Comparative Poetry Analysis
Kelsey Saniter Hour 1
Introduction
The two poems"Ode to Enchanted light" and "Sleeping in the forest are similar ways but at the same time they have complete different meanings. Although both poems talk about how the forest is beautiful, one poem seems to talk about happiness and the other talks about death.
Tone and Word Choice
The overall tone of the poem "Sleeping in the Forest" is sad and respectful. The poem talks about a person dying and that you end up going somewhere better and the author respects that. You see this in lines 15-18 "All night I rose and fell as if in water, grappling with a luminous doom. By morning I had vanished at least a dozen times into something better." The tone of the poem "Ode to Enchanted Light" Seems happy and respectful. The poem talks about how beautiful nature is and how she is happy there. She talks about how something as ordinary as light shining through a tree can make her feel happy because of the beauty. The author uses a metaphor to describe her feelings towards earth which is "The world is a glass overflowing with water." I think that means the world is spilling with beauty.
Figurative Language
Through out the two poems "Sleeping in the forest" and "Ode to Enchanted Light" the authors use figurative language to help the reader to understand what is going on in the poem. The poem "Sleeping in the Forest uses personification to make the earth seem like a person. This makes the reader believe the author thinks of the earth as an old friend. You see this in lines 1-5 "I thought the earth remembered me, she took me back so tenderly, arranging her dark skirts, her pockets full of lichens and seeds." In the poem "Ode to Enchanted Light" the author uses a metaphor to explain how beautiful she thinks the earth is. In lines 13-15 the author says "The world is a glass overflowing with water" That means that the earth has so much beauty that it is like there isn't enough room for it. In that way the author explained what she was thinking through metaphors.
Format
"Sleeping in the Forest" has a specific format in the poem. One unique thing in the poem is that the lines are centered on the page. This makes the poem see less formal because the lines appear uneven. That tells me that the poem is going to have an informal feeling. The poem also has sentences that are broken between two lines. This gives the poem pauses in those spots which emphasis those words adding more meaning to those spots. For example, lines 5-7 have breaks in the sentences " I slept as never before, a stone on the riverbed." there are breaks between the words slept and as, also between stone and on. That tells me that those sentences are important. In "Ode to enchanted light" the author has the lines line up on the left margin and some lines only have one word. Having the words line up on the left margin gives the poem a formal feeling telling me that the poem is probably not going to be funny. The author had lines with only one word which showed that those words are important and the next few lines talk about the word with one line. For example, lines 3-5 "Shining on every leaf, drifting down like clean white sand." Shining is the only word in a line and the next lines talk about the light shining telling me that the author thought that was important. Authors can use format to make certain points in their poem stand out.
Conclusion
Overall I think that it was important for authors to use their style on their poem. Authors style gives the poem meaning and makes it unique. The message was shown in each poem using authors style. I think the message for "Ode to Enchanted Light" is to see the beauty in nature and be happy. The message for "Sleeping in the Forest" might be that you shouldn't feel sad when you are dying because you will end up somewhere better. I was able to tell this clearly by looking at authors style. That just goes to show that you can tell a lot from a poem by looking at authors style.