E. E. Cummings’ poem, “Maggie and Milly and Molly and May,” tells of an adventure of four girls who each learn a lesson in their experiences. To explain these lessons, Cummings uses poetic devices such as alliteration, simile, and symbolism, to elucidate the messages in an appealing way. In “Maggie and Milly and Molly and May,” Maggie, Milly, Molly, and May find a shell, starfish, crab, and stone, in which each object sends a message.
In the beginning of the poem, Cummings swiftly describes the initial encounter at the beach: “and maggie discovered a shell that sang / so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles, and” (3-4). When referring to a shell’s song, the sound of the ocean is heard from the shell after putting it up to an ear. Maggie has so much enthrallment for the particular sound that her tribulations abscond from her mind. To express this thought, Cummings uses slant rhyme to exquisitely elucidate the meaning of the two lines without openly inferring it. Just as Cummings gets to the point in lines three and four, the same thing is done in lines five and six in Mil...
Anyone with genuine interest in literature, has heard about the recent leakage of Three Stories, a collection of three short stories written by famous American writer, J. D. Salinger. While I do not support the fact, that those are now known to general public despite author’s wishes for the stories not to be published until 50 years after his death, I cannot say, that I wasn’t thrilled when I heard they leaked. I will only focus on one of the three stories here, namely The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls, precursor to the famed The Catcher in the Rye, taking place on the day of Allie’s death. More specifically I will be dealing with the meaning and symbolism behind the phrase “bowling ball” in the text.
E. Cummings creates a critical and intolerant tone. He uses his work to criticize “most people” and how they blindly follow others. Cummings intolerance arises from others critical opinion of not normal people, whom the townspeople of the writing do not acknowledge. The uniqueness of both the main characters in the writing and Cummings is shown by the distinctiveness, inconsistency, and incorrectness of the writing. This tone directly relates to the theme and how anyone and noone are compassionate, caring people who actually recognize the value of life ,but are surrounded by townspeople who just stumble through life without a care or emotion. Cummings uses the seasons, bells, his unique composition and the repetition of “Women and men” and “anyone” to create and emphasize the unfortunate cycle of life. The use of the seasons in lines three,eleven, and thirty-four emphasise the passing of time and the unchanging ways of the townspeople. “Women and men”, in lines five and thirty-three,are used to remind us of Cummings definition of “most people” and how people tend to blend in and follow. The bells in lines two and twenty-four are used to indicate a change in the character 's, the first bell is before love and the second bell is rang before death.These significant life transitions show how love and death are final. life The character “anyone” introduces a person, unlike any others in the town, between him and his
Therefore, the poetry reading is vividly portrayed as a school of fish actively and eagerly exploring their aquatic environment. This characterization of the students is a pun because there is an implied play on words between a high school class and a school of fish. Elements of form, sound devices, and poetic devices are essential to achieving this unique depiction of the poetry reading as an exciting and stimulating experience.
The first poetic device the speaker uses to convey his or her meaning in this poem is the unorthodox grammar and sentence structure. The poem starts with the lines “anyone lived in a pretty how town / (with up so floating many bells down)” (1 – 2). In this case, this improper grammar reinforces the point that is the story of “anyone” (1). As such, the “how town” (1) represents the fact that the name of the town does not need to be specified, as this happens to everyone in every town. The speaker therefore alludes that the events of this poem are natural and they happen to anyone anywhere. E.E. Cummings deliberately uses “anyone” (1) and “no one” (12) as pronouns with ambiguous antecedents to generalize the poem’s meaning to society and all people in it. In this way, the speaker uses these thoughts as social commentary.
Each poem describes a scene where a man learns from his experience and interaction with nature. In “The Meadow Mouse” the man instantly finds himself a father-figure to the mouse that he finds. When the mouse leaves, he thinks of the dangers of nature such as, “the turtle gasping in the dusty rubble of the highway.” From his instant love and pain of losing the mouse, he learns how he truly feels about nature. Set in a different scene, the fisherman in “The Fish,...
At the beginning of the poem, the speaker starts by telling the reader the place, time and activity he is doing, stating that he saw something that he will always remember. His description of his view is explained through simile for example “Ripe apples were caught like red fish in the nets of their branches” (Updike), captivating the reader’s attention
The ninth line of the poem reads, “Diadems – drop – and Doges – surrender,” repeating the letter “D,” while also bringing the plural “Diadems” and “Doges” into “surrender” (which contains a heavy “D” sound, as well.) The heaviness in the repetition of “D” weighs down the second stanza, as quite the contrast to the second stanza of the 1859 poem. The final line of the poem, “Soundless as dots – on a Disc of snow” visually appears to be chiasmus, but only in the reversal of the first letters “S” and “D,” the same letters repeated in the previous line. The parallel structure created by the repeated sounds and visual letters create a circular effect as resolution to the poem. The snow is soundless and the dots fall on the disc. The imagery and phonemics soften the weight of the previous lines of history changing as time passes by comparing such changes to falling snow, as previously noted. However, through parallel structures and alliteration the execution of this effect is
The first literary device that can be found throughout the poem is couplet, which is when two lines in a stanza rhyme successfully. For instance, lines 1-2 state, “At midnight, in the month of June / I stand beneath the mystic moon.” This is evidence that couplet is being used as both June and moon rhyme, which can suggest that these details are important, thus leading the reader to become aware of the speaker’s thoughts and actions. Another example of this device can be found in lines 16-17, “All Beauty sleeps!—and lo! where lies / (Her casement open to the skies).” These lines not only successfully rhyme, but they also describe a woman who
Although this section is the easiest to read, it sets up the action and requires the most "reading between the lines" to follow along with the quick and meaningful happenings. Millay begins her poem by describing, in first person, the limitations of her world as a child. She links herself to these nature images and wonders about what the world is like beyond the islands and mountains. The initial language and writing style hint at a child-like theme used in this section. This device invites the reader to sit back and enjoy the poem without the pressure to understand complex words and structure.
There is also a sense of acuteness as the words in this stanza are short and sharp, and the lines clash and seem to contrast greatly. " Whispering by the shore" shows that water is a symbol of continuity as it occurs in a natural cycle, but the whispering could also be the sound of the sea as it travels up the shore. The end of this section makes me feel as if he is trying to preserve something with the "river mud" and "glazing the baked clay floor. " The fourth section, which includes four stanzas of three lines, whereas the third section included four-line stanzas and the second section included two-line stanzas, shows continuity once again, as if it's portraying the water's movement. "Moyola" is once again repeated, and "music" is also present, with "its own score and consort" being musical terms and giving the effect of harmony.
In the first stanza we can see that all the words fit together and they express the same feeling. We can clearly see that the beginning of each line is not capitalized and that some thoughts are stopped, such as “to” and “attention” from line to line. When looking at the second stanza there is assonance. In the phrase “and kisses are a better fate” (Cummings, 1931, L.8) the “e” sound is the same in these words. We can see assonance again in the line “wholly to be a fool while spring is in the world” (Cummings, 1931, L.5-6) the “o” sounds in the words “to” and “fool” are the same. Cummings wrote the stanzas like this to show that the poem is meant to be tied together. Personification is also used in the third stanza "my blood approves"(Cummings, 1931, L7) giving human characteristics to something non-human. In this poem life is compared to a paragraph, and death is compared to parenthesis. Cummings seems to note that life and death cannot be summed up in poetry, or in any writing at all. He suggests that life is substantial and death is not an afterthought or an unimportant side note. Life and death are vital beginnings and endings which every person must face, and writing cannot begin to explain the extent those things possess. Cummings' use of contrast to make the reader understand the irrelevance of writing compared to living life to the
A great poem shocks us into another order of perception. It points beyond language to something still more essential. It ushers us into an experience so moving and true that we feel at ease. In bad or indifferent poetry, words are all there is. Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “Annabel Lee” is a great poem, not because it is popular or it is classic, but because of its underlining message. “Annabel Lee” is a poem of death, love, and beauty. It captures the narrator’s interpretation of these three ideas through his feelings and thoughts for one woman. The narrator, Edgar Allan Poe, becomes infatuated at a young age with the character in the poem, Annabel Lee. Even after she passes away, his love for her only increases and only becomes stronger, revealing that they were meant to last forever. So, it is clear that in “Annabel Lee” Edgar Allan Poe depicts the death of a lovely woman, his lovely woman in words of eternal love.
Dickinson begins the first line of her poem by writing in iambic tetrameter. In the second line she switches to iambic trimeter and proceeds to alternate between the two. This rhyme scheme proves to be particularly effective in complimenting the subject of the poem-- the ocean. When a reader looks at the poem it is easy to see the lines lengthening then shortening, almost in the same fashion that the tide of the ocean flows and ebbs.
The repetition of the “s” sound in line 4 and of the “m” sound in line 5 illustrate alliteration, and this occurs throughout the poem, providing to the listener what the rhyme of modern-day poetry provides – an aesthetic sense of rightness or pleasure. The Old English poet would “tie” the two half-lines together by their stressed alliteration (Chickering 4). Each line of poetry ideally contains four principal stresses, two on each side of a strong medial caesura, or pause. “At least one of the two stressed swords in the first half-line, and usually both of them, begin with the same sound as the first stressed word of the second half-line” (Donaldson 67). Such stressed alliterative binding together created hundreds of pairs that are used over and over, such as halig/heofon holy/heaven, dryhten/dugud lord/troop, fyren/feond sin/enemy. The pairs need not be complementary, but rather can be contrastive, like eadig/earm happy/wretched and wearm/winter warm/winter. These dictional contrasts provide the listener additional pleasure by surprising his expectations. The al...
Unlike the varied meter of the poem, the end rhyme in “Crossing the Bar” is consistently applied. The first stanza’s rhyme scheme follows an ABAB pattern and each subsequent stanza utilizes a similar principle as the last syllable of the first and third lines and second and fourth lines rhyme. Utilizing rhyme in this manner allows for the emphasis of significant ideas within the poem while simultaneously strengthening the parallels to the sea the meter has created already. The meter in the third stanza is the most irregular, illustrating how the sea is ever changing, but the consistent end rhyme allows for the solidifying of the speaker’s reluctance for sadness. As “bell” rhymes with “farewell” (9 and 11), the reader is not only reminded of closings, but also the possibility of embracing those closings