Subject: What is this poem about?

• It’s about a mountain – Mont Blanc

Form:

• It’s very long
• Descriptive – that is, not narrative – no story
• Divided into 5 parts
  • First part:
    • A lot of imagery – paints a picture of the environment – waterfalls, mountains – metaphor for the human mind
    • No sign of Mont Blanc
    • Starts IMMENSE: “the everlasting universe of things” – literally all things for all time
      • Within the human mind
    • Second part:
      • More assonance and consonance
      • Moved from the human mind to the ravine
      • Tone: not very grounded; you feel you are about to fall over
      • Returns to the human mind and the universe of things
    • Third part:
      • First mention of Mont Blanc
      • Comparing the way we experience the view of the mountain – the structure of the mountain – some parts of it are obscure – metaphor for the human mind?
        • But makes you understand it in pictures not words
      • Referencing creation
      • Something inaccessible
      • Creation in the guise of destruction
      • No one can tell us what happened. Probably because they’re dead.
      • Repetition with eternal/everlasting/eternity
      • “wilderness has a mysterious tongue” – wilderness is saying something we can’t understand
      • difference between understanding and feeling – feelings can’t be explained away easily
    • fourth part
      • expanded his view beyond the particular location
      • danger
      • emphasizes “this” – why? Marks a change in the poem? It gets dark
      • trying to explain the beauty of death?
        • Everything that happened already happened – repeats, constantly
        • Man-made imitations of mountains, with powerful associations – city of death
      • No obvious rhyme scheme, but there are rhymes
        • Stream of water making you just think – stream of consciousness – no real logic – irregular rhyme scheme – one idea leads to the next – not trying to structure it in a traditional way – feels like a flowing river
          • But it all kind of falls into place if you read it with the meter
        • Rhythm
          • Iambic pentameter
          • Provides a loose structure that allows freedom for imagery
        • Lots of consonance and assonance

Word choice or diction

• Pairs “gloom” and “glittering” – could be describing night and day in nature?
• More contrast (in order, moves through the poem): high/low, man-made/natural, life/death, order/chaos
  • Comparing the way we experience the view of the mountain – the structure of the mountain – some parts of it are obscure – metaphor for the human mind?