“During a Son’s Dangerous Illness” and “Lost Sister”

Out of several poems I have chosen to discuss “During a Son’s Dangerous Illness” by Denise Levertov and “Lost Sister” by Cathy Song. The reason I have chosen these poems is because I found them pretty easy going and I could feel the author’s emotions as they laid down the poem on a paper.

Both poems are very different from each other, yet they share something in common. After reading the first poem, the feeling was very transparent, feeling of sadness, grief, helplessness and sorrow. Levertov seems to use figurative language in a very well described and explanatory way. Such lines as: “-

. . .
There are some ways for us to identify the type of a poem, but the meaning and thoughts are endless for a reader as well as for a writer. She seems to compare death to various unpleasant abstract and concrete objects, such as splinter, cape brushes, eternal nothingness, etc. The writer misses her child and feels that she didn’t do enough or didn’t love enough and that the death came too soon. Two poems are very different from each other in structure and almost every aspect, yet they have several things that are alike. We created this image in order for us to be reminded that not only death exists, we also need to physically see it and be afraid of it. We can also find several ideas that author didn’t attempt for us to think of.

In the second poem “Lost Sister”, author describes a loss of a family member who is gone, but not forever. The use of figurative language keeps a reader interested and perhaps helps him/her visualize the picture in depth and makes our brains stimulated by having us link abstract with concrete. As the author mentions it in line12: “To move freely was a luxury, stolen from them at birth”, tells us how much freedom daughters had back in China.

Although both poems are tragic, “Lost Sister” brings less feelings of sadness. The Levertov’s poem consists of seven columns with uneven amount of lines, where Song’s poem is made out of two parts that has no significant separation from each other. The fact that a “Lost Sister” could have a better life and more opportunities over seas instead of being on a lockdown at home. Line 30 through line 34, Levertov also talks about taking life for granted. “the whirling cinder we love but not enough…”. “But in another wilderness, the possibilities, the loneliness, can strangulate like jungle vines.

Common topics in this essay:
Lost Sister, Cathy Song, , Death Compare, lost sister, figurative language, lost sister author, poem lost sister, poem lost, abstract concrete, sister author, levertovs poem, cape brushes, selves variety, whirling cinder, share common,

Approximate Word count = 1035
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

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