Billy Collins, the speaker of Introduction to Poetry, attempts teach the readers by guiding on how to appropriate and analyze poetry. Collins use of personification and imagery, gives the readers a different perspective to interpret and find the significance in poetry. In this particular poem, the speaker does not want the reader to, “tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it,” (Collins 13-14) but the reader should relate to their own personal experiences to the poem and what the author is conveying. Collins believes poetry should be studied in the right way else they lose their beauty. The reader senses a change in the authors tone through the speaker’s dialogue as the poem progresses. The speaker begins …show more content…
The speaker of Collin’s poem plays a roll of a teacher, ‘“I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide.” (Collins 1-2), attempting to persuade the students to interpret poetry in a new light. The speaker wants the readers to envision poetry as a color slide and to understand that he cannot see the full detail of the slide if it is not held into light. When thinking of this in a metaphorical way, the speaker is asking the reader to look at poetry and see all of its beauty and meaning. Also the speaker wants the readers to use their own mind to get the poems …show more content…
The speaker is asking the readers to press their ears against a hive, as if to hear the bee’s making honey. In the third verse paragraph, the speaker is telling the reader to visualize a mouse being placed into a maze, as if through placing themselves into a poem full of words. The speaker wants the reader to have their own interpretation of the poem, “I say drop a mouse into a poem, and watch him probe his way out,” (Collins 5-6). Like a maze the reader searches their way through poetry to find a meaning. Like a lab mouse, both mice and readers must undergo a trial and error process to truly find an understanding behind a piece of poetry. With this metaphor, Collins is pleading with the reader to have patience with poetry and not rush through it to find a meaning. The fourth verse presents another idea for interpretation that requires trial and error. The speaker asks readers to walk inside poetry’s room and feel around in the darkness for a light switch. “Walk inside the poem's room, and feel the walls for a light switch.” (Collins 7-8). Most readers cannot or have difficulty finding this “light,” and are often discouraged by this. What Collins once again asks of the reader is patience, to search for the meaning. Collins encourages the reader not to give up but to continue their search for their own interpretation of the
In both poems, Collins uses comparative imagery to create a visual representation of readers’ inability to comprehend the essence of literature. In “Marginalia,” Collins compares the readers and their annotations to “fans who cheer from the empty bleachers” (Lines 23-24), illustrating the fans are cheering because they are in the bleachers, not because there is anything to cheer for. Likewise, the “fans who cheer” represent the readers and their enthusiastic annotations towards what they are reading however, “the
Many of Billy Collin’s poems concern the act of writing, be it a response to someone else’s work or a discussion of the poems themselves. His poetry is less threatening to the non poet community because his poetry is more transparent than others. His poems don’t usually have a deep underlying meaning that needs to be dwelled upon to understand, but rather simplified thought that can be understood by just reading it once. Collin’s poem After Reading Some Tales of the Hindu Gods is a prime example of this:
Therefore, Oliver’s incorporation of imagery, setting, and mood to control the perspective of her own poem, as well as to further build the contrast she establishes through the speaker, serves a critical role in creating the lesson of the work. Oliver’s poem essentially gives the poet an ultimatum; either he can go to the “cave behind all that / jubilation” (10-11) produced by a waterfall to “drip with despair” (14) without disturbing the world with his misery, or, instead, he can mimic the thrush who sings its poetry from a “green branch” (15) on which the “passing foil of the water” (16) gently brushes its feathers. The contrast between these two images is quite pronounced, and the intention of such description is to persuade the audience by setting their mood towards the two poets to match that of the speaker. The most apparent difference between these two depictions is the gracelessness of the first versus the gracefulness of the second. Within the poem’s content, the setting has been skillfully intertwined with both imagery and mood to create an understanding of the two poets, whose surroundings characterize them. The poet stands alone in a cave “to cry aloud for [his] / mistakes” while the thrush shares its beautiful and lovely music with the world (1-2). As such, the overall function of these three elements within the poem is to portray the
This change in tone echoes the emotions and mental state of the narrator. At the beginning of the poem, the narrator starts somewhat nervous. However, at the end, he is left insane and delusional. When he hears a knocking at the door, he logically pieces that it is most likely a visitor at the door.
feel truly, what the poet is trying to make me feel as if I was
Cook uses an array of musical terms in order to establish this connection, like “notes of ink”, “concert of phrases” and “written key signature”. The contrast between the ideas of writing and music is what creates the overall metaphor. The juxtaposition of two very different senses, sight and hearing, are what make the metaphor effective. This is something new to the reader, and causes he or she to consider what it might be like to actually visualize music. This is different, however, from a physical score or printed sheet music. Cook states that “notes of ink resonate through the / lines and curves of script”(Cook 4-5) as though the sound itself can be captured onto paper. The parallelism and cataloguing of musical and literary terms help the reader imagine how deaf people may experience music. This is evident in the listing in the second stanza: “…sharps, flats, and naturals become / nouns, verbs, and adjectives…”(Cook 14-15). Of course, it isn’t very easy to translate the sensation of listening to music onto paper, however in this case poetry is supposed to take the place of music, and should provide a similar sensation to the reader. Writing is something that can easily be shared across all mediums – whether it is read aloud or silently, poetry is something that can be enjoyed
Henley establishes the sense of suffering that the speaker is experiencing through the use of multiple literary devices. By beginning the poem with images of darkness and despair, Henley sets the tone for
The popular American Poet, Billy Collins, is playing a significant role in the evolution of poetry. His writing style evokes an array of emotions for the reader. Every stanza in his poetry passes the satirical standard that he generated for himself over his career. Collins swiftly captivates his readers through his diverse use of figurative language. More specifically, his use of vivid imagery paired with humorous personification and extended metaphors create his unique style of satirical poetry. This developed form of writing appeals to a large crowd of people because the generally accessible topics that he discusses are fairly easy to resonate for the common man. However, his poetry offers an interesting perspective on what otherwise would be simplistic ideas. The main themes and concepts that are being presented in each of his writings are revered and coveted by the general population. An appealing aspect of his writing is his ability to directly convey the main idea within the poem. As a result, the reader can understand the meaning of his work with ease. The typical beginning of his work gives the reader a slight taste of what is to come. Billy Collins’ unique writing style and various trademarks directly influenced by his ability to propagate an array of emotions for the reader, his humorous tone, and the accessibility of the topics he describes within his poetry.
Billy Collins has used a specific metaphor, simile, rhyme and personification in his poem ‘Introduction to poetry’ in order to show how one should better understand a poem. This poem focused on what the poem actually mean and how a poem should be clearly understood. Throughout the poem, Billy Collins has presented a clear way of understanding the poem by using a very interesting imagery, symbolism, metaphor and a very sensitive sound. The words used in this poem are so powerful that the readers are convinced to think about the issue presented in the poem.
Poetry is a way of expressing ones thoughts, morals, feelings and ideas through the use of minimum words. Some peoples only escape is through their poetry and that is where Emily Dickenson poems come into analysis. Many authors like Emily Dickenson use their poetry to express everything from love to hate in which they feel. Emily Dickenson’s wrote three poems How Happy is The Little Stone, I Like a Look of Agony, and I Measure Every Grief I Meet which will be analyze today. Throughout her poetry especially in these three poems Emily Dickenson used many different elements of poetry to express her thoughts. The two elements of poetry that will be mention in this essay are imagery, theme, and symbolism.
A second step in analyzing a poem is to identify the main idea or point of the poem. In “The Author to ...
Each poem is both a system and a pattern of events in which neither of these aspects is wholly consistent. Many of the lyrics deliberately and often outrageously play with literary conventions or sources and by doing so; reflect an aspiring poet's intellect to an equally sophisticated audience. A concern is that of playful exaggeration and shrinking that exposes a clear pattern of perception of social values. (Hannaford) The need to expand and reduce ideas as well as objects is a mode of poetic activity that can offer a vision of self as limited, excising in opposition to larger, external forces, and social perceptions.
Poetry, like any other piece of literature, is written to express certain emotion,feeling or idea as desired by the author. Without a defined format, poems come in all sorts of variations, each with it’s own sound,smell, and taste. The most successful poems masterfully give readers the Ah Ha! experience and invoke in them incomprehensible emotions that render them vulnerable to the poets message. William Shakespeare’ s Sonnet 18 and Sylvia Plath’s Metaphors adequately contain imagery,lineation,and tone to shape the meaning and allow the rest to the readers perception.However, no matter how elegant the poem may be structured the poem is nothing without the readers interpretation. Poetry is brought to life by the authors ability to use words in combinations that allow readers to create their own story.
..., that make it a quality piece of literature include the nature of its mostly free verse, the descriptive and visual imagery, and the slant rhymes found through the poem. With the stanza, “It hurt, putting them down, sill with the ghost of your hands on my skin,” the reader can visualize the love filled caress the speaker longs for, and how empty they feel now that their lover is gone. With the inadvertent description of the color red, “...finding treasure troves of rubies beneath,” the visual imagery is that much stronger, describing the struggles of the speaker offhandedly to the reader; in allowing their own interpretation, the reader can give their own interpretation, and could possibly finding themselves relating in a greater manner to the speaker and the poem. This leads the poem to be considered a quality piece of literature, that fits well in this anthology.