Rita Dove

The children are unnoticed by others and the mother is the only one that is protecting them. This poem shows the hard times that the mother must face because her children have died. However the mother is coping with them while still protecting her children after they have died, This is the mother's way of coping because she is not yet ready to let go of her children and still wants to care for them. This poem shows this through nature by portraying the mother as a bird who is protecting her nest. Also the poem uses nature by describing the harsh times as a winter wind that has caused harm to the mother and her children.

Individuals look at a home has a place of shelter and a place of refuge after a long day. In Marilyn Dumont case, her home is more than just a home. It’s a sense of serenity. The poem is about a mother who is faced with a huge loss of her child. The loss that happens in the poem are some that individuals in that situation would not want to face alone. Coping with such a tragedy in her case would be through her child carrying in his or her life through the land that the speaker holds so close to her. In the poem “Not just a Platform for my Dance”, Marilyn Dumont uses landscape and nature as a coping method to help find serenity.

‘Up the Wall’ by Bruce Dawe and ‘In the Park’ by Gwen Harwood both utilise the structure of the poem, dialogue and imagery to explore the idea of personal limitation and the loss of identity and love that accompanies maternal and domestic responsibility. Both poems have a third person persona where the use of “She” can indicate the mother’s universal sense of alienation and drudgery, which is further emphasised through the miserable and despairing tones of the poem. The incorporation of a generalised, impersonal pronoun adds to the evident struggle of separating her maternal identity from her identity as an individual. The poem ‘In the Park’ by Gwen Harwood is constructed in the form of a Petrarchan sonnet with an iambic pentameter and a rhyme

The tone of this poem is very important. Throughout as I was reading this poem I sensed heartfelt and great concern for the new mother. Also, in this poem one may notice the role of

The spacing and structure of the poem is set up to allow flow and momentum in the poem and its narrative. The speaker’s voice is present with emotion as emphasised in a natural rhythm of thought offering an honest and bare interpretation of motherhood. The open “blank space” of the poem encourages a calm and breathy atmosphere, fulfilling a mood of tranquility and bliss. Each stanza is short with a couple quick fragmented thoughts before closing each section with the power of a single word. Each stanza breaks apart a separate thought filled with a loving passion the speaker uses to stress the beauty, wonder, and over-flowing love present in motherhood. To better the structure, the poem itself is broken into three parts, each representing a stage of motherhood. The first segment of motherhood that is represented is during the moments while the baby is still in the womb and the mother waits in anticipation for the baby to arrive. This “honeymoon” phase is expressed with a tone filtered through a perception of rose-coloured glasses and excitement as the mother is in utter bliss to carry a life into the world. The

Harwood revolves this poem around change, through the use of a motherly character she is able to construct a life style that has dramatically changed from free to a fairly constricted. Harwood uses the conversations of two people to get this message across, with the conversation discussing life’s progression with an old lover. “But for the grace of God…” suggests that the ex-lover is somewhat thankful for not ending up as a father figure to these children, as he can see the effect it has taken on her from when he used to know her. “Her clothes are out of date” shows her appearance has altered in the bid to live as a mother, her children are now her identity and that is what she will live to be. This poem is revolved around the negativity of losing yourself through mother-hood and the factors that slowly show that it.

Lucinda’s name represents a person who seems to have been extraordinary, unique, and vibrant in life. Unlike George, she lived with purpose and showed ambition. Instead of running away from hardships, Lucinda experienced every emotion in life from the good times to the bad times. This resulted in an amazingly full life with no regrets. Lucinda died at the age of 96, completely satisfied with how well her life went. While alive, she experienced love and sorrow, but also, had an ambitious outlook that allowed her to fulfill her purpose and achieve her goals. At the end of the poem, Lucinda gave these words of wisdom: “Life is too strong for you--/It takes life to love Life.” Her advice is to live life to the fullest even if life begins to become challenging. Lucinda speaks directly to the reader, and challenges the reader to live life to the fullest. “Shouting” and “singing”, “working” and “raising” twelve children are examples of ways she behaved with vibrancy and energy. This carpe diem attitude encourages us to lose the anger, discontentment, sorrow, and weariness that may cause us to live unhappily.

The poem Daystar struck me from my first reading of it because I do the same thing this woman did sometimes. The apartment I share with my husband has a balcony where I have planted some flowers, and sometimes when the whether is nice I drag a rocking chair out there into the sun and just sit and let my thoughts wander. This poem reminds me of those moments.

Linda Pastan made this poem include various forms of figurative language to hide the literal message that it's trying to portray. Figurative language is using figures of speech to make the text be more powerful, persuasive, and meaningful. Figures of speech such as, similes and metaphors, go beyond the literal meanings to give the readers a new way of looking at the text. It can come in multiple ways with different literacy and rhetorical devices such as: alliteration, imageries, onomatopoeias, and etc. With the usage of the literary devices Pastan has used, it introduced the relationship between the mother and the daughter. It shows the memories of how the mother helped her daughter grow from a little girl to a young adult getting ready to go her own way in life.

Rhyming couplets such as “date” and “late”, “rehearsing” and “nursing” are surprisingly simple, but meaningful, as they highlight how the author examines this important issue in society. This clearly communicates how sympathetic the poet feels for the women who are faced with nurturing children by themselves, as negative connotations in “departing” and “aimless”. More particularly, the “departing” of the man’s smile emulates how her disconnection from society has left her emotionally broken and somewhat regretful that she decided to have children in the first

In this stylistic analysis of the lost baby poem written by Lucille Clifton I will deal mainly with two aspects of stylistic: derivation and parallelism features present in the poem. However I will first give a general interpretation of the poem to link more easily the stylistic features with the meaning of the poem itself.

The third stanza of the poem expresses the emotional connection between the mother and the child having grown stronger. “O node and focus of the world” (11). Her child is the center of her world. This symbolizes just how important her child is to her, it was become the “focus” of her life. “I hold you deep within that well/ you shall escape and not escape-/ that mirrors still your sleeping shape;/ that nurtures still your crescent cell” (12-13). The “well” represents the woman’s womb that molds and “nurtures” that child while it sleeps. The part that speaks about the child escaping refers to the child no longer being inside of the mother yet always being a part of her. The mother will always have an emotional connection to her child.

To start off the analysis, the setting of the entire poem is significant. Though the poem takes place in a house, the atmosphere the house is set in is also important. The month is September which is a month of fall which can be seen as a symbol for decline. It definitely insinuates that the poem is leading towards death. Line 1 has “September rain falls on the house” which gives the feeling of a dark and cold night with a storm on top of that. To further develop that, Bishop gives us the failing light in line 2 to also give us an idea of the grandmother’s struggle. Bishop uses the cyclical theme of changing seasons to show the unending nature of what is transpiring within the

Daystar by Rita Dove emphasizes gender roles and the expectations society has towards being a mother. It is often believed that mothers should assume responsibility for cooking, cleaning, tending to their demanding children and husbands. The poem illustrates the challenges women endure to live up to society’s expectations to be a fit mother and wife. As seen through the main character mothers have to make sacrifices that often puts everyone else’s happiness before their own. For example, the women in the poem desired to have time to herself but she couldn’t because she had endless chores and children to care for. Not having time to herself made her feel lost and unfulfilled.

On the other hand, John Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale” is another interesting poem set in London, which tells the story of a nightingale that undergoes pain and suffering caused by a loss of human life but remains alive. Like in “the Raven” the latter the poem demonstrates clearly that pleasure is temporary and that human beings are mortal (Fogle 81). In the literary piece, Keats envisages the shortcomings of the physical environment and considers his own life gone when the nightingale song sets in. As such, the poet contrasts between the eternal nightingale and temporal life of human beings in an immensely imaginative way that integrates the primary factors affecting life including weather and natural aesthetics such as flower. Weather rejuvenates the power of the nightingales as evidenced in their covering of the heath. Like “the Raven,” however, “Ode to a nightingale” shares the theme of human mortality, spirituality and kindness, and isolation among the bereaved.