It's a Rainbow of Colours Man, It's Burning My Eyes - Memories of West St and Lepke V

This post is part of my poetry analysis on Robert Lowell's Memories of West Street and Lepke, the poem and original post can be found at: http://robertlowellandco.blogspot.com/2009/05/like-arrr-this-poems-about-like-jail.html

He uses these references throughout the poem to describe characters and give the reader a feel of their personality. For example he uses the term “Jaundice yellow” to describe Abramowitz, portraying him as sickly, frail and weak. In turn, he used “chocolate brown” to describe the pimps’ suits. What comes to mind when we think of chocolate? Luxury and excess much like what the pimps had in prison. Finally he describes his daughter in “flame flamingo infants-wear” portraying her as bright and bubbly.
He not only uses these terms to describe people he met but also to describe himself. The main use of vivid imagery in the poem is the repeated references to fire. The words “I was a fire-breathing catholic C.O” help signify his fiery passion to the reader. He uses another reference to fire later in the poem, while in prison he references soot (“through sooty clothesline entanglements”). This soot represents the dissipation or ‘burning out’ of his passion, this soot is what is left over. Fire is once again mentioned in the poem right back at the start in the description of his daughter (“Like the sun she rises in her flame flamingo infants-wear”). These lines not only portray her as bright and bubbly but as his renewed passion in life, the phoenix that rose from the soot and ash. This does however come at a price; he seems utterly dispassionate about everything else much like the lobotomized Czar Lepke. This is why his daughter is so important in this poem; she becomes an outlet for his passion in these ‘tranquilised times’, something Lepke did not have.

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This paragraph is used in much the same way as the one about the frequent use of juxtapostion. If a poet uses a particular example of vivid imagery or emotive language it is important to include it. The use of colours and of the element of fire has a deeper meaning that to help the reader visualise the scene at hand. In this paragraph I needed more direct quotations than ever because you cannot simply explain vivid imagery it has to be shown. Finally, I have used the last few sentances to link my paragraph to the next one.