Poetry Analysis: Sailing Home from Rapallo by Robert Lowell - Essay Example

Sailing Home from Rapallo Lowell’s poem, “Sailing Home from Rapalio”, is centered on a particular event in his life, a touching event. The poet is accompanying his mother’s corpse from Italy to his home town in America, New England. The body is to be buried in the family burial ground. Though it is a physical journey for the poet, in the poem he seems to be on an emotional journey. The readers find themselves informed of various external facts, as he wanders through his imagination. The gripping emotional content of the poem gets an equally great structure and style, making the poem altogether a pleasant reading. A brief analysis of the quality and content of the poem is the focus of this paper. The poem opens with the poet’s grief at the departure of his mother, “tears ran down my cheeks”. But before the readers could settle down to share his tears; he shakes them off from it to take them to the real reality. “The crazy yellow and azure sea” seen from the ship reminds him that nature outside is active, and he realizes that nature is indifferent to the death of his mother. He is caught between the temporal and the eternal. Time moves on “bubbling” and “blasting”. This is further illustrated by showing the fellow passengers warming themselves in the sun on the deck, while “our family cemetery in Dunbarton lay under the white mountains in the sub-zero weather”. Suddenly the poet thinks of his father too, as he was engaged in the thought of his family. The abrupt change in tone shows that everything was not well in the family relationship. He does not hide his attachment to his mother. And his father’s strained relationship with his mother is evident in the tone. Not only that, he says his father was an “unhistorical soul”. Thus poem which had its emotional beginning now reveals several facts, the poet’s family secrets. As the readers share these facts, the personal becomes universal, exposing man’s inability to adjust and adapt to situations even in a family. The strenuous relationship between husband and wife is a common fact in society. Yet people pretend otherwise. The hollowness of human pretension is thus shown as part of the poetic content. Without losing his journey motive, the poet exposes the human vanity in a sarcastic way. Those shipmates exhibiting warmth up there on the upper deck too will one day go down like his mother, hiding their inner strains. Therefore, the poem has an artistic structure, which can accommodate various aspects of human life. It opens with a three line stanza, then shifts to a ten line stanza, then a twenty-one lines, and finally a four line one. Lines are short and long as the tone demands. Images float themselves, helping the poet to unravel contrasting situations. Wherever it is found difficult, the poet deliberately juxtaposes the images to achieve his creative intentions. The way his mother’s lifelessness is juxtaposed to the vitality of the gulf is an example of this. And as his mood shifts, the tone of the poem also shifts automatically. Though he is describing his own emotions, he is also conscious of the external characters and their situations. The poem begins, as already said, with his delicate relationship with his mother. But gradually he moves to complex relationships. The contrast between his father and mother and between Europe and America enable the poet to blend emotions with facts, thus enriching the poem as a whole. Like the mixing of relations, the poet deliberately breaks the boundaries between past and present. Mother’s death reminds the poet about “so many of its deaths” in the family. All these inevitable events are carried in a sarcastic tone, wrapped with irony. He relies heavily on certain symbols too to sharpen his irony. As he leaves Europe, he realizes the warmth of life he experienced there. As against this, is shown his homeland, which reminds him of winter, death, graveyard, stone, etc. It seems America for him is a sterile world. The poet resorts to several poetic devices in the poem. Onomatopoeia is such a one in the poem. The words “bubbling” and “blasting” is an example. It carries exactly the emotions in the poet and the indifferent emotions of nature. “While the passengers were tanning on the Mediterranean” is yet another one. The repetition of ‘r’ and ‘n’ here gives a clear rhythm to the poem. This is an emotion he is forced to forego as he sails toward New England, where the temperature is “sub-zero”. The following lines speak more about the poet’s skill: "Dour and dark against the blinding snowdrifts, its black brook and fir trunks were as smooth as masts." The selection of syllables here enriches the whole poem. The repetition of ‘d’, ‘b’, ‘r’ and ‘s’ makes a great impact in the poem, both thematically and structurally. In fact, Lowell’s poem is great for both, the diction and the subject. To search for all the varieties of poetic techniques used in a poem is a conventional academic habit. However, Lowell is clever enough to pack in his poems as many as devices as possible, though they remain their as an integral part of the work. Association of ideas is a visible method in his poem. From death he moves to life, from warmth he moves to winter and “sub-zero”. Now these devices can also be categorized under contrast, negation, and inversion. The poem is, in a way, rhetorical too, because all these devices are effective and add to the overall effect. Though a passing remark was made about Lowell’s use of sarcasm in the poem, a little more elaboration of it is essential here. For example, when he says: "Mother traveled first-class in the hold, her Risorgimento black and gold casket was like Napoleons at the Invalids’’. This is surely sarcasm at its height. Also the last lines: "In the grandiloquent lettering on Mothers coffin, Lowell had been misspelled LOVEL. This evidently is a comment on the place his father had in the hearts of his mother, and, of course, in her son too. There are many stories about the poor relationship the poet had with his father. But it is absurd to go deep into subjective matters to substantiate a poem. At the same time, Lowell is known as a confessional poet. “Sailing Home from Rapallo” is certainly a confessional poem. His associations with Europe, his attachment with his mother, his strained relation with his father, and his attitudes to America are all true to his character. As a piece of literature the poem is superb, though the poet’s attitudes may continue to receive critical comments. Lowell will go down in the history of literature as great skilful oet. Read More