Poem Analysis: Morro Bay

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“Morro Bay” “Morro Bay” is a poem describing a once beautiful bay. The author, Robinson Jeffers, uses metaphors, personification, and similes to describe the declining beauty of Morro Bay. The poem begins with the metaphor of the bay being a woman, moving around and exploring with the speaker. And soon after, the speaker explains how lifeless the bay has become, and its inhabitants. In the first stanza the speaker explains a positive relationship with the bay. He shows a bay with movement and liveliness. An example being from the “life from her eyes”. The speaker uses personification to describe Morro bay. Since human relations have more meaning than those of objects, he changes the bay to a woman to show its importance to him. Two humans …show more content…

Morro bay no longer has the life a woman would have, so the speaker doesn’t use personification any longer. It may not mean that he doesn’t love the bay any less, but tropes aren't used to describe it any longer in the first stanza. Jeffers states, “Now the bay is brown-” a very sudden change in its description. This may indicate Jeffers was not expecting the bay to have an unappealing color or not taken care of. The stanzas are followed by a lone stanza, with a lone word. Stagnant. This puts emphasis on the word and creates a pause when read aloud. Senses are now active imagining a stale, brown, bay with an odor. The upcoming stanza describes the now lifeless bay that is not taken care of. “Rotting weed, and the stranded fish-boats/ reek in the sun” is how the bay is described. Supporting even more how brown and stagnant the bay has become. Descriptions such as the reeking shows it wasn’t just a wild, petty claim the author could have used. In the next line a simile compares the rock to a thundercloud. Again the tone changes and the rock is now protected and has power. It is no longer a fragile attractive hing. The bay has power to protect itself from anything else that may put its natural beauty in

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