“The Impulse” is the last short poem and considered the climax in the series of poems called “The Hill Wife”. “The Hill Wife” written by Robert Frost depicts a story of a childless married women’s departure from her inattentive husband. Specifically, in “The Impulse”, Frost delineates the deterioration of a married relationship through structuring the stanzas to mimic the poem’s abrupt nature, illustrating the theme of loneliness through the two perspectives between the couple, and depicting their relationship with nature imagery.
“The Impulse” is written in seven quatrains and has a ABCB rhyme scheme to invoke a pulse-like nature to the rhythm of the poem. Throughout, the poem has a consistent eight, three, eight, three syllable pattern except
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The husband’s job is an outdoors job woodworking and cutting down trees which can later be metaphorically applied to the poem. The breaking of the bough during the “impulse” is the breaking of a tree- parallel to what the husband’s job does. The broken branch comes from a “black alder” (14), which is a tree that sheds male catkins and female cones representing that the tree can have children while the couple cannot. Ironically, the black alder tree’s wood is used to build houses while their marriage (home) is broken. Additionally, the women is connected to the image of a bird when she “rested on a log and tossed the fresh chips, with a song only to herself on her lips” ( 9-12). The connotations of the bird represent her transformation into freedom as she realizes that she must leave. The poem ends with “sudden and swift and light” which is another bird-like image that can be traced back to the earlier image to depict her final carthaic release. Lastly, the wife’s final appearance in the poem depicts her hiding in ferns which can be tied to the larger poem, “The Hill Wife”, to mark the her final transitive to freedom.
Between the pulse like structure and the toggle between two speakers, Robert Frost is able to convey the disparity of a neglected relationship with the poem “The Impulse”. Set in the rural countryside, Frost is able to clearly displays the themes of loneliness, pain, and uselessness through the symbolic nature of the break in rhythm in the poem as well as the connection to his
The essay will consider the poem 'Practising' by the poet Mary Howe. It will explore how this poem generates its meaning and focus by analysing its techniques, metaphorical construct and its treatment of memory. The poem can primarily be seen to be a poem of missed opportunity. In this way is comes to form, alongside other poems of Howe's a study about a certain kind of loss and the recuperative efforts of memory, alongside the certainty of the failure of this recuperation. The paper will begin by giving a context to the poem with regard to Howe's life and work and will then proceed to analyse it directly, drawing attention to how it can be seen to fulfil this thesis about its content and meaning.
In this poem, Frost discusses his situation as, “When I see birches bend to left and right...” This poem is clearly set in a more rural portion of the United States environmentally due to both the presence of birches and other darker trees as Frost explains. Lentricchia explains Frosts’ portrayal of the setting as, “"Birches" begins by evoking its core image against the background of a darkly wooded landscape...” The setting is crucial to the meaning of this poem due to the fact that it is based around the scene portrayed throughout the poem. Clearly, the natural setting of this poem relates to the meaning of the overall
However, it is difficult to define what the “night” means to the speaker at the beginning. In this stanza, the narrator walks in the rain and see the city light. The narrator wanders in the night, feeling that he is isolated from the world, despite the fact that he is in the city. The rhyme in the first stanza is obvious because the narrator starts five lines with the same pattern “I have”. Frost uses the first person perspective in order to emphasize the narrator’s loneliness.
Robert Frost and John Frederick Nims are astounding poets from the 1900s. One of the many reasons why Robert Frost’s “Road Not Taken” and John Frederick Nim’s “Love Poem” are considered great pieces of literature is because of their brilliant use of literary devices throughout the poems. Their works have impacted not just the literature side of society, but every side of society through their sense of strong literary devices like point of view, metaphors, imagery, hyperbole, personification, and tone. In The Road Not Taken, Frost uses first person point of view in order to connect with his audience.
The tone of the poem changes from joyful to depressing. The poem starts off with the two characters deeply in love, but the author begins to reveal the messed up society that they live
Robert Frost’s poems explored the nature in a rather deep and dark way. For example, his poem, “After-Apple Picking” is hidden under a mask that looks like a harvester is just tired and wants to go to sleep after a day of picking apple from tree. However, we learned that this poem has deeper meaning than what is being shown on the surface. This poem is about actually talking about death as a deeper meaning. I think it is really interesting how Robert Frost, as a poet, was able to connect two themes that are completely different and make it into a single poem.
Swish Basketball is a very high paced, intense sport as the most exciting moment of the game is the fast breaks that result in a lay-up or dunk. A fast break needs everyone on the team to work together to flash past the defense and gain an advantage. Fast breaks are almost always the highlights of the game that you see on TV over and over again on Sportscenter. Outside of sports, the fast break is like completing a test in school and knowing you did well on it, after studying and learning the material for countless Hours In “Fast Break” by Edward Hirsch, he uses an immense amount of imagery to capture this perfect moment coming all together through teamwork, appearance and struggle.
Everyone has a journey of childhood some with more self-discovery and some with more self-doubt. The poem “Queries of Unrest” by Clint Smith is about a black author dealing with self-doubt and seeing joy in darkness. Furthermore the poem “Making a Fist” by Naomi Shihab Nye is about a whining child asking his mother about death. “Queries of Unrest” by Clint Smith and “Making a Fist” by Naomi Shihab Nye the poem that was more effective was “Queries of Unrest,” due to it having a more meaningful message of the relationship between self-doubt and trying to discover himself, and a more impactful tone of darkness. In light of this “Queries of Unrest” becomes the more impactful and effective poem.
The poem is about an African American man who dreams to be free one day. He compares himself to a caged bird. He feels as if him and the bird are both missing out on all the wonderful things in life. According to the text,” I know what the caged bird feels, alas! When the sun is bright and the upland slopes; when the wind stirs sot through the spinning grass” (Dunbar 1-3).
When you read a piece of his art you feel like you get all the benefits. One of Frost’s more popular poems is “Fire and Ice” and this poem is short but hits you with raw emotion. It explores the two forces and how they bring destruction to the world, while, “The Mending Wall," is slower paced and shows us that humans like separations
Also in line 19, the word “autumn” appears, and it gives the image of the fall of life, and a time that is near death. Even more, “shroud” which is used to describe people’s heart, originally means a piece
The poem A Step Away From Them by Frank O’Hara has five stanzas written in a free verse format with no distinguishable rhyme scheme or meter. The poem uses the following asymmetrical line structure “14-10-9-13-3” while using poetic devices such as enjambment, imagery, and allusion to create each stanza. A Step Away From Them occurs in one place, New York City. We know this because of the lines, “On/ to Times Square, / where the sign/blows smoke over my head” (13-14) and “the Manhattan Storage Warehouse.”
It uses a few literary devices including end rhyme pattern, repetition, parallelism, pathetic fallacy and imagery. Frost’s poem displays an end rhyme pattern, as all four of the stanzas have four lines, in which three of the four lines rhyme, with the third line usually rhyming with the following stanza’s main rhyme. For example, the last words that rhyme in the last stanza are: know, though, here and snow, in which the first, second and fourth rhyme, meanwhile the third line, here, rhymes with the following stanzas rhyming words: queer, near, lake and year. There is also both repetition and parallelism within the last two lines in the last stanza, as they are repeated and parallel with one another. Another example of repetition throughout this poem is the title, as the concepts of stopping by woods on a snowy evening is constantly being mentioned.
Other events that may have influenced him to write poems the way he does are, visiting different places and things. When he moved, he went to different colleges and got different experiences to write poems. In Frost’s three poems, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening (“SBW”), “The Road Not Taken” (“RNT”), and “Nothing Gold Can Stay” (“NGS”), there are both similarities and differences in form and style, theme and meaning, and tone and mood. First off, in the poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”, the form of it is a traditional form. Next, the style of the poem has rhyme scheme, repetition, and metaphors.
For example in stanza five there are two rhyming triplets. The tone of the poem also changes accordingly to the action in the poem, the rhyme, rhythm and measure. At first skeptical, almost discouraging, but after it gains hope. At a point that hope shatters and the tone becomes grave and sorrow. The poem as well as the charge end quietly in a plain stanza, the last stanza which different but still inspirational.