How Do Poems Use Language to Create Imaginary Worlds?

Poppies by Mary Oliver and A Martian Sends A mailing-card Home by Craig Raine, with the social function of unconventional metaphors and exceedingly detailed observation encourage us to look upon the ordinary in a mode that leads us to explore our own human personality. unpredicted connections between a previously ordinary object and something that at offset seemed totally unrelated can paint a picture of some other context within which we can better examine our own creationness (Hirsch).This is demonstrated quite well in A Martian Sends A Postcard Home in nearly every stanza, with the alien stall of everyday things leading to considerable thought closely the things we take for granted. The line, At darkness, when all the colours die is a particularly vivid counselling of describing day turning to wickedness and implies the alien land must be either bright all the time or of another property where night and day have no heart and soul.Similarly, Poppies describes a fie ld of flowers in terms that evoke the passage of life itself, with lines such as, Of course nada stops the cold, black, curved blade from hooking forward of course, loss is the spacious lesson describing night falling, the death of a flower as it wilts and the blade of a scythe, invoking images of the Grim Reaper (Wu). All these observations be made as metaphors as opposed to similes, forcing the indorser to consider each point as being the same thing as that which it is being compared to.In doing so, the lector is actually is problematical in surmising the meaning of the passage through the metaphor, in collaboration with the occasion (Hirsch). This allows the reader to have a deeper connection with the work than merely pickings in what the author is fix upting across, in a way that encourages encompassing internal processing of the ideas more than just a literal and literal description of the ideas the author wanted to portray may have.In Poppies, when Oliver says, that light is an invitation to felicitousness the reader is invited to think about not just poppies in a field but their own life and how they have the opportunity to prevail the best of the life they lead before the curved blade of the night (Wu). In a slightly different vein, A Martian Sends A Postcard Home is suggesting that we pay closer attention to the world about us, a world in which Mist is when the sky is tired of feather and rests its soft machine on he ground and also provokes feelings of nostalgia of when the reader was young and looked up at the clouds, the soft machines, for long periods, looking at them in a new way (Williams 454). The poets also have an centre of attention for incredible detail in the world well-nigh us that they use to paint a picture of a scene in layers, allowing the reader to form a three dimensional picture of the scene in their head in vivid detail.In Poppies, for example, the one field of poppies is focused on in at almost every angle the way they persuade in the wind, the way the shine, their yellow hair and rough and spongy fortunate leading to almost a baptism of flowers, washed and washed in the river of earthbound delight. This seeming approach of wonder, joy, light and rebirth through the fast(a) application of description after description of the one object (the field of poppies) give the reader pause to think on their own progression through life.With the occasional interjection about the darkness and the deep, blue night we are reminded that death is looming but it is the happiness we can construct onwards that is important, and we should pay attention to that detail (Wu). A Martian Sends A Postcard Home does not have, on the surface, as much of a anomalous message to communicate it presents us with a series of common-day objects perceived through an alien lens as completely new and how they would appear to a being with no frame of elongation.However, it is precisely this alien frame of reference that g ives the reader a connection between their observations and their inner thoughts. Lines such as, Adults go to a punishment room with water and nothing to eat, though describing the base act of going to the toilet in a slapstick manner also can lead to reflection on the nature of punishment and our own frame of reference for all things around us which we observe when we dont quite understand their context.It encourages the reader to do harmony between our inner selves and the universe around them, which some ask is the entire function of poetry itself. Both these poems utilize this detail to create a living imaginary world for the reader to consider the ideas put forth within (Couch 12). In conclusion, when both metaphor and detail are brought together in this way, with the poetic language that is employed in the two pieces, a powerful representation of truth and harmony is communicated to the reader in a way that possibly the standard prose form cannot.In this essay I have shown how the poets, by including the reader in the process of forming the ultimate meaning of what they are reading by the use of metaphor, together with painting their descriptions in great detail but in such a way that obscures instant recognition of what is being described, lead the reader to deeper thought about the issues raised and about their own humanity as it relates to the world around them. Works Cited Couch, Arthur Thomas.Poetry. New York E. P. Dutton, 1914. Print. Hirsch, Edward. Metaphor A Poet is a Nightingale by Edward Hirsch . Poetry Foundation. N. p. , 23 Jan. 2006. Web. 7 Oct. 2012. . Williams, David G. Elizabeth Bishop and the Martian Poetry of Craig Raine and Christopher Reid. English Studies A daybook of English Language and Literature 78. 5 (1997) 451-458. Print. Wu, Alexis. Mary Olivers Poppies. alexiswupoetry. N. p. , n. d. Web. 7 Oct. 2012. .