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Poem Explication Essay- Crocuses by Ruth Fainlight

The poem titled Crocuses was authored by Ruth Fainlight, a New York immigrant to Britain. Relocating to Britain in 1944, Fainlight learned art in colleges in Brighton and Birmingham before settling in London. Fainlight has written numerous dramas, short stories, and liberties among them the Crocuses. Additionally, she has also translated numerous works of other writers, with her works frequently addressing the issues of feminism, the Holocaust and Jewish identities. In her poem, Fain talks in detail about the crocuses that are newly grown and are slowly emerging from the muddy ground in spring. The poem takes a new direction when the narrator begins to compare the color of the newly grown crocuses with the color of bruises that the abused and naked men and women had as they were being rounded to be transported to a horrible place. This essay analyses Ruth Fainlight’s poem titled Crocuses in its entirety.

The first three lines in Fainlight’s poem positively paint a picture of structures to do with the pond, forest, and the meadow area. The author also provides a vivid description of crocuses. It is evident from the author’s choice of words in that there is a form of struggle at play. The narrator uses carefully selected words such as pale to paint a picture of something unpleased that is going on. The narrator also mentions that bruises paint a picture of pain, struggle, and sadness for the crocuses. The narrator speaks in third person and it is almost as if she can barely see the minds of the population. The main speaker in this poem is a woman in her early or middle adulthood. One of the values that the speaker demonstrates is empathy. This is viewed in how she compares the crocuses to the cuts found on the bodies of the men and women.

While the scenes painted by the speaker in the first three lines paint a picture of calmness, this quickly changes into a bizarre and graphic scene as the narrator begins to paint a picture of people writhing in pain with their naked bodies covered in cuts as they are hulled into the forest for executed. Readers can feel that the acts do not sit right with the speaker as she is also against such actions. Despite the first three lines painting a positive picture of calmness, the same mood hardly dominates the rest of the poem. The narrator talks about innocent people being inflicted with pain and possibly being killed. This is emphasized in the narrator’s choice of works towards the end, where she talks of people crying for help.

The two lines making up the last stanza come off as effective and powerful. This is evidenced in the speaker’s choice of words to incorporate syntax. Worth noting, the speaker used the word ‘and’ repetitively in a bid to emphasize the poem’s main message. The speaker uses the words, ‘final screams and prayers and moans,’ to lay emphasis on the emotion of the men and women who are at the brink of being executed. It is almost as if the author wanted the reader to remember pain and fear as the main emotion that dominated the poem, which explains why he placed them at the end.

In closing, in her poem, Fainlight talks in detail about the crocuses that are newly grown which are slowly emerging from the muddy ground in spring. The poem takes new shift when the narrator begins to compare the color of the newly grown crocuses with the color of bruises belonging to men and women that have been abused. The poem which has been written is third poem starts with a calm emotion but ends up with sad emotion.