Comparative Poetry Essay
In this analysis I will be comparing the poems "War Photographer" by Carol Ann Duffy, "Sonnet 116" by William Shakespeare and "Remember" by Christin Rossetti. I have picked the theme death and I am going to show how the poems relate to death. These poems show us how other people feel and live, reading these poems help people understand death much more in different ways.
The poem "War Photographer" is about a photographer that goes into a war zone to take pictures of what happens and takes the pictures back for other parts of the world to see what is happening in war zones. In the poem the poet shows the feelings and pain a war photographer goes through. "A hundred agonies in black and white from which his editor will
…show more content…
"A Mother in a Refugee Camp". "No Madonna and child could touch her tenderness for a son she soon would have to forget..." The first line shows a compassionate mother. The last line shows us that the child has not yet died but once he does the mother will have to forget about him. This stanza is smaller than the others to show how little time her son has left. There is very little hope n the life of refugees their whole life is a struggle so there is not much hope.
The poem ends with the word "grave" this shows us that death will take place next. The poet also tells us the mother baths her child with her bare palms this could suggest that she is cleaning him for death. The air in the refugee camps is not clean and all the kids are ill. "of unwashed children with washed out ribs" This line tells us that the kids have not eaten in so long that their ribs can be seen through their skin and that they have not been cleaned in a long time.
Dickinson 's poems all have the same theme they all seem to deal with death again and again. In “Because I could not stop for Death,” we see death personified. Straight away we see that the poet is calm about death and that he is ready for it. The speaker is already dead but we don 't know this till the last stanza throughout the poem the speaker is a ghost or spirit. "Because I could not stop for death", death has kindly stopped for her to do what she could not stop for. The day of her death was a very memorable day for this person
…show more content…
The rhyme scheme in the poem is aabb, every two lines rhyme with each other. The rhyme scheme which is consistent throughout the poem is easy to notice. The speaker is trying to convey to her loved ones that she is not really gone and she can be found in the simple aspects of nature. “Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep” has the tone of magnificence and warmth. We can find hopefulness and warmth in the tone of the speaker. The ending line of the poem gives hope and comfort to the people whom the speaker has left behind. The speaker tells her loved ones and the readers not to stand at her grave and weep. She also provides reasons why they should
The speaker doesn’t mention until the last stanza that her mother is dead in the ending of the poem is when the poet confronted it directly. The poet states this by saying “the thing she took into her grave” which is when the reader knows her mother is gone. The poem consists of three quatrains, or four line stanzas. Within the poem the final of the first and third lines rhyme, as do the second and fourth line rhyme.
Countee Leroy Porter was born on May 30, 1903. His exact birthplace is unknown, but his possible birthplaces are Baltimore, Maryland; New York, New York (based on his claims); and Louisville, Kentucky (based on his references on legal applications).When he was nine years old, he was brought to Harlem and looked after by his grandmother. She looked after him until she died in 1918. At age fifteen, Countee Cullen was looked after by Reverend Frederick A. Cullen, a preacher who eventually became the president of the NAACP. He became the main figure in Countee’s life due to his acts for fighting for African-American rights.
Death is an unknown, no one has ever died and come back to tell the tale, instead people have to imagine and come up with what they think it will be like. The poets, Emily Dickinson and William Cullen Bryant, both had very different perspectives when it came to writing about death. In Bryant’s “Thanatopsis”, the speaker emphasizes that one joins nature and should not be afraid because they will be with everyone else as equals when they die. This is different from Dickinson’s poem, “Because I could not stop for Death”, where the speaker takes a ride in a carriage with death for eternity. Whether or not these authors believed that their poems were actual representations of what happens when one dies, the poems both describe unique ideas of what
The narrator’s changing understanding of the inevitability of death across the two sections of the poem illustrates the dynamic and contrasting nature of the human
In the end of the poem she finally answers her rhetorical question about what the dead feel and comes to the conclusion that even blessing them is useless, for they cannot hear when she says, “They refuse / to be blessed, throat eye, and knucklebone” (16). They have no voice so they cannot speak, they have no sight so they cannot see, and they have no touch so they cannot feel. Following the
Additionally, this poem connects the afterlife with uncertainty and describes this period as something that “beckons, and it baffles / Philosophy—don’t know” and “Faith slips / and laughs, and rallies” (Dickison 501). This text describes this period after death as something difficult to truly understand and that we shouldn’t put our entire faith in predicting what occurs in this period. Also, the second embedded quote expresses that one cannot be truly confident in fully understanding the afterlife because it personifies faith as untrustworthy. At the beginning of “Because I Could Not Stop For Death”, Dickison describes the speaker as someone who “could not stop for death” (Dickison 712) and personifies death itself by stating that “he kindly stopped for me” (Dickison 712). These pieces of the text show that the speaker
“Because I Could Not Stop For Death” by Emily Dickinson is a poem about death being personified in an odd and imaginative way. The poet has a personal encounter with Death, who is male and drives a horse-carriage. They go on a mysterious journey through time and from life to death to an afterlife. The poem begins with its first line being the title, but Emily Dickinson’s poems were written without a title and only numbered when published, after she died in 1886.
The theme of the of is that death need not be feared and in this poem the speaker shows how death is a part of life, and how death really is not as scary as it seems. The speaker in the poem “Because i could not stop for death” by Emily Dickinson personifies death as a gentlemen to make death seem less scary. The speaker states “Because I could not stop for death--He kindly stopped for me…” (568). Death normally cannot stop to let a person inside a carriage.
Emily Dickinson had multiple views on death. At first she was in love with the peaceful, gentle side of death, but that all changed when she lost her everything, her parents to death. The significance is that Romanticism is a diverse thing and it can be shaped a formed to the writers likings, but it will only have an effect if the reader interprets the poem in the same
Comparing these poems and their meaning in real life, we can testify how painful it is to lose our loved ones. Sometimes, it takes so many years to let it go and move on, despite the memories that we will always hold on to it. Thus, therefore, death in Edgar Allan Poe’s oeuvre represents his emotions over the illness and impending death of his wife which influenced his writing as
While most of the poem is spent trying to ensure that she will be remembered after she dies, the speaker realizes that keeping her memory alive must not occur at the price of another’s happiness. She does not want her beloved to be sad that she is gone, but wants him instead to understand that the afterlife and a physical existence are two separate realms, and, moreover, to rejoice in the memories of the good times they have spent together. Remember’ gives the griever permeation to move on. This may be because “Remember”, was written by the person that would soon die, unlike “Funeral Blues” which is entirely negative towards death not only forbidding themselves from moving on but also forbidding the world from moving on after the tragic passing of the loved one. This may be one of the many different attitudes the two poems have towards
In “Because I Could Not Stop For Death”, Emily Dickinson uses imagery and symbols to establish the cycle of life and uses examples to establish the inevitability of death. This poem describes the speaker’s journey to the afterlife with death. Dickinson uses distinct images, such as a sunset, the horses’ heads, and the carriage ride to establish the cycle of life after death. Dickinson artfully uses symbols such as a child, a field of grain, and a sunset to establish the cycle of life and its different stages. Dickinson utilizes the example of the busyness of the speaker and the death of the sun to establish the inevitability of death.
The Transformation that Changes our Lives The poet Emily Dickinson in her poem, I Felt a Funeral in my Brain that is the first line of the poem, not a special title that Dickinson chose. It tells about the story of the experience of the speaker in the poem who is transforming from place to another. Many readers would take this poem as an explanation of what happens after death, what the dead body feels in the funeral.
The poem concludes by stating that their deaths weren’t so bad after all, for the water was cold and anesthetic, and how everyone dies, but not all die in luxury.
“Do Not Stand At My Grave And Weep” is the only known poem written by American poet, Mary Elizabeth Frye. “Do Not Stand At My Grave And Weep” is one of the most popular poems in the English language. Mary Elizabeth Frye was a Baltimore housewife who knew nothing about poetry and never got a formal education. Frye and her husband were hosting a guest when they lived in Baltimore, a German Jewish woman named Margaret Schwarzkopf. Schwarzkopf’s mother was ill in Germany and later passed away, leaving Schwarzkopf saddened that she never got the chance to say goodbye to her mother since she couldn’t visit her because of the anti-semitic movement in Germany.