The Great Blue Heron (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Carolyn Kizer
- First Published: 1958
- Type of Work: Elegy
- Genres: Poetry, Elegy
- Subjects: Children, Mothers, Parents and children, Love or romance, Ghosts or apparitions, Death or dying, Birds, Animals
The Poem
Carolyn Kizer first published “The Great Blue Heron” in Poetry magazine as a poem of fifty-five lines and three irregular stanzas. When it was later reprinted in Mermaids in the Basement, she split the middle section, creating a fourth stanza. She has dedicated the poem to “M.A.K.” These initials and the dates that follow them, as well as the content of the poem, confirm that this is an elegy, a long, sustained poem of mourning, for her mother, Mabel Ashley Kizer, who died in 1955 in her seventy-fifth year. The tone is serious and melancholy. The...
[The entire page is 1447 words long]
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