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The poem, In Blackwater Woods, by Mary Oliver describes the beauty of a forest destroyed by fires. She talks about the features of the land, how they were destroyed, and the emotional loss that she still carries since it burned. In her first stanza, Look, the trees are turning their own bodies into pillars of light, describes how the fire had climbed up the trees and made them look like burning pillars. Oliver uses the verb look to grab the readers attention right away and emphasize how important the event is to her.
She also uses personification here when she refers to the trees trunks as bodies. Oliver incorporates some alliteration with trees and turning; the repetitious [ t ], alveolar stops, adds to the flow of the stanza. The second stanza describes the smell of the tress burning; she uses the adjective rich and the noun cinnamon to refer to the potpourri-like scents. The alliteration she uses here is fragrance and fulfillment. This is effective because it contributes to the intensity of the smell description. Her clear imagery extends into stanza three, which reads, the long tapers of cattails are bursting and floating away over the blue shoulders of the ponds.
Oliver paints the picture of cattails going up in flames and being swept away by the rivers. Again she uses the repetition of consonant sounds in bursting and blue, which are both bilabial stops. Stanza four Oliver writes, and every pond, no matter what its name is, is nameless now. She tells about how the forest has lost its identity and that there are no more unique spots. Oliver's syntactic structure here adds a lot to the poems meaning. She uses ponds and then ponds, and name and then nameless.
This repetition of words is essential to the rhythm and smoothness of the piece. In stanza five she explains, every year everything I have ever learned in my lifetime leads back to this. This time she repeats vowel sounds three times in every year, everything, and ever. This assonance keeps her poem orderly and clearly accentuates the meaning she is trying to expose.
She talks about everything she has ever learned leads back to, the fires and the black river of loss whose other side is salvation. Her usage of the alveolar fricative [ s ] sound in fires, loss, side and salvation adds a nice soothing sound to the sentence. She is expressing her sadness and connection to the area. She uses black to symbolize the loss, or it may be that ash has fallen in the water. In stanza eight and nine, Oliver describes the duties that one must do in able to be a true human being. She writes, you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.
Here Oliver refers to a Buddhist type of mentality, where you must respect all living creatures, because we are all part of each other, and we depend on each other to stay alive. But, if and when the time comes and you have to let go to whatever it may be, the best thing to do is to just let it go. In these last phrases she uses the repetition of the preposition to, which signifies the steps she talks about. Also she uses the interdental fricative, [ th ] in the words three and things, the [ o ] sound in mortal, hold, and bones, these factors contribute to the overall sounds in the phrase, and it is harmonic to the ear. The last sentence repeats, to let it go, to let it go, this is being emphasized to get the point across that that is all you can do once it is already gone. You have to let it go although you still carry with you the memories.
I enjoyed this poem very much because I can relate to knowing a place and loving it so much that you hate to see something happen to it. I think she uses great imagery that leaves you with a lasting picture in your mind. Her choice of words and how she linked them makes the piece flow right off your tongue. She uses many sounds that are alike and that repeat, and I think is made it interesting to read because it gave it a singsong effect. It was very melodic in the vowel and consonant sounds. She uses many aspects of linguistics that make this an outstanding poem to read.
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Research essay sample on Oliver Describes Consonant Sounds Stanza
