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Poetry as a form of social comment
Symbolism in modern poetry
Symbolism in modern poetry
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“Anyone lived in a pretty how town,” by E.E. Cummings, is a poem that alludes to the circle of life and how birth and death are a natural part of this cycle. This meaning is conveyed by a complex metaphor; broken down, this metaphor slides away to reveal the true social commentary behind it. This poem is an allegory; the speaker uses pronouns with unclear antecedents to mask the true meaning and add poetic flair to the simple belief he or she presents.
The first poetic device the speaker uses to convey his or her meaning in this poem is the unorthodox grammar and sentence structure. The poem starts with the lines “anyone lived in a pretty how town / (with up so floating many bells down)” (1 – 2). In this case, this improper grammar reinforces the point that is the story of “anyone” (1). As such, the “how town” (1) represents the fact that the name of the town does not need to be specified, as this happens to everyone in every town. The speaker therefore alludes that the events of this poem are natural and they happen to anyone anywhere. E.E. Cummings deliberately uses “anyone” (1) and “no one” (12) as pronouns with ambiguous antecedents to generalize the poem’s meaning to society and all people in it. In this way, the speaker uses these thoughts as social commentary.
The speaker also manipulates time to bring out his or her message. Lines 3, 8, 11, 21, 34, and 36 all contain some order of either “spring summer autumn winter” (3), as in lines 11 and 34, or “sun moon stars rain” (8), as in lines 11, 21, and 36. As the order of these seasons changes, it indicates the passage of time. This manipulation of time draws attention away from these lines and towards the lines with deeper meaning hidden within. However, there is another form of time: the progression of life. The speaker comments on the growth of children in terms of their maturity levels and how as they get older, children tend to forget their childish whims and fancies and move on. He or she says that they “guessed (but only a few / and down they forgot as up they grew” (9-10). He or she then goes on to say that “no one loved [anyone] more by more” (12), hinting at a relationship in development, foreshadowing a possible marriage.
These lines demonstrate the stage of adulthood and the daily challenges that a person is faced with. The allusions in the poem enrich the meaning of the poem and force the reader to become more familiar with all of the meaning hidden behind the words. For example, she uses words such as innocence, imprisonment and captive to capture the feelings experienced in each of the stages. The form of the poem is open because there are no specific instances where the lines are similar. The words in each stanza are divided into each of the three growth stages or personal experiences.
trauma can have on someone, even in adulthood. The speaker of the poem invokes sadness and
I first read this poem and I thought of love, two people in love. Anyone and noone are in love and that is what matters to them, to be in love with each other and with life. It involves the day, the night, and how the weather changes. The seasons revolve and the children grow up to become adults. As I read the poem I realized there were three sections to it. Which consist of anyone and noone, "women and men" in line four, and the children. The first stanza is strange the first time you read it. You do not understand "anyone" is a person and not just anyone. I believe that line six is referring to all of the adults in the town, Cummings does not want us to think of the town people as separate people but as a whole group undistinguishable from on another. This is told in line five where it states "little and small", he is grouping them in very close together. The children are separated into there own group. As they grow through the seasons in lines nine, ten, and eleven, they pass on into adulthood. They in essence no longer exist in the poem. The bells ringing might have something to do with them becoming adults, since I do not see them relating to any other parts of the poem. The bells seem to be an important part of the town since they are mentioned in the second line of the poem and those exact lines are repeated in line twenty-four, sixth stanza of th...
In her poem entitled “The Poet with His Face in His Hands,” Mary Oliver utilizes the voice of her work’s speaker to dismiss and belittle those poets who focus on their own misery in their writings. Although the poem models itself a scolding, Oliver wrote the work as a poem with the purpose of delivering an argument against the usage of depressing, personal subject matters for poetry. Oliver’s intention is to dissuade her fellow poets from promoting misery and personal mistakes in their works, and she accomplishes this task through her speaker’s diction and tone, the imagery, setting, and mood created within the content of the poem itself, and the incorporation of such persuasive structures as enjambment and juxtaposition to bolster the poem’s
e.e. cummings, gained reputability for his writing, containing themes such as love, death, and the human condition. Renowned for its distinct style, cummings’ poetry features deliberate disregard of punctuation and use of irregular syntax. Cummings paid attention to the visual aspects of his poetry, and arranged the words in his poems in a particularly eye-catching way in order to convey the message or theme in his text. His erratic stylistic choices forced the audience to immerse in and become more conscious of the text itself. In 1940, Cummings wrote “anyone lived in a pretty how town,” a bleak depiction of how the mentality present in a small town isolates people from society for the entirety of their lives, from childhood to adulthood throughout all the 4 seasons. The protagonist in the poem, “anyone,” represents society as a whole, and is the only one who is able to love and live a fulfilling life, allowing him to fall in love with “noone”. “Anyone”
More than death itself, Harwood’s poetry shows how many people fail to accept death. Their belief in immortality and fear of the end is also potrayed in Nightfall. Although when the subject of the poem is death, the words describe life, as if reluctant to face up to reality. The images are of suburbs, lights, birds and trees. Even with so many experiences, many of us will forever be ignorant seems to be the truth ringing perpetually though Harwood’s verses.
In the poem “Anyone lived in a pretty how town”, E. E. Cummings’ use of structure contributes to the grateful, touched but also sombre mood, which reveals that we must live life to its fullest rather than living with no purpose because death is prominent and cannot be avoided. This is evident in the overall structure and spacing of the poem, as it is unique compared to E. E. Cummings’ other poems. The form and spacing of “Anyone lived in a pretty how town” is quite consistent, as it has been divided into nine even stanzas of four lines each, creating the effect that the “pretty how town” (Line 1) is quite regular and ordinary in everyday life. The fact that this “pretty how town” is just a regular, ordinary town, represents that residents would
In the fourth stanza it is discovered that “anyone’s any was all to her”, which is in reference to noone. While none of the people in the town liked anyone, noone loves him and shares his emotions when she “she laughed his joy she cried his grief”. Using the figurative language of making ‘anyone’ and ‘noone’ into actual characters creates a hopeful mood in the poem. cummings uses these words intentionally because anyone can find someone to love them when nobody else does, and that a person can love someone even if they feel like they are unimportant. Together they go through life, which is exemplified through the four seasons, and eventually die together. In the stanza where anyone dies, cummings again uses language to trick his readers by writing “and noone stooped to kiss his face” which on first reading seems sad. However, knowing that noone is a person that loved anyone, the line is actually heartfelt and kind. After noone is buried alongside anyone the people of town return to reaping and sowing as they did in the beginning, which creates a feeling that they were unaware of the love that the two people shared. Upon first read, the language leads readers to feeling sorry for anyone, but after understanding the meaning of the poem, they feel sorry for the other men and women that couldn’t see the beauty of their
The mention of the “one” Vermont poem is especially significant, as it implies that all of their poems are essentially the same, suggesting a uniformity of experiences among travelers, that the vast majority of travelers experience the same tranquility. Yet, the speaker’s experiences with nature are uniquely different, as her experience is tainted by racism that is inescapable even in the beauty of Vermont nature. Thus, because of her position in society, she isn’t allowed the same access to nature as every other traveler, making it impossible for her to write that “one Vermont poem” while still staying true to her
“Anyone Lived In A Pretty How Town is a short work of poetry written in 1940, by American poet Edward Estlin Cummings (E. E. Cummings). Throughout the poem, Cummings uses the four seasons as an analogy of the human life cycle. Edward Estlin Cummings (E. E. Cummings) uses a complex contradicting language to display the setting, mood, and meaning, in “Anyone Lived In A Pretty How Town”; it illustrates how life can be related to nature.
In a typical family, there are parents that expected to hear things when their teenager is rebelling against them: slamming the door, shouting at each other, and protests on what they could do or what they should not do. Their little baby is growing up, testing their wings of adulthood; they are not the small child that wanted their mommy to read a book to them or to kiss their hurts away and most probably, they are thinking that anything that their parents told them are certainly could not be right. The poem talks about a conflict between the author and her son when he was in his adolescence. In the first stanza, a misunderstanding about a math problem turns into a family argument that shows the classic rift between the generation of the parent and the teenager. Despite the misunderstandings between the parent and child, there is a loving bond between them. The imagery, contrasting tones, connotative diction, and symbolism in the poem reflect these two sides of the relationship.
Robert Frost uses metaphor and symbolism extensively in ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’, developing deeper and more complex meanings from a superficially simple poem. Frost’s own analysis contributes greatly to our appreciation of the importance of metaphor, claiming that “metaphor [is] the whole of thinking,” inviting the reader to interpret the beautiful scene in a more profound way. However, the multitude of possible interpretations sees it being read as either carefully crafted lyric, a “suicide poem, [or] as recording a single autobiographical incident” . Judith Oster argues, therefore, that the social conditions individual to each reader tangibly alter our understanding of metaphor. Despite the simplicity of language, Frost uses conventional metaphors to explore complex ideas about life, death and nature. The uncertainty, even in the concluding stanza, that encompasses the poem only adds to the depth of possible readings.
The first paragraph, presented by the author in only five lines , begins with “When we are older, we´ll look back on this place” and in this way the author introduces the two characters to the readers, giving an emphasis on the fact that they are still young. By doing so the readers automatically anticipate what the passage can be about given the young age reference in the first line.
Andrew Marvell in his poem describes a young man convincing his fair mistress to release herself to living in the here and now. He does this by splitting the poem up into three radically different stanzas. The first takes ample time to describe great feelings of love for a young lady, and how he wishes he could show it. The idea of time is developed early but not fully. The second stanza is then used to show how time is rapidly progressing in ways such as the fading of beauty and death. The third stanza presses the question to the young mistress; will she give herself to the young man and to life? Although each stanza uses different images, they all convey the same theme of living life to the fullest and not letting time pass is seen throughout. Marvell uses imagery, symbolism, and wonderful descriptions throughout the poem. Each stanza is effective and flows easily. Rhyming couplets are seen at the ends of every line, which helps the poem read smoothly.
When first reading “The Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls”, the reader may view E.E. Cummings as a cynic of the Harvard society. This is not entirely inaccurate, yet Cummings does not write about Cambridge as an outsider; he has a reputation in Cambridge. He builds ethos in the poem by having lived in the town of Cambridge among the townspeople and by graduating from Harvard University (Martin 1). The reader is able to align with Cummings line of thinking once they understand his background and values. Cummings was also the kin of an “ordained minister of South