Introducing
Your new presentation assistant.
Refine, enhance, and tailor your content, source relevant images, and edit visuals quicker than ever before.
Trending searches
The poem starts out with the seemingly idea of time beginning and also the thought of that of changes that needed to be done for the future in order to sustain life (in our solar system). It then goes to the short discussion of dinosaurs and how they tried to live through the meteor that struck them but their extinction was inevitable. Life was then restarted and grew seriously fast. Afterwards humans came along as described by two apes "coupling" which made a "mutant" child. In the second paragraph though, the idea of the end seems to be the feeling as the poem opens with how the world "unearths" itself. I feel as though this means that humans have begun to start destroying the planet when we come into existance. Next, the poem describes fire and how us humans all wanted to have fire because it could provide us with protection. The poem seems to wrap up how "our thoughts, however elegant, were fire" which could mean that our thoughts were and are negative to the planet. Then it describes places of past wars as though they spread like fire for dominance between ourselves. Finally it ends with the possible future of peace and harmony reached as a sudden agreement thus leaving the reader with a sense of curiosity.
Poet and critic, Eleanor Wilner was born in Ohio, and went to Goucher College. From there, she went to Johns Hopkins University. She was the editor of The American Poetry Review, and has taught at many universities, including Smith College and Warren Wilson College. She likes to write about myths and they usually convey themes about peace and justice.
Poetic Devices
~Rhyme~
"brains no bigger than a fist
clenched to resist the white flash
in the sky the day the sun-flares
pared them down to relics for museums". Fist and resist rhyme
~Repetition~
"...white squirming..." "...white heat..." "...white flash..."It
could be numerous reasons why she chose to repeat the
word white but I believe it could be because white
humans thought themselves as better than other skin
colors in the past
~Similes~
"to these malign
necessities we come
from the dim time of dinosaurs
who crawled like breathing lava
from the earth’s cracked crust". Like is used to describe dinsaurs
walking very slowly as a simile.
~Alliteration~
"the swamps
were melted down to molten mud"
The letter m is used in this enough to make it an alliteration.
~Allusion~
"Two apes, caught in the act of coupling,
made a mutant child
who woke to sunlight wondering, his mother
torn by the huge new head
that forced the narrow birth canal". Wilner doesn't mention
humans specifically but most definitately means it.
The tone in this poem is really between two different poem emotions that are hopeful and destructive/regretful. I believe it is to be hopeful in the beginning of the poem when there is new life and everything seems to be bright and then comes the dinosaurs extinction which leads to us apes and then our destructive selves destroy the planet and ourselves with it making the beginning of the poem compared to the end feel like a regret humans were created.
Destruction:
Destruction is showed throughout the poem by explaining how the theme of white went from creation to explaining suffering and pain ("white fire") and then went on to say that our thoughts of aggression against each other turned into actions like that of Troy and Nagasaki which both housed "battles" between us humans which lead to destruction.
Creation:
The poem goes directly into detail of this huge theme of white things which is in fact a symbol for creation in that it talks about something like how humans started from huge beasts before them aka dinosaurs and they had to grow and adapt from their tiny brains given to them. Our human population spread quickly through "coupling" as said about us "apes". With our fast "multiplication" we brought down with us our environment from overpopulating.
As if compelled to repetition
and to unearth again
white fire at the heart of matter—fire
we sought and fire we spoke,
our thoughts, however elegant, were fire
from first to last—like sentries set to watch
at Argos for the signal fire
passed peak to peak from Troy
to Nagasaki, triumphant echo of the burning
city walls and prologue to the murders
yet to come—we scan the sky
for that bright flash,
our eyes stared white from watching
for the signal fire that ends
the epic—a cursed line
with its caesura, a pause
to signal peace, or a rehearsal
for the silence.
To turn a stone
with its white squirming
underneath, to pry the disc
from the sun’s eclipse—white heat
coiling in the blinded eye: to these malign
necessities we come
from the dim time of dinosaurs
who crawled like breathing lava
from the earth’s cracked crust, and swung
their tiny heads above the lumbering tons
of flesh, brains no bigger than a fist
clenched to resist the white flash
in the sky the day the sun-flares
pared them down to relics for museums,
turned glaciers back, seared Sinai’s
meadows black—the ferns withered, the swamps
were melted down to molten mud, the cells
uncoupled, recombined, and madly
multiplied, huge trees toppled to the ground,
the slow life there abandoned hope,
a caterpillar stiffened in the grass.
Two apes, caught in the act of coupling,
made a mutant child
who woke to sunlight wondering, his mother
torn by the huge new head
that forced the narrow birth canal.