Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Mirage Oases

Kay Ryan, Vintage book pg. 531

First among places
susceptible to trespass
are mirage oases

whose graduated pools
and shaded grasses, palms
and speckled fishes give
before the lightest pressure
and are wrecked.

For they live
only in the kingdom
of suspended wishes,

thrive only at our pleasure
checked.


The first thing I noticed about Ryan’s poem is the images she presents. As the poem is read, the reader sees each of the images momentarily. Her use of repetition, for example the use of the word “and” in stanza two enhances a feeling of longing that mirage oases represent. The positions of certain alliterative words, like “pools...palms…pressure” also help the reader mentally dredge along with the protagonist of the poem. Another thing that struck me is that Ryan was able to give sudden tone shifts with one liners. The whole tone of the poem veers off in a completely different direction than its beginning tone. It first seems like the narrator is giving you a warning, then in the second stanza the serene setting is abruptly crushed, until stanza three and four inform the reader that his serene world is false and it only comes at his expense. It seems like Ryan is using her stanzas to warn people about the dangers of getting caught up in our dreams, and people who “live only in the kingdom of suspended wishes” need to be shaken (or tapped) back to reality and understand the real danger they are in. For example, getting caught up in a dream could lead to a person living a life of misery, much like hallucinating that a mirage is present while not realizing that the mirage is fake and going towards a fruitless goal would not change the fact that the person is still in danger if they are lost in the desert.

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