"The Snow Man", "The Marvel", and "The Tempest"

          "The snow man" interested me because of the detailed depiction that it gave of a winter atmosphere. I felt as though it captured every aspect of a winter day, ranging from the, "pine-trees crusted with snow" to the "distant glitter Of the January sun". I liked how Stevens incorporated a line and stanza break in line 6 and 7 because it gave the "distant glitter" two images to describe; the spruces and the sun. I thought the poem took a hard shift in the final stanza, which brought about this sense of mysteriousness by discussing, "the listener" and then a sense of loneliness as the listener becomes "Nothing that is not there and nothing that is".

       A main point that stood out to me in "The Marvel" was it's consistent rhythm. The three-lined stanzas and the length of each line gave it a nice flow as it read along. This rhythm contributed to an adventurous tone to me in the final three stanzas. Although it is discussing mariners who have passed in a rotting manner, a sense of adventure as the speaker advises the reader to let the dead mariners, "take you where their forgotten ships lie" and to, "engrave that word the sun goes through with the power of the sea".
 
      I struggled most with "The Tempest" out of these three poems. I found it hard to grasp any specific idea as to what exactly the poem was referring to. As a result, I analyzed the poem based upon the sense it gave off from its' tone. I ended up finding a large sense of defeat throughout the poem, both in the first and second stanzas. The first stanza gave me this sense as the speaker described the girl laying down with, "the back of her hand on her forehead". This pose signified defeat in my mind as I pictured the girl laying in such a manner. The second stanza also appealed to a sense of defeat to me as it discussed, "the last cigarette that must last a lifetime". This phrase lead me to believing that an end was approaching.