The night is clear and empty, but still memories linger throughout this soft, rainy night. There is plenty of time to ponder upon them, even to open up the letters of my grandmother that have been long stowed away in our dingy attic, where they have become soft, discovered, and fragile. Memories are delicate, a persona has his or her own special meaning attached to each one, making it difficult to sincerely understand what something meant to another.
I stop and I think to yeses, “Am I truly recollecting the events that my grandmother experienced, is it really bringing me back to that time? ” Unaware of what the answer is I continue traveling through my grandmother’s memories creating my own history, unlike hers as the rain taps on the roof. I chose to paraphrase and analyze Hart Crane’s, “My Grandmother’s Love Letters” because it spoke volumes to some of the thoughts that I have had in the past. When reading Crane’s work I was strangely transported to the times that I would think about my grandmother, and the life that she lived.
As I continued through the poem he diction that Crane uses in order to create the mood of the environment drew me ever closer to his words. Often times it is when I am sleepless during drizzling or even pouring rain that I am sitting there thinking about the individual members of my family. I have never had the fortune of meeting my grandfather’s and having lost my “mother’s mother” three years ago and my others health rapidly deteriorating, thoughts of their past’s have been near and frequent to me recently.
By bringing me back to those sleepless moments, Crane’s words made me feel a sense of warmth ND comfort, ones that I would have when my I would walk into the homes of my grandmother’s knowing that a kiss, hug, and dinner would be awaiting my arrival. In addition to how Crane sets the environmental mood, the way in which he described the “brown and soft” letters that were “liable to melt as snow’ was excellently worded. This made me reminisce of the times when my grandmothers would tell me and my brothers stories and I would frequently think to myself of how I heard the story multiple times and how boring I thought they were.
Yet as I sit here, an older errors I wonder to myself, “would I really take those moments for granted again? ” I would listen to their stories and believe that I understood them, not wanting to listen to them again, thinking that they were dull and empty, but Just as the narrator could not truly put themselves in their grandmother’s shoes, “And so I stumble,”, I could not ORAL 101 Art Of Poetry Essay 1 By Agway come close to experiencing the Joys that my grandmothers experienced and the hardships that they endured.
What I found great about this poem is not Just what it meant to me when I was reading it, but also the fashion in which it was written. At first glance, this poem seems very simplistic; it is merely a child figuratively is being brought back to the past by way of her grandmother’s love letters found in her house. Yet that is the beauty of Crane’s work, while it is written with simple vocabulary, allowing everyone to understand it, it invites each person to incorporate their own memories and feelings into it, making it deeper and more complex than on the surface.
I observed that Hart’s poem had 6 stanzas and that the word “l” did not appear until the fourth stanza, and it is part of a simple four word stanza that reads “And I ask myself:” In act, Hart only includes the word “l” three times in this poem, two coming in the last stanza. I believe Hart did this with the intention of provoking the readers to put themselves in the narrator’s position. By doing so this elicits unique thoughts, emotions, and memories from each individual, essentially creating a different meaning of the poem.
Hart Crane’s, “My Grandmother’s Love Letters” is a wonderful piece of literature. I chose to write about this poem because of how it touched me and made me think deeper of my past events. Not only did I find this to be the beauty of this seemingly impolitic work, but also how the fashion Hart Crane structures his poem allows, almost forces them to incorporate their personal experiences.
When first glancing at “My Grandmother’s Love Letters” I dismissed it because I thought that it was very plain and unexciting. As I skimmed back upon the poem, I reread it over and found that it was quite the opposite and each time my sense of emotions were heightened as one thought, one memory, led to the next. The simplicity of this poem, in a sense more complex than many poems, in addition to other reasons is why “My Grandmother’s Love Letters” is a poem that has withstood the test of time.
