as the poems interwoven throughout use a whimsical rhyme scheme and light-hearted tone, all while dealing with an ominous and dark subject. This ironic juxtaposition causes the verse to be accentuated, emphasizing the deconstruction of a linear narrative. This demonstrates Munro’s ability to use interspersed styles to comment upon content through form.