Planting A Sequoia Commentary

Planting A Sequoia, written by Dana Gioia, included in her larger work, The Gods of Winter published in 1991. The work is written in first person point of view because the narrator. This poem’s central assertion is remembrance and honoring of the dead with the family and rebirth. The poem is about the a father that plants a sequoia tree in honor of his recently deceased infant son. Gioia uses imagery in the first few stanzas to emphasize the severity of the father and his families’ grief and despair. In these sections he also reveals the setting of the poem which is Sicily and the reason he chose a sequoia tree. The very first stanza of the Gioia’s poem sets the tone for the poem, which was melancholy, with the imagery the author uses. The imagery type the author uses is visual color imagery when he describes the “blackened horizon” and the “dull gray” sky. The author’s word choice when describing the sky and horizon were dark and mournful words hence the established tone. Towards the end of the first stanza the author writes “of an old year coming to an end” which implies that the season is winter. Winter is the season where all plants wither and die thus creating a desolate lifeless atmosphere. This atmosphere created by winter further emphasizes the mournful tone of the poem. This tone development is important to the central assertion because it describes what the family is feeling like and makes the reader understand the inner meaning of the poem. In this stanza, the author also uses very soft sounding words such as “carefully” and “laying”. These words are used to communicate that the actions being performed are careful and filled with respect for the deceased. This ties back to the central assertion of death because they are paying their respects for the deceased. The second and third stanzas are filled with symbolism and hidden context of the poem. For example, the narrator mentions that in “Sicily a father plants a tree to celebrate his first son’s