"How does the wedding ring's situation- lying in a "basket / as if at the bottom of a well" - embody the marriage symbolized by the ring?" pg. 613
A basket at the bottom of a well seems lost and abandoned, which is exactly how the author feels about her wedding ring and marriage. She says that "nothing will come to fish it back up and onto my finger again," so therefore there is nothing left in the relationship that can save her once successful, now defeated marriage. Although this is a negative and somewhat depressing poem, it was one of the ones I enjoyed the most. This is probably because it was written in a modern language which made it more obvious and easier to understand, and even though I have never gone through a troubled marriage, her simple language makes it easier to relate to. The objects described in the second stanza ( "It lies among keys to abandoned houses, nails waiting to be needed and hammered into some wall, telephone numbers with no names attached, idle paperclips." ) created an image in my head to really understand how lost and helpless her marriage really is.
2 comments:
I agree that the language really created imagery in this poem. I could picture the ring amongst the other items in the basket perfectly, as I had (or felt that I had) seen many times in the past around other people's houses. The simple words didn't help me relate to it but helped me to understand better.
This was my favorite poem, too. Like you, I was drawn to the poem's simple language and the beauty of that simple image of the ring lying in the bottom of a basket. I'm curious if we will find any more poems that use "simple objects" in our next readings. Perhaps you can look for some poems that use simple language/objects to share with the class.
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