Partial Draft of My Poetry Analysis

Hi guys. I was going to try and have the whole essay posted, but I really just want to go to bed. I have, what I like to call, an extended outline written up for you to peruse. It has the introduction and all my supporting evidence written out. There are some detailed sentences so that you can see where I intend to go with this as well. I hope that this is appropriate to partial draft. I've never had a partial draft due.

Alicia Rogers

Wexler

English 495

11 February 2013

Partial Draft

Comfort and Adventure in Death:

A Look at Tennyson’s “Crossing the Bar”

            It is often said that the only inescapable constants of life are death and taxes.  As mortal men and women, we will always be tied to some form of government to control the masses, and thus, subject to the payment of taxes.  Furthermore, as mortal men and women, we will always be tied to the grave.  Mortality is something that we all share; it is our great equalizer and unifier.  However, none of this makes death any easier to encounter.  This is where art comes in.  Whether graphic or literary, art seeks to negotiate the boundary between life and death and lend some comfort or insight into an experience that we all must face.  Alfred, Lord Tennyson navigates through his own feelings about death in his poem, “Crossing the Bar.”  Through his natural images, his structure and rhyme, and his established conceit, Tennyson finds a place of comfort and acceptance within the deep distress of morbid thought.  

When Tennyson discusses natural images within his poems, he connects back to stability.  The images serve as reminders that humanity, in general, and the reader, specifically, are connected to the world.  In “Crossing the Bar,” Tennyson relies on images of the environment to “gravitate [the poem] towards some inevitable ground” (Tucker 9).  The image of the tide brings implications of “being swept away…is [instead] and act of volition; he is the tide master, not its victim” (Shaw 10).  He then uses this inevitability of the natural world to unite with the power of God.  Just as readers cannot escape the world around them, neither can they escape the power of God and death. 

The structure and the rhyme scheme of the poem further emphasize Tennyson’s journey to a peaceful resolution with death.  Just as Tennyson uses the natural world to reflect the inescapability of death, he finds “a semblance of command…reflected in the command of poetic form” (Tucker 14).  Tennyson takes an uncontrollable situation and exerts control over it by fitting the wildness of death into four finely structured and relatable stanzas.   The poem is not overly ornate; in fact, it is “poetry of the austere and minimal” (Shaw 9).  This reflects Tennyson’s understanding that death is not an exceptional experience.  It is one that all beings who live must face.   Yet, even within the “deliberately impoverished” style, readers—like Tennyson—learn that it is not desirable to avoid death at all cost.  Tennyson’s “short syntactic units create a sense of urgency” that leads readers to believe that Tennyson looks forward to the journey of death (Shaw 10).  DO SOMETHING WITH THIS LINE: “with the twice repeated optative—‘may there be no moaning,’ ‘may there be no sadness’—and the final ‘hope’ Tennyson is committed at the end to nothing but a wish” (Shaw 11). 

Finally, Tennyson treats readers to an extended metaphor that eases both their feelings about death and his own feelings about death.  The narrator of the poem is a boat heading to sea.  This motif of the sea and the boat “permits plenty of action, but action in which the actors are subordinated to some authority outside of themselves” (Tucker 11).  The “sustained evocation of emotional atmosphere” holds readers to Tennyson’s analysis and urges them to further contemplate the nature of death (Tucker 12).  Ultimately, Tennyson finds hope in the journey that his boat must make. He puts his trust in his faith where “God is the guide as well as the goal, for without His Incarnation as the ‘Pilot’ at the outset of the voyage there would be no immortality on the farther shore” (Shaw 10).  Tennyson does not undercut the overarching message that death is unavoidable; instead, he call attention to his confidence that “though he knows he will not make the journey through his own navigating skills, his humility is also a form of confidence: a trust in his Pilot’s presence” (Shaw 10).  

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