A poem which I have recently read is “Mid–term Break” by Seamus Heany. This poem told the story of someone’s death, which made the poem very sad to read. The poet showed the sadness using various techniques. The poem begins with the poet in the medical room of his boarding school, awaiting his neighbors to arrive to take him home. When he arrives home he sees his father is crying.There are also some friends and relatives in the house and he feels uncomfortable and a little embarrassed because grown men are shaking his hand.
Annabel Lee is a work that expresses great loss and sadness. The speaker laments that he has lost the one true love of his life. The loneliness and sadness that permeate the lines of the poem result in an obsession of sorts over the love that the two shared. Every thought and all the dreams he has -- everything has to do with this love that was lost. In modern day thought, such an obsession that results in the speaker going to the grave to lay by her side could be viewed as a form of necrophilism, or morbidity.
Other similarities lie in the poetic features such as language, similes, and rhyme scheme. Poetic features like language usually depend on the era when it was written. In Norris’ poem, the language is very common and doesn’t need any deciphering. This simple language is used to put forth the idea through its simplicity. For example: “What is happening?
This links in with the idea of fate, as fate can’t be organised or forced to follow specific rules, just like a free verse poem. The use of formal diction suggests that the speaker of this poem is a knowledgeable and wise person who knows about both the lives of the two characters talked about in the poem. The poem suggests that the speaker is excited about the two lovers meeting and thinks they are destined to be together. Throughout the poem there is a very joyful tone, which is created by the positive outlook of the speaker and also the imagery used by the poet. Due to this poem being free verse, the use of imagery is less than most other poems, however the poet still creates a scene in your mind through imagery, but also with the use of figurative language.
We can tell that he is hurt psychologically as it says ‘unexploded mine buried deep in his mind’ and physically as it says ‘the rungs of his broken ribs’ these are both effects of his traumatic experience at war. The distribution of each stanza could also show the distance that she now has with the subject because of his lack of understanding of his painful experiences and emotions. As a reader, it sounds like she is writing the poem the way she would be saying it, this emphasises the shortness of each stanza and the small steps she has to take to his recovery, which is also shown in the tone of the poem as she sounds in pain, which makes the reader feel sorry for her. However, in ‘Hour’, the poem is separated into four stanzas, which all have four lines each apart from the last stanza which has two lines. Each stanza has emotive language of the writer’s feelings, we know this as it says things such as ‘we are millionaires, backhanding the night’ this gives the reader the impression that their relationship is stable and strong unlike the fragmented relationship in ‘The Manhunt’.
The Catcher in the Rye Response “I felt so lonesome, all of a sudden. I almost wish I was dead.” (Salinger 48) Loneliness and depression is exhibited by Holden, the main character in the book, The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. In the Poem “Hanging Fire”, Audre Lorde, the author, focuses on a young person who also suffers from being lonely and depressed and feels many of the same emotions Holden does. There is a common theme between this poem and this book: the loneliness, depression, and neglect teenagers face leads them to feel like “outliers” of society.
In the beginning of the poem the soldier starts to reminisce about his past. The cyclical nature of the poem is appropriate as it emphasises the pain and the nightmares that are continuously in his mind, giving him no peace or respite. “Poured it down shell-holes till the veins ran dry… a leap of purple spurted from his thigh.” This image when contrasted to the images of his previous life, serves to create a sense of loss for the young. The injury still to this day causes him pain when he thinks about the life he could have had. The soldier reflects on his “youthful” days which effectively exposes Owen’s perspective on the aftermath of war.
He was known however to add twists to the endings of his short stories and poems to produce a chill of ironic horror in the reader, which is notable in "The Son's Veto" as Randolph rides atop his mother's hearse on the way to her final resting place as the route leads past a mourning yet snubbed and rejected--by Randolph, not by Sophy--Sam, the grocer. Having said this, it is possible to identify ridicule of class prejudice in the character and role of Sophy's son, Randolph. He is raised to be like the Vicar, his father, and, like him, to disdain Sophy's country upbringing and lower class ways and dialect. Though Sophy was tutored by the Vicar to have more sophisticated city-like ways, the country girl still lay at the heart of Sophy's dialectic speech and understanding about life, at the heart of her world view, if you will. When Sophy tells Randolph that she intends to accept Sam, the grocer, as her husband, Randolph flies into a fit of horrified emotion because Sam isn't a gentleman as society defines it, which was by wealth and family background and not by manners anto define it today.
The boy relates his feelings to death and how he feels lost, even though he is not dying. The feeling of heartbreak for the first time can feel as though it is the end of the world, and this is how the young couple are feeling. They have extremely different points of view than the speaker. The speaker in the poem is an old man who does not understand why the young couple are mourning over their relationship. He also wishes he were younger and relates his thoughts about death to the actual meaning, not relationships.
The poem “Mid-term Break” by Seamus Heaney made me feel very sympathetic towards the poet. The poem is about a tragic loss in the poet's life when lost his youngest brother in car accident. The writer uses many techniques including similes and metaphors to convey the misery in the situation of his brother's death. Heaney uses effective language techniques to convey his ideas and the real sadness of the situation. "Mid-Term Break" is a very emotive poem in which Seamus Heaney reflects on the death of his little brother and explains what was going through his mind at that time.