Mixed Language and Imageries in The poem Lies by Martha Collins

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“Lies” and “Dover Beach”
The poem “Lies” by Martha Collins who plays so well with the word “lie” in the first six lines of this poem. “Lies” is a great piece that includes a strong mixed languages and imageries.With her choice of language, “Lies” has many of its different meanings that did get me so confusing when I just first read this poem. Collins uses the single word “lie” which seems crucial to the poem’s total effect and theme. This mess of words helps us to point out how much one word (lie) can be manipulated and twisted into so many different meanings in a poem. It implies that there are too many secrets in our life.
In this poem, I can feel its graceful and athletic. All of these phrases that Collins uses make me think of the multiple meanings of lie in each line. In the second line of the poem “ but is is a lie for her to say she laid him…” (Line2-3) shows the question about the confusion behind the affairs. This makes me think if there is so much confusion and questioning, then why people want to have an affair. Furthermore, the question "if we don't know, do we lie if we say?" imposes a moral dilemma on the readers. The different phrases that Collins uses in this poem such as “laying low,” (line 1) “she ought to lie, but is it a lie…,” (line 2) “he wouldn't lie still long enough…,” (line 4) “A good lay is not a song,” (line 5) “a good lie is something else,” (line 6) “she lay down…,” (line 10) and “If we must lie, let's not lie around.” ( line 14) I think all of these phrases are important to the poem because the word “lie” plays a such meaningful role in this poem. No matter what it is meant to mean or what tense it is used in. It is used to explain something that is inferior to something else.
Everyo...

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...e struggles between humans is highlighted in this poem “And we are here as on a darkling plain swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, where ignorant armies clash by night” (line 35-37). The speaker of this poem tells us that we shouldn't expect life to be full of “ really neither joy, nor love, nor light”(line 33). He wants to shake us awake, and to tell us that, in the world we live in now there is no certainty, no "help for pain" (line 34).
Everyday we face the rough stuff in our life such as pain, fear, suffering, and loss. Arnold uses imagery to describe the flow of the tide and compares it with how sad the life truly is. Arnold sympathies with the loss of hope in reality. In a different sense, the calm, naturalistic description of a beach at night that the appearance contrasts to the reality that is sad, unhopeful, ‘retreating’, and ‘tremulous.’

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