The Crane: An Emotive Poem About Empathy And The Power Of Human Emotions

Write a two page analysis of the poem “The Crane,” by Javier Peñalosa (It is in a pdf attached to this prompt. The poem is in Spanish first and in English second, translated by Robin Myers.)

The poem is about an encounter with a wounded crane (a large, long-legged and long-necked bird) hidden in a boat, how the speaker in the poem reacts to it, what he/she does, and how that scene stays in their memory, years later.

Read the poem a few times before you begin writing, and again once you have started working on the essay. It is impossible to extract everyting from a poem in a single or a couple of readings. Going over the poem again and lingering over certain words and certain lines will help you extract subtle meanings that you may have missed before.

Focusing on Empathy and the Power of Human Emotions

Javier Peñalosa’s poem “The Crane”, is a captivating and thought provoking piece of art that talks about empathy and the power of human emotions over the suffering of both man and other creation. The poem, using the life of a bird appeals to the mysterious and the sacred nature of life and living. Throughout the poem, the persona expresses how he got overwhelmed by the struggles of a dying bird. He makes a parallel comparison of the bird’s helps situation to what many may be going through while trying to find purpose in life. The event happens to be traumatizing to the persona for he happens to have recurrent visions of the bird that he killed many years ago. The persona creates intimacy, fear and outright malice in the narration which makes the reader to reevaluate their attitude about love and hatred. The persona’s desire to have another opportunity to crash the bird’s skull makes the reader wonder whether he was indeed remorseful of his heinous past. “…But I’m waiting for it to fall so I can draw close again, the oar clutched in my hands”

There is an extensive use of imagery and figures of speech throughout the poem. There is a clever use of similes, which essentially is the comparison of one thing with another thing of a different kind (Delgado & Valdez, 2018). Similes are mainly used to make a description more emphatic or vivid. For instance, the persona describes the feeble state of the bird as having its wings broken, and its long, thin neck, “as graceful as the reeds”. By comparing the bird’s long neck to reeds, he makes the reader to create a visual image of how emaciated the bird was and probably death could relieve it of pain. Also, when the persona finally kills the bird, he uses imagery to show us how the bird died with little resistance. The bird did not make a single movement or sound. “It moved that leg of river grasses once or twice”. A leg of river grasses is a term to refer back to the reed like state of the bird’s legs. There is also an element of repetition that makes the poem both memorable and appealing to the reader. The persona constantly uses the pronoun “I” in reference to the performer of the action. All the mystery inflicted on the bird was apparently achieved by one person who is the speaker.

The poem employs enjambment which, essentially refers to thoughts or phrases that do not conclude at the line break but instead overlaps into the next line (Barry, 2016). In the first stanza of the poem, the persona concludes the last stanza by breaking and finishing up with the word “flight”.

The tone of the poem is both remorseful and sad. Tone describes the general feeling in the poem (White & Zoss, 2015).  The persona gives a narration of how the life of the helpless bird was ended by his oar. There is some sense of guilt in the persona’s voice. In the third stanza, we read “..I felt a line of cold rise slowly to my neck, my hands shook, since they couldn’t weep”. He felt shame on her face. There is also an element of personification in the poem when the persona talks of compassion wearing a face of shame for the first time. “…and in my soul, compassion wore shame’s face for the first time.”

The title of the message and the topic addressed is intriguing. How often do we stop to empathize with other creatures or people that may be suffering in one way or another?  Is it fair to end the life of anyone or anything that may be suffering?

References:

Barry, P. (2016). Reading poetry.

Delgado, E. B., & Valdez, R. M. (2018). Poiesis: Bringing Our Stories Into Being Through Poetry.

The Crane. Translated by Robin Myers

White, A. M., & Zoss, M. (2015, July). “It's a Sad, Sad Story”: Teaching Emotional Connections and Tone in Literature. In The Educational Forum (Vol. 79, No. 3, pp. 213-229). Routledge.