Bishop uses apostrophe in this poem, which is when a poem's speaker directly addresses someone or something who isn't there. Because the poem is called a "letter," and because in the first line the speaker refers to "your next letter," we know she is speaking to someone who is absent.
Similes also appear in the poem. Simile is a comparison that uses "like" or "as." An example of a simile is the following:
the meter glares like a moral owl
This way, we can imagine a parking meter looking like an owl.
Another simile is:
one side of the buildings rises with the sunlike a glistening field of wheat.
Both similes employ visual imagery, words that describe things we can see. We can imagine sun shining on a building in the early morning, lighting it up like a wheat field.
Bishop uses end rhymes, though she does so irregularly from stanza to stanza. Some examples are as follows from the first stanza: "say" and "plays" rhyme, as do "doing" and "pursuing." In stanza three "caves" and "waves" rhyme.
The poem also employs alliteration, which is when words close to each begin with the same consonant. This creates a sense of rhythm and places emphasis on the alliterative words. Examples in the poem include a line we have already quoted:
the meter glares like a moral owl.
The repeated "m" in "meter" and "moral" are alliterative. This line also uses personification, which is the attributing of human characteristics to an animal or object. In this case, a meter is likened to an owl, which is given the human characteristic of being moral.
Wednesday, November 26, 2014
In Elizabeth Bishop's "Letter to N.Y.," please identify several of the literary devices that she uses in the poem.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
What is the theme of the chapter Lead?
Primo Levi's complex probing of the Holocaust, including his survival of Auschwitz and pre- and post-war life, is organized around indiv...
-
The statement "Development policy needs to be about poor people, not just poor countries," carries a lot of baggage. Let's dis...
-
"Mistaken Identity" is an amusing anecdote recounted by the famous author Mark Twain about an experience he once had while traveli...
-
Primo Levi's complex probing of the Holocaust, including his survival of Auschwitz and pre- and post-war life, is organized around indiv...
-
De Gouges's Declaration of the Rights of Woman was enormously influential. We can see its influences on early English feminist Mary Woll...
-
As if Hamlet were not obsessed enough with death, his uncovering of the skull of Yorick, the court jester from his youth, really sets him of...
-
In both "Volar" and "A Wall of Fire Rising," the characters are impacted by their environments, and this is indeed refle...
No comments:
Post a Comment