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  • Essay / Facing the end of life in poetry

    The dawn of life and the twilight of death Every living being on this planet has two guarantees: life and death. The duration of any of them depends on their fate and the date of their conclusion is not disclosed; the gift of one will eventually continue with the other. Although the inevitability of the latter situation scares many people, most people find peace by focusing on life. In the poems “Dawn Revisited” and “When Death Comes,” poets Rita Dove and Mary Oliver explore the hope and possibility of life in the face of everyone’s inevitable end. Say no to plagiarism. Get a Custom Essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get an Original Essay In “Dawn Revisited,” poet Rita Dove draws a parallel between the start of a new life and the beginning of the day , as the title literally suggests. Its primary use of imagery lies in one of the most recognizable identifiers of the morning: breakfast: “in the lavish smell of biscuits – / eggs and sausages on the grill” (Dove, 8-9 ). As a new morning dawns, possibilities for new choices and life are reborn. Dove instills the idea of ​​renewal of life through the imagery of a new beginning with the metaphor of "the blank slate" and hopeful prospects with the phrase "the sky is the limit": "The the whole sky is yours / to write on, blown open / on a white page. (Dove, 10-12) At the end of the poem, Dove appeals to both the breakfast metaphor and the ideal of good humor: "You'll never know / who's over there, to fry these eggs, / if you don't know. I don't get up to see. (13-15) Dove's light narrative tone blends into the subject of hope through the descriptive appeals to light. In “When Death Comes” by Mary Oliver, the title strikes the audience with the sense of the imminence of a dark poem, expressing the depressing inevitability of death. The humanistic fear of death is commonly associated with the fear of pain. Oliver appeals to this mortal fear through the imagery of pain: the pain felt through death by illness – “when death comes / like measles” (Oliver, 5-6) – and the pain felt through a death by brute. strength — “When death comes / like an iceberg between the shoulder blades” (Oliver, 7-8) Although death does not literally stab its victims in the back with a piece of ice, the feeling of life's cold betrayal s 'expressed through the tactile sensations of the temperature of the weapon in the point of vulnerability. As a means for humans to mitigate the inevitability of death, death itself is commonly personified as its own being with the consciousness of taking and bargaining: "when death comes and takes all the shiny pieces in its bag handbag / to buy me, and will snap the handbag closed. (Oliver, 3-4 years old) Death as a character creates the feeling of a malevolent being who stands above everyone else in the hierarchy of life. “Dawn Revisited” and “When Death Comes” both use images of nature to signify life, but their usage differs in each poem. In "When Death Comes", Oliver uses "the hungry bear in autumn" (2) to signify the end of life during the season of autumn, personifying Death as the hungry bear. In "Dawn Revisited", Dove uses the imagery of the "blue jay / [peddling] his pretty wares / and the still [standing] oak, displaying / his glorious shadow" (2-5) to signify the life of nature, and in turn the speaker, to its peak. The bright colors of the blue jay's feathers and the oak's leaves give a sense of life through the passage into.