Mark Doty is an American poet who uses his platform and his poetry to speak out about society’s castigation of homosexuality. A plethora of Doty’s poems share a theme: a community impacts one’s individuality from a young age. Youth often indicates a sense of self that is no longer present in adulthood, an individuality with a distinct disregard of the expectations of others. A couple of Doty’s poems draw from the experiences of youth, Brian Age Seven showcases a young boy, unperturbed by society’s mores, while Charlie Howard’s Descent describes the pressure that youths face as they grow older. Brian Age Seven follows a first-grade class on a field trip to a pharmacy, after which the students draw self-portraits. Doty describes Brian’s drawing, “It isn’t craft / that makes this figure come alive; / Brian draws just balls and lines, / in wobbly crayon strokes. …show more content…
/ Why do some marks / seem to thrill with life, / possess a portion / of the nervous energy / in their maker’s hand?” (Brian). Doty writes of a child who proudly displays his artwork in the window for the world to see; he describes a child who has not yet been taught to fear what some may see as an imperfection. Charlie, of Charlie Howard’s Descent, is not as lucky as Brian. He and his peers have reached an age where they begin to feel societal pressure to behave certain ways and persecute people who are different so they do not become the persecuted. In the poem, Charlie is thrown into a river by teenage boys, ... climbs back / up the ladder of his fall, / out of the river into the arms / of the three teenage boys / who hurled him from the edge -- / really boys now, afraid / their fathers’ cars shivering behind them, / headlights on -- and tells them / it’s alright, that he knows / they didn’t believe him / when he said he couldn’t swim, / and blesses his killers (Charlie) In this poem, Doty shows that in their (search/quest) (for community/to fit in), the bullies, only young boys, kill a classmate whom they believe to be different from them, and by extension, different from what is socially acceptable. The cars belonging to their fathers are representative of the silent support from parents and older generations who teach the boys to value fitting in over individuality. In some of Doty’s poems, water is a literal point of impact, in some it is a figurative point of impact, and in others it represents changes and fluidity. In Charlie Howard’s Descent bullies use water as a punishment for nonconformity; similarly, in The Death of Antinous, Antinous, a young gay man, uses water as an escape from his nonconformity and the persecution that comes with it by drowning himself. Doty writes, “... swimming at dawn / in a current too swift for him, / or obedient to some cult / of total immersion that promised / the bather would come up divine” (The Death). In this passage, the current represents society’s expectations; Antinous chooses to be wiped away by society rather than fighting against the swift current. Later in the poem, Doty describes Antinous, “the drowned boy blurred as much by memory / as by water, molded toward an essential, / remote ideal” (The Death). Doty expresses the fluidity of individuality and how quickly one can be pulled into a current of conformity. Two of his other poems, Difference and A Display of Mackerel use aquatic animals to symbolize individuality and criticize the surrender into societal conformity.
Difference describes groups of jellyfish, “every one does something unlike: / this one a balloon / open on both ends / but swolen to its full expanse, / this one a breathing heart / this a pulsing flower … What binds / one shape to another / also sets them apart” (Difference). Doty describes a group of individuals, each unique, yet each finding a place in a community that accepts them; none of the jellyfish feel the need to fully integrate to be accepted the others, which many people feel. A Display of Mackerel illustrates a row of mackerels in a fish market, all the same colors and a uniform size. Doty writes, “… and not a one in any way / distinguished from the other / -- nothing about them / of individuality. Instead / they’re all exact expressions / of the one soul” (A Display of Mackerel). The soul in this poem is symbolic of societal ideals, of which the mackerel are all following, thus they are indistinguishable from each other. Doty
continues, Suppose we could iridesce, / like these, and lose ourselves / entirely in the universe / of shimmer -- would you want / to be yourself only, / unduplicatable, doomed / to be lost? … They don’t care they’re dead / and nearly frozen, / just as presumably, / they didn’t care that they were living: / all, all for all (A Display of Mackerel). Doty questions his audience. Would one rather be one’s self or fit in with the crowd? How happy are those who gave up individuality in their quest for conformity? Mark Doty writes poetry to support individuality and the freedom for one to live the life that makes them happy, no matter the societal backlash. Common motifs like youth, water, and society support a common theme -- a community impacts one’s individuality from a young age-- and the theme rings true throughout much of his work.
In Mark Doty’s “A Display of Mackerel”, Doty depicts a glorious group of mackerel perfectly united to suggest that humans should learn from them and act as a group to reach the same level of perfection. He describes simple mackerel on sale, but with the stunning image he portrays, they seem as valuable as gems: “Iridescent, watery/prismatics: think abalone,/the wildly rainbowed/mirror of a soapbubble sphere,/think sun on gasoline.” (9-13 Doty). The fish are remarkable in themselves, but their beauty supports the point of this poem, which is that there is “nothing about them/of individuality. Instead/they’re all exact expressions/of the one soul,/each a perfect fulfilment/of heaven’s template” (17-22 Doty). The earlier imagery creates a feeling
The article “A Letter To My Younger Self” written by Terrance Thomas is made to motivate readers, especially teenagers that share similar concerns and emotions as the author’s younger self. By writing a letter to his younger self, Terrance created a motivational and melancholic tone. The style of writing is, therefore, informal with a poetic touch to it. The article is written to motivate readers which results in it to have a motivational and melancholic tone. “Those moments of fear, inadequacy, and vulnerability that you have been running from, are the moments that will shape you.”.
Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke and Black Swan Green by David Mitchell introduce a central idea about beauty; Rilke’s being beauty within, and Mitchell’s being beauty is. Rilke develops it through his own narration, yet Mitchell develops it through a character’s experience (Madame Crommelynck). Individual identity is also a central idea pertaining to both Rilke and Mitchell. Rilke explains individual identity to someone else while Mitchell makes it so the main character (Jason) is to struggle with individual identity. The authors both take a similar approach to develop and refine their central ideas, beauty and individual identity, beauty and individual identity.
ultimate theme of 'The Fish" is that the carelessness of how we treat others and
Poetry is a way for authors to express their feelings on life, whether it be current events, past memories, or just abstract thought. Some poets write stories using poetry, while others write short simple imaginative journeys. One poet, Rita Dove, uses her poetry to reflect upon her past actions as a child. Her poems create extraordinary sensory experiences in the reader, mostly being visualizations that the reader can image. Both “Geometry” and “Grape Sherbet”, by Rita Dove, are similar in that they express a commonality between Dove’s childhood, and experiences people have in the present day by using common poetic devices like imagery, symbolism, and personification.
Several boys believe that they are capable of handling on their own without any guidance from their parents. In "Rites of Passage" by Sharon Olds, the son celebrates his birthday with his friends through the perspective of warfare. In "Boys" by Jim Tilley, the speaker portrays the life of a war through their premature games with his neighbors. Both poems establish the reality of transition from boys to men by creating warfare imagery that contradict the traits of a man and a child. Olds and Tilley demonstrate that boys want to prove to themselves that they want to take care of themselves.
In Seamus Heaney’s poetry, there is a recurring theme of his talking of the past, and more predominantly about significant moments in time, where he came to realisations that brought him to adulthood. In “Death of a Naturalist” Heaney describes a moment in his childhood where he learnt that nature was not as beautiful as seem to be when he was just a naive child. Heaney does this on a deeper level in “Midterm Break” describes his experience of his younger brothers funeral and the mixed, confusing feelings he encountered, consequently learning that he no longer was a child, and had no choice but to be exposed to reality. Robert Frost in one sense also describes particular moments in time, where his narrator comes to realisations. However, Frost writes more indirectly than Heaney, and all together more metaphorically. In “A Leaf Treader” he symbolically talks about life and death through the autumn season. He does the same, in “The Road Not Taken” where the two roads are described to be a metaphor for the decisions one makes in life, and the inevitable regrets we face due to those decisions. In “Stopping by a Woods on a Snowy Evening” Frost directly talks directly of a moment in time, however the significant meaning being that in life one needs a moment of solace to appreciate peace and beauty.
Mark Doty’s poem, “Golden Retrievals” describes the thoughts of a dog who’s merry tone contrasts with the human’s sentimental view towards life. The poem is in a form of a Shakespearean sonnet, but uses slant rhymes to further portray the speaker is a canine. Doty uses images, rhythm, rhyme, and organization to encourage the tension between the speaker and the human.
In the poem “On Turning Ten” by Billy Collins, imagery and movement is used to display the sadness of a little boy who is turning ten and does not want to grow up.
These lines demonstrate the stage of adulthood and the daily challenges that a person is faced with. The allusions in the poem enrich the meaning of the poem and force the reader to become more familiar with all of the meaning hidden behind the words. For example, she uses words such as innocence, imprisonment and captive to capture the feelings experienced in each of the stages. The form of the poem is open because there are no specific instances where the lines are similar. The words in each stanza are divided into each of the three growth stages or personal experiences.
... to understand one another. Furthermore, while both poets encase aspects of the fish into their poems, Bishop’s interpretation of the fish places it at a distance because her block of text loaded with descriptions is how she sees the fish, which gives the image that she just feels pity for the fish but doesn’t really feel the need to delve deeper in understanding the essence of the fish. By contrast, Oliver’s interpretation of the fish embodies its’ essence because she does not rely on its appearance to understand it but rather when she consumes the fish, its’ spiritual aura merges within herself. Oliver captures the soul of the fish within her poetic writing as evidenced by the constant alliteration with “f” letter words including, “first fish”, “flailed” , “flesh”, “fall”, “feed”, and “feverish”, which give the image that the poem is alive and is the fish.
innocence and how it all changed at the end of primary school. inky tadpoles changed from commas into exclamation marks I believe. This symbolizes the change from a child into an adolescent. However, in Piano, the poem shows us how the past will always shape us. tells us how we can never go back to the past I weep like a child for.
In class we have been studying poetry, and the two poems I have chosen to compare are “In a Brixtan Markit” and “Not My Business”.
... Therefore, instead of losing mental stability because of old memories, one should try to embrace sanity and perpetuate it in life. Moreover, the poem emulates society because people fantasize about looking a certain way and feeling a certain way; however, they are meddling with their natural beauty and sometimes end up looking worse than before. For instance, old men and women inject their faces to resemble those in their youth, but they worsen their mental and physical state by executing such actions. To conclude, one should embrace her appearance because aging is inevitable.
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.