summary of poem stop stop pretty water
Answers
Pretty is an unusual poem by Stevie Smith not only because it features the word pretty itself 18 times but also due to the idiosyncratic way the speaker explores the notion of prettiness within nature.
Each stanza has it syntactical oddities - unpunctuated lines with no enjambment - commas galore, dashes and exclamation marks, caesura that needn't be there - in particular stanza 4 which has no line end punctuation but is in effect four separate sentences. And stanza 5 likewise.
All of this places extra weight on the role of the reader, who is given a certain amount of freedom when it comes to pace, pause and delivery but may experience some unease as they make their way through this paradoxical poem.
There is repetition, contradiction and an alternative investigation of certain natural phenomena - primarily focusing on animals. As the poem progresses it shifts from an ideal aspect of the natural world - leaves falling, which most see as pretty - to the predatory world of the pike and the owl.
Towards the middle of the poem the human eye is introduced - the eye abashes (is embarrassed) - the way it sees things, wants to take in everything. As humans we see nature's prettier side but is it really pretty?
The poem becomes a little surreal as the disembodied eye rises above the wood in cinematic fashion, giving an overview of the countryside, fields, hills, sky.
The way humans experience the natural world is brought into question, deemed extraordinary because it is pretty. Nature is subject to our value systems being imposed upon it, whilst it remains careless and indifferent and someone being there and stealing a look and demanding that it be pretty, pretty, pretty....is misuse of the language.
This misuse of the language, this repetition of pretty eventually becomes futile because either it negates the true meaning of the word pretty (whatever that meaning is) or the person dies figuratively - delivered entirely from humanity - which becomes a sort of ultimate prettiness.
ItzDopeGirl❣
Answer:
It is the American edition.
It has been my object, in writing the following Little Songs for
Little Boys and Girls, to endeavor to catch something of that good-
humored pleasantry, that musical nonsense, which makes Mother Goose
so attractive to children of all ages.
The little folks must decide whether the book is entertaining. To
them I present my little volume, with the earnest hope that it will
receive their approbation. If children love to lisp my rhymes, while
parents find no fault in them, I ask no higher praise.