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Robyn Palm

Professor Inoshita

English 273C

March 4, 2010

Poetry Literary Review

I chose to analyze the poems One Flesh by Elizabeth Jennings, Wild Geese by Mary

Oliver, The Red Wheelbarrow by William Carlos Williams, Mushrooms by Sylvia Plath, and

August by Mary Oliver. The reason I chose these particular poems is because I felt a connection

to them while reading them. Wild Geese, Mushrooms, and August, are all types of free-verse

poems that are from the free-verse handout. One Flesh by Elizabeth Jennings is from the book

Imaginative Writing and The Red Wheelbarrow by William Carlos Williams is from the haiku

handout.

One Flesh by Elizabeth Jennings is a poem about a mother and father from their

daughter’s perspective. In the poem, Elizabeth Jennings, uses imagery techniques to describe the

relationship between the couple. She portrays the mood of the distance between them, both

literally and emotionally with the line “Lying apart now, each in a separate bed” (120). She uses

this as a metaphor, noting that they aren’t really in separate beds, but that the space and distance

in between them is large enough that it feels like it. They hardly ever touch—“Or if they do, it is

like a confession, Of having little feeling - or too much” (120). Here she shows us that the couple

does not have an intimate or romantic relationship any more. When they do touch, it is not

sensual, and sometimes it’s like an apology. Sex is a confession that they want to use to seek

forgiveness—which is what Elizabeth Jennings is describing when she says “or too much”. She
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means that they’re either not touching at all, or they’re having sex for the wrong reasons. She

uses imagery to explain how the couple is so distant, almost like strangers, yet close at the same

time “Strangely apart, yet strangely close together” (120). They stay close because they are

married and have a daughter, but in reality that’s the only thing they share in common. The

daughter’s voice in this poem illustrates how she feels, not just what she sees. She watches her

parents who have grown out of love—watches the way they no longer touch, no longer love, and

seemingly stay together because of her. Elizabeth Jennings uses excellent imagery in the line

“Whose fire from which I came, has now grown cold” (210) to portray the daughters feelings. In

this line she means that the passion, love, and sex that the daughter was conceived from, has

vanished and is no longer visible. She was born out of their love, but now that love is gone and

it’s been replaced with chastity, books, and dreams of childhood. Overall this poem uses great

imagery to show the daughters pain as she watches her mother and father become strangers of

each other.

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver is a poem about combining the past with the future in order

to bring out the best in you. In the first line, she tells us “You do not have to be good”. In this

line she means that we don’t need to be perfect, good at anything, or good in a moral way, but

that just being alive is a precious thing. The next couple lines, “You do not have to walk on your

knees, for a hundred miles through the desert repenting” tell us that we don’t need to spend our

lives being sorry and asking for forgiveness. Instead, “You only have to let the soft animal of

your body love what it loves”. In this line, she uses soft animal as a metaphor for our hearts. She

means to tell us that we need to let our hearts guide us, and to do what we love. Things won’t

always be easy though, “Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine” is a line in which

she portrays hardship and sadness in ones life. She means to say that she will be there to listen

and talk, but “Meanwhile the world goes on”. She tries to show us that while we are busy
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worrying, the world is still turning, and we fail to see the beauty in things when we’ve occupied

ourselves with worry, stress, and despair. She uses great imagery to show the beauty in the world

around us in the next few lines, saying “the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain, are moving

across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers”. She

uses wild geese as a metaphor of going home and to call out to people in despair to let them

know that there is a place for them in nature’s family. She wants us to see that humans could be

just as content, just as carefree as nature if they wanted to.

The first two lines of The Red Wheelbarrow by William Carlos Williams are very

important because they set the tone for the rest of the poem, the also introduce that “so much

depends upon” the wheelbarrow—meaning to focus on the wheelbarrow. “A red wheelbarrow,

glazed with rain water” gives us imagery of what the wheelbarrow looks like. It’s a bright red,

and glazed with rain water—he might be hinting that since it had been raining, the skies are dull,

and the wheelbarrow is the main attention of the picture. The red color contrasting against the

gray skies makes it pop out. He really wants us to get a vivid picture of the wheelbarrow in our

mind. He has a line break between wheel and barrow, and he’s trying to get us to really break

down the word and have a picture of it in our heads. The last line “beside the white chickens”

just adds another object to contrast against the wheelbarrow. This is a really simple poem, but he

used imagery to describe the wheelbarrow, not necessarily in detail, because all we know is that

it’s red and has rain drops on it, but he used them to show contrast against other things in the

picture—like white chickens. When you read this poem, he wants you to have a vivid image

where the wheelbarrow really stands out.

Mushrooms by Sylvia Plath uses imagery to describe mushrooms and how “Overnight,

very whitely, discreetly, very quietly” they multiply. She wrote the poem as if she were a

mushroom “Nobody sees us, stops us, betrays us; the small grains make room”. She uses
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imagery to show how the mushrooms push their way up to the surface, forcing things out of their

way. They “Diet on water, on crumbs of shadow”, meaning that all they need to survive is water

and the darkness. “Nudgers and shovers, despite of ourselves: our kinds multiplies”, here again

she is describing how the mushrooms push their way up and through the surface. Despite the fact

that they push each other, and other things around, they still live—unlike other things. “We shall

be by morning, inherit the earth, our foots in the door”. Here she is describing how quickly they

multiply, and when they do they’ll be everywhere. She uses “our foots in the door” as a

metaphor for not leaving. When someone has their foot in your door, they’re pestering you.

August by Mary Oliver is a poem about blackberries. In this poem, she portrays herself

almost like a bear “all day my body accepts what it is, in the dark creeks that run by there is this

dark paw of my life darting among the black bells” She’s out in the woods, where blackberries

grow “swollen”—meaning that they are ripe and delicious. She spends her days there, searching

for blackberries “among the high branches, reaching my ripped arms, thinking of nothing,

cramming black honey of summer into my mouth”. She uses black honey of summer as a

metaphor for the blackberries. She uses honey to give the imagery of how sweet—like summer

—the blackberries are. The last line “there is this happy tongue” describes how she feels after

eating the blackberries. She’s happy, and the sweetness still lingers on her tongue.

The imagery used in these poems gives you a vivid imagination. In the poem One Flesh,

you can picture the mother and father in bed—you can feel the distance. The same thing with

August by Mary Oliver, you can taste the sweetness on your tongue as she describes the

blackberries like “black honey of summer”. The Red Wheelbarrow itself is full of imagery,

because that’s all that the poem really is. It’s a sentence made in to a poem by putting imagery in

to it. When you read the poem, you get a vivid image of the bright red wheelbarrow. Mushrooms
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and Wild Geese portray many different kinds of imagery in them—telling us how things look but

also how things feel.

Works Cited
Janet McNew. "On Mary Oliver's Poetry". Modern American Poetry. March 03, 2010
<http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/oliver/about.htm>.
Jennings, Elizabeth. “One Flesh”. Imaginative Writing: The elements of craft. New York:
Longman Publishers, 2007.
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Gale Group Inc. "The Red Wheelbarrow". Modern American Poetry. March 03, 2010
<http://www.english.illinois.edu/Maps/poets/s_z/williams/wheelbarrow.htm>.
"Sylvia Plath." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 2004. 4 March
2010. <http://www.enotes.com/topic/Sylvia_Plath>.
"Wild Geese: Introduction." Poetry for Students. Ed. Marie Rose Napierkowski. Vol. 15. Detroit:
Gale, 1998. eNotes.com. January 2006. 4 March 2010. <http://www.enotes.com/wild-
geese/introduction>.