Discuss the use of imagery in the three metaphysical poems we have
studied as a class.
In the three metaphysical poems The Flea, To His Coy Mistress and A
Valediction Forbidding Mourning; all have used unusual objects in
their imagery, these objects are not usually associated with the
subject matter so they get the poets point across in a bizarre style.
All of the poems have similar themes and are all trying to persuade
the women in them to co-operate with their needs in one way or
another. All the poems deal with love, which is where the metaphysical
aspect of the poem is portrayed.
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy that deals with the first
principles, in particular Ontology ('being') and Epistemology
('knowing'), and that is concerned with the ultimate nature of
reality. Metaphysical poets were a group of early 17th Century English
Poets whose wok is characterised by ingenious, highly intricate
wordplay and unlikely or paradoxical imagery. They use rhetorical and
literary devices, such as paradox, hyperbole and elaborately developed
conceits, in such a way as to engage the reader by their sheer
outrageousness.
In A Valediction Forbidding Mourning, a compass is used as the
imagery. The poet is saying that he is at one point of the compass and
she, his lover, is at the other and no matter how far he moves away
they are still joined together. But when the lovers are together the
points of the compass come together and the compass grows erect, this
closed compass is an image of his erect penis. This image that the
poet uses is to say to her that she need not worry because she is the
only woman for him.
At the top point of the image of the compass joining the man and woman
together there is also a hidden picture of an eagle, "Like gold to
ayery thinnesse beate." The 'ayery' in the quote is shaped to be seen
as the word aviary which gives the idea of birds. When the
illustration of 'gold' is mentioned before this, the two visual
representations are combined to create an image of a golden eagle. The
golden eagle is seen as a symbolic figure of strength and importance
and within this text the poet is saying that the eagle is watching
over them and protecting their love.
The poem also brings up the subject of "Moving of th'earth brings
harmes and feares," this is when the world was debating as to whether
the earth was the centre of the universe. This caused a huge uproar in
society because it shook peoples' beliefs. It is a sexual image and
Who she is as a poet, feminist or not, her experiences where what she wrote about and how she connected with the world and how she got away from her life as the, “middle aged witch,” or house wife. With the Double “I”, the tone and repeation, and who she was as a person, house wife, and poet. The very end of each stanza in “Her Kind”, “I have been her kind,”(7) isn’t just there. This is where she can connect with both her madness as the witch, adultress, and a housewife, with the “kind” she real was, a woman who writes.
The poet shows us that her mother did her best, and also was able to
situation is not to surrender to fear and the author shows this idea throughout the poem that we
to the powerful imagery she weaves throughout the first half of the poem. In addition, Olds
The poem begins by saying ‘I was a cottage maiden’. It is a simple beginning, talking in the past tense. She tells us she is lower class person.
The poem's speaker mistreated,gloomy and being isolated. She is a person who loss and assimilation if not loose your self. “That this
is similar to the feelings in her heart. In the same way that there is
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
Although the little girl doesn’t listen to the mother the first time she eventually listens in the end. For example, in stanzas 1-4, the little girl asks if she can go to the Freedom March not once, but twice even after her mother had already denied her the first time. These stanzas show how the daughter is a little disobedient at first, but then is able to respect her mother’s wishes. In stanzas 5 and 6, as the little girl is getting ready the mother is happy and smiling because she knows that her little girl is going to be safe, or so she thinks. By these stanzas the reader is able to tell how happy the mother was because she thought her daughter would be safe by listening to her and not going to the March. The last two stanzas, 7 and 8, show that the mother senses something is wrong, she runs to the church to find nothing, but her daughter’s shoe. At this moment she realizes that her baby is gone. These stanzas symbolize that even though her daughter listened to her she still wasn’t safe and is now dead. The Shoe symbolizes the loss the mother is going through and her loss of hope as well. This poem shows how elastic the bond between the daughter and her mother is because the daughter respected her mother’s wish by not going to the March and although the daughter is now dead her mother will always have her in her heart. By her having her
The poem is a combination of beauty and poignancy. It is a discovery in a trajectory path of rise and fall of human values and modernity. She is a sole traveler, a traveler apart in a literary romp afresh, tracing the thinning line of time and action.
This draws in the attention because it is like the poet is really asking the reader the question, and gives the reader a chance to think about what has just been said. The tone changes frequently during the poem, even when she is describing the life she loved there are a few lines that almost seem to bring the fantasy back ...
form of the poem to convey a message to the reader occurs on line four as she
to see herself as unimportant and useless. The poem states, “Often in a summer… downstream