Mary Oliver: Poetry Literary Elements

The poems "August", “Beside the Waterfall” and “Singapore” are all narrated by a first-person-narrator and from their subjective point of view.

The poem “August” consists of 4 stanzas of varying length. There is no consistent meter or rhyme scheme.

Similes:

“August”:
l. 3-4: “walking like a woman who is balancing a sword”

“Singapore":
l. 22-23: "the airport ashtrays, as big as
hubcaps."
l. 26: “Her dark hair is like the wing of a bird.”

“Beside the Waterfall”:
l. 30-31: “he, too, if you’re willing,
had a face
like a flower”

Alliteration:

“August”
l. 1-2: “the mother
of many”
l. 18: “a roof repaired”

“Beside the Waterfall”
l. 6-7: “the white
waterfall”

There are no instances of irony.

The poem "Singapore" is a satirical poem, ridiculing the usually overtly poetic content of poems.

The poem “Singapore” is set in an unidentified women’s restroom in the airport in Singapore. The poem “August” takes place in the summer months of an unidentified year. The setting is the adjoining gardens of two families, somewhere in the country.

The tone of the poem “August” is of desperation and lamentation for the narrator’s sick neighbor, as well as disbelief of her family’s way of dealing with it.

In the poem “Beside the Waterfall”, the narrator’s dog Winston is both the protagonist and the antagonist. The narrator watches her dog, who is exploring the surroundings of a waterfall. The dog is portrayed both as a kind, curious creature, as well as a blood-lusting monster when he begins to dismember and eat the remains of a baby deer.

There are no major conflicts.

In the poem “Singapore” the climax happens in stanza 5. The narrator, who was formerly disgusted by the work of the cleaning lady, comes to the revelation that the woman and her work possess poetic attributes too and begins to describe her in words traditionally used for poetry (comparisons to nature).

This revelation fundamentally changes the narrator’s view of poetry.

In the poem "Beside the Waterfall" there is foreshadowing in the first stanza. The narrator begins to describe her dog Winston as "the big dog" (l. 2), before mentioning his name. This emphasizes the fact that he is foremost an animal with animalistic instincts (such as killing and eating) and foreshadows his later actions.

There are no instances of understatement.

In the last stanza of the poem “August” the narrator alludes to a painting by the painter Vincent Van Gogh, which portrays a man sitting in chair with his hands over his eyes. The narrator compares her neighbor’s family to this painting because they too choose not to see their mother’s illness, instead preferring to pretend as if everything is ok, thus metaphorically putting their own hands onto their eyes.

Synecdoche:

“Beside the Waterfall”
l. 5: “into the leaves”
into the plants

Metonymy:

“Singapore”:
l. 2: “a darkness was ripped from my eyes”
an innocence, a veil not to see

There are no instances of personification.

“August”
l. 22: “Everything wrong, and nowhere to go.”
The narrator exaggerates the situation to emphasize that the illness of the neighbor is non-curable.

“Singapore”
l. 8: “A poem should always have birds in it.”
This universal statement is used to emphasize that poems usually feature nature in them.

There are no instances of onomatopoeia.