Mary Oliver place of birth was Ohio and her poem describes how she loved the nature and its beauty. Her first five stanzas of the poem are mainly focused on the gorgeousness of the backwaters trees and the ponds. The essay below describes the critical analysis of in backwaters woods by Mary Oliver. The poem illustrates the beauty that is observed in the forest but it is destroyed by fires. Mary Oliver describes the destruction of the features of the land and the emotional burden that she still experience since the beautiful forest was burnt.
In the first stanza she quotes,” look, the trees are turning their own bodies into pillars of light.” This illustrates how the blazing fire had climbed up on the trees and they had changed to appear like burning pillars. The use of the verb look has a purpose to capture the reader’s attention at the exact moment and it explains the importance of the event to the reader. The use of personification is also observed when the poet calls the trees trunk, bodies. Alliteration is also associated with trees and turning, the repeated alveolar stops that contributes much to the development of the flow of the stanza.
Stanza two mainly talks about the smell of the burning trees. Potpourri-like scents are described by the poet when she uses the adjective rich and cinnamon as the noun. The use of alliteration can be proved by the fragrance and fulfillment. This is very useful in the way that it develops the smell description intensity. To some extent, the third stanza shows clear imagery. The poet says,” the long tapers of cattails are bursting and floating away over the blue shoulders of the ponds.” Oliver concentrates on painting the picture of cattails that goes up in the flames and are swept by the rivers. The words bursting and blue illustrate how the consonant sounds have been used and both can be said to be bilabial stops.
In the fourth verse, the poet writes,” and every pond, no matter what its name, is nameless now.” She speaks to explain the way the forest had vanished its identity and the unique spots had all disappeared. Oliver’s uniqueness in this part contributes in adding a lot to the meaning of the poem. Repetition of words in the poem is very common, like in the use of the words ponds and name. Repetition is useful in a way that it develops a perfect rhythm and smoothness of the poem. The reader can enjoy the flow of the poem and understand it in an easy way without much constraint.
Mary Oliver loves and feels the colorful nature that surrounded her childhood home. The poet uses the scenarios as useful lessons that she can capture and apply in her entire life. She writes that,” Everything I have ever learned in my lifetime leads back to this.” This line explains more how the nature of her surroundings had impacted her life. The destruction of the pond and the trees influenced her to keep away and regret being associated with the destroyed beauty of the nature. Repetition is useful in a way that it develops a perfect rhythm and smoothness of the poem. The poet has incorporated various stylistic devices to come up with an attractive piece of work.
In both stanza eight and nine, the poet illustrates the responsibilities that a person have to engage in order to be recognized as a real human being. She outlines that one has to love and embrace what is mortal i.e. “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”. At this point Oliver wanted to refer the people who have Buddhist mentality that believes that we should show respect to all living things. This is because as humans we are element of each other and dependent to each other in order to survive.
However, when the time comes and it is highly demanding that you must let go whatever you have been holding, the appropriate measure is to let it go. In her last phases, Olivier uses the preposition repetition to be able to clearly demonstrate the steps of her concern. In addition, she also applied interdentally fricative, “th” in words such as things and three. She also uses the “o” sound in mortal which is a significant element in the in general sounds in the phrase and it is choral to the ear. In the last sentence there is repetition “to let it go, to let it go”. The poet intended to emphasis on the point that that all what one is supposed to do once it is already gone. Although, that particular thing still sticks in the memory you have to release it free to go. In other words, one has to importantly let go of things that are appropriate to be detached with him.
According to the writer’s unusual breaks in all her stanzas the emotion derived from the poem is conspicuous. This poses a question that unusual breaks put in some emotions, do you? These breaks can be related by the choking at the point of describing something or a person. For instance, when someone is talking keenly about something they like such as lover, friend or even nature, and then they get choked up. This is exactly what happens when these unconventional breaks are created in the poem.
The use of convectional line break such as “name is, is” forces the reader to involuntarily think deeply of the thing, place or a person that is mentioned. That is, its existence is unquestionable, not somewhere reliant on names, categories or definitions. These breaking line bring s the mind in considering the relationship between name and human being. However, the most interesting part of this point is the courageous willingness to hold both loss and connection at the same time. Therefore, one has to accept loss and try to separate themselves from the things that should not be there.
Above all, Mary Olivier is deeply attached to the Backwaters forest that was devastated. What is really interesting about this poem is the way poet portrayed a picture of the past events memories and how she was capable to free it go at the end. She portrays the way the forest catch on fire to the point that the forest lost its entire identity. She then teaches the reader on what to do when such conditions arise and responsibilities as humans in order to survive in this world.
Works cited
Thomas W Mann, The God of dirt: Mary Oliver and the other book of God. Cambridge, Mass.: Cowley Publications, 2004.
Robbie Pfeufer Kahn, Milk Teeth: A Memoir of a Woman and Her Dog. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2008
John R Knott. Imagining Wild America. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 2002.
Elaine Marks; Richard E Goodkin. In Memory Of Elaine Marks: Life Writing, Writing Death, Madison, Wis.: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 2007.
