There are few positive views of life to be found in C.K. Williams’ The Vigil. His poetry does not present a necessarily negative life-view, but rather sees the world as most others do. He calls out commonplace people, places, and times in the same manner that most of the rest of us do, despite how dark it may seem.
Williams uses a lot of punctuation in his poetry. His sentences, although full of commas and semicolons, flow smoothly from line to line. He uses a lot of clauses and qualifications in his writing. Each stanza remains fresh, never becoming mundane or repetitive. He chooses words carefully, painting pictures with broad, smooth strokes rather than wispy phrases that are hard to follow.
In his poem entitled “Grief”, Williams accurately describes his grief at the loss of a loved one. In Part One, the feeling is heavy and overwhelming. The speaker, (most likely Williams), recalls days of sitting bedside with a slow-dying love. Some writers waste time in getting to the heart of the poem, but Williams wastes none. In the first line, he leaves his readers with no question as to what is going on in the poem. He writes, “Gone now, after the days of desperate, unconscious gasping, the reflexive / staying alive,” (29). All readers are instantaneously reminded of an experience with watching a loved one pass slowly, perhaps painfully.
In Part Two of the poem, Williams questions grief as an emotion. He tries to indicate what exactly the emotion of grief entails, and maybe even what it should be. He comes to the conclusion that grief is not clear-cut, but rather like a roller coaster ride, up and down, coming and going in unexpected waves. Readers can identify with this, as we all know that grief is not an appare...
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... Hughes writes, “… to announce to the world / What Life had made of you” (112). Hughes feels happy at this moment, but he knows that Plath’s happiness is too good to be true, and that it probably won’t last. We all know that it couldn’t, and it didn’t.
Both Williams and Hughes present life in a manner that may not be pleasant, but is nonetheless true-to-life. Although Williams’ life-view is a bit dark and dreary, we can all read it and relate it to some aspect of our lives. And although Hughes’ poetry is mostly about his life with Sylvia Plath, we can all read it and relate it to someone what we may know. Williams refuses to find a silver lining in every cloud, and Hughes refuses to see Plath as a woman who could be helped. The reason that both of these poets are successful is that they write about life as it is, rather than what we would all like it to be.
My initial response to the poem was a deep sense of empathy. This indicated to me the way the man’s body was treated after he had passed. I felt sorry for him as the poet created the strong feeling that he had a lonely life. It told us how his body became a part of the land and how he added something to the land around him after he died.
“Pass On” written by Michael Lee is a free verse poem informing readers on grief, which is one of the most difficult obstacles to overcome not only when losing a loved one, but also in life itself. “Pass On” successfully developed this topic through the setting of an unknown character who explains his or her experience of grief. Despite Lee never introducing this character, readers are given enough information to know how they are overcoming this difficult obstacle. In fact, this unknown character is most likely the writer himself, indirectly explaining his moments of grief. One important piece of information Lee provides is the fact that he has experienced loss twice, one with his grandfather and the other a friend who was murdered by the
Sadly, life is a terminal illness, and dying is a natural part of life. Deits pulls no punches as he introduces the topic of grief with the reminder that life’s not fair. This is a concept that most of us come to understand early in life, but when we’re confronted by great loss directly, this lesson is easily forgotten. Deits compassionately acknowledges that grief hurts and that to deny the pain is to postpone the inevitable. He continues that loss and grief can be big or small and that the period of mourning afterward can be an unknowable factor early on. This early assessment of grief reminded me of Prochaska and DiClemente’s stages of change, and how the process of change generally follows a specific path.
Death has feelings as much as any human, imagining, getting bored, distracted, and especially wondering (350, 243, 1, 375 respectively). Odd, one could say for an eternal metaphysical being. But then again, not that queer once having considered how Death spends his time. He is there at the dying of every light, that moment that the soul departs its physical shell, and sees the beauty or horror of that moment. Where to a human witnessing a death first hand (even on a much more detached level than our narrator) can easily be a life changing event, Death is forced to witness these passings for nearly every moment of his eternal life. Emotional overload or philosophical catalyst? Death gains his unique perspective on life through his many experiences with the slowly closing eyelids and muttered last words. Yet in this...
Metaphor is an underlying element used in this memoir to depict the relationship between family and nature, and the profound understanding of oneself, through the sequence of life and death, and the rebirth that proceeds. Using metaphoric references, Williams explores the continual unpredictab...
In fact, an interesting experiment would be to give a group of people the words that Williams uses and ask them to arrange the words into the structure of a poem. How many people would do as Williams does and end up with four almost perfectly congruent stanzas, each one with three words in the first line and one word in the second line? The syllable count in Williams's arrangement is not perfectly congruent, but it is harmoniously different: the two longer stanzas (by only one syllable apiece) sandwich the two shorter stanzas. A sentence which would otherwise sprawl across the page, nearly without structure (it has no punctuation or end-mark),
This poem at first seemed straightforward to me. As I read it more closely and thought about it more I began to put bits and pieces together. I think Hughes has done a wonderful job of describing the slave experience, from the beginning of his narrative to the end, which is when he starts to realize that a brighter future might exist. The way it was written made me really think about what it was Hughes was trying to say. This poem made me realize that a great many people suffered as slaves. These people lived their whole lives in this capacity, most without hope of any change of status. I felt like I was putting together a jigsaw puzzle and it was a good feeling when I finally saw what I believe Hughes wanted me to see.
The interpretations of what comes after death may vary greatly across literature, but one component remains constant: there will always be movement. In her collection Native Guard, Natasha Trethewey discusses the significance, permanence and meaning of death often. The topic is intimate and personal in her life, and inescapable in the general human experience. Part I of Native Guard hosts many of the most personal poems in the collection, and those very closely related to the death of Trethewey’s mother, and the exit of her mother’s presence from her life. In “Graveyard Blues”, Trethewey examines the definition of “home” as a place of lament, in contrast to the comforting meaning in the epitaph beginning Part I, and the significance
The two poems, “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”, by Dylan Thomas and, “Because I Could Not Wait for Death”, by Emily Dickinson, we find two distinct treatments on the same theme, death. Although they both represent death, they also represent it as something other than death. Death brings about a variety of different feelings, because no two people feel the same way or believe the same thing. The fact that our faith is unknown makes the notion of death a common topic, as writers can make sense of their own feelings and emotions and in the process hope to make readers make sense of theirs too. Both Dickinson and Thomas are two well known and revered poets for their eloquent capture of these emotions. The poems both explore death and the
The speaker started the poem by desiring the privilege of death through the use of similes, metaphors, and several other forms of language. As the events progress, the speaker gradually changes their mind because of the many complications that death evokes. The speaker is discontent because of human nature; the searching for something better, although there is none. The use of language throughout this poem emphasized these emotions, and allowed the reader the opportunity to understand what the speaker felt.
“In Memoriam A. H. H.,” a large collection of poems written by Alfred Lord Tennyson, is an extended expression of the poet's grief for the loss of his beloved friend Arthur Hallam. The poem takes the speaker on a journey that describes an individual’s struggle through the stages of grief. In 1969, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross first proposed five stages of grief which include denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance in her book titled, “On Death and Dying.” Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s universal stages of grief are expressed in Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem “In Memoriam A. H. H.” During the first stage, denial, the individual develops feelings of futility and defeat.
Williams’s poems represent the simple, small, or quick occurrences in everyday life. This may be a scene, image, or event, but Williams seems to capture the essence of these ordinary items and describe them in great detail. A possible reason for these simple ideas showing up in his poems may be because he was a doctor. Doctors are taught to see the smallest details in trying to determine what is wrong with their patients, and in some cases these small issues can be very important. This may explain why Williams portrayed seemingly insignificant aspects of life as complex or important. Another possible reason for these praises in Williams’s poetry according to Poet
Langston Hughes is one of the writers affected by events that happened during a certain time frame. As represented in this essay you can see that biological events affect writers and what they write about. Even to this day time affects the way we think, act and write. It influences everything we about us. For example, when 911 happened many people wrote about what was going on, and how people felt. They even drew pictures and murals as dedication and respect for they lives lost. In Dream andOppression the affects were from negative things going on during that time, on the other hand My Peoplehas a positive outlook. Even though the poems were written during different times, they still were influenced by the time period, So you see no matter how little or big things are they impact us all socially.
Funeral Blues by W. H. Auden is a short poem that illustrates the emotions that he is dealing with after the love of his life passes away. The tone of this piece evokes feelings that will differ depending on the reader; therefore, the meaning of this poem is not in any way one-dimensional, resulting in inevitable ambiguity . In order to evoke emotion from his audience, Auden uses a series of different poetic devices to express the sadness and despair of losing a loved one. This poem isn’t necessarily about finding meaning or coming to some overwhelming realization, but rather about feeling emotions and understanding the pain that the speaker is experiencing. Through the use of poetic devices such as an elegy, hyperboles, imagery, metaphors, and alliterations as well as end-rhyme, Auden has created a powerful poem that accurately depicts the emotions a person will often feel when the love of their live has passed away.
Losing a loved one is one of the hardest experiences every person must go through. The experience does not end with the loss though, but begins with it. The loss of a dear person leads those left behind into a downward spiral of emotions and memories. A poem entitled “Lucy Gray” by William Wordsworth focuses on that loss and the emotions that follow it. By reading the poem one can objectively experience both the grief that Lucy Gray’s death brings on but also her parents’ acceptance of her death.