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The importance of poetry
The importance of poetry
The importance of poetry
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“Piano” by D. H. Lawrence
The poem Piano, by D. H. Lawrence describes his memories of childhood. Hearing a woman singing takes him to the time when his mother played piano on Sunday evenings. In the present, this woman is singing and playing the piano with great passion. However, the passionate music is not affecting him, because he can only think about his childhood rather than the beauty of the music that exists in his actual space.
“A woman is singing” softly to the speaker “in the dusk.” The speaker is describing the place he is at in the present moment. It’s partially dark, and a woman is singing to him. As he listens to the woman’s soft voice, he remembers the time when he was little. He says that it is taking him “back down the vista of years,” till he sees “a child sitting under the piano.” This child is the speaker.
The child is “sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings,” and he is “pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.” When the speaker was a child, he used to be under the piano where the strings were tingling since his mother was playing the piano. He used to press his mother’s feet, which were in balance. His mother was singing with a smile on her face.
The speaker sees this scenery in his mind. As a reader, I can even imagine him standing in a dark room looking at a woman singing and imagining his old days with his mother. Using the picturesque words such as “softly,” “dusk...
The title of this piece, “Remembered Morning,” establishes what the speaker describes in the stanzas that follow as memory; this fact implies many themes that accompany works concerning the past: nostalgia, regret, and romanticism, for instance. The title, therefore, provides a lens through which to view the speaker’s observations.
Imagery uses five senses such as visual, sound, olfactory, taste and tactile to create a sense of picture in the readers’ mind. In this poem, the speaker uses visual imagination when he wrote, “I took my time in old darkness,” making the reader visualize the past memory of the speaker in “old darkness.” The speaker tries to show the time period he chose to write the poem. The speaker is trying to illustrate one of the imagery tools, which can be used to write a poem and tries to suggest one time period which can be used to write a poem. Imagery becomes important for the reader to imagine the same picture the speaker is trying to convey. Imagery should be speculated too when writing a poem to express the big
In comparing and contrasting the poems, "My Papa's Waltz" by Theodore Roethke and "Piano" by D. H. Lawrence, the reader could also compare and contrast the childhood lives of the poets themselves. Roethke's father, Otto Roethke, was a drunk and a figure of terror to his son (Seager 26). His mother was an angry woman and Theodore was a desperate child consistently in the middle of his parent's opposition (Seager 28). D.H. Lawrence's father was a drunk, almost illiterate miner (Squires and Talbot 34). His mother; however, was educated, refined, and pious, ruling the lives of her sons (Squires and Talbot 42). Reviewing the form, tone, and imagery of both poems, the attitude of the boy towards his father in Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz" allows the reader to observe the poet's ironic tone contrasting with the attitude of the boy towards his childhood in Lawrence's "Piano", allowing us to sense a more melancholy tone.
Many people look back on memories with a pleasant slant. A backpacker may love to go to the mountains, but every time that person ventures out he encounters a blizzard. The weather is not always conducive to the backpacker and can cause great discomfort. However, when the hiker returns to his normal routine he usually forgets about the bad experience so that he can continue loving the mountains and happily plan his next adventure. Similarly, Theodore Roethke's, "My Papa's Waltz" is a poem about a man who tries to make a horrible event into something much more pleasant to think about. The speaker seems to be remembering back to his childhood and finally uncovers dark memories about his father. The child in the poem finally realizes that childhood was full of scary nights in which he sometimes feared for his life. The speaker has tried for years to believe that he loved his father, but he finally understands what really happened in his boyhood home.
A character’s attempt to recapture the past is important in many poems and stories. " Fifth Grade Autobiography" by Rita Dove, succeeds at recapturing the poet's past. The poem's speaker is a the author and the addresse is the audience. The subject of the poem is one of remembrance. The tone is childlike, innocent and sadness and the theme is reminiscent. We discover the poet is describing a particular memory that shows reverence and longing for her grandfather, who is dead at the time she writes the poem. Dove recaptures memories as a child on a particular day and her interaction with her brother and grandparents especially her grandfather with great detail. The author recaptures the memory in the poem by looking at an old photo and describing, the things that were taking time at the place of the picture not exactly what is pticutred..
Imagery is widely used in O'Connor's story, which makes the characters and surroundings seem lifelike. In the depiction of the grandmother the reader can visual see the woman sitting in the car waiting on the others to arrive. "Her collar and cuffs were white organdy trimmed with lace and at her neckline she had penned a purple spray of violets containing a sachet." These are a few phrases of description that O'Conner used to describe the old lady. In the description of the scenery, O'Connor uses metaphors to create a more vivid image in the minds of the readers. As in this example of a field: "…various crops that made row of green lacework on the ground." Or "The trees were full of silver-white sunlight and the meanest of them sparkled." The reader might feel that he or she is riding in the backseat of the car along with the grandmother, June Star, and John Wesley. Perhaps he or she is reading a comic book or staring out the window admiring the scenery. Whatever the action that is taken place the readers feel a place in the story either living vicariously though the characters or by being a witness.
The joys of motherhood is shown all the way through this poem. The mother has gone to the effort of organising this and she lets the children play. “It’s so sweet to hear their chatter…” Here Harwood is showing how the mother appreciates looking after the children and hearing them learn and talk. She loves
She then shifts to discussing TV shows that bring family members together such as Sally Jesse Raphael or Oprah. As the mother imagines what it will be like when her daughter comes home, she brings out the imagery of tears and wrapped arms, and since we have all seen these shows, the reader can see the stage set up with four chairs and the daughter waiting for the parents to come out on stage. We can see the look of surprise on the daughter's face as they come out onto the stage. She has not seen her daughter, Dee, for a while and imagines b...
During imagery, it uses specific detail to describe something like the setting or mood. In Frost’s poem he says, “His house is in the village though, though he will not see me stopping here to watch his woods fill up with snow.”Anyone reading might be thinking; who? The author wants the reader to use their imagination. Imagination is another type of romanticism that is used in these poems. The author wants the reader to think; who is he? Where is he going? As he says, “My little horse must think it queer, to stop without a farmhouse near,” Why would this person be riding a horse? Frost
She often gave the child some of her food and ate with him as she enjoyed watching him eat. Once during a scouting job, she would take out a stack of photos from her backpack and look back on her infant childhood that she could not remember. She shuffles between the wrinkled photos, and then it strikes her that one of the background buildings in them had resembled to what was in front of her. She checks out the building and finds a frail old scavenger mumbling an old world song, lying down with an empty whiskey bottle in hand. He starts to reminisce about some small books he collected before passing out. After she searches through a pile of passports in his black plastic bag, she finds out her last name from one through her picture and matches up the names from the back of her photos. After she got back to share food with the child, she decides to set out to a high point to look for the
Over and over she sang this, reminiscing on the past, letting the needle guide her into a different time. This melodramatic act of hers was repeated each day, from sunrise until noon when it became time for her afternoon nap. Today remained more or less the same except she was gradually moving further and further back into her memory, further than she had before, transforming into the person she once was, the child she had once been that no longer existed. A calm breeze blew in through the window letting a strand of hair from behind her ear fall onto her face, not seeming to care she continued, “…bumble-bee, lavender, sage.”
Imagery in the novel brings the setting to life within the reader’s mind, by providing sensory details that appeal to
The melodies and harmonies woke him up from his deep slumber, creeping into the small cottage through the bedroom window. He rose to his elbows and listened intently; it wasn’t loud, but it wasn’t soft, either. It was like a missed lover come home, calling to him, missing him. His thoughts flew to the girl that occupied his bed with him the night before, and called out her name.
In the first line, we learn about the speaker. We discover that he is an artist that frequently goes to an artist’s colony which is like a cabin where selected artists can go and be creative while being able to also interact with each other. We also find out that he admires one of the other artists who lives there and has been watching her for a week. In the
Certain voices stuck out more than others; the shrill laughter of my aunt whose tone was a single octave higher than anyone else’s and a deep, nearly unintelligible rumble from my grandpa fairly close to where I was sitting. There was classical music playing from the stereo. It alternated between Beethoven and fast-paced Bach with an abundance of pianos and violins. The volume couldn’t hold up to the natural sounds of the house since my father had invited relatives over and they were all chatting each other up. I sat there deep in my own thoughts; I could feel my eyebrows pushing together and my lips held a firm rectangle. My stomach growled, but I didn’t want to bother making my way through the hoard of the family just to get a plate of finger foods. I distracted myself from their boring chatter that clouded the room by worrying about her and picturing what happened over and over again. The melodies were hard to hear above the people that worked the floor of the house, but my fingers still tapped along to the faint beat along the mahogany wood of the far end of the dinner table I leaned against. The only reason I knew this song, as muffled as it could be, was because my mom used to play it around the house. Why was he playing this? As if he had read my mind, my father turned his attention from my uncle for a second and easily found me through the crowd of relatives, eyes never leaving me as I made my way