Ambiguity In Emily Bronte's 'Remembrance'

As Wendy Martin says “the poem leaves the reader with painful impression of a woman in her mid-fifties, who having lost her domestic comforts is left to struggle with despair. Although her loss is mitigated by the promise of the greater rewards of heaven, the experience is deeply tragic.” (75)

It is a fear that can stick with a person. This poem shows how the speaker deals with it, and he or she thinks that one “should not cry aloud-could not cry” (St. Vincent Millay line 9). This is a calm way of handling the loss of the speakers’ lover, and he or she are choosing to stay composed and to not scream and cry. The speaker is saying he or she will not “wring [their] hands in such a place- “(St. Vincent Millay 10). The way the speaker has chosen to deal with grief is in a way that most people would not choose how to react. The speaker has chosen to detach and can be in the denial process of the stages of grief in this

The deceased are often remembered in either the best of themselves or the worst. Family and friends usually look back and reminisce on the most striking qualities held by their lost loved ones. Death is a shocking and confusing period for those affected by it and the whirlwind of emotions, such as the various stages of grief, catch many by surprise. Born in 1908, Theodore Roethke was an American poet who was deemed one of the most proficient and leading poets of his generation. In his poem, “Elegy for Jane”, Roethke uses a variety of poetic devices to express the different themes of love, happiness, and grief. His use of imagery, symbolism, persona, tone and word choice, contribute to the deeper meaning of the poem, assisting in the expression of the speaker’s feelings for Jane and of how, Jane, herself felt.

Gwen Harwood’s mournful laments Mother Who Gave Me Life and Father and Child explore the challenging ideas of nostalgia and mortality to provide valued texts.

In the poem, “Where is She?” by Peter Cherches, the speaker focuses on a man who has a feeling of loss after an important woman in his life goes missing. After the woman goes missing, the man begins to think about her so much, that over time, he begins to forget her. The poem describes the man’s loneliness through his memory and imaginations of this woman while he is trying to hold onto every last memory he has of her. Peter Cherches uses words describing images in a man’s imagination to show the loneliness he was experiencing without the woman that he believes he cannot live without, but as he keeps forgetting more about this woman, he begins to live without her within his imagination.

A certain image, scent or sound can bring back moments that may have been forgotten. The speaker is astonished by the dreams she has of her mother. Her mother died very ill, the person who she was when she died was merely a shell of who she truly was. She describes her as “so much better than I remembered.” (Monro, 151). At the end of her mother’s life she could not hear her voice. She remembers her “mother’s liveliness of face and voice before her throat muscles stiffened [as] a woeful, impersonal mask fastened itself over her features.” (Monro, 151) In her dreams she was able to hear her mother’s voice again, opposed to the reality before her death. A mother’s voice is beautiful, and there is no other sound that compare to something as unique. Elliot writes “The unconscious sifts through memory, and then offers up details either strangely distorted or implausibly combined. As in art, as in story, dreams too, render experience metonymically.” (Elliot, 79). With time memories inevitably fade, but the dreams bring a sense of comfort and replenish the image of her mother. “How could I have forgotten this?” (Monro, 151). Heller writes that this scene “serves as a springboard from which the narrator launches into a story being told by her mother.” (Heller, 1). This scene leads us to the central conflict in the story of her mother’s life, and assists in understanding the conflict

Consider the opening line. Do you sense that the narrator is relived or yearning for something she can never have again? Explain why you feel the way you do.

Again, the author selects a new set of imagery, such as stars, moon, sun, ocean, and wood to remind of the heaven in which the speaker used to live, and then to sweep it off right away. The last statement “For nothing now can ever come to any good” (16) finally reinforces the speaker’s loss and unhappiness. In loneliness, the speaker’s love becomes fiercer and more truthful. It is the fierceness and truthfulness that lead the speaker to the last stair of hopelessness. The end of the poem is also the hopeless end of the speaker’s life because of “nothing …good.”

In my thoughts, Harwood’s poetry engages readers through its poetic treatment of loss and consolation throughout relationships as well as its exploration of universal themes about human existence and processes of life. Harwood’s poetry validates the consoling influence of childhood experiences upon adult development evident in both At Mornington and A Valediction where they both explore one sense of loss and consolidation. Harwood cleverly includes personas with their own feelings and anxieties to outlook on the present and future and the power of memories held with past relationships. Relationships link within Harwood’s poetry as throughout life she experiences suffering and includes her personal voice and life within the story of her poem.

From depths of grief the poet sweeps back to life by clinging to his greatest faith which is in his

The Speaker's of “""Remembrance""” and Wuthering Heights react differently for the same struggle. The tone of the last stanza of ""Remembrance"" is similar to the tone of the last chapter of Wuthering Heights. Both works have a sullen mood and each speaker wants to move on from their memories. The way Emily Bronte wrote the last stanza mirrors the feelings of Heathcliff in the last chapter of Wuthering Heights. Both works seem to be tied together, as ""Remembrance"" reflects the feelings of Heathcliff, a main character of the novel.

Descriptive words such as “broken” (11), “helpless” (14), “darkness” (15), “despair” (22), and “emptiness” (51) show the grief and pain the speaker experiences due to his loss. Lowell’s diction also shows a shift in the poem from the “sweet” (2) and “calm” (4) that dramatically change into “tattered surges” (7) and “breaking gulfs of sorrow” (13). Furthermore, Lowell’s use of “drearily true” (34) and “dull shock” (42) show a bitter and sarcastic animosity within the speaker indicating his difficulty in falling for his friend’s comfort. In the final two lines, Lowell’s diction reaches a new level as he discusses the “emptiness” (50) that argues the friend to be incorrect and makes his “wisdom down” (51). Lowell’s use of diction shows how difficult the speaker finds it to recover not only from the shock of losing his daughter, but the difficulty to mend the empty hole within

Many people believe that the worst part of remembrance is all the pain that comes with it. But what actually causes all the suffering is loneliness. Memories, thoughts and ideas all have to be shared in order to understand them better, or to let go of them. In this essay I will be looking at 6 poems: “Piano” by D.H. Lawrence, “Poem at 39” by Alice Walker, “Stop All The Clocks” by Auden, “War Photographer” by Carol Ann Duffy, “Praise Song” by Grace Nichols and finally “Digging” by Seamus Heaney and how they present their memories.

Through countless deaths and years of self reclusion, Emily Dickinson’s poems reflected her experiences of death, loneliness, and life after death. She was a poet far ahead of her time, and her poems were only found and appreciated on a large scale after death. As a child, Dickinson grew up in a well established family, and had a brother and a sister. She attended school in Amherst, Massachusetts, and it is there that she first started to study literature and poetry. Even as a child, Dickinson familiarized herself with death’s presence (Her Childhood and Youth). When her friend Sophia Holland died, Dickinson was damaged greatly and left school for a while. After a few more years of schooling, Dickinson

Memory is something all humans struggle with. A person’s memory is everything. It shapes the entirety of a person’s being. The fear of losing your memory is a uniquely human phenomenon, and to some degree I believe it must haunt every person. In these two poems, both titled “Forgetfulness”, two poets explore the idea of losing yourself and being human. Although their voices are very different, and the techniques which they employ to get their message across, the topic of the poems is the same. The truth is that forgetfulness is a many-headed beast, and it’s entirely valid that two different viewpoints could explore different aspects of it. Hart Crane’s poem focuses on the image of forgetfulness, the effect it has on humanity as a whole, and