The Stone of Heaven (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Jane Hirshfield
- First Published: 1988
- Type of Work: Ode
- Genres: Poetry, Lyric poetry, Ode
- Subjects: Nature, Art or artists, Painting or painters, Planets, Earth, Life, biological, Stone
The Poem
“The Stone of Heaven” is a free-verse ode of thirty-two lines arranged in five stanzas. The stanzas range from two to sixteen lines of irregular length. The last stanza, a sixteen-line hymn to the earth, includes human beings in its praising and naming and is marked by many repetitions of initial words in succeeding lines (anaphora). The voice of the poet serves as a guide in the first two stanzas of the poem, signifying a place (“here”) where the earth is the many greens of jade (known as the stone of heaven in China). She further specifies the place in the...
[The entire page is 1526 words long]
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