Crossing The Swamp By Mary Oliver

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In the poem, “Crossing The Swamp,” by Mary Oliver, the poet exhibits the relationship of the swamp and speaker through imagery, personification, and long sentences. The use of imagery illustrates the scene and tone of the speaker. The use of personification portrays the speaker’s feelings of the swamp, as if it were alive.. Then, the use of long sentences reassures the poem’s description of the never-ending the swamp, contributing to the speaker’s struggles of crossing the swamp.
The use of imagery illustrates how the speaker views the swamp and how the swamp reacts to the crosser. At the beginning of the poem, the speaker’s first impression of the swamp was a knot of branches, soon to devour them. For an example,

This causes the speaker to ease the tension and adore the swamp for its kind act.
Long sentences, with plenty of commas, exemplifies the speaker crossing the swamp and the speaker feeling as if the swamp goes on for forever. This contributes to the relationship, of the speaker and the swamp, as if they as one. For instance, “here is to the endless wet thick cosmos, the center of everything- the nugget of dense sap, branching vines, the dark burred faintly belching bogs,” (Oliver 1). The tone for the rest of the poem was directed by the beginning quote because it created a tranquil flow. The tranquility of the poem was created by long sentences, describing the swamp as a calm, never-ending setting. If the poem were to instil plenty of periods and short sentences, the speaker would feel rushed, unable to build the relationship with a swamp. “Here is swamp, here is struggle, closure- pathless, seamless, peerless mud, (Oliver 9). The speaker directed their attention to the swamp, the gentle flow of the poem built a peaceful bond between the speaker and the swamp.
In essence, the use of imagery, personification, and sentence structure contributed to