Although the relationship between nature and humankind contains unavoidable paradoxes, Marianne Moore conveys their complex bond through her natural imagery and unique structure. Moore questions the balance between the universe and humanity’s attempt to control it in her poem “The Fish.” Prominently, Moore’s poem displays the essence of water. Her poem, a collection of eight stanzas, ebbs and flows, much like that of a wave. Christian Reed notes that Moore’s “inherent rhythm” creates the “conjunction between the poem’s formal structure and the substance of its descriptions.” As her stanzas syllabically increase and decrease amongst lines, the literal image of a wave is created. Waves build within the sea, crash upon a shore, and retreat back Initially, More glimpses at a pack of fish swimming through the sea. She notices how they “wade” through the water, thus impacting the “crow-blue mussel-shells” in the sand below (1, 3). Moore begins with imagery of fish to represent humanity’s impact on the smaller parts of nature. Soon after, the focus shifts from the fish to the water in which they swim. She introduces the water to be made of “black jade” but later, as the sun glistens through, illustrates the waves to be “turquoise” (2, 17). This water, like all oceans, flows with the tides. However, Moore’s waves later bring a “wedge / of iron” onto the nearby cliff (18-19). Moore shifts her image of the water to convey nature’s ever-changing ways. While constantly transforming, Moore’s waves continue to endure the rhythmic motion of the ocean. But while her poem is mainly about the sea, Moore does not solely focus on it. Instead, she implies the life of the water through the lives of the creatures it impacts. Moore is able to “represent the sea formally even if she is not saying anything directly about it in the content of the poem” (Ranta). Moore’s subtleties provide a hidden significance. By her lack of direct description, Moore’s s imagery of waves explains their ultimate force upon the world— along with the world’s attempt to control it. Eventually, Moore displays a cliff on the seashore. This cliff is a “defiant edifice” by its strength against the abuse of the waves (29). Naturally, as the waves hit the cliff, the water wears away the presiding rocks. Over time, this oceanic cycle will decrease the size of the cliff. But this cliff is not only being impacted by the ocean: “dynamite grooves, burns, and / hatchet strokes” cause this stone to be “dead” (33-34, 36). Clearly, society has claimed this cliff as theirs. Humankind, with its industrialized habits, damages preexisting life. Amongst this destruction, the cliff is able to endure
In this poem, Frost includes his fear of the ocean and exaggerates its destructive power. As Judith Saunders stated that “The first thirteen lines have depicted an ocean storm of unusual force, and through personification the poet attributes to this storm a malign purposefulness” (1). Frost provided human characteristics on the storm to help prove his point that the ocean has bad intentions and its only purpose is to hurt him. Frost does not describe the waves as a result of unfavorable weather; he explains them as having a malignant intention to destroy the world. This poem revolves around the forces of nature and could be included in the long list of nature themed poems by Robert Frost.
The poem itself uses a number of varied techniques such as alliteration, metaphor, simile, imagery, rhyme, rhythm and much more. These varied poetic techniques are spread throughout the quite lengthy poem, made up of 16 stanzas, ensuring that the audience remains engaged and interested. Kijiner uses a combination of increasing rhythm through out the poem and the metaphor of “lagoon that will devour you” to represent the ever more elusive threat of climate change, giving the audience a sense of utmost urgency regarding this
The poems “Sea Rose” by H.D and “Vague Poem” by Elizabeth Bishop were both written by two women who took over the Victorian era. H.D’s works of writing were best known as experimental reflecting the themes of feminism and modernism from 1911-1961. While Bishop’s works possessed themes of longing to belong and grief. Both poems use imagery, which helps to make the poem more concrete for the reader. Using imagery helps to paint a picture with specific images, so we can understand it better and analyze it more. The poems “Sea Rose” and “Vague Poem” both use the metaphor of a rose to represent something that can harm you, even though it has beauty.
The water was calm, like the morning; both were starting to get ready for the day ahead. The silent water signals that although rough times occurred previously, the new day was a new start for the world. As I went closer to the water, I heard the subtle lapping of the water against the small rocks on the shore. Every sign of nature signals a change in life; no matter how slight, a change is significant. We can learn a lot from nature: whatever happens in the natural world, change comes and starts a new occurrence. I gazed over the water to where the sky met the sea. The body of water seemed to be endless under the clear blue sky. The scope of nature shows endless possibilities. Nature impresses us with the brilliant colors of the sky, the leaves, the water. She keeps us all in our places and warns us when we are careless with her. After all the leaves have fallen from the trees, she will offer us the first snows of the year to coat the earth with a tranquil covering. That will only be after we have recognized the lessons of autumn, the gradual change from warm to cold, rain to snow, summer to winter.
Two poems, “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop and “The Meadow Mouse” by Theodore Roethke, include characters who experience, learn, and emote with nature. In Elizabeth Bishop’s poem “The Fish,” a fisherman catches a fish, likely with the intention to kill it, but frees it when he sees the world through the eyes of the fish. In Theodore Roethke’s poem “The Meadow Mouse,” a man finds a meadow mouse with the intention of keeping it and shielding it from nature, but it escapes into the wild. These poems, set in different scenarios, highlight two scenarios where men and women interact with nature and experience it in their own ways.
A poem without any complications can force an author to say more with much less. Although that may sound quite cliché, it rings true when one examines “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop. Elizabeth’s Bishop’s poem is on an exceedingly straightforward topic about the act of catching a fish. However, her ability to utilize thematic elements such as figurative language, imagery and tone allows for “The Fish” to be about something greater. These three elements weave themselves together to create a work of art that goes beyond its simple subject.
Marianne Moore was born on November 15, 1887 in Kirkwood, Missouri. Her father, who was an engineer, suffered a mental breakdown before her birth and was hospitalized before she could meet him. Moore lived with her mother, her brother, and her grandfather in Missouri until her grandfather’s death in 1894. Moore’s mother moved the family briefly to Pittsburgh and then to Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Moore attended Metzger Institute through high school and then enrolled at Bryn Mawr College in 1905. At Bryn Mawr Moore she published poems in two of the school’s literary magazines: Tipyn O’Bob and the Lantern. She majored in history, law, and politics, and graduated in 1909. After graduating Moore took secretarial courses at Carlisle Commercial College and then taught bookkeeping, stenography, typing, commercial English, and law. [i]
The ocean is mysterious to mankind. The unfathomable vastness of the ocean intrigues humanity into exploring it. In life, the immense possibilities that lie in the future compel us to reach for the stars. In the poem “The Story” by Karen Connelly, an individual willingly swims into deep waters even though they are fearful of what may exist in the waters. The swimmer later finds out that their fears were foolish, which illustrates the human tendency to venture into the unknown. The theme conveyed in this poem is that life is like a rough, uncertain, uncontrollable ocean that we must find get through with experience.
In this poem, the author tells of a lost love. In order to convey his overwhelming feelings, Heaney tries to describe his emotions through something familiar to everyone. He uses the sea as a metaphor for love, and is able to carry this metaphor throughout the poem. The metaphor is constructed of both obvious and connotative diction, which connect the sea and the emotions of love.
Second of all, in the poem “Lake Isle of Innisfree”, the reader sometimes fails to understand what is really happening. “I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water...
Elizabeth Bishop's use of imagery and diction in "The Fish" is meant to support the themes of observation and the deceptive nature of surface appearance. Throughout the course of the poem these themes lead the narrator to the important realization that aging (as represented by the fish) is not a negative process, and allows for a reverie for all life. Imagery and diction are the cornerstone methods implemented by Bishop in the symbolic nature of this poem.
Marianne Moore was an all-time good writer. She had many difficulties but she overcame them.
With fewer than fifty published poems Elizabeth Bishop is not one of the most prominent poets of our time. She is however well known for her use of imagery and her ability to convey the narrator?s emotions to the reader. In her vividly visual poem 'The Fish', the reader is exposed to a story wherein the use of language not only draws the reader into the story but causes the images to transcend the written work. In the poem, Bishop makes use of numerous literary devices such as similes, adjectives, and descriptive language. All of these devices culminate in the reader experiencing a precise and detailed mental image of the poem's setting and happenings.
Relief,” Millay used a similar form of imagery to describe the rain that resulted in the remembrance of the persona’s love: “…I miss him in the weeping of the rain…” (Millay, 3). This description of the rain not only helped better visualize the rain itself, but also emphasized the sorrowful and desolate undertone of the poem. Another exemplification of visual imagery utilized in Millay’s poem was used to illustrate the tides: “…I want him at the shrinking of the tide…” (Millay, 4). The retreating of the tides was easily concei...
This is a poem about a sea and a beach that is truly beautiful, but hold much deeper meaning than what meets the eye. The poem is written in free verse with no particular meter or rhyme scheme, although some of the words do rhyme. Arnold is the speaker speaking to someone he loves. As the poem progresses, the reader sees why Arnold poses the question stated above, and why life seems to be the way it is. During the first part of the poem Arnold states, "The Sea is calm tonight" and in line 7, "Only, from the long line of spray". In this way, Arnold is setting the mood or scene so the reader can understand the point he is trying to portray. In lines 1-6 he is talking about a very peaceful night on the ever so calm sea, with the moonlight shining so intensely on the land. Then he states how the moonlight "gleams and is gone" because the "cliffs of England" are standing at their highest peaks, which are blocking the light of the moon. Next, the waves come roaring into the picture, as they "draw back and fling the pebbles" onto the shore and back out to sea again. Arnold also mentions that the shore brings "the eternal note of sadness in", maybe representing the cycles of life and repetition. Arnold then starts describing the history of Sophocle's idea of the "Aegean's turbid ebb and flow". The sea is starting to become rougher and all agitated. Also the mention of "human misery" implies that life begins and ends, but it can still be full of happiness, and unfortunately, at the same time, sadness. "The Sea of Faith was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore." The key word in that stanza is once, because it implies that he (Arnold) used to look at the sea in a different way than he does now. Throughout the whole poem, Arnold uses a metaphor to describe his views and opinions. Now he only hears its "melancholy, long, withdrawing roar." It seems as though Arnold is questioning his own faith. The whole poem is based on a metaphor - Sea to Faith.