Comparitive poetry analysis
Angelique Vega hour 3
introduction
"Grappling with luminous doom. By morning i had rose and fell at least a dozen times into something better." This is a line from Sleeping in the Forest, what do you think it means? Did she die, did she wake, or did something get her? We don,t know either but we have evidence to support our reasoning, just like we have evidence on why this poem and Prayer to the Pacific have structure, tone, figurative language and are similar in ways and different in the other.
tone and word choice
Prayers to the Pacific and Sleeping in the Forrest both have similar tone however, they do have differences, Prayer to the Pacific is respectful and slow pase. It uses word choice like "Big as the myth of origin" (line 5)' "Ocean herself was born" (line 10), and "so from the time immemorial" (line 26,16). Leslie Mormon Silko's word choice makes the poem seem more prayerful.
However, Sleeping in the forest is also respectful it seems more calm and feathery with the word choices the author used, such as?" luminous doom "(line 16), "took me back so tenderly", (Line 3), lichens (line 5), and "grappling"(line 15). By themselves they don't seem to special but together with the rest of the poem really makes a different.
Without tone and word choice the writing would be plain and wouldn't engage the reader>
Figurative Language
However, Mary Oliver uses personification in lines 1-5 when saying "i thought the earth remembered me, she took me back so tenderly, arranging her dark skirts, her pockets full of lichens and seeds" the author might mean a funeral however, it depends in how to see the poem as, light and dark, sleeping and waking, or life and death. Next , she has a metaphor in 6-8 "as never before, a stone on the river bed nothing between me and the white of the fire of the stars," She compares herself to a stone on the river bed" With more personification on lines 12-19, and a simile on line 16 sating she rose and fell like water. Again the way the author uses the words to contributes to the poem really makes a difference and gets you thinking about the poem.
from and structure
Sleeping in the Forest is centered int the middle, is all 1 stanza, has no rhym scheme besides in line 1-3. Witch again, like in Prayer to The Pacific, contributes with the rest of the poem to make the poem what it is. think the Author chose to do it this way is to go along with the trying to figure out what the actual meaning of the poem is weather it is life and death, light and dark, or sleeping and waking.
conclusion
All in all, these factors come together to form the finish product of both of these poems, I personally think that the Sleeping in the Forrest is about living and dying, she questions the earth multiple times saying" I thought she remembered me" and also luminous doom, I think she means that she wants to die (luminous) and then the dying part ( doom) all together it leaves you to think more about the story.
Nonetheless, Prayer to the Pacific is about how the author feels about the ocean, i think that by writing this she might have been wanting us to think more about the ocean and how it was vs now it was beautiful, and still is but now it has pollution and might get worse.
Although, my feelings about both of these poems are entirely my own these authors might have meant a totally different thing then what I thought, the best parts that we don't know but that is also the worst. These poems are fun and cool to read and both leave you wondering about something.