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Imagery In The Swamp By Mary Oliver

443 Words2 Pages

In the poem “The Swamp” by Mary Oliver the speaker talks about their relationship with the swamp. We can compare her struggles with something in our own life, wither it is school, work, or just your personal life. We can sew a struggle between the swamp and speaker through her word choice but also the imagery that the poem gives off.
Imagery is used in the poem to get the reader involved in what a swamp might look and smell like. “here is struggle, closure pathless, seamless, peerless mud”, from this quote one gets a strong image of what the struggle of getting through a swamp might be like. One could relate this back to one’s own life with the many struggles they have already gone through. With knowing the outcome, you try and “march” through it as best as one can, finding the best ground and path to get through. …show more content…

Like “wet thick cosmos”, “much as painted and glittered”, and a “palace of leaves”. Just looking at those you wouldn’t think about a swamp, but these words help move the poem along. When one thinks of a cosmos the reader would think of and the universe as a whole and how beautiful it is. The same could be said about the swamp, it may look dirty and gross at first glance but when thinking about it, the swamp is full of thick vibrant green plants. Life will make one feel stuck in the mud and it will make one fell like they cannot be a cosmos or painted and glittered, but when the reader gets unstuck from what ever made them feel stuck one can feel like a painted and glittered radiant cosmo. One has to remember to push through the struggles and get to the end of the swamp to feel like the hidden beautiful cosmo in all of

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