The Mind Has Mountains By John Wain Analysis

group of stresses: “bright images”, “ravaged plain”, or “shot boy”, “white sheet”, “own blood” “saw blood” and “brave still, trying” “stop himself” “white girl waiting” and in the third stanza still more in lines 2,6, 7,8,10, 11 which make for an emphasis and pulsation beyond that of ordinary speech. Word or phrase repetition together with sound repetition also heightens the rhythmic quality, while the run of stressed syllables in “All day/ I have thought” gives weight, the heavy pace of her sensing of violence and death, just as the sequence of stresses in the last line “never seen anyone die,” strums like a sad closing chord weighed for the finale. The poem presents a very subtle playing by ear, an instinctive rhythm in keeping with subject and form. …show more content…
John Wain’s analogy for her poems:“ you hold them out/ As modestly as tea- things on a tray” could not be more opt for the work presented in Recoveries, or for that matter, for her usual demeanor as a writer. “ I see you never doubt/Even in those lost days, denying stark,/ What is the work that you must be about …” The quiet pursuit continues (Wain 199).
The two collections Recoveries and The Mind has Mountains can be grouped as Art and the experience of human suffering. After eight poems “Sequence in Hospital,” which opens this fifth volume, she has written herself back to order and proceeds to her habitual ordering of experience. Yet this book remains full of fear and loss: a return to childhood’s troubled memories and her loss of innocence and security. A number of subjects are similar to ones used previously and more