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Maxine Tynes Winter Alone

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Maxine Tynes Winter Alone
Poetic Analysis Essay

Throughout the poem “Winter Alone” by Maxine Tynes, the reader has the chance to take a glimpse into the life of someone who suffers from polio. Tynes uses an exceptional word choice enhancing the feeling of solitude all through the piece. Her hope in writing this poem is to have the reader understand the imprisoned life style of an individual who has the disabling virus, polio.

The mood of the poem is automatically set as soon as you read the first line. “Winter solitude,” opens up the piece and immediately has the reader embrace the loneliness that they are about to experience. Directly after being versed on the isolated and lonely mood, we learn from the lines “Memories from my fifth, my tenth year of winter alone” that the speaker has been secluded their entire childhood. The way Tynes
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This person would give anything to be able to force their brain to send the neurons shooting down into their legs, landing in their feet and propelling them forward into the age old snow they’ve been admiring for years. Being an invalid has left the speaker longing to break through the imprisonment behind the window, into the world beyond the window pane. The speaker’s desire to slip and slide in the snow has become urgent at this point. It’s unbearable for this child to sit back and watch their siblings and friends enjoy this mysterious winter wonder land knowing that he or she never will.

The speaker’s imagination draws out in the last couple of lines, “The landscape of small friends and siblings, oblivious in riotous hillside reverie.” This is the world beyond the window pane that this child invisions in their mind. The world consists of being able to fumble and fall into the snow with siblings and friends, oblivious that such a disabling virus exists out

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