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Essays about anne sexton
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In Anne Sexton’s poem, “45 Mercy Street”, she illustrates a narrative of her desperate and distressing attempt of finding the place she once called home. As she is “walking up and down Beacon Hill/ searching for a street sign -/ namely MERCY STREET”, memories of her past resurfaces and the line separating dream and reality grows faint. In the midst of her search for the house with the memories that taints her life, she realizes I am walking and looking and this is no dream just my oily life where the people are alibis and the street is unfindable for an entire lifetime. Sexton connects her misfortunes in life to the memories of her childhood and she awakens herself from the dream she has fabricated over time to the truth of her reality. As the poem progresses from the line mentioned above, Sexton becomes more frantic and distraught. …show more content…
Her written words expresses the jumbled thoughts that raced through my mind the night I felt most vulnerable. Cars sped by on the dark streets as I wondered what life truly meant. I was so caught up in this fantasy of a perfect world and for a long time of period I believed all was well. But like all wonderful dreams, my world of happiness all came to an end when reality came knocking at my door just to rip my heart out. Reality gave me a check and left me with an emptiness that I did not know how to fill. I wondered where life was taking me and I questioned every detail just to find an answer as to what sort of path is life leading me down to. I became destructive as the answers I was looking for was never straightforward and this lead me down a spiral of despair. WIthout realizing it the first few times of reading Sexton’s poem, I was able to connect my past with her words and it brought a deeper meaning to
Her poem switches from positive to negative. She starts the poem with the story of the mother spider and her babies which has a happy ending, but then she goes into talking about herself. In Marie Howe’s essay, she says “…a white frame house, and rising, / and I thought of a room it was shining in, right then, / a room I might live in and can’t imagine yet.” From this quote we notice that she is imagining a house that she could possibly live in one day. Maybe it’s the man’s house and she is thinking one day she could live there with him, but not yet. She says “And this morning, I thought of a place on the ocean where no one is, / no boat, no fish jumping, / just sunlight gleaming on the water, humps of water that hardly break.” This quote provides a sense of loneliness, to think of a place on the beach that is deserted, there are no other people, little noise, and there is nothing there to keep you company. Then she says, “We argued about one thing, but really it was another,” this shows that there was a lack of communication between the two, which could cause Howe to feel like she was alone. Part of one of her quotes, “unbroken by footprints”, created a huge sense of loneliness. She is all alone, awaiting the return of the man she loves, and he hasn’t yet shown up. The fact that the path leading to the front door hasn’t been walked on in two days, would make the reader wonder if anyone besides the man would normally visit her, or if Howe has even left her home in those two days. The last line in her poem is “Anything I’ve tried to keep by force I’ve lost”, and she uses this to provide a sense of emptiness. The movement of her poem from positive to negative is what helps create that feeling of being
In the book Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson is a memoir where Bryan Stevenson guides us through his life as a lawyer for those who are death sentence. From 1983 when he was student at Harvard Law to 2013 where he lost a client he was defending for years , he takes us through several cases he has taken over the years and showed how they personally impacted him as not only as a lawyer , but a person as well.
She is talking about her precious moments that she spent with Law. She is deeply missing and waiting for him; but at the end, when year has been passed and her husband, Law, does not return, she starts to forget her past. She gets emotional while writing her broken memories. The way of her writing looks irritating but she brings the whole poem as a pack of closed life. The structure of the poem shifts the normal kind of literary work into an animated work. Anne Carson also used some work by Emily Bronte and Charlotte Bronte of Wuthering Heights to create a scene while she was with her husband and going crazy. Every morning she finds herself in a new experience which seems that she is having a trouble with her mental state. Honestly, due to these ways that are mentioned above and experiences that she poured into this poem makes it
These lines demonstrate the stage of adulthood and the daily challenges that a person is faced with. The allusions in the poem enrich the meaning of the poem and force the reader to become more familiar with all of the meaning hidden behind the words. For example, she uses words such as innocence, imprisonment and captive to capture the feelings experienced in each of the stages. The form of the poem is open because there are no specific instances where the lines are similar. The words in each stanza are divided into each of the three growth stages or personal experiences.
Bryan Stevenson is a distinguished black man who was born into rural Delaware in 1959. Stevenson was raised in an impoverished community where he discovered that there is an obvious division between human beings. He realized that life is much different depending on what class and/or race you are a part of (2009 Justice Prize 1). His minority status caused him to be repeatedly mistreated and misunderstood; nobody took the time to get to know him prior to making false assumptions and accusations. It was this mistreatment that caused Stevenson- whether he knew it or not- to enter his specific field of work.
Another visual image in this poem occurs when the woman is looking around her backyard, and she sees "the pinched armor of a vanished cricket, / a floating maple leaf." These are little things that catch your attention for a second, not things to sit an contemplate about. I think the point is that the woman doesn't really want to think about anything, she just wants to be. Sometimes she doesn't even want to look at anything, but instead close her eyes and see only "her own vivid blood." This image of the woman looking at her own blood makes it seem like this time alone reminds her that she is very "alive" -- that she has a free will and can...
Sometimes knowledge of someone’s life can be taught by stanzas. It is not always simple being honest and open to discuss past troubles, but it is important that those negative thoughts do not stay bottled inside you. Expressing these feelings can help aid in recovering. Lucille Clifton uses poetry as her therapy to bring out all the shadows in her life. From the beginning of her career with the publishing of Good News About the Earth in 1972 to the most recent addition, Mercy in 2004, we see how Clifton relies on her writing to capture her past. Lucille Clifton’s poetry traces the life of a strong woman imprisoned by loss and disease, but eventually frees herself by living each moment as if it were her last.
She lost everything in her life that she genuinely cared for, causing her to be angry, hurt, and even depressed. In the end she states, "When everybody is sleeping, my eyes are weeping.” Her capability to repress these emotions, are visible when she says she can’t even sleep because of all she had suffered. She uses metaphors to say that she was honestly not truly happy. This is an important part in the story, showing that her feelings of anger, depression, and hurt had been held in and caused a break down. Rowlandson continuously uses metaphoric ideas about food subsided her feelings of anger and depression. However, the most important part is the end, in which her ideas and identity have been compromised from before the
This duality is concealed within a character because the darkness(truth) conflicts with the light(dreams/hopes) when we hold onto our desire to unite ourselves with our true lover. The author reveals that the light of the “sunset” represents the strength, by illuminating that days are going by, but the true lover still sticks to their strength. The author portrays darkness through the “death” of the“lilacs” representing the inevitable truth that one has to face when holding onto their desire to meet their true love. Parker illustrates that one whose “eyes are deep with yearning”, will persist to their strength until their determination does not overcome the obstacles preventing one from accessing true love, embracing love as a natural and beautiful thing. “Deep” represents her strength and “yearning” is symbolic of her desire to meet her husband. “Yearning” adds a sense of beauty and “deep” illuminates a depth to her strength and how it can overpower obstacles in her life. The author blends “deep” with “yearning” to enhance and illustrate that when we hold a desire we have to deepen our strength and embrace it to achieve what we aspire. The image of “an old, old, gate” where “the lady wait[s]” emphasizes the idea that her husband’s death is “old”; it occurred many years ago, but
The excerpt I chose to read for this assignment was Chapter 1 from Jeanette Walls’ “The Glass Castle: A Memoir” titled “A Woman on the Street” This chapter of the novel depicts the main character and her mother’s relationship. The mother has decided to live her life in poverty for reasons yet to be explained to the reader. It is said that this is how she wishes to live. Her daughter, the main character, is ashamed by her mother and the way she is living and intends to try to help better her life, however her mom insists that she isn't the one who needs help. This readings goal is to establish the core relationship of the novel, and set up the beginning of how the story may begin to change.
“Her Kind” by Anne Sexton was initially called “Night Voice on a Broomstick” holding a concluding stanza that lacked a powerful image, theme, and a prevailing tone. With tedious and constant revision, she finally introduced a refrain, “I have been her kind”, that would forever alter the poem. Dual points of view are labeled "I" in each stanza, however, through the use of the parallel yet double "I," the poem crafts a single character identified as a possessed witch to be later disconnected through perception. In doing so, Sexton created a piece of work that cunningly finds a way to embody a state symbolized not necessarily through the words, but through expressions that desire to be understood. Ultimately, without this refrain and that powerful “I”, she wouldn’t have been able to stage the platform into "like that" to deduce, observe, and support her alter ego in the same line, nor encompass these dual characters and symbolized the misconceptions Sexton wished to portray
She mentioned that the poems in that book focus on deceptively simple moments, and how they work together to tell a powerful story of what it means to be human. As she went on to read some of these poems you understood what she was doing and how powerful the poem was. For example, one of her poems she talks about is called “The Attic” which centers on abuse by her father, while her brother cares for her afterwards helplessly. One line that sticks with me from that poem was “I don’t know if he knows he’s building a world that I can one day love a man”. Talk about a powerful line! I honestly went home and thought about that line probably all night. That line had so much meaning and impact, just for it being a simple line. Marie Howe Does this a lot in her poems. I have not technically read any of her books but from the poems she did read, it has me intrigued and wanting to go out and buy all her
In the poem’s opening lines, she begins her day occupying the harried mother role, and with “too much to do,” (2) expresses her struggle to balance priorities. After saying goodbye to her children, and rushing out the door, she transitions from one role to the next, as well as, one emotion to another. As the day proceeds, when reflecting on her life choices, she wonders “what she might have been as a mother” (23), fantasizing about being around, experiencing more of her children's development and daily life. By deciding to pursue her current situation, she must entrust her children’s wellbeing to another, rather than herself, and as she “feels the quick stab […]” (36) she experiences flashes of guilt. However, knowing she has happy and well cared for children, in spite of it all, creates recognition of the situation’s
Sexton compares Plath’s suicide to an old belonging in the couplet, “what is your death but an old belonging” (54-55). The couplet serves to convey that the speaker is moving past the initial shock of her friend’s death. The comparison of Plath’s death to an old belonging implies that the speaker used to have a strong emotional attachment and understanding of Plath’s suicide, but now, it is more of a memory that lingers than something that consumes her mind every day. Even so, the death of Plath still impacted the speaker on a deep level because Plath’s death involuntarily forced her to contemplate and to reflect on her own emotions and thoughts on suicide. She experiences an emotional journey that places her on the other end of the death in which she once fantasized. The term “old belonging” illustrates how the speaker previously dreamed and longed for death. However, after experiencing the emotional toll of being on the other side of the death that she once coveted, she reconsiders her desires. The tone has shifted from one of mourning and envy to something that she used to desire, an “old belonging” (55). The sharp left turn that is transmitted in the speaker’s tone articulates the emotional journey she has endured. Therefore, the relation of Plath’s death to an old belonging displays how the speaker no longer wants that death, but she still remembers what it feels like to be the person with thoughts of
When Anne Arrived the first time to Green Gables she renamed most of the places that attracted her and sometimes she could not find the perfect words to describe some of them. This imaginary authority of renaming what is beautiful, can be read as an unconscious act which reflects a deep rejection and a challenge to the dominant thoughts that the daily language enhances.