Highlight the theme of the poem A photograph in hornbill?
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Summary of the poem a photograph in hornbill!!..
A Photograph by Shirley Toulson is a tender yet a jolting piece that revolves around the universal theme of loss and separation – an inevitable reality that is a common lot of mankind. Through the stock symbol of a photograph, evoked in many literary pieces to denote nostalgia and remembrance, the poet articulates the void she feels upon having made uncomfortable peace with her mother’s death. The poem is tender because of the heart-touching manner in which it has expressed nostalgia born of loss to the passage of time and the final rest; the jolting attribute comes from the harsh message it sends across about how humans can never be entirely adept at accepting irreversible separation from a loved one...
Hope this helps you out!!
A Photograph by Shirley Toulson is a tender yet a jolting piece that revolves around the universal theme of loss and separation – an inevitable reality that is a common lot of mankind. Through the stock symbol of a photograph, evoked in many literary pieces to denote nostalgia and remembrance, the poet articulates the void she feels upon having made uncomfortable peace with her mother’s death. The poem is tender because of the heart-touching manner in which it has expressed nostalgia born of loss to the passage of time and the final rest; the jolting attribute comes from the harsh message it sends across about how humans can never be entirely adept at accepting irreversible separation from a loved one...
Hope this helps you out!!
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A Photograph by Shirley Toulson is a tender yet a jolting piece that revolves around the universal theme of loss and separation – an inevitable reality that is a common lot of mankind. Through the stock symbol of a photograph, evoked in many literary pieces to denote nostalgia and remembrance, the poet articulates the void she feels upon having made uncomfortable peace with her mother’s death. The poem is tender because of the heart-touching manner in which it has expressed nostalgia born of loss to the passage of time and the final rest; the jolting attribute comes from the harsh message it sends across about how humans can never be entirely adept at accepting irreversible separation from a loved oneBy presenting the summary of the poem, A Photograph, we at Beamingnotes want to enable our readers to understand the deep significance behind seemingly simple actions and memories, in turn expounding upon human emotions of deep-rooted pain.
The ‘cardboard’ here refers to the thick stiff photo paper used in the pre-digital photography era to develop prints and store memories. It is interesting to note that instead of writing about memories about her mother directly, the poet takes help of the prop of a photograph to convey to the readers that she is reminiscing about her mother. Reminiscing, in itself, is a rather abstract nostalgia-influenced act, which the poet has successfully made concrete and empirical by adding to it the specific action of looking at an old photograph of the one she is missing terribly.
Think about it… Isn’t it a general human tendency to revisit old pictures in your galleries when we miss a certain person or time of our life?
Photographs are beautiful aides of nostalgia because each picture, no matter how candid or well-framed, has a story to tell. Shirley Toulsonthen shares with us the story behind the picture she is holding in her hands, taking us to the time when her deceased mother had gone to the beach for some paddling as a young girl, in the company of her two younger cousin sisters. In the picture, the sisters are each holding her mother’s hand, she being the eldest among all at about twelve years of age. It might seem that the poet is just mentioning the mother’s age in passing; however, the act of picking out a picture from her mother’s childhood is a well-thought-out one. It helps accentuate the harsh reality of the mother’s loss, which is conveyed to us at the end of the poem, by contrasting this loss of life with the playfulness of youth. The poet details how each of the sisters are holding her mother’s hand – even in a photograph from her childhood times, the poet’s mother had a protective aura about her. This image helps readers feel the motherly presence that the poet perhaps wished to convey so that she can make the loss of the same more pronounced at the end of the poem. Taking all of these significations underlying the photograph into account, the opening sentence of the poem carefully sets the mood and tone for the poem and its overarching subject of losing a mother.
All three stood still to smile through their hair
At the uncle with the camera, A sweet face
My mother’s, that was before I was born
And the sea, which appears to have changed less
Washed their terribly transient feet.
In the second line, the poet talks in tender details about how the girl’s uncle has captured her mother in space and time through a camera, at a point when she had a lot of life ahead of her, waiting to be lived. The camera then becomes an interesting tool of nostalgia, used to always provide food for fond remembrances by means of pictures. “Through their hair” is an expression used to denote how the three girls are smiling their widest smile – a smile so broadly spread across their faces that it seems to reach the strands of hair falling on the sides. She describes her mother’s face as one full of sweetness, instantly drawing tender emotions from the readers
The ‘cardboard’ here refers to the thick stiff photo paper used in the pre-digital photography era to develop prints and store memories. It is interesting to note that instead of writing about memories about her mother directly, the poet takes help of the prop of a photograph to convey to the readers that she is reminiscing about her mother. Reminiscing, in itself, is a rather abstract nostalgia-influenced act, which the poet has successfully made concrete and empirical by adding to it the specific action of looking at an old photograph of the one she is missing terribly.
Think about it… Isn’t it a general human tendency to revisit old pictures in your galleries when we miss a certain person or time of our life?
Photographs are beautiful aides of nostalgia because each picture, no matter how candid or well-framed, has a story to tell. Shirley Toulsonthen shares with us the story behind the picture she is holding in her hands, taking us to the time when her deceased mother had gone to the beach for some paddling as a young girl, in the company of her two younger cousin sisters. In the picture, the sisters are each holding her mother’s hand, she being the eldest among all at about twelve years of age. It might seem that the poet is just mentioning the mother’s age in passing; however, the act of picking out a picture from her mother’s childhood is a well-thought-out one. It helps accentuate the harsh reality of the mother’s loss, which is conveyed to us at the end of the poem, by contrasting this loss of life with the playfulness of youth. The poet details how each of the sisters are holding her mother’s hand – even in a photograph from her childhood times, the poet’s mother had a protective aura about her. This image helps readers feel the motherly presence that the poet perhaps wished to convey so that she can make the loss of the same more pronounced at the end of the poem. Taking all of these significations underlying the photograph into account, the opening sentence of the poem carefully sets the mood and tone for the poem and its overarching subject of losing a mother.
All three stood still to smile through their hair
At the uncle with the camera, A sweet face
My mother’s, that was before I was born
And the sea, which appears to have changed less
Washed their terribly transient feet.
In the second line, the poet talks in tender details about how the girl’s uncle has captured her mother in space and time through a camera, at a point when she had a lot of life ahead of her, waiting to be lived. The camera then becomes an interesting tool of nostalgia, used to always provide food for fond remembrances by means of pictures. “Through their hair” is an expression used to denote how the three girls are smiling their widest smile – a smile so broadly spread across their faces that it seems to reach the strands of hair falling on the sides. She describes her mother’s face as one full of sweetness, instantly drawing tender emotions from the readers
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