In the poem, “Recurring Awakening” by Franz Wright, Wright tries to immerse and entwine the reader by the use of his words. He does this by using very blunt and simplistic wording. The reader comes to understand this is a dark poem and about a subject all living things will encounter, death. Wright confabulates about death very bluntly in the third line, “...point blank, news that you passed late last night.” (Wright) The next line that follows is an enjambment and Wright states, “What is it, some sort of exam?” (Wright) This can be taken more one way. This writer interpretation is that, Wright asking if dying is a test, and if so can we pass it. This writer found Wright’s answer sort of cynical, to the subject at hand (death and the passing off someone he knew). Wright never truly answered who had passed or if even someone did pass (die). He left it up to the reader to figure it out.
Another part of this puzzle is when Wright states, “I find myself walking along a high ridge in the wake of an ice storm; at the heart of some annihilated fairy tale of forest in West…show more content… This happens in lines 16-19 on page 60 of the New Yorker, when Wright describes, “And finally, there it is: your face, floating at my feet with nose pressed to transparent black ice; yes, you are certainly dead, all signs point to it. Wrapped in white cerements.” (Wright) This author’s interpretation of those lines, is that Wright or someone is looking at a casket with a glass cover and they (Wright or someone) are looking at a corpse in the casket. This is why Wright mentions, “nose, pressed to transparent black ice.” (Wright) Wright uses great alliteration and metaphoric language to describe something so depressing. The “white cerements”, is clothing worn by the dead which describes this imagery even more