Timothy Steele’s “The Skimming Stone”— Pondering the Meaning of a Friend’s Early Death
In Timothy Steele’s Sapphics and Uncertainties, “The Skimming Stone” reminds readers on how death can take hold of someone anytime and how precious friendships are. This is a sonnet dedicated to Steele’s dearest friend Billy Knight, who died of a heart attack at a young age of thirty-eight. In this sonnet, Steele, as the poetic speaker, reflects back at a certain part of time in his past when he witnessed his friend Knight pockets a smooth stone. What was the significance of that very action? The poetic speaker is left pondering whether it was, perhaps, a foreshadowing of his friend sensing his early death in life and that stone for him became a significant
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Steele’s early self may have simply seen the activity as simply skimming stones; however, the Steele who has experienced the great loss of a dear friend now sees the value of that particular memory. The line “Once when the whistle called us from the shore, / You pocketed a stone.” (9-10) reveals that having spent his days skipping stones with Knight together, Steele noticed Knight did something unusual one day. Among the stones they found and skipped, at the whistle, Knight took a smooth stone with him. Steele questions the meaning behind a simple act of pocketing a smooth stone especially since it only happened once. There does not seem to be any other time Knight collected stones. He wonders what Knight might have been feeling at that moment. Perhaps, he might have already known his inevitable death will soon happen, and he seeks comfort from the stone’s smooth touch and warmth.
Steele the poetic speaker as opposed to Steele’s early self begins to ask several questions on what that stone might have possibly represented. The pauses as he asks one question after another shows to the reader that he is contemplating on each question with careful thought. From the first question “Was it for luck?”(10), the smooth stone might have symbolized a kind of hope for Knight, that he will experience life well and perhaps delay Death’s arrival. Perhaps, if this were the case, Knight might have known he will die
Introduction: First Stone is about Reef who commits crimes such as throwing a stone and making orange explosions on the streets. First Stone is about Leeza who judges others by their appearances and personality. First Stone is written by Don Aker. “Let anyone of you who is without sin to be the first to throw the stone”. My subtopics are Reef’s sentence and Judge Thomas expectations, Reef’s idea about manliness and Father figures in Leeza and Reef lives.
In the Victorian era, the woman had a determined place and role in society- she was considered to be the one that maintained a family. Her only “centre of interest” was to take care of the issues related to her home, which was like a shelter. ( Ionoaia). So she belonged to it and had no close relation with the outside world.
In our cultural the task of gaining freedom is never easy to obtain. Stephen Rose, in his poem ‘The Stones Cried Out’, states, ‘How long will it be till a voice of liberty can speak so free’. The quote reflects on how long will it be till a brave prophet of the African- American community will testify their freedom with a voice of no chains or restraints openly without regard. This poem relates to the historical activist Martin Luther King Jr who was above all else a voice of liberty within the American-American community aiming for his people to have Equal rights. Furthermore, the journey during the Civil Rights did not go without tears and blood.
Areas of thematic focus in of Rosamond Lehmann 's The Swan in the Evening include death and the power of writing (Séllei, 2009). Further, Séllei (2009) points out the ability for "the trauma of death" to act "as a source of writing" (p. 175). References: Séllei, N., (2009) The mother in mourning as the subject of autobiography in Rosamond Lehmann 's The swan in the evening: Fragments of an inner life.
“Trap Lines” Question 6 In the short story “Trap Lines” by Thomas King, the intergenerational affairs still endure today, even to non-natives. In the story, Christopher is a man who is 18 years old and had recently finished high school. Christopher’s father is 46 and he had grown up in a time which is now very offbeat. Christopher and his father cannot comply with each other’s thoughts and ideas.
His black balanced, and pulled against, the white of Stone, when
Petrarch’s Sonnet 292 and Donne’s poem, A Valediction Forbidding Mourning, depict a lover’s vulnerable separation. Although both present the idea of separation, Petrarch’s depiction speaks of a mournful melancholic state intensifying the feelings of lost love, conveyed by the use of various metaphors, dusky euphemism, and biblical allusion. Whereas Donne’s portrayal is based on divine eternity and everlasting love, as expressed through the use of buoyant diction, extended metaphors, and ________. Both poems also present a differ in structural techniques such as peripeteia or the “turn”, and rhyme scheme.
In Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale, Chaucer uses several different sins to develop the characters throughout the tale in order to portray the moral of the tale. Throughout the tale Chaucer provides the reader with the main motifs which are Anger and Pride. These two sins help provide with the characteristics of Palamoun and Arcite. As the tale runs on, Palamoun and Arcite tend to love the same girl. They begin to argue who saw her first and each one wanted to find love with her.
With a close reading of Emily Dickinson’s poem 764, ‘My Life Had Stood – A Loaded Gun’ and poem 320, ‘There’s a certain Slant of Light’ I will be comparing and contrasting both poem in terms of the metre, language and themes that can be seen in both and others that are opposite to one another. The main aspects of Emily Dickinson’s poetry is the varying length of each poem, unusual capitalism throughout each, the variant of word choices and the slant or approximate rhyme. I choose poem 320 to compare to poem 764 because while it has similar aspects and themes it is in Dickinson’s ‘Death’ category rather than the ‘Poetic-Self’ category that poem 764 belongs too. ‘My Life Stood Still – A loaded Gun’ is written in common metre, which is popular
Working Title: “Not Waving But Drowning” by Stevie Smith – A Criticism of Speechlessness and Lack of Understanding Apparently, the poem “Not Waving but Drowning” is about the Stevie Smith’s own suicidal thoughts – at least this is a conclusion one is tempted to draw given that the majority of early critics more or less explicitly linked the poem to Smith’s biography (Huk 241). In part, the vast interest in the authors biography is understandable since Smith tried to commit suicide shortly after writing the poem (Marangoni 76-7) and since she stated that “[n]early every poem’s about suicide, more or less”(Dick 44). However, this focus on biographical interpretations has hampered a fruitful discussion of the text itself (Huk 241) and stands
We are drawn close in to “between my finger and my thumb the squat pen rests; snug as a gun. The writer has tuned into the pen almost like weapon ready to fire on to the paper. We can see this first two lines we have two literary items first the writer kinda throws us a smile by saying the pen is like a gun as the pen feels like a weapon ready to be used. Then we have internal rhyme with snug and gun being used. Lastly the writer displays both objects as tool fitting for a poem named digging.
In the story of “The Knight’s Tale” narrated by the Knight from Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, readers can experience the conflicts between two cousins after facing a similar dilemma. The dramatic tale between the cousins, named Arcite and Palamon, begins when Theseus, the Duke of Athens, discovers them in battle. Because the relatives were on the side of Creon, fighting for Thebes, Theseus decides to capture and imprison them. For many days the cousins are stuck in a lonesome room with a single window, which is where they can gaze upon a beautiful woman named Emily. Arcite and Palamon are instantly overcome with love for the alluring lady.
Where there is life, there will always be death. A start must always have an end even if a new beginning must emerge. Ray Bradbury, the author of “The Scythe”, wrote the story on the basis of death and how it comes about. The ideas of death throughout this short story are frightening but help us as a society rationalize death to our own beliefs. The author explains his theme of the story through the many symbols in his text.
The essence of the saint’s spirit is captured in the prose poem as the rhythms flow in flawless measures. Words are like strokes of a paint brush and the understatements accompanying the single word sentences create the atmosphere of dust and heat. “Spain, The wild dust, the whipped corn,/earth easy for footsteps, shallow starving seeds. High sky at night like walls./ Silence surrounding Avila.”(86) The four waters are described in the same fragmentary style, so that the flow of water itself becomes the only continuous image.
In the Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer creates what is known as estate satire. Estate satire is a genre of writing that was used commonly during the fourteenth Century. Chaucer also uses satire to expose the liability of institutions and common stereotypes of his time. Irony is seen throughout the introduction of each character and he also teaches moral lessons throughout the story. Many examples are seen in the story that express irony and most characters seem to be taught a lesson.