Report to Wordsworth: Analysis of Boe Kim Chang's Poem

Context and Overview

• Publication: In Boe Kim Chang's collection Another Place (1992).
• Themes: Loss of reverence for nature, human greed, environmental crisis.
• Address: Appeals to the long-dead Romantic poet William Wordsworth, lamenting the death throes of nature.

Poem Structure and Literary Devices

• Form: A Shakespearean sonnet (14 lines, rhyme scheme: abab cdcd efef gg).
• Disruption: Half/slant rhymes, lack of regular base meter symbolize environmental disharmony.
• Volta: Occurs unusually at line 11, indicating humanity's spiritual failure.

Literary Techniques

• Personification: Nature as a female figure.
• Metaphor and Simile: "Wound widening in the sky", "sky slowing like a dying clock".
• Sound Patterns: Alliteration ("wound widening"), sibilance ("smothered by the smog").

Mythological References

• Figures: Proteus, Triton, Neptune.
• Significance: God's powerlessness highlights the environmental crisis's gravity.

Analysis of Key Imagery

• Nature's Personification: Vulnerability due to human greed.
• Apocalyptic Vision: God depicted as vulnerable, signifying comprehensive existential collapse.

Contrast with Wordsworth's Views

• Romantic Ideal vs. Reality: Changes Wordsworth's line to convey urgency and irreversible damage.

Conclusion

• Lamentation: Ends with an ominous vision of widening environmental wounds and divine collapse.
• Message: Human actions threaten the natural and divine worlds, signaling a profound existential crisis.

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