Throughout the poem, You, Rain by Anthony Abbott, the author uses poetic devices to illustrate the hardships of the human experience and how they are relieved by the healing powers and rejuvenation of water. Abbott paints the reader a poetic portrait by taking an inanimate object, water, and illustrating the human condition of being healed. The theme of You, Rain is healing is a glorious, recurring process that comes when it is needed. Life, no matter the kind, has to face certain hardships and Abbott reveals the nature of healing in a familiar sense. Even though we can be hurt by time, eventually we can be healed. Abbott uses the tools of apostrophe, sensory imagery, and metaphor to convey the symbolism of rain being the beautiful process of healing.
Abbott grabs the attention of his readers by having the speaker address rain as “you”. In line 1-3 “ Thrum your fingers / on my roof. I rejoice / in your rhythm”, Abbott reveals the euphoria the speaker feels when the rain finally arrives by using an apostrophe to talk directly to the rain/healing. The apostrophe Abbott uses within his poem helps support the theme by allowing the speaker to highlight the relief and happiness with intensity when the rain starts. It proves that healing is a
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While time itself does not do the damage, throughout our lifetime it is a certainty that each person will experience some type of loss, pain, or physical ailment. Abbott utilizes a metaphor to describe the concept of wounded time. In lines 28-30, “...On my roof, healing, / healing the jagged wound / of time.” he ties the poem together by displaying the reason why healing is a necessary component in life. By choosing to use the metaphor to describe the wound time can leave, it strengthens the theme by stressing the reason people need to be healed and rejuvenated. Without a reason to be healed, the theme of the poem would be lacking a sense of reality to its