A modern day poet from the Twin Cities, Lee paints a unapologetic picture of the world exploring the discrepancy between the ideals of America and it’s harsh reality. He looks for beauty in the experience of the downtrodden, simultaneously portraying hope and weariness. As journalist John Freeman remarks in a review, “One can feel Lee trying to reconcile this merciless America with the beautiful one of its dream.” In “String Theory,” Lee moves from exploring the human experience of loss to revealing the beauty and meaning that develops throughout it. Connecting to a universal experience by incorporating a foundation of dreamlike imagery and an abstract structure, a broad message emerges. Biblical references and a prophetic tone in the latter half of the poem develop the idea that despite tragedy, individuals have the power to change their world through their perceptions. “String Theory” opens by exploring the motivation behind choice. The speaker begins by recounting a childhood experience of choosing “a beach ball” (line 1) over “food & grownups” (3). The justification of choosing the option that “wouldn’t float away / despite any mouth” (4-5) demonstrates the …show more content…
The speaker first continues with his biblical creation, “Let there be an infant somewhere, always / in the city night, refusing to obey” (20-21). The split of lines enjambing at always emphasizes the infinity of the child’s existence at night. The night represents the grief and emotion of loss, but the “refusing to obey” indicates that he will not accept these feelings as they are, carving his own path through life. This child connects back to the boy at the beginning of the poem, as “refusing to obey” (21) correlates with the earlier rejection of grownups (3). This implies that this boy and the narrator are the same. As he prophecies about himself, he implies that he controls his own destiny. The speaker
When I read poetry, I often tend to look first at its meaning and second at how it is written, or its form. The mistake I make when I do this is in assuming that the two are separate, when, in fact, often the meaning of poetry is supported or even defined by its form. I will discuss two poems that embody this close connection between meaning and form in their central use of imagery and repetition. One is a tribute to Janis Joplin, written in 1983 by Alice Fulton, entitled “You Can’t Rhumboogie in a Ball and Chain.” The second is a section from Walt Whitman’s 1,336-line masterpiece, “Song of Myself,” first published in 1855. The imagery in each poem differs in purpose and effect, and the rhythms, though created through repetition in both poems, are quite different as well. As I reach the end of each poem, however, I am left with a powerful human presence lingering in the words. In Fulton’s poem, that presence is the live-hard-and-die-young Janis Joplin; in Whitman’s poem, the presence created is an aspect of the poet himself.
While the poem's situation is simple, its theme is not. Stafford appears to be intimating that life is precious and fragile; however, nothing so clearly discloses these attributes of life as confrontation with death. Furthermore, the very confrontations that engender appreciation of life's delicacies force action-all to frequently callous action.
Stanza three again shows doubtfulness about the mother’s love. We see how the mother locks her child in because she fears the modern world. She sees the world as dangers and especially fears men. Her fear of men is emphasized by the italics used. In the final line of the stanza, the mother puts her son on a plastic pot. This is somewhat symbolic of the consumeristic society i.e. manufactured and cheap.
When the poem is read aloud, the explicit rhyme and rhythm of the lines becomes extremely obvious. In fact, the bouncy rhythm is so uplifting, it occasionally makes the audiences feel like it is too predictable and straight-forward. An example would be “bright with chrysolite”, the word “chrysolite” feels like it is forcefully implemented for the sake of the rhyme. This is somewhat similar to a children’s tale. Most children’s tale as we know it, conveys messages straightforwardly and are easily understood by children, it also has an amiable tone and a merry mood that engages the children 's attention. Similarly, the rhyme and rhythm of this poem is very obvious and explicit, creating a delightful, casual mood that appeals to a young audience. Even though the legend dealt with deep insights about parenting that are intricate and puzzling, the father delivered it in such a gratifying, simple manner that made even the most dark and dreadful matters: like the description of precarious beasts and vicious monsters to sound like a blissful adventure of friendly animals. The sole purpose of this contradiction between the tone and message is to make this seemingly strong and serious topic more tolerable and captivating to the son of the father. Unsensible, impulsive youth is very similar to restless children, a long insipid lecture about deep insights is very difficult for them to buy into. In the same time, a harsh, threatening warning will only make them obey unwillingly, and creating a doubtful relationship will make them uncomfortable to communicate or appeal to their parents. Clearly, the percipient father recognized the ineffectiveness of these unsuitable parenting methods. Instead, he conveyed the message in a uncomplicated, friendly way that made his son to accept his teachings more comfortably. A
Dylan Thomas wrote the poem “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.” It is about a son’s plea to his father who is approaching death. Two lines are repeated in the poem and addressed directly to the father. These lines structure the first stanza and collaborate as a couplet in the last. They are repeated a lot but each time, they have different meanings: statements, pleas, commands, or petitions. Repetition and rhyme scheme are parts of prosody in poetry. The rhyme scheme is built on two rhymes and forms of a pattern. The two rhymes are night and day and the pattern is aba, and in the last stanza, abaa. Even though the poem seems to have too much repetition, the fascinating imagery is more important and readers pay more attention to that instead.
In the last line of the first stanza, the speaker announces “I have outwalked the furthest city light (3)” and in the next line continues with “I have looked down the saddest city lane (4)”. Here, the absence of light from the speaker’s “outwalk[ing] the furthest city light” is a metaphor for isolation. The urban setting of the poem makes this loneliness ironic, since the speaker is surrounded by other people yet still feels alone. The speaker’s extreme loneliness manifests itself in the way that the speaker views the city; since the speaker is lonely and sad, the lanes of the city also seem sad. Later, the speaker recounts that once “an interrupted cry / came over houses from another street (8-9)” but its purpose was “not to call me back or say good-by (10)”. These lines reference the speaker’s lack of human interaction, which only contributes to their loneliness. Soon after, in lines12 and 13, the speaker states “One luminary clock against the sky / Proclaimed that the time was neither wrong nor right”. The clock’s description as “luminary” implies that the sky is dark, complementing the poem’s bleak mood. This set of lines also contains an additional metaphor comparing life to time (which makes sense, considering that life is constrained by time); by noting that “the time was neither wrong nor right”, the speaker also reveals that the magnitude of the isolation that they have experienced is emotionally numbing. The speaker is not happy, so the time is not right; however, the speaker is so numb that they can no longer experience sadness, so the time is not wrong either. The speaker summarizes their experience with loneliness with the final line (a repetition of the opening line), “I have been one acquainted with the night (14)”. The significance of the night in
American poetry, unlike other nations’ poetry, is still in the nascent stage because of the absence of a history in comparison to other nations’ poetry humming with matured voices. Nevertheless, in the past century, American poetry has received the recognition it deserves from the creative poetic compositions of Walt Whitman, who has been called “the father of American poetry.” His dynamic style and uncommon content is well exhibited in his famous poem “Song of Myself,” giving a direction to the American writers of posterity. In addition, his distinct use of the line and breath has had a huge impression on the compositions of a number of poets, especially on the works of the present-day poet Allen Ginsberg, whose debatable poem “Howl” reverberates with the traits of Whitman’s poetry. Nevertheless, while the form and content of “Howl” may have been impressed by “Song of Myself,” Ginsberg’s poem expresses a change from Whitman’s use of the line, his first-person recital, and his vision of America. As Whitman’s seamless lines are open-ended, speaking the voice of a universal speaker presenting a positive outlook of America, Ginsberg’s poem, on the contrary, uses long lines that end inward to present the uneasiness and madness that feature the vision of America that Ginsberg exhibits through the voice of a prophetic speaker.
Very few people will contest that Walt Whitman may be one of the most important and influential writers in American literary history and conceivably the single most influential poet. However many have claimed that Whitman’s writing is so free form as evident in his 1855 Preface to Leaves of Grass and Song of Myself that it has no style. The poetic structures he employs are unconventional but reflect his very democratic ideals towards America. Although Whitman’s writing does not include a structure that can be easily outlined, masterfully his writing conforms itself to no style, other then its own universal and unrestricted technique. Even though Whitman’s work does not lend itself to the conventional form of poetry in the way his contemporaries such as Longfellow and Whittier do, it holds a deliberate structure, despite its sprawling style of free association.
Not only the words, but the figures of speech and other such elements are important to analyzing the poem. Alliteration is seen throughout the entire poem, as in lines one through four, and seven through eight. The alliteration in one through four (whisky, waltzing, was) flows nicely, contrasting to the negativity of the first stanza, while seven through eight (countenance, could) sound unpleasing to the ear, emphasizing the mother’s disapproval. The imagery of the father beating time on the child’s head with his palm sounds harmful, as well as the image of the father’s bruised hands holding the child’s wrists. It portrays the dad as having an ultimate power over the child, instead of holding his hands, he grabs his wrists.
In this section the importance of destiny is again reminded to us. In this story the idea of God chooses your destiny and some of us become kings and some become slaves. It doesn’t matter what you do because you can’t change your destiny God has picked out for you.
The title has one line, representing the son’s age as one and the first stanza has two lines, representing the son’s age as two – this continues until stanza five when the child is five. At the age of five, the son “waits in [his father’s] lap” (3) and awaits a new story; this is when the father realizes that he is unable to come up with a new story and begins to fear his son’s disappointment. The following stanza has four lines, representing how the father wishes to go back to a time where he was able to entertain the son with the “alligator story” or the “angel story” (13) without the sons desire for something new. The final stanza has five lines, this is because it is the reality which the father has to face because his son will not ‘become younger’ or interested again in the stories that he has heard before. The structure of the poem expresses the complexity of the internal struggle of the father to fill his son’s desire as he reaches an age in which stories that he has already heard do not entertain him through the purposefully structured stanzas that represent the son’s growth along with the father’s wish to go back rather than
One of the more confusing parts of the poem for me was the last two lines in the second stanza. Stephen Mitchell has a mystic almost dark tone when he is translating the following:
...u. What does this mean exactly? Do you control your fate by accepting it? Or do you just live your life without trying to learn what your fate will be? Or is he just saying that no matter what you do, your fate will fulfill itself with or without your help? It seems likely that the point would be to just live your life and do not worry what fate will bring you because when you try to control the uncontrollable, you end up virtually painting yourself into a corner. Throughout the play Oedipus is seen to get broken from fate and trying to escape it. It would seem that he would lose all hope because no matter what he does, the prophecies laid out for him keep coming true. Sophocles was probably trying to say to just live your life. You cannot change your fate, so why not just keep it a surprise? Do not waste your time with oracles and do not try to control your fate.
The father is consistent in carrying out actions that the son does not agree with; resulting in feelings such as “rage” or “deadfaced.” The word “for” also distinguishes between the cause and effect of each point. Each stanza begins with “for,” which is immediately followed by an action of the father; this can be seen as the “cause.” The “effect” is then shown every time the speaker states that “he [the father] made…”Additionally, the effect expresses the sons reactions or feelings. For example in the fourth stanza, “for expecting my mother to make money like food… he made us go deadfaced.” The father expecting so much of the mother results in the children all “go[ing] deadfaced.” This list-like quality is reinforced by the lack of punctuation in the poem.
The author uses imagery to show children are physically and mentally destroyed. This quote represents the mental wear and physical damage it puts on the kids “they look Up in their pale and sunken faces. our young feet are very weak”. The children in the poem are very tired mentally displayed by the imagery in the quote they look pale and sunken faces. And the other part of the quote states “our young feet are very weak” displaying that the children are physically exhausted by working day in and day out.Another quote uses dialogue to show you just how scared the children are.” it is good when it happens”...” when we die before our time” The children are so exhausted and