Poem+Comparison

4. Summer

I'm in the back garden, dead-heading fuchsias at summer's end. Around me are poppies and the perfume of stargazer lilies. I'm thinking of how this summer of death has so quickly passed. My friend's father, dead suddenly at his desk.

Another friend's mother with cancer of the pancreas, stopped eating, died with grace. My mother. And her slow dying. Her mind gone, she sleeps all day.

Imagines, when awake, she's on a cruise ship. Music and dancing Under the stars. Stargazer lilies everywhere. Perhaps she could waltz. Not this summer. Not this. Summer.

12. Sleep

The evening hangs beneath the moon A silver thread on darkened dune with closing eyes and resting head i know that sleep is coming soon

Upon my pillow, safe in bed a thousand pictures fill my head I cannot sleep my minds a flight And yet my limbs seem made of lead

If there are noises in the night A frightening shadow, flickering light Then I surrender unto sleep

Where clouds of dreams give second sight What dreams may come both dark and deep Of flying wings and soaring leap As I surrender unto sleep As I surrender unto sleep

 I chose to compare Summer and Sleep because they are both about death, and contrast in different views about it. Summer is a poem about a summer of death, where three people die, including the narrator’s mother. Sleep, however, is written from the point of view of the person who is dying, giving us insight on what it’s like to die. Both of these poems have very depressing descriptions, yet they end nicely. Summer ends as if the narrator’s mother is waltzing around in heaven, and Sleep ends as the person dies and thinks about a wonderful afterlife. I think that the authors did a great job giving each of these poems sadness at the beginning and middle, and closure at the end. The theme of Summer is death, particularly the death of the narrator’s mother in the summertime. Sleep takes place at night, also with the theme of death, and both poems end with peaceful thoughts. There are no examples of hyperbole in Summer, but there is in Sleep when it says ‘a thousand pictures fill my head.’ Alliteration is not really used in either of the poems, as it’s not in Summer, and only a few words in Sleep. For instance, ‘What dreams may come both dark and deep,’ only uses d twice, which I think is half of alliteration. Lines in Summer do not rhyme, but some in Sleep do with the rhyme pattern a, a, b, a, in the first three stanzas. In the last stanza, all of the lines rhyme. In Summer, I think that the cruise ship is a metaphor for heaven, just as how in Sleep the person’s sleep is a metaphor for their death. Analogy is used in Summer when the author says that stargazer lilies have the fragrance of perfume. In Sleep, analogy is used when limbs are compared to lead and a silver thread is compared to a dune. Both poems contain repetition, as both repeat the last line twice. Personification is used in Sleep, as the evening cannot hang, and pictures cannot actually fill up your head. All of Sleep is basically euphemism, as they use ‘sleeping’ instead of ‘dying' to describe someone's last moments of life. At the beginning of Summer, there is some excellent imagery of flowers whereas I felt that all of Sleep had amazing imagery. I could not find any examples of irony, onomatopoeia, oxymoron, satire, similes, or malapropism in either of the poems. In Summer, just like how I before said that the cruise ship is a metaphor, it’s also a symbol for heaven. Sleep also has the symbol of death when the person surrenders unto sleep. I also think that the ‘noises in the night’ symbolize death calling for the person. The ‘thousand pictures that fill my head’ represent the person’s life flashing before their eyes.’ In the end, I think that both authors incorporated a good amount of poetic devices to enhance their poems. I like the poems both equally because they paint magnificent pictures in your mind.