Poetry Prompt

In the poem “Here” the poet, Philip Larkin uses many techniques to convey his attitude toward the places he describes; like image, personification, and simile. He uses these to get his message across to the readers in the best way possible. The tone of the places he is describing is vacant; lost; quiet; dead. The poet portrays this once great city that is abandoned and is writing for people to return.
Through this entire poem, the poet uses imagery like in line 8 “The piled gold clouds, the shinning gull-marked mud,” and in lines 19 and 20 “ fishy-smelling mud pastoral of ships.” These show that there was more meaning behind the clouds, they weren’t just clouds they represent something else they are gold clouds. This whole poem is basically imagery because the poet is trying to make the reader picture in their mind what these places look like and all the poet has are words.
The poet also uses personification to the tone, like in line 13 “The dead straight miles…flat-faced trolleys”. Miles can’t really be dead and trolleys don’t really have faces. He uses personification to explain more in detail the straight miles and the trolleys, it gives the objects more depth and meaning. The poet shows that he wanted to explain in detail really how vacant this place is because the miles are dead; the poet wants to give some life to the trolleys by giving them faces. It makes each thing he talks about have different meanings when he uses personification.
Simile is also used by the poet to emphasize more the object, so the reader can truly get what the poet pictures, his tone. He uses this in line 23 “fast-shadowed wheat-fields, running high as hedges,” and in lines 25 and 26 “Here silence stands like heat.” The poet wants to compare to things that are some what alike so the reader can have a better understanding of the wheat and the silence.
All these techniques that the poet uses in this poem are to get his point across better to the readers, he only has a short amount of space to tell the story he wants to tell and these techniques aid to mission. He can say what he means and have the reader understand in so few words because of these techniques.