Anne Sexton and Maxine Kumin grew to be friends during a poetry workshop in Boston. Their confessional style poetry guided them into writing three children’s novels together and assisting each other in their writing, which strengthened their friendship further. Anne Sexton and Maxine Kumin scatter similes and metaphors to bring the reader into a feeling of nostalgia through the themes of a favorite childhood fairy tale and friendship. Both poets accomplish this through a sarcastic tone, and but Sexton’s sarcasm is filtered to appear joyful while Kumin’s sarcasm is meant to emphasize an established friendship.
In Sexton’s “Cinderella”, the placement of similes and metaphors pulls the reader into a feeling of nostalgia from their childhood and former friendships. In “Cinderella”, there is an unfortunate twist. The “Happily Ever After” that adults and children alike find solace in, never comes. The uncertainty at the end of the poem …show more content…
She is changed by this painful occurrence and this poem’s use of figurative language manifests the hurt she is suffering through. While being enveloped in her despair, Kumin is also feeling nostalgic, by saying “running the home movie backward to a space/ we could be easy in, a kitchen place/ with vodka and ice,/ our words like living meat.” (Kumin 19-21). The comparison of their words to living meat is contradictory because once an animal becomes meat, it is no longer living. “The unspoken allusion is perhaps to the dead meat of the body that no longer speaks, for both Sexton and Kumin had used the metaphor of the body as meat. (“Kumin” 219). The significance of these lines lies in the imagery it produces for the reader. It creates an image of the two friends sitting at a kitchen table drinking and talking. By asserting their “words [are] like living meat” (Kumin 21), it is implying that their conversations are unique and unlike any
In Sexton’s “Cinderella”, the placement of similes and metaphors pulls the reader into a feeling of nostalgia from their childhood and former friendships. In “Cinderella”, there is an unfortunate twist. The “Happily Ever After” that adults and children alike find solace in, never comes. The uncertainty at the end of the poem …show more content…
She is changed by this painful occurrence and this poem’s use of figurative language manifests the hurt she is suffering through. While being enveloped in her despair, Kumin is also feeling nostalgic, by saying “running the home movie backward to a space/ we could be easy in, a kitchen place/ with vodka and ice,/ our words like living meat.” (Kumin 19-21). The comparison of their words to living meat is contradictory because once an animal becomes meat, it is no longer living. “The unspoken allusion is perhaps to the dead meat of the body that no longer speaks, for both Sexton and Kumin had used the metaphor of the body as meat. (“Kumin” 219). The significance of these lines lies in the imagery it produces for the reader. It creates an image of the two friends sitting at a kitchen table drinking and talking. By asserting their “words [are] like living meat” (Kumin 21), it is implying that their conversations are unique and unlike any