Mary Oliver Crossing The Swamp Analysis

298 Words1 Page

In Mary Oliver's poem crossing the swamp, Oliver describes the journey of crossing the swamp, however, a deeper understanding through metaphoric work is shown. The speaker's relationship with the swamp is challenging but loving, revealing how despite the challenges in life, one can still grow. Readers are shown, through the use of structure, the challenges and feelings of going through the swamp. Gooey, sticky mud and the struggle of walking through it are visualized through a wave like structure. The waves represent a person moving forward with hefty and large steps. Oliver also incorporates enjambment in her poem to demonstrate a never ending journey. By avoiding the use of periods at the end of lines, we are show that the struggle of crossing

Show More
Related

  • Crossing The Swamp By Mary Oliver

    605 Words  | 2 Pages

    reacts to the crosser. At the beginning of the poem, the speaker’s first impression of the swamp

    Read More

  • Skrzynecki's Crossing the Red Sea

    1112 Words  | 3 Pages

    This poem captures the immigrant experience between the two worlds, leaving the homeland and towards the new world. The poet has deliberately structured the poem in five sections each with a number of stanzas to divide the different stages of the physical voyage. Section one describes the refugees, two briefly deals with their reason for the exodus, three emphasises their former oppression, fourth section is about the healing effect of the voyage and the concluding section deals with the awakening of hope. This restructuring allows the poet to focus on the emotional and physical impact of the journey.

    Read More

  • The Poet With His Face In His Hands By Mary Oliver Analysis

    991 Words  | 2 Pages

    Therefore, Oliver’s incorporation of imagery, setting, and mood to control the perspective of her own poem, as well as to further build the contrast she establishes through the speaker, serves a critical role in creating the lesson of the work. Oliver’s poem essentially gives the poet an ultimatum; either he can go to the “cave behind all that / jubilation” (10-11) produced by a waterfall to “drip with despair” (14) without disturbing the world with his misery, or, instead, he can mimic the thrush who sings its poetry from a “green branch” (15) on which the “passing foil of the water” (16) gently brushes its feathers. The contrast between these two images is quite pronounced, and the intention of such description is to persuade the audience by setting their mood towards the two poets to match that of the speaker. The most apparent difference between these two depictions is the gracelessness of the first versus the gracefulness of the second. Within the poem’s content, the setting has been skillfully intertwined with both imagery and mood to create an understanding of the two poets, whose surroundings characterize them. The poet stands alone in a cave “to cry aloud for [his] / mistakes” while the thrush shares its beautiful and lovely music with the world (1-2). As such, the overall function of these three elements within the poem is to portray the

    Read More

  • Symbolism In Gary Soto's Saturday At The Canal

    974 Words  | 2 Pages

    The author uses personification in lines 16-17 where he writes “ the shadows of this loneliness gripped loose dirt.” ( Soto 1). This use of personification is the narrator’s way of helping the reader to further understand the loneliness he experienced in life. The last use of personification relates back to the water in the last line where he describes it as “racing out of town”. The water racing out of town represents what the narrator wishes he could do. He is envious of the water’s ability to come and go as it pleases and that’s why he phrases this line in that

    Read More

  • Explication of Mary Oliver’s “The Black Snake”

    1158 Words  | 3 Pages

    Riley, Jeannette E. "Mary Oliver." Twentieth-Century American Nature Poets. Ed. J. Scott Bryson and Roger Thompson. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 342. Literature Resource Center. Web. 1 Nov. 2011.

    Read More

  • Mary Oliver Nature

    624 Words  | 2 Pages

    A prominent theme throughout Mary Oliver's poems is the appreciation of the natural world and all of its little details. Oliver is renowned for her ability to immerse the reader in the natural world through powerful language and imagery, allowing them to truly appreciate the beauty of nature. Her close observation of nature illustrates her intimate relationship with nature and is exemplified in one her most famous poems "The Summer Day," in which she questions the origins of nature. In this poem, Oliver conveys her love of nature through the speaker, who is not only a passive observer and admirer of nature, but also an active thinker and component of nature. By choosing nature as the poem's center of attention, Oliver is able to depict nature as a beautiful and mystical place, evoking the reader's awe and fascination. This poem is so beautiful because the speaker describes to the reader the lovely little idiosyncrasies that she notices within nature, illustrating how nature is infinitely complex and that even little insects are worthy of appreciation.

    Read More

  • Michael Ondaatje's Running In The Family

    186 Words  | 1 Pages

    Nature often plays an important role in the books and poems. Through the use of imagery, an author is able to help the reader to visualize the surroundings and the habitat in which the book is set up. In Michael Ondaatje’s memoir Running in the Family nature is interspersed here and there with the newly discovered family history. In addition to facts that Michael Ondaatje discovers, through the use of nature he associates the behavior of some of his family members. Michael Ondaatje connects his father with dogs and snakes, and his grandmother with horses and gardens. By connecting the nature with one of the most important characters in the book, the author uses symbols to imply his father and grandma’s true personalities. By doing this he is

    Read More

  • The Use Of Multiple Literary Elements In Henley's Invictus'

    767 Words  | 2 Pages

    Henley establishes the sense of suffering that the speaker is experiencing through the use of multiple literary devices. By beginning the poem with images of darkness and despair, Henley sets the tone for

    Read More

  • Crossing The Swamp By Mary Oliver

    436 Words  | 1 Pages

    In 'Crossing the Swamp,” Mary Oliver places the speaker in a dismal swamp and leaves him to process its being, analyze his feelings towards it, and conclude with how the swamp affected him. With the flow established within the poem, the reader is left to understand that at first, the speaker views the swamp as sinister, but upon crossing, he finds it to be the force behind his rebirth.

    Read More

  • Birches

    1102 Words  | 3 Pages

    Robert Frost engages the reader in a tension driven metaphor which relates the phenomena of natural processes to what can be regarded as the metaphysical transcendence of ones imagination though time. In this exploration, he reveals the conflict of ones volition against the natural, opposing forces. In the first three lines, the poet sees birch trees swaying in the wind, and likens the movement to young boy swinging on the branches.

    Read More

  • Tom Brennan Transition

    1227 Words  | 3 Pages

    Throughout the fourth tercet, the poem details of a psychological journey descending into a geographical journey through landscape “plunged into distant regions, his head a bathysphere, through his eyes’ thin glass bubbles”. The use of diction for “bathysphere” is conveyed as the son to represent the fragility indicating human frailty, thus also conveying through imagery and the metaphorical representation of his head a “bathysphere” being a “thin, glass bubble”. The concept of nature’s relationship to humanity, further makes detail through personifying features such as “he looked out, reckless adventurer” which is conveying a innocent story. Additionally, emphasising in another tercet, the sibilance of “spring, sun, shining, grass, solidity, hands and glistened represents a new beginning and a sense of identity and belonging through “hands”. Furthermore, the new phases of life demonstrated through the sibilance for the rebirth in nature suggests that individuals gain a deepened understanding of themselves and others through nature’ relationship with

    Read More

  • Eco-Poetics Reading in The Wate Land by T.S. Eliot

    3180 Words  | 7 Pages

    In this discussion of Eliot’s poem I will examine the content through the optic of eco-poetics. Eco- poetics is a literary theory which favours the rhizomatic over the arborescent approach to critical analysis. The characteristics of the rhizome will provide the overarching structure for this essay. Firstly rhizomes can map in any direction from any starting point. This will guide the study of significant motifs in ‘The Waste Land.’ Secondly they grow and spread, via experimentation within a context. This will be reflected in the study of the voice and the language with which the poem opens. Thirdly rhizomes grow and spread regardless of breakage. This will allow for an eco-poetical reading of the final eight lines of the poem. Fourthly rhizomes grow via subterranean networks and this provides a framework to study reference and allusion within the poem. Aware that this already sounds prescriptive and thereby against the spirit of what Deleuze and Guattari propose in their rhizomatic approach I will, fifthly, use the definition of a rhizome to try and capture what is germane if elusive to this approach- a lack of stasis. A rhizome can sprout roots or shoots from any part of its surface,’ which suggests the unpredictable connections, variation, and expansion, possible in poetry read rhizomatically.

    Read More

  • The Fish by Elizabeth Bishop

    885 Words  | 2 Pages

    With fewer than fifty published poems Elizabeth Bishop is not one of the most prominent poets of our time. She is however well known for her use of imagery and her ability to convey the narrator?s emotions to the reader. In her vividly visual poem 'The Fish', the reader is exposed to a story wherein the use of language not only draws the reader into the story but causes the images to transcend the written work. In the poem, Bishop makes use of numerous literary devices such as similes, adjectives, and descriptive language. All of these devices culminate in the reader experiencing a precise and detailed mental image of the poem's setting and happenings.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Dulce Et Decorum Est, By Wilfred Owen

    1143 Words  | 3 Pages

    Both forms of these poems, history and storytelling have a certain degree of fluidity to help determine the meaning from the speaker to the reader. The compositions of these poems show that the poets, Owen and Brooks, did not write for an audience, but rather for an absent reader, by using more imagery and sound elements. But, thanks to the introduction of electronic media, the seven poetic elements are now easier to be “seen” and heard. This allows for the reader or listener to reach the full potential of the poem. Through listening the speaker’s tone, witnessing the time period, hearing the diction, speech and sound elements, the true meaning of the poem is painted for the audience.

    Read More

  • A Critical Analysis of Judith Wright's 'the Killer'

    913 Words  | 2 Pages

    The consistent pattern of metrical stresses in this stanza, along with the orderly rhyme scheme, and standard verse structure, reflect the mood of serenity, of humankind in harmony with Nature. It is a fine, hot day, `clear as fire', when the speaker comes to drink at the creek. Birdsong punctuates the still air, like the tinkling of broken glass. However, the term `frail' also suggests vulnerability in the presence of danger, and there are other intimations in this stanza of the drama that is about to unfold. Slithery sibilants, as in the words `glass', `grass' and `moss', hint at the existence of a Serpent in the Garden of Eden. As in a Greek tragedy, the intensity of expression in the poem invokes a proleptic tenseness, as yet unexplained.

    Read More

More about Mary Oliver Crossing The Swamp Analysis

Open Document