PenelopePoetryPoetry1-…
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Penelope Poetry Poetry 1 - … Penelope Poetry Poetry 1 Mrs. O’Neill AP Lit. & Comp.: Poetry Reflection #1 Mary Oliver from the collection New and Selected Poems: Volume One--New Poems (1991-1992) Nature Of the poems that I have read thus far, I have noticed multiple common themes. Mary Oliver’s poems are distinguishable for using nature, life, and death as major themes. Often times Oliver will draw connections to the nature around her and her own (or others’) life. She is able to clearly present the beauty of nature and display a strong appreciation for every detail of the environment that surrounds her. She does this best with the physical structure of the poem and diction of her poems. The first thing I noticed while reading Oliver were the poems’ structures. To the eye, she often uses enjambment, both short and long lines, and diagonal, center, or straight alignment. In one particular poem, “Picking Blueberries, Austerlitz, New York, 1957,” I noticed that the story being told in the poem could simply be followed with only the last lines of each quatrain. For example, if the reader only saw the last lines it would read: “when a dear stumbled against me/and was just wandering along/so, there we were/shouting instructions/and went floating off toward the trees/I have to think of her/before she took flight/(beautiful girl) where are you?” Without reading the poem in advance, Oliver uses structure to draw the eye downward in the stanza to create a story. Poetry 2 Another structurally appealing poem in this collection is called “The Egret.” The poem describes the egret as having “bamboo legs” in the “thin polished reeds.” To support and further emphasize the vision of the egret standing alone in the water, the columns are long and slender as if to mimic the egret’s legs. Oliver also uses repetition when describing the egret. Along with multiple “white” descriptions, there are many other “w” words in the poem that help the reader to picture the bird. The “w” words simply include: “white,” “what,” “were,” “with,” “which,” “words,” “weedy,” “world,” “wild.” In this way, Oliver is using alliteration and consonance to attract the reader and lull them into the natural flow of the poem. Similar to “The Egret,” the poem “Water Snake” has a structure that reflects the subject of the poem. Like a water snake, the poem is thin with short, condensed lines of enjambment. The poem is aligned on the left side, which mimics the snake stretched out across the path in front of the speaker. I see Oliver’s poems as being brief stories. To me, they are short moments captured in time in which she later is reflecting upon. In one poem, “Morning,” the end lines are specifically placed. The beginning and the end of the poem are more choppy, with more periods that abruptly set up the scene for the reader. In the middle of the poem, when the cat is able to explore and goes “out into the world,” it seems like one long sentence. This could be because Oliver wants the reader to savor this moment, to enforce the idea of appreciating the world around us (as seen in the line “everything wonderful around me”) and out. Another way that Oliver may say this in “Morning” is Poetry 3 the way she describes herself in this situation. She is standing in her “cold kitchen” watching the cat “leap lightly” and carelessly. The “cold” kitchen is isolating and dark, where as the cat is free in nature. Life and Death Along with nature, Oliver writes about life and death. “Bitterness” is a poem that shows an obvious theme of death. After living a life of “bitterness,” “loneliness and misery” the speaker dies: “lay down at last in your coffin none the wiser and unassuaged.” The last line is a bit contradictory when she writes “cold and dreamless under the wild and reckless, peaceful flowers of the hillsides.” It is curious that the hillsides can be wild and reckless, but at the same time peaceful. The subject’s death is emphasized 本文来源：https://www.wddqw.com/doc/748245bc6beae009581b6bd97f1922791788bedb.html