Mother's Maiden Name example essay topic

Te poem by Robert Lowell seems as if he was remembering his mother's death and what he had gone through during that time. He tells the story in a poem in a sequential order from being in the hospital, being in the car with her dead body and finally in the cemetery burying her. In the hospital we can see that he remembers that the nurse could only speak in Italian. We also see that, he kind of knew that his mom was going to die because he says that there is only a week left of her existence. By thinking about all this Robert Lowell starts to tear and I guess does cry.

When he gets his mother's casket in the car he gets very descriptive by saying, "the whole shoreline of the Golfo di Genova was breaking into fiery flowers. The crazy yellow and azure sea-sleds blasting like jack-hammers across the -bubbling, wake of our liner". In these lines he's basically talking about or describing his emotions. Then he goes on talking about his Ford vehicle where the mother is traveling first class in the hold. Then the author talks about the black and gold casket and how it resembles with the great Napoleon's casket.

Since Napoleon was a very noble man in his time he referred his mom's casket with Napoleon's. He saw the importance because the mother was very important in Robert's life just as Napoleon was important to his people. Its so hard writing down what you see in a poem. Well this is the best I can do so far, and I'm going to try my best as for the next couple paragraphs. I just wanted you to know that I kind of thought the next verse or stanza was important Robert's life and I'm going too see if I can make you understand that. Well what I see is that the mother is being buried in the winter time.

We can tell when the author says "sub-zero whether,"soil was changing to stone,"blinding snowdrifts", all these lines were describing the coldest in the winter time. Then he goes on by saying " "un historic" soul to come here was Father, now buried beneath his recent unweathered pink-veined slice of marble". When Robert says "recent" you can guess that it wasn't long ago that his father had past away. When Robert said "un historic" is seemed as if him and his dad weren't close at all. His dad was some sort of business man who basically or I can tell never had time to spend with his son.

Even on the father's grave it said "Occasioned", which means, "recognize (your) opportunity", this seemed like he even died during a business deal or something. The on his grave seemed like he was selling something, unlike other's whose graves say Rest In Peace or something better. The also felt as if he was on a commercial you know. Could have been a marketer and was doing an ad you know.

Then he talks about the mother's grave, maybe comparing it with the father's grave. We can see that the mother's maiden name could have been either Winslow's or Starts. Then I see that the grave is given a special touch with diamond edges. Which can show the value or importance of the maiden name, or can show the value and importance the mother had in the whole family itself. The father's last name Lowell was spelled incorrectly to Lovel on her coffin. Isn't that ironic?

That the diamonds on the edges show the importance of the mother and her maiden name meanwhile having the last name spelled incorrectly can mean that (repeat) well the son wasn't close with the father and was closer to his mother. Having the last name spelled incorrectly again also separates the Lowell family and the supposedly Lovel family. And to top it off the corpse was wrapped like a cake; and only cakes can be sweet, like the mother to his son. I thought the poem was pretty good. I saw that the writer had only about 10 sentences in a 38-line poem.

A lot of words that struck me were all the Italian words to explain the poem. Some other words would be clashing, azure-sea sleds, black brook and fir trunks, pink veined slice of marble because these words describe the moment of the poem and what the author feels or sees. There really wasn't any repetition used in the poem but he is very descriptive in the poem itself. He describes the scenery so good that anyone reading the poem can picture it in his or her own minds. A pattern a saw was that he left a lot of sentences open, meaning there were no periods giving us as the reader a chance to think as if we were him. He used a lot of comas and the fours dots (...

) (I don't know what they are called) and the end of the lines. The author also divined the poem by first again, talking about how he felt in the hospital to being in the car and finally in the cemetery.