We’ve all wondered and wracked our brains over the questions and nature of humankind, to which we have no true and final answers: how every moment lived and this moment you live right now, will simply be a memory, the daunting inevitability of death, life’s transience, the irreversibility of time, the loss of innocence with ages…it is in the human condition to question such things; and this mutual similarity in wonder, to me, is beautiful. I intertwine these universal topics into my poetry, particularly Father & Child and the Violets, to transcend time and provide meaning to a range of different contexts, whilst reflecting my own context and values. In “The Violets” I entwine the past and present, the reoccurring flower motif of ‘spring violets’ sprout in both memory and reality to reflect the persona’s age and perceptions “I kneel to pick frail melancholy flowers among ashes and loam”. The violets portray the persona as an adult, whose gained knowledge and lacking innocence has created a critical, melancholic view on her world. This is juxtaposed by the persona’s childhood perception; “spring violets in their loamy bed”. In childhood, beauty was simplistic and untainted by knowledge and human experience; blessed by innocence. This is stressed by time shifts established through structural indentation, whilst enjambment echoes the fragmented process of memory recollection. Structure is also pivotal in Father and Child, the two part structure, Barn Owl And Nightfall, emphasising the opposition between life and death, innocence and maturity, youth and infirmity; all while accentuating childhood as the era which catalyses maturation, internally and physically. The structure also depicts the influence of modernism upon my writing, as... ... middle of paper ... ...recognition of ‘symbols of transience’ which is juxtaposed with the oxymoron ‘ancient innocence’ representing the continuity of memory despite the transience of physicality and mortality. The alliterative metaphor in The Violets explains ‘Years cannot move nor death’s disorientating scale distort those lamplit presences’. Here, the father’s presence in the persona’s memories acts as a guiding and warming light, forever embedded in her memories, never to be tainted by death. The poems facilitate the investigation of human experience through illustrating life’s transience and the longevity of memory. My writing is my medium, to impart my values, my beliefs, my ideas, my messages, everything to you. The ability to convey such things is beautiful. But for you to discover and interpret the beauty, to mould the beauty into a new being, is the true beauty of poetry.
In “The Flowers,” by Alice Walker, the flowers are used throughout the story to symbolize the beauty and naivety of childhood. In the beginning of the story the author shows the main character Myop walking down a path along the fence of her farm. Myop sees “an armful of strange blue flowers with velvety ridges…” The flowers are bright and colorful, reminding the reader of an innocent type of beauty often associated with them. This suggests the flowers were inserted in the story by Walker to reveal how young and innocent Myop appears to be. Later in the story, after Myop had discovered the dead body of a man who seemed to have been hung “Myop laid down her flowers,”. As Myop put down the flowers she was also putting down the last of her innocence.
Eugenia Collier’s “Marigolds” is a memoir of a colored girl living in the Great Depression. The story does not focus on the troubles society presents to the narrator (Elizabeth), but rather is focused on the conflict within her. Collier uses marigolds to show that the changes from childhood to adulthood cause fear in Elizabeth, which is the enemy of compassion and hope.
The poem is written in the father’s point of view; this gives insight of the father’s character and
As the poem progresses, the flower blooms underneath the touch of the man, representing that their passion for each other allows her spirit to bloom just as a flower does. Philip Jason notes the effectiveness of Williams’ metaphor to Queen Anne’s lace, writing, “…it is mainly through metaphor that he transforms his observation, his still life, into a dynamic field of action that reveals the life and energy hidden.” Just as Jason proves, the metaph...
In Gwen Harwood’s poetry, the changes in an individual’s perspective and attitudes towards situations, surroundings and, therefore transformations in themselves, are brought on by external influences, usually in the form of a person or an event. These changes are either results of a dramatic realisation, as seen with shattering of a child’s hopes in The Glass Jar, or a melancholy and gradual process, where a series of not so obvious discoveries produces similar reformation. An example of the later case would be Nightfall, the second section of Father and Child, where the persona refers to her forty years of life causing “maturation”. For the most part these changes are not narrated directly but are represented by using dynamic language techniques to illustrate constant change in the universe of the poem.
During the process of growing up, we are taught to believe that life is relatively colorful and rich; however, if this view is right, how can we explain why literature illustrates the negative and painful feeling of life? Thus, sorrow is inescapable; as it increase one cannot hide it. From the moment we are born into the world, people suffer from different kinds of sorrow. Even though we believe there are so many happy things around us, these things are heartbreaking. The poems “Tips from My Father” by Carol Ann Davis, “Not Waving but Drowning” by Stevie Smith, and “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop convey the sorrow about growing up, about sorrowful pretending, and even about life itself.
Instructor’s comment: This student’s essay performs the admirable trick of being both intensely personal and intelligently literary. While using children’s literature to reflect on what she lost in growing up, she shows in the grace of her language that she has gained something as well: an intelligent understanding of what in childhood is worth reclaiming. We all should make the effort to find our inner child
Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Time does not bring relief,” also known as simply “Sonnet II”, explores the theme of a protagonist who cannot escape the memory of a loved who has left them in an ambiguous fashion. Millay disregards cliché that “time heals all wounds” as being a lie as the protagonist allows her grief and resurrected former feelings over the missing figure to control her actions after a year--”But last year’s bitter loving must remain /Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.” Throughout the year, the protagonist has longed for the loved one during the varied weather accompanied by the seasons. Regardless of the changing seasons, the subject cannot escape her dilemma. Not only does the central figure watch time go by, she refuses
1. “These later poems were usually written in response to some particular experience rather than to experience in general. Their points of departure are intimate and local rather than cosmic” (Korg 73).
her grandmother) and grief, Viramontes successfully paints an endearing tale of change. “The Moths” emphasizes the narrator’s oppression by her
For the most part of the poem she states how she believes that it is Gods calling, [Then ta’en away unto eternity] but in other parts of the poem she eludes to the fact that she feels more like her granddaughter was stolen from her [or sigh thy days so soon were terminate]. One of the main beliefs in these times was that when someone died it was their time; God needed them and had a better plan. Both poets found peace in the idea that God had the children now and it was part of the plan, but are also deeply saddened and used poetry as a coping mechanism.
Poetry is a lot of things to a lot of people, but can be characteristically described as an unwillingness to be defined, nailed down, or labelled. The poet uses words to create art instead of using the traditionally clichéd examples of art. In poetry, the canvas the poet uses is the reader itself. Poets go beyond writers and consider words, emotive qualities, their values and even the spacing in relation to the page to create an emotional resonance in the reader. Poetry is an evocative art form able to inspire strong emotions in the reader such as happiness and anger, while retaining the ability to surprise a reader.
As a child, Sharon Olds childhood was described as a “hellfire.” Growing up, she was told that she was going to hell. In Olds’ poem, she tries to express how she felt about her early childhood with an abusive father and relationships with her family. Olds wrote many poems about her relationship with her helpless, alcoholic father and her path to help deal with these memories and forgiving her father to loving the dying man. Most of Olds poems are about her journey from an abusive household to healing her past memories from a man she disgusted with. Her poems are ways of her speaking in loud tone describing domestic violence, sexuality, and family relationships. Like any poem, “His Stillness” the theme of the poem was about Olds getting close to her father w...
With photographs, visual memory's deception is particularly acute.We need only think of the photo of a dazed Jackie Kennedy gazing upon the swearing-in of Lyndon Baines Johnson as the next U.S. President or of the image of a small boy, his hands stretched above his head, being herded out of the Warsaw Ghetto by German soldiers, to recognize how well photographs work as vehicles of memory. But their strength is offset by the fact that in memory, one function of photography - its ability to "tell it like it is," commonly called its verisimilitude - is understated in order to privilege a second function - the ability of the photo to act as a symbol. In memory, then, contingent details matter less than the way in which contingent details are made part of a larger interpretive scheme.
In the poetry of William Blake and William Wordsworth, this difference between children and adults and their respective states of mind is articulated and developed. As a person ages, they move undeniably from childhood to adulthood, and their mentality moves with them. On the backs of Blake and Wordsworth, the reader is taken along this journey.