“The Oven Bird” by Robert Frost and “Encounter” by Czeslaw Milosz
This is for the Birds In literature, birds often stand as symbols for countless things, such as freedom or oppression - flying free versus being constantly caged - love and peace - pigeons who will go to great lengths to be with their mate and the dove from Noah’s ark - or a warning sign of death - “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe or vultures who hover over dying or already dead creatures. In both of these two poems - “The Oven Bird” by Robert Frost and “Encounter” by Czeslaw Milosz - birds serve as symbols – but in drastically different ways. In “Encounter,” the narrator is reminiscing on a journey once taken, and wondering what happens to us when we die and where we go. Milosz uses a slightly uneasy, reflective tone. The theme of “Encounter” is that life is a journey and – ultimately – all of us are going to finish the journey and move on. The poem starts off with a flashback, which consists of the first two stanzas. In the first stanza, he paints a picture of the terrain they were traversing and mentions a red bird rising in the darkness right before dawn. This sharp, deep color stands in stark contrast to the frozen tundra they’re navigating. In the second stanza, he talks of a hare darting across the road and one of his friends pointing to it. The second half of the poem is in the present, and he uses an apostrophe to address his love. He tells her that both the hare and the pointer are dead. The climax of the poem occurs in the fourth stanza when he asks his love – almost desperately – where the two deceased are now and where they are going to, but feels it important to inform her that he isn’t sorrowful, but curious. The sentences in the first half of the poem are short and concise. Each line is its own sentence. They’re merely descriptive narrations. In comparison, the second half of the poem has longer, more complex sentences with a breathlessness about them that makes the poet seem like he can’t get his ideas and questions out fast enough. Also,