Analysis Of Crossing The Swamp By Mary Oliver

“Crossing the Swamp” Rewrite Our lives are filled with hardships, struggles, and challenges, whether large or small. Yet through these difficulties in life, we experience growth and change as people. In her sensational poem, “Crossing the Swamp,” Mary Oliver shows how growth and change are capable in the complicated, messy hardships we encounter. In her poem, the speaker’s experiences within the swamp is desperate yet grateful, revealing how growth and change are capable. Oliver transports the reader into the position of the speaker through the metaphor of a swamp and repetition, revealing how similar we must pull ourselves from struggles and take new roots. Oliver creates a beautiful metaphor between the swamp and the universe. On line 3, Oliver states, “Here is the endless wet thick cosmos, the center of everything.” Here, Oliver begins her comparison of the wet, smelly, sticky swamp with the shocking vibrant beauty of the “cosmos.” Through the implication of cosmos, the swamp is no longer a sticky mess the speaker must trek through but a journey through beautiful, open, adventured space. The swamp is now a metaphor for the journey throughout life in the universe. A universe of “slick crossings,” and “peerless mud.” But it is also a …show more content…
Oliver’s phrases such as “here is swamp, here is struggle,” repeat the difficult of the task and the tasks of struggles people will face constantly in life. It makes us wonder how can we ever survive, such “pathless,” “peerless,” and “seamless” conditions? How can our hands find “fingerhold” or our minds stay rooted to a “mindhold?” Oliver answers it is through the glory of “one more chance” we find the strength to carry on, to move forward from endless struggles. She reveals how our universe of chances, and limitless of possibilities for change make up brave. While the struggle may be endless and desperate, we are grateful for the chance and moved by the