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Summary Of A Weld By Albert Goldbarth

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“A Yield” by Albert Goldbarth opens with a proposition that someone dies. It has no stanzas, and flows as a stream of consciousness until the end, where a man washes cucumbers. Throughout the poem, there are a lot of allusions to many of the impressive feats humankind has achieved. This is then contrasted with the end, where ordinary things are described as beautiful. The poem is very descriptive, and often uses metaphors to illustrate a mental picture of what is going on. In terms of lineation, the lines don’t rhyme, nor do they have any particular rhythm. “A Yield” by Albert Goldbarth is a philosophical argument that states that big, seemingly important things are not good enough as a distraction from death, pain, and loss, while small, insignificant …show more content…

The plane crash on line three is one image which draws the reader in. Another image is the metaphor of life as a theme park in line eight. This image is really what explains the reasons for why people are building and doing all these amazing things. People want to be distracted from death. They want to be distracted from the rides that are pain and loss. All the amazing things described can’t fully distract them, but people try anyway. Other images include Angkor Wat as Vishnu’s cane, the priestess holding the bull’s beating heart aloft, and the sun sparkling off the bishop’s miter. During line sixty-eight, the image of the striped cucumbers serves to illustrate the completeness and beauty in ordinary things: “Each one is striped green like a race car, / holding its clear and clement juice in its body. / Ordinary beauty. You could cry” (Goldbarth lines 68-70). Most of the images in the poem are made using metaphors. “The heart of a bull / still pulsing – with the regular beat / of a sleeping infant’s breathing - / in her upheld hand” (Goldbarth lines 38-41). The use of metaphor makes both the priestess and the bull’s heart feel alive, as if they were real. The comparison to a sleeping baby makes it easy to see the heart beating slowly in the priestess’ hand. This comparison is another point in the poem where Goldbarth connects big things to small things, this time in a more subtle way. Because babies have their whole lives ahead of them, …show more content…

In terms of lineation, the lines of “A Yield” end in an enjambment except between sections. In the last section, all the lines end in either a comma or a period, breaking this pattern. Therefore, there are no clear patterns. There are different numbers of syllables in each line, and no regular rhythm. This gives the poem an almost natural feeling, similar to prose. Because of the simplicity of the form, the poem has an ordinary beauty to it. This visual orientation and the rest of the form provide further illustration of the main point of the poem. Through the form of the poem, Goldbarth is illustrating that big, extravagant things are made out of smaller, simpler things. Just like Angkor Wat is made out of stones, this poem is made out of lines and sentences. Angkor Wat, much like many of the other examples in the poem is a religious place. In general, religion is the worship of something or someone better and more impressive than any person who has ever lived. Whether or not any of these deities are real is another question, but it is implied in the poem that even religion is not enough to distract people from

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