Reading Response (Literary Essay) on Poetry

Poetry is art and has different styles and techniques. It can describe a person's view on many things by using these tools. For example, in "The Starry Night" Anne Sexton uses tone, symbolism, and imagery to show her attitude towards death, in her own unique way. She based it off a famous painting by Vincent Van Gogh. Death is a very deep subject to portray, and her poem really showed what she thought.

The tone that she uses really plays throughout the whole poem. In small meaningful sentences or in long strands of her thoughts. In the text she says, "Oh starry starry night! This is how I want to die." This was said in the first stanza as well as the second. This shows how passionate but yet depressing the poet's tone is. It's depressing, because death is a depressing topic. Her tone emphasizes her view on death well in this way.

The poet uses symbolism to show how the starry night represents death to her. Throughout the whole poem "the starry night" is this representation. In the text, it said, "into that rushing beast of the night". This shows that the starry night means much more to the poet. She believes that death is consuming. The starry night is like a world of its own, that represents life and death.

Also Anne uses imagery to describe her perspective. In the text, it said, "It moves. They are all alive." This shows how death itself is alive and moving to her. It's how it draws her to it. The starry night is "like a god, from its eye". With her careful wording, she seems to show how she cherishes death rather than seeing it as a burden. She describes it vividly using imagery.

In conclusion, poetry itself is a tool to show a poet's true feelings on broad subjects, like death in this case. Poetry for Anne Sexton helped her channel her feelings on it. It must've been an important topic for her to write about it so passionately. In reality, Anne Sexton had suicidal tendencies at times. And Vincent Van Gogh had a mental illness and had commited suicide himself. So perhaps they had they're reasons for their art. Art can sprout from many things in your life, and poetry is just a special way of showing it.