“The purpose of life is to live it, to taste the experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience” – Eleanor Roosevelt. Living life to the fullest and experiencing life can be seen or taken in different ways. Sometimes fear can prevent us from living with an open-mindedness of what we already have. Can we imply expressively to understand that soundness of Barbara Ras’s poem on life, love and Carpe Diem? Emotion is set prominently in Ras’s tone. Ras’s implicates the gentleness and sweet innocence of life’s treasures. Ras states in the beginning of the poem “You can have the touch of a single eleven-year-old finger on your cheek, waking you up at one a.m. to say the hamster is back” (Ras, 1997). As a mother, I connected deeply with this poem because I have been woken up by my child years ago because he lost his hamster. This had me reflect upon my life and the innocence of my son being sad that his hamster was lost. Ras utilized phrases that created an allusion for the audience which you were able to understand the meaning in which she was providing. “You can have a purr of the cat and the soulful …show more content…
“You can’t bring back the dead, but you can have the words forgive and forget hold hands as if they meant to spend a lifetime together” (Ras, 1997). I would think we have all experienced this human element in our lives about forgiving and letting go to move on. Do on to others as you would want do on to you. Ras implicates that life is too short and we should not dwell on things. Remembering the good memories and letting go helps us grow and live life better. Ras also brings the human element into poem stating “You can’t count on grace to pick you out of crowd” (Ras, 1997). Grace is about elegance and a skill which we all need to acquire as an attribute. We need to find that grace within ourselves and we control that knowledge and
In the poem, “35/10” by Sharon Olds, the speaker uses wistful and jealous tones to convey her feeling about her daughter’s coming of age. The speaker, a thirty-five year old woman, realizes that as the door to womanhood is opening for her ten year old daughter, it is starting to close for her. A wistful tone is used when the speaker calls herself, “the silver-haired servant” (4) behind her daughter, indicating that she wishes she was not the servant, but the served. Referring to herself as her daughter’s servant indicates a sense of self-awareness in the speaker. She senses her power is weakening and her daughter’s power is strengthening. It also shows wistfulness for her diminishing youth, and sadness for her advancing years. This wistful tone is again shown when she asks, “Why is it /they begin to arrive, the fold in my neck /clarifying as the fine bones of her/ hips sharpen?” (4-7). She is demanding an explanation for why she must turn older. She is jealous that as her daughter is on the threshold of puberty, becoming more beautiful, she is on the threshold of middle age, b...
Death is a topic heavily conveyed in "Before She Died" by Karen Chase; the title is hopeful in it's mention of a time before death, but the poem is not. The presence of autumn is made aware to us, 'all the leaves gone almost from the trees,' (Line 3/4). Autumn in poetry usually has to do with decline and tiredness, this evident with the speaker 'not walk[ing] briskly through [a] field' (Line 4) and having to '[Lean] on [the speaker's dog]' (Line 6/7) for support. Along with the speaker's dog being 'aged' (Line 6), the author conveys a cogitative and somber tone using dark imagery, the depressing 'blue' (Line 6) of the sky and a poisonous 'strand of hemlock' (Line 8) present. Time is a common theme, the speaker mentioning how 'finite these
Through many writers’ works the correlation of mortality and love of life is strongly enforced. This connection is one that is easy to illustrate and easy to grasp because it is experienced by humans daily. For instance, when a loved one passes away, even though there is time for mourning, there is also an immediate appreciation for one’s life merely because they are living. In turn, the correspondence of mortality and a stronger love for life is also evident in every day life when things get hard and then one is confronted by some one else whom has an even bigger problem, then making the original problem seem minute. This is seen as making the bad look worse so then the bad looks good and the good looks even better. The connection of mortality and one’s love for life is seen in both T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland and Yulisa Amadu Maddy’s No Past No Present No Future.
The speaker started the poem by desiring the privilege of death through the use of similes, metaphors, and several other forms of language. As the events progress, the speaker gradually changes their mind because of the many complications that death evokes. The speaker is discontent because of human nature; the searching for something better, although there is none. The use of language throughout this poem emphasized these emotions, and allowed the reader the opportunity to understand what the speaker felt.
During the process of growing up, we are taught to believe that life is relatively colorful and rich; however, if this view is right, how can we explain why literature illustrates the negative and painful feeling of life? Thus, sorrow is inescapable; as it increase one cannot hide it. From the moment we are born into the world, people suffer from different kinds of sorrow. Even though we believe there are so many happy things around us, these things are heartbreaking. The poems “Tips from My Father” by Carol Ann Davis, “Not Waving but Drowning” by Stevie Smith, and “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop convey the sorrow about growing up, about sorrowful pretending, and even about life itself.
This imagery is incredibly personal, as it discusses the loss of a person. This quote suggests that it is the loss of a loved one because of the added phrase “the joking voice, a gesture I love” (Bishop 556). This quote shows that the person that was lost was important and familiar to the narrator, while simultaneously a loss that was easy to accept. The imagery used in within this poem purposefully starts off with impersonal items and the simplicity of grieving for them, as it adds to the meanings of the final example of imagery displayed in the poem. Bishop writes that the grieving and acceptance come quickly, regardless of the fact the lost entity is a house key or a loved one. This tension effectively portrays the theme, as well as leave room for a second interpretation. The last line of the poem, Bishop says that writing poetry about loss is just as easy as “the art of losing” (556). The final stanza brings forth two meanings of One Art, suggesting most poetry has multiple
Overall, dwell on this process of changing throughout the poem, it can be understood that the poet is demonstrating a particular attitude towards life. Everyone declines and dies eventually, but it would be better to embrace an optimistic, opened mind than a pessimistic, giving-up attitude; face the approach of death unflinchingly, calmly.
The poem says that "since feeling is first" (line 1) the one who pays attention to the meaning of things will never truly embrace. The poem states that it is better to be a fool, or to live by emotions while one is young. The narrator declares that his "blood approves" (line 7) showing that his heart approves of living by feeling, and that the fate of feeling enjoyment is better than one of "wisdom" (line 9) or learning. He tells his "lady" (line 10) not to cry, showing that he is speaking to her. He believes that she can make him feel better than anything he could think of, because her "eyelids" (line 12) say that they are "for each other" (line 13). Then, after all she's said and thought, his "lady" forgets the seriousness of thought and leans into the narrator's arms because life is not a "paragraph" (line 15), meaning that life is brief. The last line in the poem is a statement which means that death is no small thi...
As the first poem in the book it sums up the primary focus of the works in its exploration of loss, grieving, and recovery. The questions posed about the nature of God become recurring themes in the following sections, especially One and Four. The symbolism includes the image of earthly possessions sprawled out like gangly dolls, a reference possibly meant to bring about a sense of nostalgia which this poem does quite well. The final lines cement the message that this is about loss and life, the idea that once something is lost, it can no longer belong to anyone anymore brings a sense...
Predominantly the poem offers a sense of comfort and wisdom, against the fear and pain associated with death. Bryant shows readers not to agonize over dying, in fact, he writes, "When thoughts of the last bitter hour come like a blight over thy spirit, and sad images of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall, and breathless darkness, and the narrow house, make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart -- go forth under the open sky, and list to Nature 's teachings." With this it eludes each person face their own death, without fright, to feel isolated and alone in death but to find peace in knowing that every person before had died and all those after will join in death (Krupat and Levine
On the surface, "life" is a late 19th century poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar. The poem illustrates the amount of comfort and somber there is in life. Unfortunately, according to Paul Laurence Dunbar, there is more soberness in life than the joyous moments in our existence. In more detail, Paul Laurence Dunbar demonstrates how without companionship our existence is a series of joys and sorrows in the poem, "Life" through concrete and abstract diction.
Emily Dickinson once said, “Dying is a wild night and a new road.” Some people welcome death with open arms while others cower in fear when confronted in the arms of death. Through the use of ambiguity, metaphors, personification and paradoxes Emily Dickinson still gives readers a sense of vagueness on how she feels about dying. Emily Dickinson inventively expresses the nature of death in the poems, “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain (280)”, “I Heard a fly Buzz—When I Died—(465)“ and “Because I could not stop for Death—(712)”.
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
In conclusion, the poem helps you to realize and accept that just like birth is natural, death is a natural process in life. No matter what, death is inevitable. But instead of holding on to the sad memories, you can use the happier memories to cope and deal with the loss of a loved one or family pet. However, you are able to be at peace with the fact that you loved them until the end.
In conclusion death should be celebrated because if life is a gift in which every day is a new day to accomplish new goals and conquer any obstacle death should be the end of a satisfy life that live pleasantly . The poem emphases that idea of taking death as a new chapter, in which we remember all the encounters we have had from childhood memories to new experience we had as we get older. In so many ways death comes as our birth starts expected in some point but unpredictable when the moment would come.