To be honest, I would have never discovered D. H. Lawrence’s poem, “Shadows,” had I not been moaning and groaning about a poetry assignment given to me by my professor. It was an accepted fact that poetry was not my forte. With great trepidation, I pulled out my behemoth of a poetry book, randomly flipped to an open page and immediately decided that this was the poem I would viciously dissect. Except, instead of painfully dragging my eyes from one word to another, I found myself pulled into Lawrence’s world of grief and of acceptance. Each word, line, and stanza merged so flawlessly that by the end, my mind was blank. I had to ask myself if I had actually found pure enjoyment and awe in something I swore I never would. Granted, I had to reread …show more content…
That did not stop me, however, from pulling apart each line for my eager exploration. At first, his religious adherence gave me pause. Not being religious myself, I was disappointed that I wouldn’t be able to read the poem as Lawrence had meant it to be. But I did understand pain and death. Death of a friendship, of a home, of one moment that wrecked my fairly average life. What have you. For some people, it could be something as simple as the loss of a job or pet. At the core, it is pain all same. I understood the struggle, mentally and physically, to not let despair invade and permanently taint my life. I don’t want to have to be socked with anguish at random moments during my life. I had thought with Lawrence’s words, “My spirit darkens and goes out, and soft strange gloom / pervades my movements and my thoughts and words,” he was ready to join me in my pity party. My own sympathetic poet. Little did I know that this was the poem he wrote when he accepted his declining health due to Tuberculosis. …show more content…
Here he was, knowing he was going to die, probably resented the heck out of karma, but he believed that, despite his death, there is still life struggling. That the silence and distress he felt proved he was alive. To him, his “wintry flowers upon withered stems” and “snatches of renewal” was evidence that all around him there was life in death. Lawrence was resting his faith in this unknown God, believing that he would be resurrected into new life. As I continued my perusal, I noticed that each stanza was one continuous sentence. He was drawing out the lament of death. “And if, as autumn deepens and darkens / I feel the pain of falling leaves, and stems that break in storms / and trouble and dissolution and distress…”
Highlighting the slow, agonizing process of decay that the speaker felt as he falls into sickness and misery of an old man. The first two stanzas—which contained the focus on the loss of life—ended with a period, but when I reached the third stanza and the fourth, both encouraged the continuation of the sentences with a colon and dash. But this was a continuation that transitioned from loss to new life. His tone switched focus the moment the speaker admitted to dying. The first two stanzas seemed to finalize death, but with the tone switch, Lawrence implies that there
...he imagery of the more intensely-felt passages in the middle of the poem. Perhaps the poet is like someone at their journey's end, `all passion spent', recollecting in tranquillity some intimations of mortality?
...ttachment or emotion. Again, Heaney repeats the use of a discourse marker, to highlight how vividly he remembers the terrible time “Next morning, I went up into the room”. In contrast to the rest of the poem, Heaney finally writes more personally, beginning with the personal pronoun “I”. He describes his memory with an atmosphere that is soft and peaceful “Snowdrops and Candles soothed the bedside” as opposed to the harsh and angry adjectives previously used such as “stanched” and “crying”. With this, Heaney is becoming more and more intimate with his time alone with his brother’s body, and can finally get peace of mind about the death, but still finding the inevitable sadness one feels with the loss of a loved one “A four foot box, a foot for every year”, indirectly telling the reader how young his brother was, and describing that how unfortunate the death was.
I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.” Lewis example of fear and not being able to swallow clearly helps us to understand that his reaction to death is that of feeling like dying himself. Chapters 1 and 2 of this book is a breakdown of the stages individuals go through when trying to deal with the loss of a close love one. We move from confusion, then to hurt and pain, all the while seeking clarity and prayerfully closure. But before closure Lewis cleverly paints the picture of not only dealing with his own pain but the pain that others might assume he is dealing with. Even more so, pain that others who loved H are going through. Lewis parallels this to awkwardness to embarrassment, “It isn’t only the boys either. An odd by-product of my loss is that I’m aware of being an embarrassment to everyone I meet”. This make you ponder the questions. Does death cause the grieved embarrassment? Does this unwanted feeling cause even more pain on those left behind? Interesting, as this thought never crossed my mind, nevertheless paints Lewis into a different perspective or adds another level to our
...s fullest. The first stanza contains active imagery, while the second uses passive. The third stanza is expected to contain even more passive diction, but instead uses a mix of both active and passive. The active diction is used a little bit more. The diction in the third stanza is what makes this poem so great. If you add this proof to the first two, you get life slipping away as it progresses, with the individual being active even as he is dying. In other words, the person is enjoying his life as it slips into death?s hands, which is the theme of the poem.
At a glance, the poem seems simplistic – a detailed observance of nature followed by an invitation to wash a “dear friend’s” hair. Yet this short poem highlights Bishop’s best poetic qualities, including her deliberate choice in diction, and her emotional restraint. Bishop progresses along with the reader to unfold the feelings of both sadness and joy involved in loving a person that will eventually age and pass away. The poem focuses on the intersection of love and death, an intersection that goes beyond gender and sexuality to make a far-reaching statement about the nature of being
... the end of the poem until “the rose tree’s thread of scent draws thin and snaps upon the air”, terminating life and dictating the start of another season.
"The boundaries which divide Life and Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where one ends, and where the other begins?" Edgar Allan Poe, The Premature Burial (Bartlett, 642). To venture into the world of Edgar Allan Poe is to embark on a journey to a land filled with perversities of the mind, soul, and body. The joyless existence carved out by his writings is one of lost love, mental anguish, and the premature withering of his subjects. Poe wrote in a style that characterized the sufferings he endured throughout in his pitiful life. From the death of his parents while he was still a child, to the repeated frailty of his love life, to the neuroses of his later years, his life was a ceaseless continuum of one mind-warping tragedy after another.
Death can both be a painful and serious topic, but in the hands of the right poet it can be so natural and eloquently put together. This is the case in The Sleeper by Edgar Allan Poe, as tackles the topic of death in an uncanny way. This poem is important, because it may be about the poet’s feelings towards his mother’s death, as well as a person who is coming to terms with a loved ones passing. In the poem, Poe presents a speaker who uses various literary devices such as couplet, end-stopped line, alliteration, image, consonance, and apostrophe to dramatize coming to terms with the death of a loved one.
Ferguson, Margaret W. , Mary Jo Salter, and Jon Stallworthy. The Norton Anthology Of Poetry. shorter fifth edition. New York, New York: W W Norton & Co Inc, 2005. print.
...derstanding of time passed and time that remains allows one to become comfortable with such circumstances and express a love that must soon retire.The metaphors that represent the theme throughout the poem are similar in the way they all show the devastating and destructive factors of time. Further more, they provide a discourse surrounding the issue of mortality. With anticipation increasing from beginning to end, Shakespeare is able to demonstrate a level of comfort surrounding the inevitable. The continual imposition of death on life is a universal experience. Autumn turning into winter, day turning into night, and a flame diminishing entirely all illustrate this. The increase in intensity of associated color with metaphors mimics the intensity of the ending. As the end draws increasingly near, it becomes undeniable and provides the catalyst for the lesson of love.
The most feared aspect of life is also the most necessary. Death defines the human experience. In Emily Dickinson’s “Apparently With No Surprise”, she examines death from both a literal and specific to a metaphorical and over-arching perspective. Emily Dickinson shows us this through her poetry by explaining the aspects of death and how they relate to each and ever one of our lives. The apparent meaning of the poem is how death interacts in the cycle of nature, but closer readings reveal more intimate and complex meanings. Despite it being a necessary component of life, Dickinson often questions the timing and manner that her God chooses to carry out his duties. This poem uses subtle connotations, metaphorical allusions, and sly grammatical choices to convey both the awesome and arbitrary role that death plays in each and everyone one of our lives.
At a glance, the poem seems simplistic – a detailed observance of nature followed by an invitation to wash a “dear friend’s” hair. Yet this short poem highlights Bishop’s best poetic qualities, including her deliberate choice in diction, and her emotional restraint. Bishop progresses along with the reader to unfold the feelings of both sadness and joy involved in loving a person that will eventually age and pass away. The poem focuses on the intersection of love and death, an intersection that goes beyond gender and sexuality to make a far-reaching statement about the nature of being
The first half of the poems’ images are of life, coming of age, and death.
In the first quatrain of the poem the speaker compares himself to autumn. The speaker says, “That time of year thou mayst in me behold” (1). He is seeing himself as the fall season of the year. A time of the year when nights arrive quicker and the temperature becomes cooler. When relating this season to life, it is when a person is experiencing stages of decline in their life making them closer to death. He creates an image of a tree, with leaves that have been falling with the change of season into winter. “When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang.” (2) When using the image of leaves falling from a tree and leaving it bare,
The poem dramatizes the gradual process of falling apart. Dickinson speaks abstractly of the crumbling of the soul as a dimension of time, rather than being instantaneous. Man falls as a result of a continuous and small-scale decay of the spirit by way of evil inclinations. The complex structure of the poem reflects the underlying figurative meaning. The poem consists of three quatrains in iambic meter, alternating between tetrameter and trimeter. The poet’s use of hyphens guides the reader to read the passage slowly and thoughtfully. The slow pace mirrors the theme of slow decay. The most obvious factor of the poem’s structure is the seemingly random capitalization of mid-sentence nouns. The stress and personification of certain nouns emphasize the small elements of crumbling. The figurative meaning of the poem is built upon by showing that all things can be broken down, slowly but surely.