User:Christiene

This page is an experiment to see how useful a wiki would be to a small company.

Step One
Archibald Lampman uses his natural ability to connect with nature and to his environment to write “A thunderstorm”. With intense emotion present, he uses numerous techniques to seize the attention of his readers and draw them into his elaborate poetry. His use of imagery is the focal point of his poems, and it is Lampman’s use of description that captivates readers and helps him to achieve his purpose as a poet. In “A Thunderstorm”, Lampman uses imagery, and also changes the rhyme scheme to depict a definite mood to further draw in the reader. Throughout this poem, it was simple to continuously envision what Archibald Lampman was seeing when he wrote his poem. Poetry is used as a way to express deep meaning, and in order for the reader to appreciate that connection, they need a clear mental picture of what the author is writing about. The mood of this poem also includes a shift that makes it more challenging to keep the reader concentrated. It starts as describing the calm before the storm, and shifts to a rapid and frantic atmosphere as the storm approaches. The tone is extremely evident, and it is created by the imagery used. “Column on column comes the drenching rain” is a significant line in this sonnet, because it describes how fierce the storm is. The rain is no longer falling as droplets, but instead is just a sheet of water, engulfing the forest. Not only does the imagery in this poem succeed in creating powerful mental pictures, but it also appeals to the senses of sounds. The majority of writers can consistently use words to appeal to visual senses, but Archibald Lampman also takes it a step further and creates an entire picture of sight and sound. “The wind-rack in the muttering sky” and “the long roar of elm trees” shows how the wind is slowly creeping through the branches, and is creating an eerie murmur throughout the entire forest. Sound is one of the most comprehensive and familiar senses, and when a reader can understand what the wind is like, they can understand the effect it is having on the mood of the poem.

Section Two
Another aspect of imagery that Archibald Lampman plays with is the rhyme scheme. Instead of using a typical Shakespearian or Italian rhyme scheme, he creates his own. The rhyme scheme is very irregular, and all over the place, which adds to the imagery, because it creates different feelings for the reader. The poem does not have a perfectly distinct rhyme sequence, so it comes off as being very frantic, which plays on the imagery of an approaching storm. The fact that a rainstorm is impending creates an anxious nature in the sonnet, and because Lampman wrote his poem without any distinctive format, it shows that he wanted the reader to feel how hectic the environment is. Clearly, I believe that the technique that best allowed Archibald Lampman to achieve his purpose in “A thunderstorm” was imagery. I believe the purpose of his sonnet is to show that nature goes through stages, and before certain stages occur, the actions and emotions present in the environment are full of intense feelings. Archibald Lampman has a gift of connecting to nature, and he is also skilled as relating his love for his surrounding to everyone around him using imagery.