The Whole Entire: Poem Analysis

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Stephen Burt once remarked that “poems are easy to share, easy to pass on, and when you read a poem, you can imagine someone 's speaking to you or for you, maybe even someone far away.” This relates much to the news and media today; meaning, poetry can be used in such a way that the news is, to share. The difference appears when one realizes that the news outlets share an event’s, hopefully unbiased, details, while poems share the deep and individual emotions of said event. Take Amy Miller’s poem “The Whole Entire” for example. Miller wrote this poem in response to a news event about a random man saving a wild rabbit from a California wildfire, in December of 2017. Through her poem, Miller illustrated the anxiety, fear, and relief felt by …show more content…

In “The World Entire,” Miller does not know the name of the man saving the rabbit, where the man and rabbit are on, or anything but the emotions that can be gained from the video of a man saving an animal. However, In Hanson’s article she provides that the “21-year-old Caleb Wadman [plucked] the bunny from the side of a highway in La Conchita” California (Hanson, “Rabbit Rescued...”). Hanson’s article provides information on how the rescue occurred and what happen because of the video, from Wadman’s, doctors, and complete outsider’s perspectives. Whereas, when Miller writes that “the rabbit/ keeps moving and the man/ could be a hunter or a drunk until/ you see what he’s doing—he’s saving/ you, world, the singed pelt of your panic/ that’s running toward the fire” (Miller, “The World Entire”) she is sticking purely to what happened and who was in the video. Miller’s perspective describes the details of the video as if she was right there running through the rabbit’s thoughts. Moreover, news articles do not provide details like poems do. News articles administer surface information of an entire event, giving short and sweet snippets of what people want to know, while poems offer the emotions people want to know others