I believe that by examining the simple diction and the unusual typography used by Cummings in conveying the tone of this poem, we can reveal the poem’s deepest meaning, and portray the great images beneath the poem. In this essay, I will elaborate my findings on this poem’s diction and how it illustrates the images in this poem, as well as the unusual typography.
10), it illustrates the idea of weeds stuffing the heart with sin and guilt. In contrast, flowers symbolize purity and righteousness. For example, when Hester and Pearl visit the governor’s house, “Pearl, seeing the rose-bushes, began to cry for a red rose…” (96; ch. 7). This event helps establish Pearl's elfish nature but also her connection with the rose bush and its symbolism.
“Her hardest hue to hold” and “So dawn goes down to day” are examples of alliteration in the poem. I believe that “Her hardest hue to hold”, means that it’s hard to keep nature green. It uses the letter “h” a lot to make this line stand out. Same thing for”,So dawn goes down to day,” which I believe means that a new day has begun. Alliteration is used to show the theme by saying that you can’t hold on to something forever.
But when thinking about poems and what they are supposed to mean, it seems acceptable to take it into your own hands. Just like Cummings, other poets use unconventional punctuation and capitalization to get their meaning across. While there are critics that say it isn’t right, the importance of the poem is truly the meaning and how someone interprets it. For example, when I read poems, I use the capitalization and punctuation as a way to look at what the words mean in the stanzas. Taking an example from Cummings work, he occasionally doesn’t capitalize the letter “I” because he wants us to focus on why he did that.
There are many ways to interpret a literary text. You can interpret it from different levels, such as the literal level, the rhetorical level, or even the metaphysical level. Readers can also view texts from various critical lenses. This is due to the fact that when authors write texts, they often put in many different aspects of various things that can all be interpreted in any number of ways. Poets such as Gwendolyn Brooks and Robert Hayden are good examples of authors who write texts which can be interpreted in many different ways.
In the poem, she says, “Divided into two, I am a tree, the branches are too high for me to see, the roots too hidden from reality.” A unique way to think of a tree, it shows intelligence and thoughtfulness and not just naive kindness. Although there are many ways to interpret this line, it is most likely that the roots represent her father and the branches represent her future. The line also has notes of sadness, showing her worry for her father. Both the story and poem show her kindness, but the story portrays the princess as naive and impulsive, while the poem’s princess is more intelligent and
Bennett talks about how Dickinson uses metaphors a lot, and this relates to this poem because Dickinson’s whole poem is about the metaphor of hope being a bird and how it is present in the human soul. Dickinson begins the poem with “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers-” (Vendler 118). The beginning line is interpreted as explaining to the reader how hope is a bird, and she displays that hope is an actual thing by capitalizing it and putting it in quotation marks. By capitalizing it, it displays its materialistic quality, and this comes back to her fixation on seclusion by hope being her only companion. Since she is alone for so long, her only companion is hope since she is holding onto it through her rough times, which is the plotline of the
The conception of poetry suggested by this formalist statement may be reductive, but it is presented as a viable way of explaining how poets have traditionally attained a level of generality. The poets know that poetic comparisons and substitutions “are approximations but they touch / As near as men can through the boundaries/Rounding our senses’
This metaphor is used to pay emphasis on Persephone, daughter of Zeus and Demeter. Among the others present in the garden only Persephone's beauty was seen by Hades. The metaphor is very effective in this case. The other girls in the garden were considered to be flowers, which mean they are beautiful but because Dove used one narcissus, it proved that Persephone was even more beautiful. Secondly, in the poem Persephone Abducted, "withered her feathers to a hag's" the poet uses the metaphor to compare Demeter feathers to one of a hag's.
Alliteration is used by repeating the G in "green" and "gold," it adds to the connection between the two colors (6 clause). Personification is used to refer to nature as female. Imagery is used in the last line to show dawn going down to day. There is symbol analysis of Gold in this poem too and it symbolizes all that is new, young, and beautiful, but does not last too long. In lines 2 to 3 we are given an example of what the title is saying.