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Comparing Oxygen And The Larynx

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Oxygen and The Larynx
Both in Mary Oliver’s “Oxygen” and Alice Jones’s “The Larynx use the same central idea that bodily functions can do so much for a person. In “Oxygen” the poet describes how the character has had a breathing issue their whole life and has an oxygen machine to help them breath well, and it is beautiful (Oliver 824). In “The Larynx” the poet describes how singing requires the strength and ability to make the body an instrument. Both poems use the body to make something beautiful, for better or for worse. In “Oxygen”, the speaker is about a family member of someone who has an ill breathing problem. The speaker describes that seeing the family member try to breath with a lack of air as “the fire, stirring with a stick of …show more content…

The speaker goes into great detail on how the larynx is compounded, with elegant jargon. The central theme of the poem is that singing is more than a talent, and the poem uses imagery to show how from the bottom of the larynx, “Under the epiglottis flap, the long-ridged tube sinks, its shaft down to the bronchial fork” (Jones 829), to the top, where sound is produced, is a process; “ here the cords arch, in the hollow of this ancient instrument, curve and vibrate to make a song” (Jones 829). Just like in “Oxygen”, there is no rhyme scheme. But unlike “Oxygen”, “The Larynx” is written as one long sentence. This is called a syntactical structure, this is used because, when reading out loud, it requires the reader to draw their attention to there own breath and attempt to space out the words to take breaths. The tone and mood of the poem also has a reaction witht e reader. It helps the reader appricate the poem when speaking out loud through the word choice and diction. The poem also uses metephores and imagry, like “Oxygen,” but also uses similys as well; “small and tough’ they flutter, bend like bird’s wing finding” (Jones

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