"A summer's Night" (A POEM)
...eaking as the thoughts freely flow from his mind. It is almost as if the speaker doesn't think twice about what he says. "That one night in the middle of the summer / when people move their TV sets outside / and watch them on the porch- / so the neighborhood is full of murmuring blue lights," evinces vivid imagery (line 1-4). One can easily picture an entire town walking out onto their porch at night to watch television and the flickering lights in each household. This stanza is also the introduction to the speaker's life of bittersweetness. This stanza could be interpreted as calm and relaxing, and at the same time repetitive and purposeless. The speaker jumps from, "That one night," to "Earlier, the evening sky," to "All day," suggesting that he can't keep his mind still, and he just speaks as his mind quickly shifts thoughts. The speaker expresses his thoughts with a silent, some what nostalgic, thoughtful, and conversational tone. The beginning of the poem is unclear. The speaker makes it unclear as to why he's talking about that "one night" and even into the next stanza, the reader can't tell where the poem is headed. That tool of slowly pulling in the reader works tremendously. It's as if he tells the reader just enough to keep him listening, but hardly enough to keep him curious. The second stanza uses the poetic device imagery to paint a clear picture of the sunset. The speaker is extraordinarily careful with the words he chooses. "Earlier, the evening sky looked like a pale blue shirt," the speaker cleverly paints the picture for his reader of the sky like a "pale" blue shirt (line 5). Why the word pale? It only perfects as the poem continues, "through which a stain the shade of watermelon juice was delicately spreading (line 6)." The effect of this stanza is similar to something that has mixed emotions another indication of the bitter and sweet that composes their relationship, the bitter being the "pale" blue shirt, the sweet being the "watermelon juice." The speaker could have said that the sky looked like a silk blue shirt or a light blue shirt, but neither would have had the effect that "pale" did. One can not picture a gorgeous sunset, rich with colors and beauty, when its been described as pale. The word "pale" suggests something dim, faint and lacking in intensity, the perfect word to describe his relationship with his wife. The way the sentence flows is crucial to note as well. "Earlier, the evening sky looked like a pale blue shirt (line 5)." The sentence gets choppy at the end and flows smoothly in the beginning. What starts off as a nice description of the sky, turns out to be nothing more than a shirt, and even more importantly, a pale, shirt. The speaker then continues painting a beautiful picture of a stain of watermelon juice delicately spreading. Why a stain? And why would a stain "delicately" spread? And more importantly, why use such a description to suggest to a reader the sunset? The word "stain" does not suggest something too delicate either. Rather, a stain suggests something that has a morally defiling effec...