2004B FRQ #2

Post date: Dec 03, 2013 9:27:0 PM

Read the following poem carefully. Then, in a well-written essay, analyze the techniques the poet uses to develop the relationship between the speaker and the swamp.

Crossing the Swamp

Here is the endless

wet thick

cosmos, the center

of everything — the nugget

5 of dense sap, branching

vines, the dark burred

faintly belching

bogs. Here

is swamp, here

10 is struggle,

closure —

pathless, seamless,

peerless mud. My bones

knock together at the pale

15 joints, trying

for foothold, fingerhold,

mindhold over

such slick crossings, deep

hipholes, hummocks*

20 that sink silently

into the black, slack

earthsoup. I feel

not wet so much as

painted and glittered

25 with the fat grassy

mires, the rich

and succulent marrows

of earth — a poor

dry stick given

30 one more chance by the whims

of swamp water — a bough

that still, after all these years,

could take root,

sprout, branch out, bud —

35 make of its life a breathing

palace of leaves.

* low mounds of earth

From AMERICAN PRIMITIVE by Mary Oliver.

By permission of Little, Brown and Company, (Inc.).