Catchment Poem By Maxine Kumin Analysis

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Recommended: The role of nature in English poetry

The poem Catchment by Maxine Kumin has a theme of the harsh and depressing reality of nature. Throughout the poem she paints this nature story that completely pulls at the readers emotions. With extensive description, figurative language, and set structure Kumin demonstrates the uncontrollability and cruelty of nature. I wrote my poem Ocean to use these similar poetic devises to communicate the same theme. In Catchment the speaker uses extremely detailed descriptions to describe the events. By doing this it enhances the readers connection to the animals in the poem. The speaker illustrates to the reader the life or death situation of the infant antelope as it is hunted but also of the she-leopard. With the leopard the speaker gives the motive
Although, figurative language was used very little except the line “Nature a catchment of sorrows” this one line demonstrates that theme greatly. A catchment is simply that act of catching water or something that catches water. This metaphor says the catchment, nature; it is catching sorrow and not water. This in greater context means that nature causes all this pain and sadness, due to the survival of the fittest characteristics that create situations like the one in the poem. I utilized figurative language in the line “Nature an ocean full of sorrows” to demonstrate the same idea. I used an ocean, as it is such an immense object that holds an uncountable amount of water, or sorrows, and because my poem was based around the ocean. Both uses of figurative language directly create the theme of the depressing qualities of
I tried to write my poem to have these same core characteristics. I also utilized the same descriptive qualities, figurative language, and structure to exhibit the theme found in Catchment. My poem did very in ways like the speaker not directly witnessing the events, and the animals being both wild in Catchment and only one wild while one human in Ocean. Yet, the fundamental poetic devises were utilizes in mine just like the other. I did this in order to create the same voice of Catchment with my own poem and

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