1. What is the dominant meter and the line length? What is the rhyme scheme? Describe the poems structure.
The poem consists of 15 lines. It’s dominant meter is iambic tetrameter, and it’s rhyme scheme is a perfect rhyme comprised of mostly couplets with the exception of lines 7, 8, and 9. For the most part, the poem follows the structure of an Italian sonnet, with the first 8 lines in couplets that explain the situation, the 9th line containing the turn of events and an extra rhyme, and a sestet.
2. What is the effect of the frequent use of alliteration in the poem? Combined with assonance and consonance, what mood does this device create?
The frequent use of alliteration, assonance and consonance creates a mood of sadness. Words like “grief/gold”, “sorrow’s/springs”, and “heart/heard” reinforce the bleak mood.
3. Comment on the effect created by such unusual diction as…How do the connotations of these words create the poem’s mood?
Goldengrove gives the reader an image of a grove of trees whose leaves have turned golden in autumn. The word “unleaving” is used so we would look at the grove in a new way, as a child would. “Wanwood” is used to describe a pale color, like the color of death. “Leafmeal” gives an image of rotting and decaying leaves. “Springs” describes both underground springs and tears. The word “blight” describes death and bleakness.
4. Analyze the poet’s use of figurative language. How does it suggest the theme of the poem?
The figurative language in the poem, like “heart grows older” meaning human emotion weakening and dulling, seems to suggest that the theme is that the prospect of death is much more intense and frightening to an innocent child than it is to an experienced adult.
5. What is its meter, rhyme scheme, and structure?
The meter and rhyme scheme are iambic pentameter and a nonce rhyme scheme of aabcbdcdeefgfg. The poem contains 14 lines, and is structured around the narrator’s interpretation of a bird’s song.
6. Paraphrase the three messages of the oven bird, then analyze the meaning of the word fall as it encapsulates the theme of the poem.
The bird says that in midsummer the leaves are old and there are only 1/10 of the flowers in spring. It says that the falling of petals in early summer is past and the next fall, the one we call autumn is coming. The bird says that the dust from highways covers everything. There are three forms of “fall” on the poem: the fall of the petals in late spring, the fall of the leaves in autumn, and the fall of man’s innocence.
7. Paraphrase the last four lines of the poem. How does the oven bird symbolize the human condition?
Unlike other birds the oven bird realizes that spring and summer will not last. The bird is asking us what we will make of a world destroyed by human progress. The bird is symbolizing the destruction and disregard of nature by man’s carelessness.
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