Sam Cimino
Mr. Hamilton
AP Literature 6th
hour
18 November 2014
Wedding-Ring
by Denise Levertov
Biography on Denise
Levertov: During the course of a prolific career, Denise
Levertov created a highly regarded body of poetry that reflects her beliefs as
an artist and a humanist. Her work embraces a wide variety of genres and
themes, including nature lyrics, love poems, protest poetry, and poetry
inspired by her faith in God. "Dignity, reverence, and strength are words
that come to mind as one gropes to characterize . . . one of America's most
respected poets," wrote Amy Gerstler in the Los Angeles Times Book Review.
Gerstler added that a "reader poking her nose into any Levertov book at
random finds herself in the presence of a clear uncluttered voice—a voice
committed to acute observation and engagement with the earthly, in all its
attendant beauty, mystery and pain."
Metaphor- Simile,
Analogy, Symbol: Being visual does not just mean
describing; telling us facts; indicating shapes, colors, and specific details;
and giving up precise discrimination through exacting verbs, nouns, adverbs, and
adjectives. Often the vividness of the picture in our minds depends on
comparisons made through figures of speech. What are we trying to imagine is
pictured in terms of something else familiar to us, and we are asked to think
of one thing as if it were something else. Many such comparisons, in which something
is pictured or figured forth in terms of something already familiar to us, are
taken for granted in daily life. Things we can’t see or that aren’t familiar to
us are imaged as things we things we already know. When the comparison is
implicit, describing something as if it were something else, it is called a
metaphor. Pictures, even when they are mental pictures or imagined visions, may
be both denotative and connotative, just as individual words are: They may
clarify and make precise, and they may evoke a range of feelings. We can see
evidence of this in Denise Levertov’s “Wedding-Ring”:
My wedding-ring lies in a basket
as if at the bottom of a well.
Nothing will come to fish it back up
and onto my finger again.
It lies
among keys to abandoned houses,
nails waiting to be needed and hammered
into some wall,
telephone numbers with no names attached,
idle paperclips.
It can’t be given away
for fear of bringing ill-luck
It can’t be sold
for the marriage was good in its own
time, though that time is gone.
Could some artificer
beat into it bright stones, transform it
into a dazzling circlet no one could take
for solemn betrothal or to make promises
living will not let them keep? Change it
into a simple gift I could give in
friendship?
Analysis: There
is more to wedding-ring than just receiving or given it on a wedding day.
Denise Levertov’s uses figure of speech and literary devices to depict the
symbolism of a wedding-ring showing the tone of sadness and the pain at an end
of a relationship. Wedding-ring symbolizes commitment, which can also be viewed
as burden depending on the perspective of whoever owns the ring. Figure
of speech can be used to convey feelings or give magnitude or perception of an
idea. Simile was used in the poem “wedding–ring” likening the bottom of a
basket to the bottom of a well. This indicates how far away the woman wanted
the ring to be kept, this mimics the idea of out of sight is out of mind.
According to the poet- Denise Levertov-biography, she divorced around 1974 and
this poem “wedding- ring” was written in 1978, this can be termed as a
reflection of what was happening in her life.
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