Phillis Wheatley, a poet of early modern poetry discloses a sonnet to Scipio Moorhead labeled To S.M., a Young African Painter, on Seeing His Works. The start of Wheatley life was being purchased by a white family and shipped off to Boston. She was an extremely intelligent child that was beginning to learn how to read, write and how to strongly connect to the Bible. When knowing the background of this poet, we realize first-hand how her childhood impacted her poetry. This piece of poetry was in the point of view of first person. Many poets use a type of sound devices or figurative language to enhance their message within. Wheatley introduces a sound device known as end rhyme as a way of intensifying the experience to the reader. The poet stated, “When first thy pencil did those beauties give, and breathing figures learnt from thee to live” (409) uses end rhyme to give connection between those two lines. My outsight on these two lines would be summarized as the poet trying to interpret the beautiful people the artist has drawn in her own words. Also, Wheatley communicates figurative language into this poem by using the several metaphors to put emphasis on her writing. The metaphor heavily absorbed by me would be, “Whose twice six gates on radiant hinges ring: Celestial Salem blooms in endless spring” (410) creating an image of Heaven. …show more content…
Heaven is associated with having twelve gates and endless spring, therefore they use this metaphor for a stronger connection of Heaven in the poem. The tone poets use is important in connecting the audience with how their experience made them feel, therefore giving a deep relationship.
I feel the poet expresses a joyful and hopeful tone for this poem by the words “delight” and “wishful” to illustrate her feelings. The tone of joy comes from looking at the images as she refers to them as, “And breathing figures learnt from thee to live, how did the prospects give my soul delight.” (409) I feel the images she is characterizing are Angels and they are breath taking. Another tone I feel she displays is hopeful by expressing the hope for her and Scipio to one day exist in
Heaven. To me, the most critical assessment of a poem is to evaluate the theme and how the author connects to it. Although there seems to be a couple of themes to this poem, I feel the most critical one perceived would be religion. Throughout the entire poem, there are a variety of thoughts and details about Heaven. When considering Heaven, she elaborates on the Angels, Heavens doors and how it would sense to be there. The language usage presents Phillis Wheatley as a very spiritual woman in this poem. My favorite type of literature is poetry; therefore, poetry engages me separately than other readings. The employ of rhyming and metaphors catches my appeal intensively compared to a regular sentence in stories. The usage of metaphors in this poem was a bit hard for me to understand and visualize the first time reading it. Therefore, after rereading this poem I uncovered more details that lead me to a greater understanding of what the poet was attempting to portray. Another thing that was difficult to comprehend was how some of the language connected to the poem. If removal of the footnotes describing the word used and knowledge behind it, I would have been lost in some of the parts of the poem. I admired the way an author uses another individual’s stories (the drawings) for help describing them in her own story. Altogether, from this week’s readings this was one of my favorite poems written by Phillis Wheatley. Wheatley is a joyful and admirable poet that links her past events into her poems.
At the beginning of the poem, the speaker starts by telling the reader the place, time and activity he is doing, stating that he saw something that he will always remember. His description of his view is explained through simile for example “Ripe apples were caught like red fish in the nets of their branches” (Updike), captivating the reader’s attention
Throughout the poem, “To the University of Cambridge, in New England”, Phyllis Wheatley suggest that she accepted the colonial idea of slavery, by first describing her captivity, even though this poem has a subversive double meaning that has sent an anti-slavery message. Wheatley’s choice of words indicates that her directed audience was educated at a sophisticated level because of the language chosen. Her audience was assumingly also familiar with the bible because of the religious references used. The bible was used as a reference because of its accessibility. Wheatley uses religious references to subversively warn her readers about slavery and its repercussions and to challenge her reader’s morals.
Through her use of the words “dreamed”, “sweet women”, “blossoms” and the Mythology of “Elysian fields” in lines one through three, she leads the reader to the assumption that this is a calm, graceful poem, perhaps about a dream or love. Within the first quatrain, line four (“I wove a garland for your living head”) serves to emphasise two things: it continues to demonstrate the ethereal diction and carefree tone, but it also leads the reader to the easy assumption that the subject of this poem is the lover of the speaker. Danae is belittled as an object and claimed by Jove, while Jove remains “golden” and godly. In lines seven and eight, “Jove the Bull” “bore away” at “Europa”. “Bore”, meaning to make a hole in something, emphasises the violent sexual imagery perpetrated in this poem.
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
Mason, Jr., Julian D. The Poems of Phillis Wheatley. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1989.
result it has on people. In all three poems the last line of the poems
The poetry of Phillis Wheatley is crafted in such a manner that she is able to create a specific aim for each poem, and achieve that aim by manipulating her position as the speaker. As a slave, she was cautious to cross any lines with her proclamations, but was able to get her point across by humbling her own position. In religious or elegiac matters, however, she seemed to consider herself to be an authority. Two of her poems, the panegyric “To MAECENAS” and the elegy “On the Death of a young Lady of Five Years of Age,” display Wheatley’s general consistency in form, but also her intelligence, versatility, and ability to adapt her position in order to achieve her goals.
For the most part of the poem she states how she believes that it is Gods calling, [Then ta’en away unto eternity] but in other parts of the poem she eludes to the fact that she feels more like her granddaughter was stolen from her [or sigh thy days so soon were terminate]. One of the main beliefs in these times was that when someone died it was their time; God needed them and had a better plan. Both poets found peace in the idea that God had the children now and it was part of the plan, but are also deeply saddened and used poetry as a coping mechanism.
...vocal statement about the ?organic? possibilities of poetry than optimistic readers might have expected. ?Mayflies? forces us to complicate Randall Jarrell?s neat formulation. Here Wilbur has not just seen and shown ?the bright underside of? a ?dark thing.? In a poem where the speaker stands in darkness looking at what ?animate[s] a ragged patch of glow? (l.4), we are left finally in a kind of grayness. We look from darkness into light and entertain an enchanting faith that we belong over there, in the immortal dance, but we aren?t there now. We are in the machine-shop of poetry. Its own fiat will not let us out completely.
Another theory of basis for this poem is love and hope. When it comes to the topic of love, most of us will readily agree that everyone wants to love and be loved. One of Venus’ primary functions in Greek mythology was love, and in this poem the writer uses her to paint a picture of love with colorful symbolism. The Vigil of Venus opens with, “Loveless hearts shall love tomorrow, hearts that have loved shall love anew.” (642) This line is consistently repeated in the poem. In my view, this gives the reader hope, to love and be loved, whether or not they have experienced it before, a promise of things to
Phillis Wheatley was born in Gambia, West Africa around 1753 (Andrews et al. 770). She was forced into slavery when she was about seven or eight years old and purchased by John Wheatley in July of 1761 (770) for his wife Susanna Wheatley, who named her Phillis after the vessel that transported the young slave (Samuels et al. 543). The Wheatley’s, with their two children, Nathaniel and Mary (Brawley 12), taught Phillis to read and write in English and also tutored her in Latin (Samuels et al. 543). Wheatley studied the Bible, the Latin classical works of Virgil and Ovid, astronomy, geography, and history (Brawley 13). Much of her poetry consists of elegies (poetry written as a reflection on someone’s life) and many of her works are...
"Characteristics of Modern Poetry - Poetry - Questions & Answers." ENotes - Literature Study Guides, Lesson Plans, and More. Web. 09 Jan. 2012. .
The first literary device that can be found throughout the poem is couplet, which is when two lines in a stanza rhyme successfully. For instance, lines 1-2 state, “At midnight, in the month of June / I stand beneath the mystic moon.” This is evidence that couplet is being used as both June and moon rhyme, which can suggest that these details are important, thus leading the reader to become aware of the speaker’s thoughts and actions. Another example of this device can be found in lines 16-17, “All Beauty sleeps!—and lo! where lies / (Her casement open to the skies).” These lines not only successfully rhyme, but they also describe a woman who
In the poem, the author uses structure of the sonnet as well as patterns and rhyme to join the external form of the Petrarchan sonnet with the theme and tone. Brook's poem does not exactly follow the pattern we are used to which makes the reader follow every line closely for examination. Using a structured rhyme pattern to describe such a serious tone gives the sonnet a punchy feeling, simulating violence or pinch of strings in violin. Words like string, sing, hate, late, note, wrote, space, grace and many others all rhyme only using the last syllable, making them masculine. Also it draws attention to the ends of the lines which (the first four) she all ends with words related to music, furthering the theme of the poem. She also uses Petrarchan sonnet scheme to give the poem a lyrical quality emphasizing one of the themes of musical instruments in it. Finally, the poem is full of symbolism and imagery creating a strong connection between the way it is written and the message it carries.
In Charlotte Smith’s Elegiac Sonnets, Smith uses nature as a vehicle to express her complex emotions and yearn for a renewal of her spirit. Utilizing the immortal characteristics of spring and the tempestuous nature of the ocean, Smith creates a poetic world that is both a comfort and a hindrance to her tortured soul. Even while spring can provide her with temporary solace and the ocean is a friend in her sorrow, both parts of nature constantly remind her of something that she will never be able to accomplish: the renewal of her anguished spirit and complete happiness in life once more. Through three of her sonnets in this collection, Smith connects with the different parts of nature and displays her sensible temperament with her envy over nature’s ability to easily renew its beauty and vitality. In “Written at the close of Spring,” Smith’s second sonnet, she focuses on the wonderful ability nature has in rejuvenating itself each year.