To spend a better weekend that is both enjoyable and intellectually enriching, I am encouraging you to do the activity. Kindly submit an encoded answer on November 17, 2015. As agreed, please upload your soft copy in the comments section of this entry. Thank you.
1. Identify and evaluate the figures of speech used by the poet in the poem that follows. Discuss how the poem appeals? Do you think the poem is successful in delivering its intended meaning because of the devices used? If yes, how? If no, why?
Habitation
- Margaret Atwood
Marriage is not
a house or even a tent
it is before that, and colder:
the edge of the forest, the edge
of the desert
the unpainted stairs
at the back where we squat
outside, eating popcorn
the edge of the receding glacier
where painfully and with wonder
at having survived even
this far
we are learning to make fire
a house or even a tent
it is before that, and colder:
the edge of the forest, the edge
of the desert
the unpainted stairs
at the back where we squat
outside, eating popcorn
the edge of the receding glacier
where painfully and with wonder
at having survived even
this far
we are learning to make fire
2. How well do you think the imagery (lake, skates, saint, thin ice) works in the following love poem, published early this century?
Her bosom’s like a frozen lake
On whose cold brink I stand;
Oh, buckle on my spirit’s skates,
And take me by the hand!
And lead thou, loving saint, the way
To where the ice is thin
That it may beak beneath my feet
And let a lover in.