Endless Struggle

Introduction

This paper explains contrast and comparison of two poems. The first poem is by Mary Oliver known as “Crossing the Swamp” and the second poem is by “The Road not taken”. “The spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” as Wordsworth describes, is the art of poetry. The reluctance to properly define and break down explains poetry in a better way. The paper will discuss the feelings with which the message in the poem was conveyed by the poet. It's almost as if poetry has no boundaries to where it stands and the closest nailing down which can be done to poetry, is an understanding of the use of words. It is by means of words that one apprehends, categorizes, and even thinks and feels the world. As poetry progresses over time, there seemed to be a slight pattern of poetic devices such as rhythm, meter, rhyme, repetition etc. Although there was no rubric that one was told to follow, poets slowly acknowledged the importance of such devices and considered appending them in their poems.

Crossing the Swamp

While on one hand, “Crossing the Swamp” is about the struggle one has to endure to find success in life; “The Road Not Taken” is about the choices that one makes in life. Both the poems are related to life and narrate facing oracles in one's life which must be overcome to achieve the desired goal. Life is a system of acceleration and deceleration; while at times a person may feel so lively and invincible, they must also encompass struggle and hardship to balance the system. In literature, exposing struggle is a tactic of character development. Mary Oliver plays with the theme of struggle in her poem “Crossing the Swamp” by establishing a relationship between the protagonist and the swamp. There is continuous tension as the character attempts to overcome an obstacle. A sense of discomfort initiates the poem when Oliver indicates “here is the endless/wet thick/cosmos”. Immediately, the swamp is characterized as “endless” who hints a sense of continuity. Oliver ironically breaks the poem at this particular word to prove that while on the surface or by definition something may appear continuous, there is a possibility for an abrupt change. She continues to describe the swamp by mentioning its “wet thick cosmos”. The swamp is powerful and unforgiving, indicating the protagonist is in an unfamiliar and discouraging environment.

The poem is split into three main sections and Oliver concludes the first section when she remarks “here is swamp. Here is struggle”. Oliver emphasizes the word here to stress that the struggle exists in the present, and that all difficulty is being endured now. She directly defines the swamp as the struggle to ensure the reader is fully aware of the key obstacle being faced. Oliver terminates the obstacle with the word “closure—“. Oliver intentionally uses the hyphen as a break but also a connecter to the following sections. She urges the reader to understand there is a separation between this section and the ...