Critical Analysis Of Mary Oliver's 'Mary Oliver'

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Artem Danilov
Poetry Handbook Summer Assignment
Journal 1 In this poem Mary Oliver wanted to send a message to her readers about how important imitation is in the process of learning how to write a good-quality work. “You would learn very little in this world if you were not allowed to imitate. And to repeat your imitations until some solid grounding in the skill was achieved and the slight but wonderful difference – that made you you and no one else - could assert itself. Every child is encouraged to imitate. But in the world of writing it is originality that is sought out, while imitation is the sins of sins” ( Oliver 13). Through the poem Mary Oliver writes about the value of imitation as a skill that is necessary, but she also calls …show more content…

They both consist of 14 lines, but these 14 lines have different roles. English sonnets have couplet in the end and consist of three quatrains. First 8 lines in Italian sonnets are used as premise (octave), while last 4 lines are responding to that premise. Forms and free verse are two styles of a poem. Poets who prefer forms do so because they like order and traditional tone of the poem. Poets who prefer free verse do so because they want to switch around the tone of the poem. It would make sense to write a sonnet if a poet wants to have a rhythm in his poem. Definition of enjambment is what “gives the writer an ability to restrain or to spur on the pace of the poem” (Oliver 74). I personally am not a fan of enjambment because I prefer forms – I like order and to know what to expect from a poem. Forms also sound more musical and auditory more appealing. Journal 5: Diction, tone, voice, and imagery differ in poetry from prose because in poetry word choice is much more important due to very limited length of poems. Poets need to place a special connection between them and readers very fast, unlike prose writers who have that ability for a thousand pages. One word chosen wrong in poem – you lose reader’s attention. It doesn’t work the same way in prose, prose is much more forgiving genre of literature in that

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