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Mary Oliver Crossing The Swamp

387 Words2 Pages

Mary Oliver in her poem, “Crossing the Swamp,” utilizes allegory, alliteration, metaphor, and tone to convey an intricate relationship between herself and the swamp, that being her struggles in her life. A relationship that starts out with fear and ends in acceptance, stagnation to triumph, darkness to light; a relationship that allows her to be reborn.
The swamp is a metaphor, described as “struggle, closure,” “the center of everything;” the swamp represents the obstacles Oliver faces in her life. She enters the swamp that is “murky” with “dense sap” and “branching vines,” and Oliver must struggle in the swamp in order to move forward. But there is a lack of direction in life and no one struggles the same and no one travels the same path,

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