Planting A Sequeia By Dana Gioia Summary

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There is no greater pain than that of a parent who has lost a child. Gioia’s poem “Planting a Sequoia” reflects on the harrowing experience of losing his son. The poem is written in five stanzas, mainly driven by imagery and tone. Although the poem is dominated by an mournful tone, there is still a strong sense of honor and hope present.
The first stanza does not reveal much about the content of the poem but gives the mood and the setting. Dana Gioia makes use of strong sensory imagery to set a gloomy and negative atmosphere and lets the reader know that he has situated the poem on the North West coast of the United States. Although he has not yet revealed the content of the poem, he uses figurative imagery to symbolize death “Of and old …show more content…

Gioia embraces this tradition to overcome the grief of his son’s death. In his poem he writes “But today we kneel in the cold planting you, our native giant,[…]” which signifies that he is not planting a fruitful tree for the birth of his son, but a sequoia shrub in honor of his late son’s memory. Although the sequoia tree is still small and vulnerable, it will grow into agreat tree that will survive through the ages and that will “stand among strangers” even after time has changed. Instead of suffering over his son’s death, Gioia plants a tree in his honor which symbolizes life in the face of …show more content…

The entire poem is driven by juxtaposed ideas like life and death or the brevity of life versus the eternal lifetime of a sequoia tree. The idea of planting a tree for a child originally comes from a Sicilian tradition that symbolizes birth and celebration instead of pain and loss, like Gioia represents it in his poem. But the tree does not solely represent the Gioia’s son’s memory, but it also symbolizes the brevity of life. The tree will grow into a native giant and even when Gioia dies and all of his unborn children will have passed, the sequoia tree will live and grow. A human lifetime to the tree will seem like a cherry blossom to man, brief and

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