2. I will be passing back all your essays on Tuesday. I still am missing MANY. Don't send J.D. back to the hospital with a heart attack after he sees your grades. During the break I will give him all these scores and a check sheet of your blog entries and he will add it all to his gradebook. Right now that looks rather ugly. I will stop in on Tuesday with my chart and talk to each of you to ascertain that it is all accurate. Also, if you wish to revise either of the essays, get those to me by Thursday, if possible. If that is not possible, give the revisions, stapled to the original, to J.D. after the break.
3. I forgot to give Mr. P the prompt for the weekend, so here it is. Read the poem that follows: Consider all the elements of poetry that we have studied thus far. How does the poet use these poetic elements to give the poem meaning?
Hope -- Lisel Mueller
It hovers in dark corners
before the lights are turned on,
it shakes sleep from its eyes
and drops from mushroom gills,
it explodes in the starry heads
of dandelions turned sages,
it sticks to the wings of green angels
that sail from the tops of maples.
It sprouts in each occluded eye
of the many-eyed potato,
it lives in each earthworm segment
surviving cruelty,
it is the motion that runs the tail of a dog,
it is the mouth that inflates the lungs
of the child that has just been born.
we cannot destroy in ourselves,
the argument that refutes death,
the genius that invents the future,
all we know of God.
It is the serum which makes us swear
not to betray one another;
it is in this poem, trying to speak.
~ Lisel Mueller ~
4. You need to register and pay for your AP tests by Friday!
24 comments:
I really like this poem.
Hope is personified. It is an extended metaphor. It is being oxymoroned (that's not a true verb, but go along with me on this one). The poet uses metonymy, apostrophe, imagery, holy cowness, the poet has practically used all of the elements of poetry that we have learned thus far. Not ALL of them, but a lot of them.
The entire poem does not have the word "hope" in it whatsoever, but if the title was not included I think the reader could still be able to derive from the content of the poem that it is about hope.
The imagery gives the reader the sense of being in those moments that need hope. "it lives in each earthworm segment / surviving cruelty / it is the motion that runs the tail of a dog / it is the mouth that inflates the lungs / of the child that has been born" (line 11-15), a reader can see the earthworm hoping that the day will not end in a shovel running into its innards, they can see the dog looking at the door after hearing the car door open and close, they can see the premature baby being born and the nurse, doctors, and the parents waiting anxiously for the cry. That may have been a tad more intense than what the poet was trying to get across, but each scene makes the reader feel like they are there.
The personification/apostrophe of hope gives it almost a tangible yet unreachable object. "It is the serum which makes us swear / not to betray one another / it is in this poem trying to speak" (line 21-23) This gives the poem an entire purpose, each line has a little message that it's trying to get across to the reader. It gives the entire poem a meaning, those last three lines.
The oxymorons, "it explodes in the starry heads" (line 5) haha, that line just makes me laugh. It's an explosion! of dandelions. Okay, so this kind of goes along with imagery. We can imagine a kid blowing the dandelions so that the fuzzy parts go flying every which way with the wind. And what does a kid do when they blow on those things? Make a wish, and what are wishes? HOPE. Good deal. I think the oxymoron really made an impact of how much does dandelions mean to kids. It's not just something that kids do to spread weed, it's something that kids can do other than wish upon a star or pray to their god. The oxymorons give so much more importance in the little things.
I really, really like this poem.
I'm sure there is some wonderful rhythm, but I would like to avoid that because it would make me want to scrape my brain out with a fork.
Instead, I thought I would point out that personification and metaphor were all used effectively in this poem. Hope is never mentioned by name, as Than pointed out, but "it" is. And "it" is personified as many miracles of life. Hope is viewed as the driving force of all life, the personification used to demonstrate the diversity of hope. Without hope, life wouldn't be. The metaphors describe other aspects in the scenario initiated by the metaphor, such as the "green angels" and the "starry heads". Where hope is not mentioned, to make all life seem grander, the subject is made celestial and magical. The meaning of the poem is that hope accounts for everything, even when it is not seen.
Woah, a blog post. Unexpected.
As the third comment of twenty-some, I'll also go ahead and comment on metaphor.
The use of metaphor in this poem is actually pretty interesting.
Way back when we went over metaphor in class, we learned about four different forms of metaphor, depending on whether or not the literal term and the figurative term were named or implied.
Here, almost every line is involved in a metaphor with hope as the literal term---but in every single metaphor made, the literal term of hope is implied, not stated. "Hope" is never named.
This vague implication from the title further emphasizes hope's continuous nature and its presence in all aspects of life, as opposed to the potential interruption in reusing the word "hope" twelve times.
Furthermore, the personification of hope barely suggests "humanity": the reader would be sorely mistaken to think of the ubiquitous sense of hope as having humanoid figure or human emotions. Rather, personification is used to advance the significance and vitality of hope---it sprouts, it lives, it explodes.
What's really interesting, though, is the use of metaphor-within-metaphor in some of these metaphors.
In "it sticks to the wings of green angels / that sail from the tops of maples," for examples, there's a metaphor of hope and a scene of maple seeds. But then those winged maple seeds are, in turn, compared to "green angels."
As Sam mentioned, this gives the imagery a "celestial and magical" quality.
If you want to argue that the maple seeds bit isn't really a metaphor but rather mere imagery (which I'd disagree with), take "it shakes sleep from its eyes / and drops from mushroom gills"---here, hope is most definitely compared to mushroom spores in metaphor, and then the folds of the mushroom from which the spores fall are compared to "gills."
Interesting use of metaphor upon metaphor, in my opinion. Extremely vivid imagery results.
(Thanh and Sam also both focused on personification and metaphor, but I'll go on blissfully believing that I've put a different spin on things.)
There's also some neat use of line breaks and repetition in the structure, but I'll stop here. It's getting late...
Someone else can talk about that.
That last line is awesome, by the way. Great meta-, there.
A wonderfully positive poem, I think. To those who ask, "Why do we only read depressing stuff?" here is a very uplifting poem. (Almost naively positive, but there's my cynicism creeping back in again.)
For a class with a teacher who has been put on his back, literally, by misfortune, this seems like an appropriate poem.
Everyone loves the metaphors, but does anyone see a pattern of metaphors, or certain metaphors that all belong to the same group? Why are the metaphors that were chosen particularly appropriate?
Okay, so of course I'm going to talk about the metaphors, because they're fascinating and beautiful but to Answer Mr. P's question I do think that the metaphors are grouped into subcategories. The first one that stands out to me are the metaphors surrounding plants: mushrooms, dandelions, maple trees, potatoes ( more like food, but a plant nonetheless). Also Animals play a big role, earth worms and Dogs are powerful images, and ones that a reader can associate with. However, most importantly, and someone may have already touched on this and I just forgot is that of life. The baby just born, the earthworm strugglig to stay alive, " the argument that refutes death". The concept of waking up is also, in my opinion, a connection to life, as well as the metaphor of " a light being turned on" both signify the beginnning of a new day, or an awakening.
The most powerful thing about this poem, I think, is the imagery and metaphor employed by Mueller to describe hope. I think they are all fairly relatable to our every-day lives, things that each and every one of us has had some sort of experience with. I think the references to nature in the light of life is the purest metphor one can use. It is through these metaphors that Mueller is touching not only on the purity of life but also it's leaking into our everyday lives as well as it's immortality, which is directly expressed in the line: " we cannot destroy it in ourselves".
I thought I’d talk about the potato metaphor, “It sprouts in each occluded eye
of the many-eyed potato”, plus tomorrow is St. Patrick’s Day. Occluded means some thing that has prevented the passage of something else. I thought this referred to the potato as buried in the ground with many eyes yet unable to see, but from these eyes you can grow new plants. So even though a person might feel there is nothing good in life and the only thing they receive is bad luck, hope lets them feel like something better will happen, stopping all their misfortunes. Also there is the metaphor of “green starry angels” that drift down at the end of the summer, signal the start of winter and perhaps allude to death and coldness. The coldness doesn’t last long and is once again replaced with the spring, meaning that the even if thing look dreadfully dreary, you should perk up because there is always be something better just around the corner. I think there are two categories of metaphors: animals, plants, and everything else. Both plants and animals are organisms that struggle to survive, while plants (including the mushroom) can only sit and wait for something a brighter future, the animal go out and can grab it. So while the maples are rooted to one place the tiny worm goes out into to the world looking for greener pastures to burrow in. But animal or plant, there is still hope that the hardship will end, or that fate will turn its ray of good fortune on them. Everything else is basically all that is inorganic in this poem, and is everything not tangible. The argument is what supports life over death, and the genius, which I am assuming is a trait not a person, is the characteristic that make us be able to improve our lives.
I too noticed a big nature theme throughout the poem. I liked how the metaphors extended to everything from mushroom spores to the first breath of life. I thought the wide use of such metaphors showed how hope resides within everything and is interconnected to every aspect of life, in fact is in the very essence of life "the argument that refutes death". It also shows that hope is inescapable, it is part of the motion of the universe, "all we know of God."
Structurally one thing that stood out to me was the beginning of everyother-ish line with "it". Each though begins with "it is". The "it" of coarse is hope, but like Thanh said hope is never explicitly mentioned in the poem its self, only the title. The ambiguity of "it" in the poem makes the metaphors more effective since readers are presented only a series of images that compile together uninterrupted by anything else to depict hope. Also the constant structure gives the poem a fluid rhythm that helps it progress from one image to the next and unifies all of the images into one idea- hope is.
When I look at this poem to try and find the poetic elements the last line stick out “it is in this poem, trying to speak.” The word that really stick out to me was “trying” simply because it implies that there is in fact no description of the sound of hope. When I look back at the poem only the actions, places, and manifestations of hope are described by the speaker. This line also implies that the speaker is trying to get the reader to hear hope, and not just see it in their lives. They want the reader to listen and act on this “genius that invents the future” thus making the world a better place.
In order to build the importance of hope and give the reader a reason to seek for its voice the speaker expresses the different things hope does for someone. In the first stanza he says “it explodes in the starry heads/ of dandelions turned sages.” This metaphor shows that hope can turn something as mundane as a dandelion into something as noble as a sage—full of wisdom and insight. This metaphor associates hope with intelligences making it seem like a quality of smart people. When hope is attributed to being the “motion that runs the tail of a dog,” and “the mouth that inflates the lungs/ of the child that has just been born” it gains an even better connotation from before. Here hope is connected with life by making this metaphor. Because life is what makes you alive (and maybe this blog post is taking that gift away from you), and hope has been shown to have a hand in every aspect of life through this metaphor, hope is what makes you alive. Therefore you would be crazy to reject hope because it would equate to a lifeless life.
By showing the importance of hope it gives us reason to seek for its voice. Because of the many natural metaphors it can be implied that nature is the closest vessel by which we can find this elusive quality. Everything from earthworms to maples to babies are shown to be places where hope resides. Thus these kinds of places are where we must look for them, and are the very places where we will be able to hear the precious voice of hope.
I liked this poem, it was interesting to read.
Since I am yet to know the terms that cover meter, rhyme, and what not, I’ll stick to what I do know and understand.
Even though the word hope is not used once in the poem, I think that the reader would be able to figure out from the content of it that it is about hope, whether or not the title was included. Like everyone before me noticed, “Hope” uses quite a few metaphors. I agree with what Krista said about the wide use of metaphors showing how hope resides in all living things and that they are all interconnected. All creatures hope to survive. The hope of living to see another day and experience life ‘is a singular gift / we cannot destroy in ourselves, / the argument that refutes death’. Also, the use of the different metaphors creates several visual images. From the depiction of the mushroom to the earthworm tunneling in the dirt to the wagging tail of a content dog.
To answer Mr. Puterbaugh's question: in the poem's opening lines of the first stanza, hope is made to seem furtive and surreptitious, being a creature that "hovers in dark corners/before the lights are turned on", that "shakes sleep from its eyes/and drops from mushroom gills". In the following lines of the stanza, however, hope is something else entirely - it is sudden and spontaneous, it is joyful and unexpected, quite like the explosion of the "starry heads" of dandelions in the breeze and the descent of the winged seed-pods (the "green angels") that maples keep in store. Hope takes yet another form at the beginning of the second stanza, appearing as "the sprouts in each occluded eye/of the many eyed potato", as "each earth worm segment/surviving cruelty" - the speaker portrays hope here as resilient, as courageous. The speaker goes on to make clear how necessary a presence it is in our lives, as vital to us and as undeniable a part of us as the motion that "runs the tail of a dog", as the mouth that "inflates the lungs" of a newborn.
By organizing the metaphors she uses in the manner that she does, the poem's speaker shows that there is more to hope than we often recognize and proves that hope can function in all sorts of ways.
I feel kind of guilty for rolling my eyes at this poem. Not because it is at all poorly written, but I saw the title, I might have groaned a LITTLE bit, and then followed by the basic hailstorm of metaphors? But it’s okay, I’ll deal.
Let me try to look at this again.
The first two stanzas seem to be organized by the way hope is personified, where it is found, what it does, etc. The first stanza has personified hope in a variety of places, all strung together by a sort of fairytale-like quality, seeming dreamlike and surreal, while the second stanza is tied together by sense of realistic nature.
The diction is what created the atmosphere for me of these two stanzas—both stanzas are dealing with nature, but the visions of “starry heads of dandelions” and “the wings of green angels” seemed almost magical, where as stanza two is about earthworms, and cheerful dogs, and newborn babies. Things found in nature, not in dreams.
Both depict things of hope, but one paints almost a dreamscape in the reader’s mind.
I .. don’t really feel like touching on the last stanza, to be honest. Hope is “in this poem trying to speak”? I’m not sure I can handle it.
Mueller gives clues in the poem that hope is everywhere—from the little things to the most important. She personifies hope and uses imagery to identify specific places where hope may be found. Since the personification is self-explanatory and has already been mentioned I will discuss the diction. The word choice pinpoints the speaker's meaning and adds/supports the visual imagery. For instance, in the beginning portion of the first stanza the speaker uses 'dark', 'lights', and 'sleep' which helps give the idea/image that hope is present in the local surroundings. A further (possibly more extreme) look at this might even be that hope is present in the darkest of places and the earliest of hours. The combination of these two devices strengthens the poem's meaning about hope.
Hmm. Thanh, I disagree, without the title I think it wouldn't be too easy to guess that it was hope.
Hope is definitely described quite thoroughly in this poem. It's personified, metaphor-icised, and even imagery-icised! Every line of this poem works with different elements to convey the meaning. It's interesting that Lisel Mueller, (is that a guy or a girl? I'll put my money on 'she', but if I'm wrong, don't judge me! I've never heard that name...) never actually says the word hope, but instead implies it in every line with the word 'it' And the Mueller never says 'it's' only it is, or just it. I just thought that was interesting.
But to answer the prompt, the poet uses all of the elements to describe hope in all kinds of ways. Actually, Mueller manages use quite a few of examples of where hope is or lies in this short poem.
The form of the poem is kind of random, 8 lines for the first stanza, 12 for the 2nd, and 3 for the 3rd. I noticed that in the middle of the second he talks about being born, then death right after. And also the start of the poem starts off kind of dark and ....another word that I can't think of, and it ends lighter. The opposite of hope is despair: To lose all hope!
Thanh and I were talking about this on the bus to health careers and how it was the type of poem that left the reader feeling slightly warm and fuzzy inside. Since lots of people already mentioned the multiple ways hope is personified and compared I will attempt to identify some musical devices. One of the lines that stands out is the third. It has alliteration in "shakes sleep". While the long vowel sounds in shake, sleep, and eyes help to emphasize the sleepy awakening. Much of the poem's purpose comes through the repetition of the words "it is" at the beginning of most of the lines. The author is defining what she feels hope is.
I think the speaker picks metaphors about nature because nature is the one constant in the world and it is a symbol of hope and new beginnings.
The first metaphors are about natural endings- the end of day, dying mushrooms and dandelions, and leaves falling from trees like in the fall. I think this is saying that hope springs up after something, an ending or a death. The next section describes a beginning like a growing potato or a new baby. I think that this use of metaphors demobtrates the arrival of hope or positive thinking that is associated with beginnings.
The last section of the second stanza and the last stanza shift to a more serious, literal description of hope. The speaker connects hope to something everyone must face, " the argument that refutes death, the genius that invents the future, all we know of God." The speaker is saying that hope is unavoidable and a part of every aspect of the positive and negative in life.
One random thing I noticed is that "surviving cruelty" is singled out when talking about a struggling earthworm. I think this is to highlight that hope has to survive cruelty from the overwhelming number of cynics and pessimists in the world.
Most people before me have written about the numerous metaphors used within this poem, as it is the most obvious and extensive element of poetry in this poem. Hari’s blog post basically said what I wanted to say-Mueller describes hope through a variety of metaphors in a shifting and changing way. (Plus, his use of the word “surreptitious” was pretty great; I don’t think anyone has a better word than that). Hope, the literal term, is never mentioned directly within the poem, but rather always goes by “it”. “It” is personified. It, hope, “…hovers in dark corners”, but “…shakes sleep from its eyes”, and “…explodes in …starry heads”. It is resilient, as it “…lives in each earthworm segment/surviving cruelty”. Described as initially furtive and secretive, as like a long suppressed flicker of hope, it resonates, explodes, and finally sails unabated. It is strong and resilient, surviving the cruelty that continuously threatens one’s hope. Mueller highlights the various types of hope through these apt metaphors, but focuses on the unabated, ever present spread of hope that cannot be extinguished. By describing hope as “…drops from mushroom gills”, Mueller compares it to spores, making the point that the dispersal of hope is magnificently widespread. Hope is also spontaneous and joyful, as in explosions of dandelion heads. But most importantly, it is resilient and life giving, “…[inflating] the lungs/of the child that has just been born”.
Besides the extensive use of metaphors, what makes this poem vivid and distinct is Mueller’s use of imagery. I especially loved his description of hope as sticking “…to the wings of green angels/that sail from the tops of maples”. It instantly brought to mind the peculiar aerodynamic shape of maple seeds, designed for flight. By comparing hope to airborne seeds, Mueller emphasizes the ability of hope to spread wide and far.
Structurally, what makes this poem unique is the repetition of the phrase “it is”. Through the use of anaphora, structure is given to the poem and emphasis is placed on the descriptive nature of the poem. Moreover, by repeating what hope is numerous times, Mueller makes the point that hope is present in a variety of circumstances.
In "Hope", Lisel Mueller is saying that even in the darkest, cruelest places, hope survives. Mueller personifies hope and makes it something physical that we can touch and feel. I think without the title the "it" could be any number of things. The fact that hope is never actually stated in the poem I think allows you to put your own meaning to the many its.
I think it is kind of odd how the poet writes a poem that is over all happy, but then also has the metaphor of the earthworm, which is getting cut up and split into many pieces.
I, like Than, enjoyed reading this poem. There's something different and interesting about it. Since most people have thoroughly discussed the use of metaphors in the poem, I will try and look more at the other elements in the poem.
One characteristic I noticed from the beginning was the dominating use of euphonic sounds in the entire poem. The poem starts with "It hovers in dark corners / before the lights are turned on, / it shakes sleep from its eyes" (1-3). Although there are some cacophony with the harder c sounds in dark and corners and the t sounds in light and turned, these harsh sounds are surrounded by euphonic sounds. Hovers, before, are on, sleep, the sh- from shakes, eyes. There are more euphonic sounds which helps lead to the overall positive message of the poem. As revealed by the title, the entire poem is explaining what hope is- since hope is a good thing, the pleasant euphonic sounds go along nicely with the theme.
Another trait I noticed was the repetition of the word "eyes". In the first section, there's a line which reads, "it shakes sleep from its eyes" (3). The “it” being referenced is hope and that literally is referring to actual eyes. Then, in the second section, it starts with "It sprouts in each occluded eye / of the many-eyed potato" (9-10). In these two lines, potatoes obviously don't have eyes, so it's personification in use. I think the reason Mueller may have mentioned the idea of seeing multiple times because she (?) was trying to point out that you don't have to see the good event happening to hope for it. Even when things are bad and you're almost blind to coming good, you can still feel hope.
In going along with the repetition of "eyes", I also noticed just how many different body parts are specifically mentioned. Not only are eyes mentioned, but so are "gills", "wings", "tail", "mouth" and "lungs." I think that maybe Mueller chose to use all these different body parts to show the physical aspects of how hope can affect us.
I enjoyed this poem. There is a lot of vivid imagery that you wouldn't normally think of as hope, but this this poem takes it all and makes one big metaphor for something that a lot of people take for granted.
By taking hope, and using metaphor, the poem changes this abstract concept into tangible objects and concrete experiences. I think that the way the poem is structured provides emphasis on the powerful imagery.
It [some sort of action]
[setting for that action].
By using this structure, there is almost a sense of suspense waiting in each mini-story within the poem. As Thanh pointed out, each pairing of action and setting tells a tale that we the readers can identify with. Even if we have never experienced a conscious sense of intense hope, this poem brings out the realization that hope is all around us, in our everyday world.
Er, yeah, that's really all I've got for this one. I'll have to make sure I post early on the next one.
A poem about hope is a nice digression from the regular everyday poem about "sad stuff". WEll I personally liked this poem .So much has already been covered so I am going to repeat what people said. The poem uses metaphors and personification. never does the poem explicitly say hope. Hope is refered to as "It". Its interesting to personify hope since it gives it human characteristics to it. It makes it feel like a more tangible object. I think this makes hope seem like an even stronger force. The use of metaphors help to complement the personification of hope.
The Poem 'Hope" by Lisa Mueller employs many of the poetry elements discussed in this unit, including metaphors, metonymy, imagery, rhythm, line breaks, and others that I have not mentioned, because I didn't spot them. (But, if you look hard enough, they will be there, promise.) The description of hope in the first stanza follows a mostly uniform rhythm, (even if I can't identify it to save my life) and sets a nice tone for the rest of the poem to manipulate and expand on. The extensive use of metonymy exists for A.P. lit students to be able to say metonymy and feel like they are making progress, and the imagery lets the reader almost envision the driving force of progress, the essential lifeblood of civilizations, the element to people that is unbelievably real, but cannot be seen. I like the deviation from the pattern in the second stanza: "it is the mouth that inflates the lungs/
of the child that has just been born. It is the/ singular gift" The continuation of one idea, the child's birth, through the line is powerful, and possibly the strongest image of hope. The start of the new line calls attention to the image at hand. Also, the line break "It is the/ singular gift" gives extra emphasis on "the" which is nice to hear, and emphasizes how vital hope is.
The structure of this poem clearly involves “it” in every other line. The world is used to avoid telling the readers what “it” really is and getting us to figure it out by ourselves. I agree with Krista when she said the examples of where hope lies are all related to nature and interconnected in one way or another. At first I had trouble understanding it was really about hope. Stanza two’s first two examples, “It sprouts in each occluded eye / of the many-eyed potato, / it lives in each earthworm segment / surviving cruelty” (lines 9-12). However, I realized that they are talking about life in one form or another trying to survive and maybe take on another form to become better than their current form. The imagery is an interesting concept in this poem, because every other line has a different type of image that takes your attention away from the previous. They don’t seem to connect, but they are all related to life as a metaphor and the will to survive.
Something I noticed right away was the use of euphony. The poem starts with "It hovers in dark corners / before the lights are turned on, / it shakes sleep from its eyes" (1-3). Although there are some cacophony with the harder c sounds in "dark" and "corners," the t sounds in "light" and "turned" present a more calmer and more euphonic effect. Also the sh sound from "shakes" is another way the speaker conveys a softer feeling. Because the poem is about hope, the calm and peaceful euphonic sounds convey the speakers feelings to the reader all the more successfully.
Another thing that I found interesting was the use of personification. In the first stanza, hope is being personified, "it shakes sleep from its eyes" (3). Here hope is being referred to as "it" and is personified as opening and waking from sleep. Then, in the second stanza, "It sprouts in each occluded eye / of the many-eyed potato" (9-10). In these two lines, potatoes are being personified with the inclusion of eyes.
Another interesting aspect of this poem is how many different body parts are specifically mentioned. Not only are eyes mentioned, but so are "gills", "wings", "tail", "mouth" and "lungs."
The use of personification as well as the consistent mentioning of body parts leads me to believe that the speaker is trying to show how hope affects us physically as well as emotionally.
I think this poem is amazing. It speaks of the unpredictability and power that hope gives in everyone's' lives. The thing that I really noticed about the poem is the personification of hope. It is described as something which "hovers in dark corners" and "shakes sleep from its eyes." Mueller does this in order to convey a message that hope lurks in unlikely places and when it has a chance to reveal itself, it explodes onto you.
The tone in this poem is also noticeably optimistic. It "lives in each earthworm segment/ surviving cruelty," yet it is "the singular gift we cannot destroy in ourselves." Because hope exists in everyone's life, it allows one to be much more optimistic rather than pessimistic about life.
The metaphors within the poem is also staggering. Mueller seems to connect personification and tone to the metaphors so that one slowly understands the pathos of the poem. By stating that it is "the motion that runs the tail of a dog" and "it is the mouth that inflates the lungs," the speaker describes the unnoticeable effects that hope does for one's surroundings and for oneself. Throughout the poem such metaphors and descriptions of hope allow the message that Mueller wishes to convey to be understood in a greater depth.
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