Jane Kenyon’s The Blue Bowl Essay -- Poems Poetry Analysis

Kenyons criticism of burial chamber and the mourning process and the manner in which it fails to leave a hotshot of closure for those who have lost a love one is the main underlying theme in The low-spirited Bowl. with with(predi upchucke) her vivid description of both the natural setting and the grief-stricken aflame overtone surrounding the burial of a familys house pet and the events that follow in the time after the cat is put to rest, Kenyon is open to invoke an excited response from the subscriber that mirrors that of the poems genuine characters. Her elaborated use of diction and the poems vexation by dint of a first-person perspective, enables Kenyon to place the reader in the context of the poem, thus fashioning the reader a participant rather than a mere observer. By combining these cardinal literary techniques, Kenyon present a compelling cable with evidence supporting her critique of burial and the mourning process.Kenyons choice of a first person pe rspective serves as one of two main techniques she uses in developing the readers ability to strike to the poems emotional implications and thus further her stock regarding the futility of human races search for closure through the mourning process. By choosing to create verbally the poem in the first person, Kenyon encourages the reader to interpret the poem as a story told by the same person who fell dupe to the tragedy it details, rather than as a mere account of events discover by a third party. This insertion of the character into the story allows the reader to carefully interpret the messages expressed through her use of diction in describing the events during and after the burial.The diction Kenyon employs for her description of the poems physical and moral setting serves as Kenyons primary means for presenting her argument regarding the record of the mourning process and its failure to help those who have lost love ones. The poems first stanza begins as follows, Like primitives we buried the cat with his bowl. Bare-handed we scraped sand and gravel back into the hole(1-4). The first two words, like primitives, fall the reader immediate insight into Kenyons opinion regarding the nature of the burial itself. She sees it as a means of coming to grips with death that is less evolved than the mental state of those that it attempts to help. When the first stanza is interpreted as a whole, the reader is... ...ten through mourning, thus allowing her to illustrate one last example supporting her argument regarding the failure of burial and the mourning process to provide a sense of closure for those who have lost a loved one.Through the careful use of diction presented through a first-person perspective, Kenyon is able to use The Blue Bowl as a medium for social commentary regarding what she sees as a primitive mourning process that does not help those who acquire it. Through a careful analysis of the poem, the reader is able to picture Kenyons crit ique of the mourning rituals that humans use to alleviate the grief caused by the death of a loved one and interpret the shortcomings that Kenyon finds. Kenyons use of perspective combined with specifically chosen diction enables her to present a social commentary regarding what she believes to be the inherent shortcomings in the emotional effects of the burial itself and the sense of closure it is supposed to bring to date fails to achieve during a typical period of mourning. Works CitedKenyon, Jane. Poetry clxxx - The Blue Bowl. Library of Congress Home. Web. 11 Dec. 2015..