“The Plain Sense of Things” by Wallace Stevens delicately explores a certain dualism that he finds in creativity by exploring the conflict between creativity and the lack thereof. He speaks of the point where creativity ends, where it dries up and becomes “inanimate,” but then goes on to point out how necessary that point of null inspiration is in the larger cycle of things. He uses the period between fall and winter, when the leaves have fallen and there is, as he explains, “A plain sense of things,” a “blank cold,” and a “sadness without cause” as a way to represent this stagnation of creativity that he views as a necessity. He writes the poem without rhyme, and while the lines seem to try to pull themselves toward ten syllables, there is little evidence of the iambic pentameter required for blank verse or any other meter. The poem is filled with redundancies and longer, awkward words (“a repetition / in a repetitiousness,” “required, as necessity requires,” “inanimate,” “inert,” “adjective,” etc.) that are hard for the reader to say and make the reader feel uncomfortable, leaving him/her thirsty for fluidity.
Wallace begins the poem with leaves. The words of the first line reference a point after the leaves have fallen; Wallace slyly drops them in our minds by referring to their absence and thus begins the poem with an image of life, of nature, of a moving energy. The reader is moved rather quickly away from that, however, as the leaves have already fallen, and the second line moves directly into the stagnation—this “plain sense of things”—after which the poem itself is named.
Then, in the third line, we are given a rather blunt definition of this “plain sense of things”: it is “an end of imagination.” Rather than dance ...
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...n had / Itself to be imagined.” through the poems backwards way of evidencing through what isn’t there, the poem begins to speak very powerfully of the power of imagination. Imagination can imagine itself and it’s absence; it almost borders a power of self-creation. This could echo the Christian God’s statement, “I am that I am” — God’s power to name himself, to create and define both Himself and his absence.
In the final stanza, Wallace takes the struggle between creativity and its absence one step further, stating that the absence is “required, as necessity requires.” By doing this, Wallace brings the poem to an inescapable dualism and, in some ways, brings elements of hope into an otherwise dreary reality. The absence of creativity is required in the same way that winter must come before spring, and its requirement serves as a testament to it power and beauty.
In the end of the narrator’s consciousness, the tone of the poem shifted from a hopeless bleak
Since the beginning of the semester, the main idea of the class has been to demonstrate how “life imitates art more than art imitates life” (Wilde 10). To shaping this idea, the first work read in class was the play, The Shape of Things, by Neil LaBute. From reading this play, the class was able to dive into the rest of our literary works having a clear understanding of how art can change us. From the idea presented, each student was able to come to a conclusion about how influential art was to our lives. Personally, before starting the class I did not believe art could influence life more than life could influence art, but after starting the class and almost completing it, I now have a different viewpoint on how influential art is to our daily lives. When deciding upon which two primary sources to use, I wanted to demonstrate how powerful art was in shaping who we could become. The Shape of Things and My Fair Lady seemed to be able to demonstrate my point the clearest. In both works, the main character changes identities due to the events that take place. While the outcomes can be established as either being positive or negative, the transformation of the characters is clear: both characters are largely impacted by the artful events happening surrounding them.
...vocal statement about the ?organic? possibilities of poetry than optimistic readers might have expected. ?Mayflies? forces us to complicate Randall Jarrell?s neat formulation. Here Wilbur has not just seen and shown ?the bright underside of? a ?dark thing.? In a poem where the speaker stands in darkness looking at what ?animate[s] a ragged patch of glow? (l.4), we are left finally in a kind of grayness. We look from darkness into light and entertain an enchanting faith that we belong over there, in the immortal dance, but we aren?t there now. We are in the machine-shop of poetry. Its own fiat will not let us out completely.
In today’s modern view, poetry has become more than just paragraphs that rhyme at the end of each sentence. If the reader has an open mind and the ability to read in between the lines, they discover more than they have bargained for. Some poems might have stories of suffering or abuse, while others contain happy times and great joy. Regardless of what the poems contains, all poems display an expression. That very moment when the writer begins his mental journey with that pen and paper is where all feelings are let out. As poetry is continues to be written, the reader begins to see patterns within each poem. On the other hand, poems have nothing at all in common with one another. A good example of this is in two poems by a famous writer by the name of Langston Hughes. A well-known writer that still gets credit today for pomes like “ Theme for English B” and “Let American be American Again.”
Poe’s poem, “The Raven,” was received extremely well and swiftly made its author famous. One year passed and Poe popped out an essay called “The Philosophy of Composition,” which claimed to enlighten its readers on Poe’s technique writing “The Raven,” a method Poe suggested all writers’ use. As described in the essay’s tedious prose writing should be strictly methodical. First, one decides one’s intention. Poe’s was to compose a poem that would suit popular and critical taste. Next one must consider how long the piece is to be. Poe decided to write something short enough to be read in a sitting. Next, the writer chooses a desired tone. Using the power of logic, Poe bombastically concludes that melancholy is “the most legitimate of all the poetical tones.” Poe, who was never one to half-ass poetical tone, asks himself, “of all melancholy topics, what, according to the universal understanding of mankind, is the most melancholy?”
... poem reflects upon the skeptical poet sitting writing this and moves towards a center ground of realization that while they may be forcing false ideas onto the population that reads their work, they cannot justify either way if the "Dream" that they are creating is reality or just a figment of their imagination which the people are now sucked into believing.
“Poe’s Theory of Poetry.” The Big Read. Handout One. N.d.. 16. Web. 19 April 2014.
This poetic device aided the reader to visualize not only how silent and dead the leaves were, but also to perceive the atmosphere of the poem. In the poem “Time Does Not Bring
is a poem about the nature of creation, much as is his earlier poem from
It is imperative for us, especially all poets and writers of prose that use language to express figurative meaning, to critique this theory because it only decreases creativity and denies that artist say anything beyond the literal with their words and metaphors. Davidson's ideas violently affront to the purpose of our craft. If we become completely dependent upon objective, literal meaning and learn to reject subjective, figurative meaning in words, we will consequently become less human and more detached from the world, from our natural surroundings, from our fellow human beings, and from the spontaneous, creative voices deep in our guts that often speak of truths literal expression cannot capture.
The poet mourns the death of his loved one and wants the world to grieve with him. His wants his subjective to be objective. The first stanza links everything to noise. He wants to 'silence the piano ' for example, showing how he wants no more noise in the world. Throughout the poem, there are many imperatives. This relates back to Remember, where the poems title is included in the imperatives. The third stanza has no imperatives at all, and many antonyms. This is the poets way of saying they meant everything to him. The second stanza uses 'scribbling ' to personify a plane. The use of personification in the poem links back to Do not go gentle into that good night. The first stanza contains references to things that can be easily done like 'stop all the clocks '. The second has things that are theoretically possible but a bit harder to do. The poem seems to get less and less realistic as it goes on. The final line, 'For nothing now can ever come to any good ', is quite bleak, showing how the death of his partner has affected the poet. It gives him no good feelings
Poetry is a craft of near-paradox. Poets often say that they aim to encase the abstract within the concrete, describe without adjectives or adverbs, and expound upon concepts with the utmost concision. To meet these formidable challenges, they keep several important literary devices at their disposal, one of which is the conceit. Commonly defined as an elaborately extended metaphor, the conceit often allows poets to capture complicated ideas through comparison with images closer to readers’ everyday experiences. If the concept that the poet wishes to illustrate comes from the theological or philosophical fields, figurative language like the conceit can rescue the poet from didacticism as well as opacity. “On a Drop of Dew,” a short poem by the metaphysical poet Andrew Marvell, employs the conceit for just this purpose. Marvell’s use of the conceit allows him convey the Christian story of the human soul in his poem with subtlety and simplicity, from its birth in heaven through its placement on earth and eventual reunion with God in heaven.
Many writers use powerful words to portray powerful messages. Whether a writer’s choice of diction is cheerful, bitter, or in Robert Hayden’s case in his poem “Those Winter Sundays,” dismal and painful, it is the diction that formulates the tone of the piece. It is the diction which Hayden so properly places that allows us to read the poem and picture the cold tension of his foster home, and envision the barren home where his poem’s inspiration comes from. Hayden’s tumultuous childhood, along with the unorthodox relationships with his biological parents and foster parents help him to create the strong diction that permeates the dismal tone of “Those Winter Sundays.” Hayden’s ability to both overcome his tribulations and generate enough courage
In the first stanza the author is describing the role of the poet. The poet is one who recreates an irregular view, or creates a s...
The book, The World is Flat, by Thomas Friedman draws attention to some very good points concerning globalization and the world economy today. Friedman emphasizes the status of America today in relation to the other countries of the world. As I looked at the things in which he warned about or highlighted, I realized the importance of this issue. He talks about a few aspects in which need to be kept competitive in order for America to retain their current standing in the world market.