Images with Motion & Location
One thing that McGuckian does effectively--she uses physical space and motion in her images. A lot of times, we think of imagery as being descriptive with colors, visual aspects, sound, and perhaps taste. But describing the physical location is less common, especially when repeated throughout the poem. This poem, "Confinement" has references to location and motion frequently:
Child in the centre of the dark parquet,
Sleepy, glassed-in child, my fair copy,
While you were sailing your boat in the bay,
I saw you pass along the terrace twice,
Flying in the same direction as the epidemic
Of leaves in the hall. Our half-unpeopled
Household, convalescent from the summer's leap,
That indiscreetly drew the damp from walls,
And coaxed our neighbor, the forest, into this
Sorority, how could I share with you, unpruned
And woebegone? A swan bearing your shape
Re-entered the river imagery of my arms.
McGuckian uses imagery that indicates physical location to underscore the the themes of separation. When I read the poem, I get an image of a young woman pacing a widow's walk on the top of a home overlooking the bay. Her husband is off at sea, and her young child sleeps inside the house. She's lonely, and societal standards of the time mean that she can't escape the house. The lines "I saw you pass along the terrace twice / Flying in the same direction as the epidemic / of leaves in the hall" create a distinct, poignant contrast--I can visualize the husband on his ship in the bay, while at the same time, the young child is making a mess of leaves in the front hall. These lines have a lot of motion, vivacity, to them--and this in turn contrasts with the next lines, which describe the quietness of the home without the entire family. By oscillating between motion/rest the reader gets a feeling for the wife's changing emotions. The final image is that of a swan mimicking the shape of arms--once again, McGuckian uses an image with a feel of motion, especially by choosing "re-entered" as the verb.
The imagery in "Confinement" is great--McGuckian uses words and images that create mental pictures of motion, travel, and a vivid life, and then she contrasts those with the solitude and quietness of the title and words like "woebegone." The poem has contrasting images--but it is never overly obvious. All of the images are woven together, giving the reader the impression of the emotional ups and downs of the subject.
Child in the centre of the dark parquet,
Sleepy, glassed-in child, my fair copy,
While you were sailing your boat in the bay,
I saw you pass along the terrace twice,
Flying in the same direction as the epidemic
Of leaves in the hall. Our half-unpeopled
Household, convalescent from the summer's leap,
That indiscreetly drew the damp from walls,
And coaxed our neighbor, the forest, into this
Sorority, how could I share with you, unpruned
And woebegone? A swan bearing your shape
Re-entered the river imagery of my arms.
McGuckian uses imagery that indicates physical location to underscore the the themes of separation. When I read the poem, I get an image of a young woman pacing a widow's walk on the top of a home overlooking the bay. Her husband is off at sea, and her young child sleeps inside the house. She's lonely, and societal standards of the time mean that she can't escape the house. The lines "I saw you pass along the terrace twice / Flying in the same direction as the epidemic / of leaves in the hall" create a distinct, poignant contrast--I can visualize the husband on his ship in the bay, while at the same time, the young child is making a mess of leaves in the front hall. These lines have a lot of motion, vivacity, to them--and this in turn contrasts with the next lines, which describe the quietness of the home without the entire family. By oscillating between motion/rest the reader gets a feeling for the wife's changing emotions. The final image is that of a swan mimicking the shape of arms--once again, McGuckian uses an image with a feel of motion, especially by choosing "re-entered" as the verb.
The imagery in "Confinement" is great--McGuckian uses words and images that create mental pictures of motion, travel, and a vivid life, and then she contrasts those with the solitude and quietness of the title and words like "woebegone." The poem has contrasting images--but it is never overly obvious. All of the images are woven together, giving the reader the impression of the emotional ups and downs of the subject.
posted by Lauren at 6:28 AM
1 Comments:
she also refers to motion very well in the parallelogram poem, with the sun's shimmer on the river.
id also like to say how metaphor and imagery seem to go hand in hand so well. They seem to almost be the same thing at times. Either way, they can be looked at as a triple threat of image, feeling, and comparison with combined ability to really slap the reader with an excellent understanding of a particular syntactic unit. what are everyone else's thoughts on this?
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