Diction In Seahorses

937 Words2 Pages

Poetry possesses the unique ability to change and manipulate readers’ perspectives. By reading and writing poetry, we can look from a different angle to explore and unlock deeper meaning in even the most everyday objects and animals. The theme of finding intricate beauty in everyday items is prevalent throughout many of American novelist, essayist and poet Brad Leithauser’s multitude of works. One of the most detailed and elegant examples of this lies in one of Leithauser’s lesser known compositions, “Seahorses” (p.98, Poetry Speaks: who i am). In this poem, Leithauser invites the reader below the waves to witness firsthand an “equine wonder” that initially appears to be only a strange looking fish, but turns out to be used as an emblem of …show more content…

Leithauser’s seahorse is used not as an example of ocean life (as the poem may initially suggest), but as a symbol for an item, large or small, that we can look to in our lives to “give us release” from our everyday concerns. Some clear examples of this throughout the poem reside in the fifth stanza with the lines “mailed male” and “turreted, nonsynchronous/ eyes”. In these lines, Leithauser uses diction to convey the theme of whimsical otherworldliness by likening the seahorse’s eyes and body to the chain-male of a knight and the stone turrets of a medieval castle. With these sentences, Leithauser whisks the reader away from the aquatic world of the ocean and into the age of knights and castles. When I am working strenuously to achieve a goal or complete a project, such as drafting a position paper for Model United Nations or completing a complicated experiment in Science class, poems such as “Seahorses” can act as a bridge from the constraining world of reality to a realm of imagination and relaxation. This ability to transport the reader is a central pillar to the overall success of the poem, for although everyone wishes for it, no life is entirely free from labor and stress, and as a result, almost every reader of “Seahorses” can connect deeply with it. This ability to connect with virtually any reader, along with its intricate toolbox of literary devices and themes, has made “Seahorses” one of my favorite

Show More
Related

  • Analyzing Robinson Jeffers 'Morro Bay'

    560 Words  | 2 Pages

    The poem begins with many examples of imagery and reveals an important role of the meaning of the poem. In the first four lines of the poem, Jeffers uses imagery to establish his connection between him and the bay.

    Read More

  • Theme of Carpe Diem in A Fine, a Private Place by Ackerman and To His Coy Mistress by Marvell

    863 Words  | 2 Pages

    The first poem by Ackerman is about two lovers who find their own special place to make love: under water. The writer describes the captured moment over four stanzas of the undersea world, describing physical attributes and actions with marine life. The woman in the poem is described as “his sea-geisha / in an orange kimono / of belts and vests, / her lacquered hair waving” (Lines 24-27) and the man with “his sandy hair / and sea-blue eyes, his kelp thin waist / and chest ribbed wider / than a sandbar / where muscles domed / clear and taunt as shells” (Lines 34-40) Ackerman’s poem has a feeling of tranquility and patience, capturing the moment and enhancing it to its fullest extent. She portrays sex as a beautiful act, saying “he pum...

    Read More

  • Elizabeth Bishop's "the Fish" and "One Art"

    446 Words  | 1 Pages

    of images and details about the fish, making it into not only a poem with a purpose, but

    Read More

  • The Blue Estuaries Personification

    718 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Julia Alvarez’s poem “On Not Shoplifting Louise Bogan’s The Blue Estuaries”, Alvarez skillfully employs poetic devices such as imagery and personification to let the reader view the power of literature through the eyes of a young, poverty stricken, estranged woman, inspiring her love for poetry. Alvarez’s use of imagery paints a vivid picture of the setting and the narrator’s actions for the reader throughout her significant experience; all through the eyes of an alienated female. The use of personification and author’s tone brings “The Blue Estuaries” to life for the reader-just as it had appeared to the narrator.

    Read More

  • The Use Of Alliteration In The Diver By Robert Hayden

    1029 Words  | 3 Pages

    The repetition of sound causes different feelings of uncertainty and fear as the reader delves deeper into the poem. “Moss of bryozoans/blurred, obscured her/metal...” (Hayden 3). The r’s that are repeated in blurred and obscured create a sense of fogginess of the darkness of the water that the speaker is experiencing. The fogginess is a sense of repression, which is attempting its way out of the mind to the conscious. Hayden continues the use of alliteration with F and S sounds. Although they are different letters they produce the same sound that causes confusion, but an acceptance of death. “Yet in languid/frenzy strove, as/one freezing fights off/sleep desiring sleep;/strove against/ the canceling arms that/suddenly surrounded/me...” (Hayden 4). The use of sound at the last six lines of the poem causes the reader to feel the need for air and the fear of death. “Reflex of life-wish?/Respirators brittle/belling? Swam from/the ship somehow; /somehow began the/measured rise” (Hayden 4). The R sounds that begin is the swimming through the water. The B sound that continues right after in “brittle belling” is the gasp of air, and finally, the S sounds that finish the line by creating a soft feeling. As if the reader might not get out in time, even though the lines are saying that the speaker does escape the ship. The fear the alliteration evokes from the reader is the unconscious. The deep inner thoughts that no one wants to tap into. The speaker is accepting the idea of death in the ocean through his unconscious, but his conscious mind is trying to push back and begin the “measured rise” (Hayden 4) back to the

    Read More

  • America, by Claude McKay

    1105 Words  | 3 Pages

    Kelly, Joseph. The Seagull Reader Poems Second Edition. New York: W.W Norton and Company, 2001.

    Read More

  • Essay 1

    1806 Words  | 4 Pages

    Throughout the first half of the poem, Bishop describes the fish as an inanimate object, as reflected in her comparisons, which uses objects to describe the fish as shown when she says, “Here and there his brown skin hung in strips like ancient wallpaper…”. (9-11) She chooses a wallpaper to describe the skin of the fish in order to accurately portray its battered and worn state; her decision to compare the fish to an inorganic ...

    Read More

  • Nature in the Poems: The Fish by Elizabeth Bishop and The Meadow Mouse by Theodore Roethke

    518 Words  | 2 Pages

    Two poems, “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop and “The Meadow Mouse” by Theodore Roethke, include characters who experience, learn, and emote with nature. In Elizabeth Bishop’s poem “The Fish,” a fisherman catches a fish, likely with the intention to kill it, but frees it when he sees the world through the eyes of the fish. In Theodore Roethke’s poem “The Meadow Mouse,” a man finds a meadow mouse with the intention of keeping it and shielding it from nature, but it escapes into the wild. These poems, set in different scenarios, highlight two scenarios where men and women interact with nature and experience it in their own ways.

    Read More

  • Analysis of The Fish by Elizabeth Bishop

    976 Words  | 2 Pages

    A poem without any complications can force an author to say more with much less. Although that may sound quite cliché, it rings true when one examines “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop. Elizabeth’s Bishop’s poem is on an exceedingly straightforward topic about the act of catching a fish. However, her ability to utilize thematic elements such as figurative language, imagery and tone allows for “The Fish” to be about something greater. These three elements weave themselves together to create a work of art that goes beyond its simple subject.

    Read More

  • The Sea as a Metaphor for Love in Valediction

    623 Words  | 2 Pages

    In this poem, the author tells of a lost love. In order to convey his overwhelming feelings, Heaney tries to describe his emotions through something familiar to everyone. He uses the sea as a metaphor for love, and is able to carry this metaphor throughout the poem. The metaphor is constructed of both obvious and connotative diction, which connect the sea and the emotions of love.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of The Poem The Fish

    833 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the next stanza the author writes “While his gills were breathing in the terrible oxygen … I looked into his eyes which were far larger than mine but shallower, and yellowed … scratched isinglass. They shifted a little, but not to return my stare” (Bishop). In this stanza the author uses more descriptive details to appeal to the five senses of the reader by describing how vulnerable the fish actually is, reminding the readers that the fish is at the mercy of the speake. Furthermore, the author uses simile to compare the fish’s skin to a feather ( I thought of the coarse white flesh packed in like feathers (Bishop)). The author keeps on correlating the the fish’s unattractive appearance to decorative objects such as a rose and a feather, giving the readers a (somewhat) paradox, the ugly beauty. In the fifth stanza the author writes “ It was more like the tipping ... that from his lower lip … hung five old pieces of fish-line, … with all their five big hooks grown firmly in his mouth” (Bishop). In this stanza the author describes the that fish already had five fishing hooks attached to its mouth. He suggest that the fish was able to fight of death five time in the past and starts to admire the fish for its strength. The author again uses more descriptive detail as noted

    Read More

  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

    1496 Words  | 3 Pages

    Samuel Taylor Coleridge's “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” seems like a simple story of a man lost at sea and defeating the odds, but if you hone in on the visual and aural details you see that it’s much more. The whole story revolves around the theme of religious transformation and Coleridge uses these visual and aural symbols to convey and drive home this theme.

    Read More

  • Comparison B/w The Wanderer And The Seafarer

    670 Words  | 2 Pages

    The unknown authors portray the two themes through detail and emotion.      "The Seafarer" creates a storyline of a man who is "lost" at sea. There is a major reference to the concept of the sea and how it "captures" the soul and leaves a lonely feeling. The character is set to know the consequences of the sea, but something keeps calling him back to it. "And yet my heart wanders away, My soul roams with sea, the whales' home, wandering to the widest corners of the world, returning ravenous with desire, Flying solitary, screaming, exciting me to the ocean, breaking oaths on the curve of a wave." (lines 58-64). This poem also grasps the concept of religion and how it plays a role in this work.

    Read More

  • I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

    732 Words  | 2 Pages

    Nature is often a focal point for many author’s works, whether it is expressed through lyrics, short stories, or poetry. Authors are given a cornucopia of pictures and descriptions of nature’s splendor that they can reproduce through words. It is because of this that more often than not a reader is faced with multiple approaches and descriptions to the way nature is portrayed. Some authors tend to look at nature from a deeper and personal observation as in William Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”, while other authors tend to focus on a more religious beauty within nature as show in Gerard Manley Hopkins “Pied Beauty”, suggesting to the reader that while to each their own there is always a beauty to be found in nature and nature’s beauty can be uplifting for the human spirit both on a visual and spiritual level.

    Read More

  • Critical Analysis Of The Poem The Fish

    1274 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the poem “The Fish”, the use of short lines and the presence of enjambments indicate that the poet, Bishop, is giving her own thoughts. This form of poetry gives the impression that the poet is not simply writing the words on a piece of paper but is rather speaking them out loud. The poem is presented in a way that the audience feels as if the poet was present at the scene and was narrating the events that occurred throughout the poem (Bishop 463). The poem is also written as a single stanza. The decision to write it this way may have been in an attempt to portray the long ordeal that fishermen engage in when fishing. In doing so, bishop is able to prepare the audience for the poem and to make sure that it resonates with the act of fishing itself. The poem is also full of imagery that is extremely vivid in description which help the audience visualize what is being narrated in the poem (Bishop 463). Through the narration, tone and imagery used, the audience is led into creating a bond with the fish. This bond is

    Read More

More about Diction In Seahorses

Open Document