Frost and Flynn

Robert Frost’s Witch of Coos is a dark poem which tells its readers of a conversation between the narrator, a woman and her son. The woman who is presumably a witch, along with her son tells the narrator of an event that took place forty years prior. This event which she describes is an occasion when she claims to have heard and witnessed a skeleton wake in the cellar and carry itself to the attic. There are some great metaphors used to describe this skeleton, one of which comes from the son when he states that it “carried itself like a pile of dishes.” A pile of dishes are unstable and swaying with little control, which one has to consent would the image that would be associated with a walking skeleton.

             The mother has a more romanticized metaphor for this skeleton as she claims it “was put together not like a man, but like a chandelier.” This metaphor begins to answer the question of who the skeleton is. Throughout the story, the mother mentions that the skeleton “came to her with hands outstretched, the way he (skeleton) did in life once,” which indicates that the mother at one time was either emotionally or physically close to whomever the skeleton once was. Further into the story she admits that her deceased husband killed the man instead of her which can further lead one to conclude that this mother had an affair, which makes the reader understand the meaning behind such a romantic metaphor given to describe a particularly terrifying event.

            Did a skeleton really walk from the cellar to the attic? No one but the mother witnessed the event. The son was too young to remember any of this and the husband, as admitted by the mother, never saw or heard anything though he was present when this event supposedly took place. Is it guilt, love, or did this event actually take place? The dark tones to the poem and the wonderful metaphors used make this deathly poem a lively one to read. (Bad pun I know but I could not help it.)

http://www.internal.org/Robert_Frost/The_Witch_of_Coos

In comparison, Nick Flynn’s Bag of Mice also uses great metaphors to progress a dark story. In his poem, Flynn speaks of finding a suicide note in his dream. This suicide not is written in pencil on a brown paper bag which is filled with mice. Flynn uses metaphors such as the penciled writing “smoldering,” and claiming that the writing was his friends “voice being released into the night.” These metaphors along with the mice representing the soul of the one who took their life, gives the impression that the author, though saddened at his loss, finds comfort in the idea that his friend is finally free.  

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/bag-of-mice/