Shane Koyzcan's Poem 'Atlantis'

627 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Explain the significance of one stanza from the poem atlantis a lost sonnet

Shane Koyczan’s poem “Atlantis” demonstrates the teller of the poem going through an existential path, at the beginning of the poem the teller begins to look for the lost city of Atlantis. The poem’s first two stanzas both ended with “I’m left looking for Atlantis” (Koyczan) which can also be interoperated into I’m looking for a purpose; this show that the speaker is metaphorically looking for – the lost city within himself. This being shown through a series of significant events in which he inquires why things are the way they are, why we deposit our faith in fear or why don’t aliens hide from us better. He also talks about faith and how faith can’t put a dent in fact and by saying that it shows – fact has killed faith and if we believe that “the universe is never ending” (Koyczan) then by that we are nothing not even a microbe, which demonstrates how little he thinks of himself. Shane Koyzcan’s poem displays that through of significant experiences we can start to learn our purpose he shows this having the experiences he goes make him question the world around him. Atlantis …show more content…

The speaker has been looking for Atlantis for decades and all he knows so far is that it’s somewhere under the water which can mean that either he is not looking for it hard enough or it is the right time for him to find it. In the poem he explains that “We deposit our faith in fear” (Koyczan) which proves that we are scared of being out of the box so we drop our beliefs for facts; which may be the answer to why Atlantis has not been found yet because we have been shut down to believing it is nothing but a

Show More
Related

  • Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist and Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken

    1045 Words  | 3 Pages

    The knowledge and universal understanding derivative from a journey can leave the traveller positively enlightened. In Coelho’s story, Santiago is faced with recurring dreams which lead him to ‘’traverse the unknown’’ in search of a treasure buried in Egypt, the metaphor for universal connection, and in doing so, comes to the unrelenting realisation of spiritual transcendence. After arriving at the assumed geographical location of the treasure ‘’several figures approached him’’. They demand the boy keep searching for this treasure as they are poor refugees and in need of money, but as Santiago does, he finds nothing. Then, after relentless digging through the night ‘’as the sun rose, the men began to beat the boy’’ , finally relenting with the truth, Santiago reveals his dreams to the travellers. In doing so, Santiago finds out that these men had also been faced with recurring dreams measured around the place where the boy had undergone his own, both relative to hidden treasure. However the leader was ‘’not so stupid as to cross an entire desert just because of a recurrent dream’’. It is with this fact, tha...

    Read More

  • Ambiguity In The Monument By Elizabeth Bishop

    1136 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the text Bishop states, “The monument is one-third set against/ a sea; two thirds against a sky.” (line 18) It is suggested that the monument is one with nature. The narrator goes on to state, “A sea of narrow, horizontal boards/lies out behind our lonely monument,/its long grains alternating right and left/like floor-boards--spotted, swarming-still,/and motionless.” Here the author personifies the monument by describing it as “swarming-still”. The phrase swarming-still is contradictory because an object cannot move and be still at the same time. The narrator personifies the monument as to express its life-like qualities. The location of the monument is never stated. A second voice joins the poem and questions the location of their presence, “‘Where are we? Are we in Asia Minor,/ Or in Mongolia?’” (line 33) Without knowledge on the location of the monument it is difficult to know what it means. The narrator ponders on what the monuments purpose is, “An ancient promontory,/ an ancient principality whose artist-prince/ might have wanted to build a monument/ to mark a tomb or boundary, or make/ a melancholy or romantic scene of it…” (line 35) The narrator herself is unsure of who created the monument or why. This pushes the audience to develop their own perceptions as the narrator brainstorms about its significance. A voice separate from the narrator states, “‘But that queer sea looks made of wood,/half-shining,like a driftwood sea./And the sky looks wooden, grained with cloud./ It’s like a stage-set; it is all so flat!/Those clouds are full of glistening splinters!/What is that?’”(line 40) This voice questions the scenery surrounding the monument. The narrator states that, “It is the monument” This implies that the narrator perceives the surrounding environment to be part of the monument itself. Another voice says, “‘Why did you bring me here to see

    Read More

  • Thomas Hardy's The Convergence Of The Twain

    556 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the first five stanzas, the author discusses the already submerged ship. ?Stilly couches she,? describes the ship resting on the bottom of the ocean. The lines, ?Jewels in joy designed?lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind?, point out the waste of money, technology and craftsmanship going down with the ship which is consistently mentioned in these stanzas. In the next six stanzas he describes the iceberg and the ship meeting together as one in destiny.

    Read More

  • Zarathustra by Me

    10504 Words  | 22 Pages

    --Let us look each other in the face. We are Hyperboreans--we know well enough how remote our place is. \"Neither by land nor by water will you find the road to the Hyperboreans\": even Pindar1,in his day, knew that much about us. Beyond the North, beyond the ice, beyond death--our life, our happiness...We have discovered that happiness; we know the way; we got our knowledge of it from thousands of years in the labyrinth. Who else has found it?--The man of today?--\"I don't know either the way out or the way in; I am whatever doesn't know either the way out or the way in\"--so sighs the man of today...This is the sort of modernity that made us ill,--we sickened on lazy peace, cowardly compromise, the whole virtuous dirtiness of the modern Yea and Nay. This tolerance and largeur of the heart that \"forgives\" everything because it \"understands\" everything is a sirocco to us.

    Read More

  • The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allan Poe

    2010 Words  | 5 Pages

    When the “narrator discusses how the unconscious mind provides a glimpse into the gulf beyond,” this shows how Poe can try to explain how the imagination can work, and how it can interact with rational thought processes of...

    Read More

  • Carl Adamshick's Everything That Happens Can Be Called Aging

    718 Words  | 2 Pages

    The poem unapologetically documents the poet’s hopes to have all of his “emotions rattled” and makes demands: “Give me the bottom of the river, / all the unadorned, unfinished / unpraised moments, one good turn / on the luxuriant wheel.” Adamshick is sincere in his need for family, for dancing, and for “verbal sparring” throughout his time on this earth. It is his sincere confession and documentation of these needs and desires that makes his poem a prayer. Adamshick’s collection of poetry, entitled Saint Friend, focuses on the horrible truth that our time on this earth will end and is often short-lived. Despite Adamshick’s realization of this truth, he chooses to honor its presence through his

    Read More

  • The Epic Poem Omers by Derek Walcott

    953 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the epic poem Omeros by Derek Walcott is a literary piece that calls for a lot of attention. This poem can be dangerously confusing at time because it is written in a universe that has so many different things going on. Omeros is a racial, ethnic, and political poem that captivates the reader for a couple of reasons. Wolcott intentionally doesn’t put the poem in anytime of chronological order. He uses many different cultures/religions such as African gods, Greek gods, Caribbean gods, and the Christian God. Wolcott talks about complexity of being both Afrocentric, Eurocentric and shows how these principles/ideologies distract us as human beings. His characters show signs of displacement in society trying to assimilate between culture and race. The poem also in some instances rejects or hides the characters’ race and culture as they try to find an identity in the world. Omeros is unlike any traditional epic poem and it deviates from the conventional genre of an epic poem. Jay for instance says,” the epic element in Omeros threatens to reopen an old debate over Walcott’s relationship to the European and African elements in his personal heritage and in the culture of West Indies as a whole” (Jay 546). Walcott uses wounds as way to open up this long debate and show us how these cultures work against and with us. The wound is a symbol symbol is apparent and prevalent towards every character both physically as well as psychological. The wound is the gash of history the connects us all.

    Read More

  • Keith Basso's Wisdom Sits in Places

    1945 Words  | 4 Pages

    I think of the mountain called ‘White Rocks Lie Above In a Compact Cluster’ as it were my own grandmother. I recall stories of how it once was at that mountain. The stories told to me were like arrows. Elsewhere, hearing that mountains name, I see it. Its name is like a picture. Stories go to work on you like arrows. Stories make you live right. Stories make you replace yourself. (38)

    Read More

  • My Dream of the Ocean: A Narrative Fiction

    1866 Words  | 4 Pages

    Ships do not sink because they have too many people on them. Anything that floats in or under the water could pop a hole, spring a leak or snap a bolt. What is needed is enough hands on deck to keep up the repairs.

    Read More

  • The Seafarer Diction

    951 Words  | 2 Pages

    “We all come from the sea, but we are not all of the sea. Those of us who are, we children of the tides, must return to it again and again, until the day we don’t come back leaving only that which was touched along the way.” This quote from the movie Chasing Mavericks perfectly captures the undying passion to return to the sea exhibited by the seafarers of the Anglo-Saxon time. In the lyrical poem The Seafarer the storyteller displays his shifting mood toward the sea and his life as a seafarer through diction, imagery, and other literary elements.

    Read More

  • Christianity In The Seventh Century

    714 Words  | 2 Pages

    “The lonely traveler longs for grace, For the mercy of God…He cuts in the sea, sailing endlessly, aimlessly, in exile” (7). The speaker tells of the unfortunate circumstance of the wanderer, in need of help from God. Unfortunately, life can be filled with difficult circumstances, and fate governs events within it. But in the ultimate end, things will be well for the person who seeks comfort and help from God, in whom all strength and solidity rests. This is wonderfully depicted in this opening because the message is a universal one: whether it be a king or a helpless vagrant, each will end up with the same status and substances once departed from life and into

    Read More

  • A Deconstructive Glance at Edgar Allan Poe's The City in the Sea

    2439 Words  | 5 Pages

    Always mesmerizing, Edgar Allan Poe's poems range from deep and depressing to dark and grotesque. Certainly this is true of his poem “The City in the Sea,” which is dark in tone and ambiguous meaning. What does it mean, and where did Poe come up with his concept? There are many possible answers to this question, and interpretations include the phallic and yonic symbols of Freudian theory and the idea of biblical cities as source material exist. Therefore, it seems that critics cannot agree on a definite explication for the poem. Alice Claudel posits that there are mystic symbols in the poem and states that: “One can piece bits together and form the general narrative from II Chronicles, II Kings, and Daniel, among others” (56). The idea that Poe took his ideas from the bible is well founded, but he was too complex a poet to make his poetry that easy or that obvious.

    Read More

  • The Views and Opinions of Francis Bacon

    714 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Utopian New Atlantis (a new relationship between man and nature) in which human beings govern their relationship with natue and to society on behalf of real interest--knowledge is the instrument by patient observation. This gained disciples over time in the 17th century.

    Read More

  • Incantation and A Word on Statistics

    1097 Words  | 3 Pages

    Who are we? What is the meaning of life? What does it mean to be human? These questions, asked since the beginning of time, speak to the universal difficulty we have in understanding our nature and purpose in this world. Luckily for us, we have also developed a perfect medium for exploring this historic dilemma: poetry. Czeslaw Milosz and Wislawa Szymborska deftly took on this challenging exploration in their poems “Incantation” and “A Word on Statistics,” respectively. Interestingly enough, they reach similar, but not identical, conclusions because the former is much more optimistic.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of The Poem 'The Polynesian Old Man'

    533 Words  | 2 Pages

    Old Man is in a form of a lyrical poem that was published and written by a Samoan poet named Talosaga Tolovae. The Polynesian Old Man is about an old man that decided to take his son to off island for school to look for a future and to become successful in life. However, the old man was not happy to see what kind of man that his son has become. His son perhaps does not know how to do the Samoan stuff. Additionally, perhaps the old man wanted to communicate with his son, but then again, he is afraid that he might say something wrong because his son does not speak the language. Therefore, no matter how far you go in life, never forget where you came from and you cannot change who you are.

    Read More

More about Shane Koyzcan's Poem 'Atlantis'

Open Document