There are pertinent elements of poetry that Ellen Bryant Voigt utilizes that offers readers refreshing yet poignant poems! These elements include irony, simplicity, and imagery. Her universal themes touch the wide array of human emotions by comparing and contrasting the natural and unnatural environments where humans live. In a relative manner, the poems portray the seasons of nature, which parallel the cycles of human life. In addition, there are numerous surprising juxtapositions of words. For instance, the following stanza from the poem entitled "A Marriage Poem" (1980 -1981) exemplifies more than once this trait of irony found in Voigt's poetry.
1.
Morning: the caged baby
sustains his fragile sleep.
The house is a husk against weather.
Nothing stirs — inside, outside.
With the leaves fallen,
the tree makes a web on the window
and through it
the world lacks color or texture,
like stones in the pasture
seen from this distance.
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Notice the unlikely pair of words next to each other in the first line: the word caged is next to the word baby. One would not normally think of a baby being in a cage, unless the baby is not human. Perhaps our perception that a baby roams free is not quite true. The third line contains another two unusual metaphors. These are within the image of a house protecting the baby as a husk protects corn. This is a hint to the reader that a storm may be brewing; at the very least, the idea reveals that the day may not be so sunny. This is carried through out the stanza especially shown in the last lines of the poem where the world lacks color or texture.
There is complexity of ideas presented by simple images in Ellen Voigt's poetry. as an example, in the poem entitled, "Noctourne" (Fall, 1983) the imagery magnifies reality through the destruction of nature's essence by machines as seen in a dream.
Through the clotted street and down
the alley to the station, the halting
rhythm of the bus disrupts her dream
and makes the broad blond fields of grain
yield to an agitated harbor,
whales nuzzling flank to flank.
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This image of destruction is enforced with the image of the halting bus that stilts the natural rhythm of sleep, just as the progression of machines block, stunt and mutate nature. As a case in point, the last lines reveal a sudden and unnatural appearance of whales in a harbor where grain once grew. What irony!
1.
Morning: the caged baby
sustains his fragile sleep.
The house is a husk against weather.
Nothing stirs — inside, outside.
With the leaves fallen,
the tree makes a web on the window
and through it
the world lacks color or texture,
like stones in the pasture
seen from this distance.
http://www.pshares.org/issues/article.cf...
Notice the unlikely pair of words next to each other in the first line: the word caged is next to the word baby. One would not normally think of a baby being in a cage, unless the baby is not human. Perhaps our perception that a baby roams free is not quite true. The third line contains another two unusual metaphors. These are within the image of a house protecting the baby as a husk protects corn. This is a hint to the reader that a storm may be brewing; at the very least, the idea reveals that the day may not be so sunny. This is carried through out the stanza especially shown in the last lines of the poem where the world lacks color or texture.
There is complexity of ideas presented by simple images in Ellen Voigt's poetry. as an example, in the poem entitled, "Noctourne" (Fall, 1983) the imagery magnifies reality through the destruction of nature's essence by machines as seen in a dream.
Through the clotted street and down
the alley to the station, the halting
rhythm of the bus disrupts her dream
and makes the broad blond fields of grain
yield to an agitated harbor,
whales nuzzling flank to flank.
http://www.pshares.org/issues/article.cf...
This image of destruction is enforced with the image of the halting bus that stilts the natural rhythm of sleep, just as the progression of machines block, stunt and mutate nature. As a case in point, the last lines reveal a sudden and unnatural appearance of whales in a harbor where grain once grew. What irony!
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