Pitch Pines (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Brendan Galvin
- First Published: 1980
- Type of Work: Lyric
- Genres: Free verse, Poetry, Narrative poetry, Meditation
- Subjects: Colonies or colonization, Nature, Abandoned children, Death or dying, Forests or forestry, Trees
The Poem
Brendan Galvin’s “Pitch Pines” is a forty-four-line poem divided into nine stanzas of four to six lines each. Each stanza presents a series of images that culminate in the stanza’s final image. In stanza 1, for example, the trees are described as assaulted by winds and other natural forces; they are bent and twisted. In the final line of the stanza, readers see the trees as a jumble, leaning in all different directions. Stanza 4 gathers images of sourness and acidity until the final line states that the pines’ pollen “curdles water.” The cumulative effect...
[The entire page is 1219 words long]
