Madye Moore Assignment 3

1. Mary Oliver creates both an empathetic and hopeful tone throughout her poem "Singapore" through her use of imagery. The tone she creates in the first 6 stanzas of the poem is empathetic. She talks about how "a darkness was ripped from [her] eyes" upon seeing the janitor in charge of cleaning the bathrooms, and how "her beauty and embarrassment struggled together, and neither could win." She continues to talk about how "we must watch her as she stares down at her labor, which is dull enough." These uses of imagery help create the empathetic tone because they show how the author is feeling bad for the girl, and her use of imagery causes the readers, like myself, to feel bad for her as well. The tone she creates in the second half of the poem is hopeful. This tone is also created through Oliver's use of imagery. She starts out by saying "I don't doubt for a moment that she loves her life,"  and she continues by talking about how "[she] wants her to rise from the crust and the slop" and find "the light that can shine out of life." This shows her hopeful tone for the girl because she knows that there are ways to come out of the situation she is in, and she is hopeful that the girl will find one of those ways so that she can make a better life for herself, even though she makes it seem like she's in a perfectly happy state.

2. I do not view myself as an artist. I can't draw or paint for the life of me, and I'm the least creative person I know. However, Amy Lowell's quote expresses a belief about art that is similar to mine. Lowell's quote states that "Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in." This is similar to my belief about art because I think that art is simply used to express things that are hard to express with words. Whether it's dance, music, poetry, or literature, I believe that all art forms are used to fulfill the need for expression that comes from one's experiences in life, from day to day experiences to just one moment or thing you saw that stuck in your head, making you feel the need to express it in a more artistic way than just explaining it.