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How Does Mary Oliver Use Imagery In Crossing The Swamp

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Recommended: Crossing the swamp analysis

In her poem "Crossing the Swamp" Mary Oliver portrays the swamp as the basis of everything. Oliver uses a combination of both imagery and denotation to demonstrate how a swamp is the basis of all things. The first instance of imagery appears in lines 1-3 where Oliver writes "Here is the endless/wet thick/ cosmos..."(Lns 1-3) showing that the swamp is similar to a vast, cosmic land. Oliver continues to use imagery, appearing strongly again in lines 13-15 stating "My bones/knock together at the pale/joints"(Lns 13-15). By showing how her joints are wearing out, Oliver continues to paint the swamp as the middle of all. The very first instance of denotation is in lines 3 and 4 when Oliver explicitly states "the center/of everything"(Lns 3-4) in
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Abound.” This passage uses pleasant diction to depict the environment of the swamp. The swamp seems to be filled with wildlife, flowers and

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This is seen in “ I listened to the man from 1194 and knew that he was making the time up as he went along”. The protagonist is soon traumatised by the death of Alan Mannering and is psychologically affected by the guilt he feels as if he was the reason of Alan’s death. The swamp was the most prominent place in the entire suburb and was a well attracted place. The swamp symbolises wonder, freedom, adventure and guilt and growing up.

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He could imagine his deception of this town “nestled in a paper landscape,” (Collins 534). This image of the speaker shows the first sign of his delusional ideas of the people in his town. Collins create a connection between the speaker’s teacher teaching life and retired life in lines five and six of the poem. These connections are “ chalk dust flurrying down in winter, nights dark as a blackboard,” which compares images that the readers can picture.

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“The cry of a tormented man had come to the peaceful green mystery of my river, and the great presence of the river watched from the shadows and deep recesses.”

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This shows the uses of denotation as it means to give and she is using it to say that God “might of all justly” give what he sees

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Mary Oliver in her poem, “Crossing the Swamp,” utilizes allegory, alliteration, metaphor, and tone to convey an intricate relationship between herself and the swamp, that being her struggles in her life. A relationship that starts out with fear and ends in acceptance, stagnation to triumph, darkness to light; a relationship that allows her to be reborn. The swamp is a metaphor, described as “struggle, closure,” “the center of everything;” the swamp represents the obstacles Oliver faces in her life. She enters the swamp that is “murky” with “dense sap” and “branching vines,” and Oliver must struggle in the swamp in order to move forward. But there is a lack of direction in life and no one struggles the same and no one travels the same path,

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548 Words | 3 Pages

Here, Olds has the speaker using a metaphor to compare dirt to the skin of the Earth, showing how they themselves view it. This metaphor is important because it's a very different perspective from how they saw dirt in the beginning, with the "background" metaphor at the start of the poem. The speaker used to view dirt differently, as something that wasn't important, but we see by the end just how much they appreciate it. Olds effectively used metaphors to showcase the speaker's attitude toward dirt, but it wasn't just metaphors

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“The carpet near Bertis’s foot resembles a run-over squirrel, but Karen’s seen worse.” (Coupland 138) The imagery in this novel keeps the reader engaged by prompting their own imagination to visual the setting. Without the author’s skillful choice of words the imagery in this novel would have greatly

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The author utilizes multiple metaphors in the poem to create vivid imagery in readers’ mind about the poem. Additionally, John Brehm widely utilizes nautical metaphors to bring out its intentions. For instance, the poem is entitled “the sea of faith.” The term “Sea” is used to show how deep, broad, and everlasting the act of “faith” can be.

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In detailing the events that led up to her change in perspective, she made note of the honeysuckle that covered the walls of the well-house, the warm sunshine that accompanied going outdoors, and the cool stream of water that she felt as she placed her hand under the spout. These details kept the reader with her in the moment as she felt something less simple, but still universal; the returning of a, “ misty consciousness as of something forgotten.” In using rich diction, she maintained a sense of intimacy with the reader which allowed her to call on personal details from her own life and theirs. Later in the passage, she described how, once the reality of language was opened to her, and she returned to the house, “every object which I touched seemed to quiver with life.” She had gone through a complete shift of perspective, one that, to her, was felt entirely through senses other than sight or sound.

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Media bias has influenced the thoughts of readers by providing misinformation towards hard-hitting topics such as abortion. Misinformation deliberately delivers false information to persuade readers of a particular idea. The abortion discussion, the debate between whether women should have abortions or not, has been influenced greatly by media. Strong advocates for either pro-choice or pro-life use media to persuade readers and viewers with their own biased opinions. In the article The Rights of a Woman Do Not Outweigh the Rights of a Child, the article explains how supporters of abortion believe that the unborn baby has less rights than the mother.

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In her poem, “Crossing the Swamp,” Mary Oliver uses vivid diction, symbolism, and a tonal shift to illustrate the speaker’s struggle and triumph while trekking through the swamp; by demonstrating the speaker’s endeavors and eventual victory over nature, Oliver conveys the beauty of the triumph over life’s obstacles, developing the theme of the necessity of struggle to experience success. Oliver uses descriptive diction throughout her poem to vividly display the obstacles presented by the swamp to the reader, creating a dreary, almost hopeless mood that will greatly contrast the optimistic tone towards the end of the piece. While describing the thicket of swamp, Oliver uses world like “dense,” “dark,” and “belching,” equating the swamp to “slack earthsoup.” This diction develops Oliver’s dark and depressing tone, conveying the hopelessness the speaker feels at this point in his journey due to the obstacles within the swamp. As the speaker eventually overcomes these obstacles, he begins to use words like “sprout,” and “bud,” alluding to new begins and bright futures.

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575 Words | 3 Pages

As stated in “The Ponds” chapter, “A field of water betrays the spirit that is in the air. It is continually receiving new life and motion from above. It is intermediate between land and sky.” (Page Number). This conveys to the reader that the study of nature could replace and oppose our enslavement by understanding that the pond is the human soul as the connection between earth and heaven, surviving in an earthly realm but suggesting a peaceful world just above, in the sky, which reflects into the pond.

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As if she was held there against her own will, she uses the word fast to signify that she was eager to leave. Gravitating towards a natural setting, she could appease her endless curiosity of what truly mattered to her. The garden is placed in between the schoolhouse and the forest to exemplify her transition between the controlled, man-made school and the unregimented forest. The forest provides a place of freedom of the mind, which often leads to curiosity. Broken up into short phrases, in stanza 2 Oliver creates a list of what she spent all summer trying to forget, “...how to be modest and useful, and how to succeed and so forth,

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Mary Oliver’s poem “Wild Geese” was a text that had a profound, illuminating, and positive impact upon me due to its use of imagery, its relevant and meaningful message, and the insightful process of preparing the poem for verbal recitation. I first read “Wild Geese” in fifth grade as part of a year-long poetry project, and although I had been exposed to poetry prior to that project, I had never before analyzed a poem in such great depth. This process of becoming intimately familiar with the poem—I can still recite most of it to this day—allowed it to have the effect it did; the more one engulfs oneself in a text, the more of an impact that text will inevitably have. “Wild Geese” was both revealing and thought-provoking: reciting it gave me

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