Summer Day Mary Oliver

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Mary Oliver’s poem The Summer Day is a thoughtful piece on exploring religion in relation to nature and the meaning of life. A excellent look on the views of living in the moment and seize each day. The poem starts out with three questions. The first a broad encompassing question. The second talks about the entirety of nature itself by using polar opposites. The last is on who made the grasshopper. The exact lines are, “Who made the world?/Who made the swan, and the black bear?/Who made the grasshopper?”(lines 1-3). The narrator begins to then describe the grasshopper from the previous question in shocking detail. Describing how she eats and moves. It gives off an up close and personal feel. Suddenly the direction of the poem changes. In line …show more content…
Right off the bat the author writes three fairly heavy questions about creation, each narrowing slightly. This creates a thoughtful tone to the poem. Then it jumps to a description of a grasshopper that was mentioned in the last question, “Who made the grasshopper?/This grasshopper I mean -/the one who has flung herself out of the grass”(3-5). This voice of thoughtfulness is continued as the narrator describes the grasshopper. In lines 8-9 the grasshopper has its eyes and actions described as we can see here, “who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes./ Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly faces her face.”. Words and phrases in lines 8-9 like “gazing around”, “enormous and complicated” and “pale forearms” used together creating a peaceful as one might observe the insect. They are very calming and smooth sounding words the help keep the tone. The tone does completely change in line 11 where instead of focusing on e grasshopper the narrator makes a statement about not knowing what a prayer. Hen the author writes about knowing how to other things. “how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, / which is what I been doing all day”(14-15), these lines suggest that the narrator is more in tune with nature then religion and create a more active tone to the poem. The author conveys the message to readers using small, quiet writing
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