Mary Oliver 'American Primitive'

As I reread and discussed this poem in class, I noticed the sexual language and meaning behind the poem, which deepened my appreciation for the poem. I believe my experience shares many of the same types of emotions as the sensuality Mary Oliver is describing, only in a different context. Oliver writes about how, “fear shouts, / excitement shouts, back / and forth” (7). This description applies to both sexuality and experiencing great and awesome acts of nature. This relates to one of Oliver’s themes, experiencing nature and its parallels to our experiences.

Although stories are a universal art form, they hold a more significant role in Native American culture, and literature. This occurs due to the millennia spent in isolation from the rest of the world, and having stories as the main source of entertainment. Thomas King’s statement, “stories can control our lives,” is an important notion, because it embarks on the idea of molding the diseased into more interesting versions of themselves. The statement is prevalent in many pieces of literature which fuse reality into the imagination, and cause people to lose themselves in the fictitious realm. Native literature is all closely related, and they all hold messages within their stories that show their great culture; both the good and the bad. Story

In Crossing the Swamp, Mary Oliver exposes human nature to its simplest state; the passion for life present in the natural world transforms the individual by bringing one closer to the sublime. The spirituality teeming in Oliver’s swamp metaphorically represents hidden beauty within the mundane, as a call for shifted perspective and dignified appreciation permeates the passage.

Through the use of extended metaphor, Mary Oliver is allowed to express both the mentality and physicality when writing a poem, which is able to show the differences and similarities by comparison. The extended metaphor works to compare the process of writing poetry to that of building a house,

Most poems, new and old, almost always have an important message to teach to all those who take the time to read it. Authors use poetic devices to get their message across in creative, yet effective ways. For example, Mary Oliver carefully uses several poetic devices to teach her own personal message to her readers. Oliver’s use of the poem’s organization, diction, figurative language, and title aids in conveying the message of how small, yet vital oxygen is to all living and nonliving things in her poem, “Oxygen.”

This excerpt of Swamplandia, a novel by Karen Russell focuses on Hilola Bigtree, a performer who races alligators as she is watched by an audience and her family. It is in the point of view of the performer’s daughter, who has seen her mother perform before and is newly captivated each time. Since it is in her point of view, she is able to create an atmosphere where she can elevate her mother as an exquisite being. She has an admiration for her mother, both as a performer and in general, that is extremely clear. The tense narrative in the excerpt contributes to Hilola’s portrayal as indestructible. Russell portrays the narrator’s exaltation of her mother through the combination of generated and real tension by use of dark imagery and the contrast between her and the audience through sublime diction.

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.

“But now I know more/ about the great wheel of growth,/ and decay, and rebirth”(Oliver). In the poem Stanley Kunitz by Mary Oliver, the speaker talks about a man who she at first misunderstands, but then realizes the reality about him. This man is Stanley Kunitz, who was the tenth Poet Laureate of the United States, and inspired many people(Poetry Foundation). Although many admire Stanley Kunitz, Mary Oliver admired him enough to write a poem about him, and how she wants to be as great of a poet as Kunitz. Even though at first Mary Oliver had misunderstood how Kunitz would work so ethically, and almost thought it was like magic. Oliver soon realized that it wasn’t magic, it had been hard work, which had make Kunitz such a phenomenal poet. Throughout the poem Oliver describes a garden, and how hard this man works to make it beautiful, which makes sense on the surface. When looking at the deeper meaning, the poem is about how hard work pays off and creates beautiful works of art.

The Author in the Poem “Today was a Bad Day like TB” takes pride in her heritage as a Lakota Indian to the point of being understandably bitter. In one situation for example she was talking to a “young blond Hippie boy” ( ) about a pipe and she notices how ignorant he was about the significance of the pipe or from what tribe the pipe came from. The young boy was naïve about Native American culture but pleasant, but as she stated, “ he said all friendly & Liberal as only those with no pain can be “She sees him as someone who does not value or understand the suffering of the Native American people, and only uses the pipe as a prop or a trendy object. She is mad; she feels that her culture is only meant as a stereotype or at tool for enjoyment, as she holds her culture in high value, against what she perceives as being stereotyped by a white boy. While her anger is understandable it appears bitter and an overreaction to a kid who

Native American families were frequently placed in little, ruined reservations, endorsed to give up their childhood to receive inadequate schooling, a constant threat of kidnapping, and even removing entire families off their land where they have called home for hundreds of years prior. Louise’s father and mother both worked at Indian boarding schools, giving the reader the sense that she really was passionate about her writing of this poem in more ways than one. She truly gives the underlying insight to the boarding schools and the treatment of her people’s way of life, which was a systematic and legal genocide

Junior describes his life of poverty on the Spokane Indian Reservation. He wants the readers to know how life truly is on the Reservation by incorporating informal, youthful, and conversational language and gloomy diction. These elements together in his writing develop a bitter and helpless

The speaker also chooses her diction precisely, so that there is clear contribution to the overall idea that the poem is indeed about the quest for change and longing from escape from the swamp. Two very different forms of description are used to represent this source of dread: once by the simple name, swamp, and

In “A Drug Called Tradition,” Alexie’s humor efficaciously shows the bitter reality on the reservation. For example, at the beginning of the story, Alexie uses humor to reflect poverty on the reservation. After Junior shouts at Thomas, questioning “[h]ow come your fridge is always fucking empty,” Thomas goes inside the refrigerator and sits down, replying Junior “[t]here…It ain’t empty no more” (Alexie 12). As seen in this example, having Thomas sit inside the refrigerator and reply in a humorous tone, Alexie is successful in mirroring the issue of poverty, or the bitter reality, on the reservation. This point can also be supported by Stephen F. Evans’s essay, "'Open containers': Sherman Alexie's Drunken Indians,” in which Evans discusses Alexie’s use of satire and irony in his stories and poems. As Evans claims that “[c]onsidered as a whole, the best artistic moments in Alexie's poems, stories, and novels lie in his construction of a satiric mirror that reflects the painful reality of lives,” this further verifies the argument that humor in Alexie’s stories helps reflect the bitter actuality on the reservation (49).

The river and fishing made such a big impact on the Maclean family that it is the root of this book. The Macleans compared the river to life, went fishing to answer questions, and created a river that has a past full of memories. The river and fishing become metaphors for life by having a life of its own.

“In the darkness the fields / defend themselves with fences / in vain: / everything / is getting in” (Atwood, 28-33). The man in Margaret Atwood’s poem “Progressive Insanities of a Pioneer” is in a situation similar to the stranger in Douglas LePan’s poem “A Country Without a Mythology.” The man in Atwood’s poem as well as the stranger in LePan’s poem are both unsure of where they are. In “Progressive Insanities of a Pioneer” the man tries to separate himself from his environment; however, in “A Country Without a Mythology” the stranger tries to adapt himself to his environment. By analyzing the content, structure, and meaning of “A Country Without a Mythology” the reader will understand that if the stranger openly accepts his surroundings