Literary Commentary In July Man By Margaret Avison

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Literary Commentary In “July Man”, Margaret Avison delineates a bleak mood of sorrow and nostalgia for the beauty of the past through intricate diction, specifically the choice of adjectives, and sound. The morose image portrayed by the poet’s words reinforces the theme of the decomposition of nature and humanity. The structure of the poem is chaotic and spontaneous as there is no specific rhyme scheme and the length of the lines randomly alternate. Being a free verse poem perfectly fits the theme of decomposition for no order or structured standards are followed anymore and all aspects are breaking down, including the poem’s own stanzas. The stanzas are of extreme natures with the first one being nineteen lines long and the following one…show more content…
The old man is “weeping for the dust of the elm-flowers, and the hurting motes of time” (2, 3). Specifying the flowers’ dust exposes the desperation of the weeping man for he misses the smallest and most basic, tainted form of the flowers. Moreover, he also weeps for the “hurting” specks of time, a metaphor revealing the itemization of even abstract concepts such as time, as the old man mourns the “motes” of time which ache as they pass through the current age of destruction. The man could also be weeping for time because it hurts to age and live long enough to witness the decomposition of nature. The poet continues to paint a bleak portrait of the present which “rott[s] with rotting grape” yet is “sweet with the fumes” (4, 5). The repetition of the word “rot” highlights the theme of decay. The interesting choice to mention the sweetness of the fumes uncovers a contradiction where putrefaction is actually “sweet”. Moreover, “fermented potato-peel” (6) “puzzle” (6) the man, the “motes of time” (3), and the reader equally because it is “turned out and left in this grass-patch” (9). The puzzlement arises from intentionally turning out a fermented potato peel and leaving it in a grass patch, in a place of green nature, in a place of “green shadows of elm, and ginkgo and lime” (12) trees. It is puzzling because why would one throw a decaying fragment amidst blooming beauty? Such is the state of the present where man intentionally destructs and obstructs nature’s way of life. The onomatopoeic adjective and verb “buzzing” (10) is used to depict the common people at the current time. First of all, the sound of the word and its corresponding sound in reality are both unpleasant and annoying and therefore the poet is portraying the common man, or humanity in general, as an irritating source of noise. Secondly, the poet describes the shadows of the
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