Analysis Of Crossing The Swamp By Mary Oliver

Similarly to how society shapes its inhabitants, the palpable world of Delia Owens’s Where the Crawdads Sing molds the subjects of its influence from nondescript clay with potential into great statues whose lives were successful and full. Where the Crawdads Sing creates a tacit dichotomy that discriminates the swamp from the marsh in a relationship seen similarly in the interconnection of life and death. The impact of the icy, polluted environment of the swamp in unity with the warm, earthy marsh fosters the protagonist, Kya, through the troubles of her adolescence and early life by providing her a space in which she can express herself free from the heavy chains of society. Despite the chasm of difference between the representations of the marsh and the swamp, they equally promote growth within Kya; however, their methodology, and thus symbology, highlight the contrast between the two.

Oliver starts off by using imagery to describe the struggle with the swamp as a sense of hardship, and challenge. Her descriptions utilizes dark diction such as “endless,” “wet,” “dark,” “pale,” “black,” “slack,” “pathless,” “seamless,” and ‘peerless”, which gives the reader a sense of hopelessness and despair. Oliver also uses enjambment to emphasize the swamp as a never ending trail and symbolize

The swamp’s characterization carries density and weight, referring to life’s repeating rhythm that seems perpetual. The pressure of the “endless, wet thick cosmos,” prevents progression through the passage, as the heavy words slow the pace of interpretation. Oliver considers density in the opening lines to deliberately present life’s slow and repetitive movement.

Poetry, more than any other writing style, is filled to the brim with literary devices. These devices are used by the author to communicate their story. Mary Oliver’s, “Crossing the Swamp,” is a tale of one person’s struggles in crossing a swamp. Mary uses the techniques of descriptive language, metaphors, and personification to develop the relationship between the speaker and the swamp.

Dark words and phrases are initially sprinkled throughout the poem giving it a sense of despondence. For example, Oliver uses the phrase, “the dark burred/ faintly belching/ bogs” which describes the swamp as dark and grim (6-8). The imagery of the swamp is very dark because it symbolizes the hardships that people may have during their lifetimes. Crossing the swamp is a very difficult task, and Oliver compares it to the challenges of life. Therefore, she states “My bones/ knock together at the pale/ joints” (13-15). This once again demonstrates the difficulty of crossing the swamp as Oliver faces many physical challenges including the pain of her old bones. The author transitions from these dark and negative images to illustrations of hope and growth in the next few lines. For example, she describes “a poor/ dry stick given/ one more chance by the whims/ of swamp water” to take root and grow (28-30). This demonstrates how people may face tremendously difficult obstacles to overcome in their lifetimes similar to a dry stick having difficulty taking root. However, these challenges allow people to attain success. Without struggle, there would be no achievement in life. It is the hardships in life that truly allow people to appreciate success once it is achieved. Oliver concludes the fabulous piece with more uplifting and positive imagery of a

In the poem crossing the swamp the relationship between the speaker and the swamp is that the swamp is what the author puts in as her problem. She’s trying to compare the swamp to her problem, “here is the endless wet think cosmos” both of the speaker and the swamp share fear “I feel not wet as much as paintable and glittered.”

Mary Oliver is referring to the swamp as her universe- her world. She wants the reader to understand that the swamp is not bad, but actually a positive metaphor. She also uses the word “here” throughout the beginning of the poem. This anaphora indicates that the swamp is right in front of her. Continuing down the poem, the poet uses parallel language to

There is hardly anyone that hasn’t had to grow up. Growth is central to every character in a story, but “Through the Tunnel” and To Kill a Mockingbird amplify this; the loss of innocence and coming of age is central to the entire story. Both “Through the Tunnel” and To Kill a Mockingbird’s main conflict test the characters (Jem in To Kill a Mockingbird and Jerry in “Through the Tunnel”) as they grow up in the face of adversity.

The appreciation of nature is illustrated through imagery ‘and now the country bursts open on the sea-across a calico beach unfurling’. The use of personification in the phrase ‘and the water sways’ is symbolic for life and nature, giving that water has human qualities. In contrast, ‘silver basin’ is a representation of a material creation and blends in with natural world. The poem is dominated by light and pure images of ‘sunlight rotating’ which emphasizes the emotional concept of this journey. The use of first person ‘I see from where I’m bent one of those bright crockery days that belong to so much I remember’ shapes the diverse range of imagery and mood within the poem. The poet appears to be emotional about his past considering his thoughts are stimulated by different landscapes through physical journey.

The tone of despair and loneliness is carried on to the proceeding stanzas, and is more evident in the last two. By saying that “Water limpid as the solitudes that flee

“Steam rising from ovens and showers like mist across a swampland” has a double meaning, steam rises from ovens and showers, but also in summer, as it rains on a hot highway, steam rises. It is comparing the lives of the people living in these houses to the disorder of a swampland by using the simile “like mist across a swampland”. It may also be suggesting that as cities expand, more land is being stolen from nature. The last line of this stanza “The cricket sound of voices and cutlery” is appealing to the reader’s sense of sound, indicating that the people on the highway can hear the noise of the people in the houses. It is likening the noises of the people to noises made in nature by crickets. In the next stanza Foulcher has written, “Only the children remain outside”, which informs the reader of what it is now like, with all of the adults gone inside. He describes the children as, “bruised with dirt and school”, this gives the indication they are both covered in patches of dirt, and bruised, which are similar colours. Also informs that they are relaxing by play after a hard day at school.

Throughout history, authors have used poetry as a way to express themselves and how they think or feel in an artistic way. There have been poems written about almost every feeling a person has ever had which is why poetry is so popular, because it describes feelings in a way many people cannot. In present day, people from all around the world look back at old poetry and try to define the true meanings behind poems using literally elements and context clues to aid them, this is known as explication. The writing named “Boat of Cypress” is a famous poem written long ago by an unknown author, and composed about a woman full of misery and despair from her personal point of view. Throughout this poem, the readers

“Slavery in the south was brutal as anybody could imagine” an idea expressed by Jean Toomer through his poem called “November Cotton Flower”. The poem is fourteen lines of rhyming verse describing the harsh, sudden and questionable bloom of a cotton flower in the month of November. It is composed of heroic couplets, with a regular rhyme scheme, which is as follows: A, A, B, B, C, C, D, D, E, E, F, G, H, H, but the poem reads like Shakespearian sonnet - three quatrains developing a certain tone and theme, followed by a couplet that undercuts or reverses them. In the beginning it portrays the scuffle for survival of cotton flower during November’s harsh winter weather; but towards the end, it describes the sudden bloom of it. The author goes in depth with most of the descriptions to give a reader a clear and strong mental image.

In the novel by Jamaica Kincaid she dramatizes the opposing forces of the environment verses self. The speaker has just left her old home for something that to most people would be perceived as a “better way of life.” An abundance of people long for something more capacious and prominent. For the speaker this idea was “such a good idea that [she] could imagine [she] would grow to it and like it very much.” However, she soon comes to the realization that things that were “familiar and predictable even… made her happy now just thinking about it.” Often times we yearn for change and lose sense of what makes us jubilant now. The speaker was not able to conceive this until her life changed dramatically. The speaker is just like any other human being;

If the depth of Jay Gatsby’s maniac love for Daisy was made known immediately, or the tension in Madame Bovary didn’t rise in such calculated fashion, or Moby Dick started with Captain Ahab’s fatal standoff with his white whale, some of literature’s most beloved works would lose a great amount of their clout. Organization is among the most potent tools in literature. Content always steals the spotlight but the manner in which ideas are conveyed holds equal weight. Invisible Cities avoids the traditional template of a logical or chronologically organized narrative. My essay Invisible Lakes is a vain attempt to mimic the novel’s eclectic organization. Italio Calvino utilizes a kaleidoscopic, narrow point of view to describe Venice in Invisible Cities, just as I do in my essay Invisible Lakes, both to achieve the goals of alluding to larger themes, developing more palpable scenes, and maintaining a phantasmagoric motif, each with varying results.