ipl-logo

James Merrill Water Street Analysis

1145 Words5 Pages

Childhood as lost paradise is a theme which plasters James Merrill’s 1962 volume Water Street. In spite of not being generally considered a typical confessional poet, his poems are autobiographical without being dramatic. It seems that Merrill takes a long time to choose his words because he does not simply want to reveal everything at once, but gradually, through a feeling of being an incomplete, resentful man who lost something important to him, in memory-dressed images. Simple moments in his life become complex meditations. Judith Moffett articulates this kind of distance by comparing Merrill with a truly confessional poet, Robert Lowell, stating that A continuing access to childhood memories and insights nourishes Merrill’s verse; with …show more content…

Thematically it has two parts which are not toughly delimitated, transitioning from visual to dream, from history to memory, going from a narrative to an interpretation of it. In the first part, the poet and his mother are watching a thirty-year-old movie taken by the absent father. There is no temporal difference between then and now and the space is the only thing that differentiates the poet, the mother and their personas – the screen is the threshold. At one point, a shadow man, the father behind the camera, appears in the scenery, afflicting them both. The paternal figure is so strong that Our headstrong old projector/ Glares at the scene which promptly/ Catches fire and his persona is easily connected with the overheated projector. That is a crucial moment of transformation for the infant projected in the present of the adult - the moment he realizes he has to cease being a child and become a man. The mother goes to bed and leaves her son alone to gradually fade and cool. The second part begins; it seems like there is no boundary between reality and fantasy anymore, but the poet just lets himself be sucked within his own memories. Everything is possible in one’s mind; the time is compressed (A minute galaxy/ About my head will easily/ Needle me back.) and the two temporal rifts constantly intertwine having the family reunited

Show More
Related
365 Words | 2 Pages

Jim Simmerman, the writer of “Child’s Grave, Hale County, Alabama,” was born on March 5, 1952 in Bolder, Colorado. Simmerman spent the most of his childhood traveling since his father was in the military. In 1978, he became an instructor at Northern Arizona University. He then left to earn a master’s degree at the University of Iowa, but he came back to continue his previous job. On June 29, 2009, Simmerman killed himself because of a debilitating illness he had (Bruner para.

Read More
1274 Words | 6 Pages

The oxymoron “ancient innocence” again is symbolic for his reaction and pure joy for the simple surroundings that may sometimes go unnoticed. Gwen Harwood demonstrates the memory of a defining experience and shows the significance and impact it made on the personas life, in Part One of Father and Child. “Owl-blind in the early sun for what I had begun”, this line represents her hindered wisdom in her early ignorance for the pursuit of death. In Part two she finally accepts the inevitability of death. The persona turns to Romantic, naturalistic ideals to soothe her

Read More
238 Words | 1 Pages

In the book Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds, he uses specific literary devices and techniques that cause this collection of poems to become one cohesive novel to portray the story of a boy struggling with the death of his brother and gun violence in his community. This story changed the way I view living in an inner city community and how that can affect a child’s development and mental state while living in that environment. Reynolds uses imagery to develop a deeper understanding of the death of a child, dramatically displays a child being shot and how our main character views this tragedy, “Her mouth open. Bubble gum and blood” (133). This disturbing piece of imagery establishes our main character’s inner conflict, indicating that Will (main

Read More
1578 Words | 7 Pages

The speaker discloses that his children have been “gathered like a small cloud [and have become] . . . steam weeping on the window” (ll. 32-35). The speaker uses this final comparison of his children to weeping clouds to convince his grandpa that his life is not irredeemable and his presence is still needed in this world. In conclusion, through Gary Soto’s usage of powerful imagery, precise descriptions, and an absence of rhythm, he evokes a sense of sympathy for the community where he grew up while telling a beautiful story.

Read More
742 Words | 3 Pages

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.

Read More
599 Words | 3 Pages

Oscillating between the progression of life through the memories and experience of an individual is expressed through Gwen Harwood’s poem The Violets. The poem encapsulates the human experience as both integral to the formation of our perceptions of life and the timelessness that it provides to the audience. Gwen Harwood is able to create a text that goes beyond the way we respond, creating a deeper awareness of the complexity of human attitudes and behaviours. The matrilineal theme reveals that the core of the poem The Violets stem through childhood memories as a component to reveal our own personal reconciliations.

Read More
786 Words | 4 Pages

For the entire duration of the poem, the reader is able to infer how the complexity of the relationship changes and how the father feels about his son through the techniques and methods stated above. Within A Story, Lee uses point of view from both characters to convey the idea that the father’s relationship with his son is indeed, increasingly complex. The reader also learns from this point of view technique that the time of thought within the poem constantly changes. The boy’s young age is shown clearly in the beginning of the poem as: “His five-year-old son waits in his lap.”

Read More
764 Words | 4 Pages

“You beat time on my head, With a palm caked hard by dirt, Then waltzed me off to bed, Still clinging to your shirt” (Lines 13-16). The line, “You beat time in my head,” (Line 13), may be misunderstood to indicate physical violence. However, because the waltz begins in a slow rhythm that gradually, increases in tempo, the boy is dizzy and breathless, and yet happy, by its end. Although exhausted the narrator still desires to continue prancing around with the father. Given the opportunity, he would gladly experience his childhood memories exactly the same – bruises, cuts and all.

Read More
657 Words | 3 Pages

In one moment it’s ripped away from them: the only thing keeping them young; the only thing keeping them shielded from the world. It’s the mother watching her fatherless daughter cry over his coffin. It is the boy being slapped by his loving father for the first time. I That thing is known as “loss of innocence”, but is it really a loss? All one loses is their naivety and artlessness.

Read More
1515 Words | 7 Pages

On July 18, 1964, The New Yorker published a short story entitled “The Swimmer” (Wilhite 215). Edited thoroughly and heavily compacted from its original form, “The Swimmer” represents John Cheever 's most acclaimed and recognized work. The protagonist of the famous and momentous short story, Neddy Merrill, undergoes a watery journey of self-exploration, acceptance, and tragedy while swimming in various pools as he makes his way home from a party. Slyly and allegorically, the short story dramatically demonstrates the possible density of the literary technique called characterization. Containing many cliffhangers open to the reader 's individual self-interpretation, the short story effectively uses the strong power of language to illuminate

Read More
500 Words | 2 Pages

Also it is depicted how the father is cruel and at the same time gentle. Booby Fang , a literary analyst, showed how this poem can have mixed feelings of interpretation. He mentions how the poem is like a seesaw where the elements of joy, which Fang notes as the figure of the waltz and the rhythm it has, balances with elements of fear which he mentions happens through the effects of diction used in the novel such as the words like romped, scraped, beat, and whiskey. The narrator in the poem is remembering an incident in his childhood which shows that thet there were qualities in his father that were good and bad. He mentions that the achievement of this poem is that it permits readers to access such powerful memories in their own lives in ways consistent with the words and construction of the

Read More
659 Words | 3 Pages

The speaker as a child would see his father as a harsh man but as an adult, when he looked back he saw that his father had a love for his family. His father's love could be considered as a hidden love. However in the poem “Piano” the speaker's life seemed great until he looked back at his past to see his mother playing the piano and

Read More
584 Words | 3 Pages

In stanza one, the speaker uses paradox to establish the fact that she is in awe about how fast her children have grown up. She portrays her daughters as “enormous children” and seems to be mesmerized with the contrast between their appearance and their age (1). The speaker’s thoughts reveal a bewildered tone towards her children and initiate a thought process on how and why they behave and appear older than they are. In stanzas two and three, the speaker reveals the irony of her children’s

Read More
1215 Words | 5 Pages

She starts off the poem with the speaker looking at a “photograph” (Trethewey l. 1) of herself when she was four years old. The reader is instantly taken into a personal memory of the narrator and

Read More
1140 Words | 5 Pages

The scene ends with “a dead boy” that Ray “cradles him gently as though the boy weights nothing, a baby” (My Father Running with a Dead Boy 448). The image of a baby alludes to the narrator’s adolescence and even innocence. The narrator longs to be carried and comforted by his father like the dead boy. The scene reveals the pain and sorrow that the narrator felt during his childhood and his desire to find peace with the past.

Read More

More about James Merrill Water Street Analysis

Related Topics

Open Document