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Analysis Of Alliteration, Japanese Maple By Clive James

Decent Essays

Poetry is a reflection of the poet’s life experiences through the use of various poetic devices as well as imagery (Poetry, 2015). The audience is able to comprehend an understanding about the poet’s message and the influence of the idea. Poets generally write from personal experiences, which form a narrative or reflective piece relating to a place, person or thing (McCabe, S, 2010.) Clive James started his poetry career at the University of Sydney, however over a period of time James began to understand the meaning of successful poetry through crafting a poem with an interesting or personal life events. James understood personal experiences created interesting poetry, with the display for love of language (Patrick, 2009). James uses alliteration, …show more content…

The audience is able to visualise ‘Japanese Maple’ as time line reflecting on his life with the analogy of beauty and fragile, which convey his appreciation for his successful career and personal life. Metaphor is displayed in the Japanese maple tree with a comparison of his fragile life, alliteration, imagery and rhyming is represented throughout the entire poem with the second or third sentence. Japanese Maple was pieced together to reflect James life, also his battle with cancer. The title of the poem came about his daughter dedicating a Japanese maple tree to her father, where James was able to watch the tree grow and flourish through every season, much like his career and life, but most of all his ordeal with cancer. James was able to compare something with great beauty and life resembling his early life to something slowly dying and changing of appearance for example when the maple tree’s leaves will die and fall …show more content…

An example of beauty is seen through the depiction of Amber Rooms and the mirror halls; the representation of this beauty evokes the reader to enable an understanding of James comparison with something of true beauty compared to something plain and lifeless. An example of a fragile resemblance to life is an innocent, vulnerable plant such as the Japanese maple, needs beauty in order for the plant to flourish. James reflects on a vulnerable plant in his poem ‘so much sweet beauty as when fine rain falls on that small tree’. James expresses his chemotherapy battle through words, which becomes a key element in creating emotion for the poem. An example is in the forth stanza ’come a autumn and its leaves will turn to flame, what must I do’, this small extract from the poem builds a relationship with his chemotherapy and a tree given to him by his daughter, the tree resembles life and the element flourishing over time through struggle or neglect and even resemble success. The tree can be referred to as a reflection of James’ life where he had struggles, might have neglected people close to him, but most of all there was success under all the struggles he

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