Compare and Contrast Two Poems - the Rain and Just Walking Around

This essay shall compare and contrast two poems of these two poets: “The Rain” and “Just Walking Around.”

Both of the poems utilize allusion which is “a casual reference in literature to a person, place, event, or another passage of literature, often without explicit identification”(web.cn). When authors use allusion, they assume that the readers will recognize the original sources and relate their meaning to the new context” to insinuate the connotations different from what it appears it to be. In addition, In the two poems, the speakers’ strong emotions of loneliness and self-conflicts are clearly indicated between the lines. In addition, another striking feature of “Just Walking Around” John Ashbery wisely combine the abstract depiction with the concrete imageries, even though some people criticize the elusiveness of his poems. His outstanding originality of using contextual symbols is emerged between the lines of "Just Walking Around." Comparatively speaking, although Robert Creeley also apply allusion--"rain"(88) and connotation--"Be Wet"(Creeley, 89), his narrative style is characterized by understatement, down-to-earth description and precise language. However, there is a common feature existing in the two poems, which is the forms of the poems jump out of the traditional regulations in favor of a freely verse that took shape as the process of composing it was underway. On the other hand, this essay shall apply psychoanalysis approach to analyze the pathos and themes in the two of the poems.

In the poem “The Rain,” the writer elucidates the character’s loneliness. It depicts a scene that the speaker sits alone on a wood bench in a gloomy and dark night, watching the traces caused by the rain dropping down the edge of umbrella, listening to the sound of falling. He is asking himself what makes him lock in the uneasiness and also expects his lover can get rid of the yoke in the minds to love him and release her sexual desire. In terms of the structure of the poem, it can easily be divided into two sections. The first four stanzas obey the construction of four lines and the last four stanzas follow the form of two lines. In the meantime, the previous section can be deemed as the speaker's monologue or self-reflection and the latter part plays the roles of both his answer to his doubt and his longing for love. “What am I to myself that must be remembered insisted upon?” From this rhetorical question, the narrator seems to look for something important in his life. Then, the speaker compares the answer to the rain, which is neither easier nor harder than the rain falling and that is something making him “so insistent” (90). The scene that the speaker is questioning himself in a rainy night vividly establishes a tone of melancholy and a lonely atmosphere, by which the readers also can feel themselves in the solitude of a rainy night. After the lonely tone of soliloquy, the poem transfers to an expletive tone, communicating with his lover. “Love, if you love me, lie next to me.” “The getting out of the tiredness, the fatuousness, the semi-lust of intentional indifference.” The pathos of those sentences express that the speaker attempts to inspire his lover to be free from all inhibitions to enjoy the sexual entertainment. Likewise, the other poem—“Just Walking Around” written by John Ashbery describes the speaker’s monologue, which illuminates the struggle between his own darkness of humanity and the brightness of maturity and the future. There are poignant doubts in the speaker’s minds that why the fate of life seems to be circular. He is striving for the light of the future and exploring the mystery in the essence of life; however, the dark side of his humanity is always leading him to a wrong way so as to be involved in an endless loop. Similar to the first poem, the tone of this poem also can be regarded as a form of self-meditation.