Nature Imagery In Adrienne Rich's "Twenty-One Love Poems"
English 206 - Modern and Contemporary Literature
Dr. Carstens
In her "Twenty-One Love Poems," Adrienne Rich arranges a series of nature images in order to investigate the relationship between self and city, self and lover. Throughout this collection of poems, nature serves as a symbol of psychic life and shock, and it can be difficult to interpret the various natural metaphors which Rich uses. One can, however, group these images into categories, and I will suggest two. On one hand there are images of growing plants, most notably trees. On the other hand are bodies of water. While the trees allow Rich an outlet to represent a sense of belonging (or, rootedness), the water quite ...
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instrument for embodied experience. But we seek that experience, or recognize it when it is offered to us, because it reminds us in some way of our need. After that rearousal of desire, the task of acting on that truth, or making love, or meeting other needs, is ours. (Smith 590)
Thus, Rich highlights poetry's ability to connect with what many people believe to be--in contrast to restricted cultured disciplines such as poetry--"real life." In pointing to our common "struggle for existence" and accumulating emergencies, this proclamation pulls our attention toward the ways poetry is capable of being a compelling encounter with critical life issues. Yet, poetry only offers a way of distinguishing "our need," not for rejecting needs, or even for achieving them. Throughout this discussion, I hope to pin-point what need the nature images in "Twenty-One Love Poems" might remind us of.
In Poem I, Rich portrays a walk through New York City, one of the least-natured areas in the ...
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of the man-made scene, the speaker also points out the few growing plants she is able to see. Taking note of the city's human decay and natural beauty, she declares, We need to grasp our lives inseparable from those rancid dreams, that blurt of metal, those disgraces, and the red begonia perilously flashing from a tenement sill six stories high. (I)
Therefore, the speaker does not embrace a moralistic belief toward the city's horrid characteristics; instead, she tries to reach a holistic understanding of her own and her lover's "lives inseparable" from the city's various aspects. If she focuses more on Manhattan's "rancid dreams" than "the red begonia," this only makes the ...
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"Nature Imagery In Adrienne Rich's "Twenty-One Love Poems"." Essayworld.com. July 31, 2005. Accessed December 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Nature-Imagery-Adrienne-Richs-Twenty-One/30891.
"Nature Imagery In Adrienne Rich's "Twenty-One Love Poems"." Essayworld.com. July 31, 2005. Accessed December 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Nature-Imagery-Adrienne-Richs-Twenty-One/30891.
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