Blake And Atwood's Essay: The Power Of Poetry

The power of poetry
Welcome to Burning Poetry, you’re listening to Teresa FM, with Melika Burke. If you have just tuned in, for the next five minutes we will be examining the importance of poetry in today’s society.

Poetry is the essence of language; it has preserved throughout history, and while the themes have changed, the fundamental ideas underpinning poetry express the same human condition. The inherent value of written poetry within modern society is derived from its ability to force the reader to examine issues, which would otherwise be forgotten. In contemporary society, the dominant paradigm is created and perpetuated by the media, and consequently, we live in a state of social amnesia induced by a media driven hyper reality. The

Blake’s London injects a powerful voice of non-conformity through highlighting institutional oppression, to subvert the dominant paradigm of mechanistic thinking. Blake deconstructs the façade of London during the industrial revolution as a thriving metropolis. This subtle juxtaposition is exemplified through the metaphor “mind-forg'd manacles”, which evokes imagery of people as slaves to the regime and mentally oppressed. Blake further emphasises this point through the density of repetition of the word “every” in this stanza, to reveal the prevalence of oppression. This transformation of the imaginative spirit into something void of thought evokes parallels between the oppressive control of the Church in the 18th century and contemporary media’s homogenisation of culture and thought. Evidently, this poetic device stimulates the modern reader to re-examine the fabric of society as containing distinct voices, both marginal and dominant. Additionally, the third stanza taps into the collective consciousness of the reader by undermining the politically inscribed reality to expose the truth behind the facade. This defiance to the

The poem is divided into two distinct halves: the first half pleasantly depicts a Canadian landscape and the second half reveals that the speaker is dead. Atwood purposely juxtaposes these two sections to emphasise the dominant paradigm of patriarchy, as illustrated through the second half being contained within a parenthesis; this denotes the passage as an afterthought that is less important that the first half. Thus, the structure of the poem symbolises society’s polarisation of gender where women are contained entirely within the socially constructed stereotypes of femininity. Atwood subtly critiques this perception of women through the title; the simplicity of the title, in both syntax and diction, conveys the tone of the poem as direct and clear. However, this explicitly contrasts with the content of the poem, as the photograph in the poem obscures rather than reveals the speaker’s mysterious identity. The divergent meaning evoked from only reading the title symbolises society’s tendency to discern meaning from a superficial analysis, which fundamentally deviates from its true meaning. Furthermore, the ninth stanza “It is difficult to say where/ precisely, or to say /how large or small I am:/the effect of water /on light is a distortion” positions the reader to see that women are viewed through a distorted lens, where their opinions are