Sentimentality

Robert Lowell does a good job at provoking emotion without sentimentality. In his poem, “water,” he is describing a memory of a past experience. When reading this poem I noticed that Lowell did not use and adjectives to describe his personal feelings. Instead he created a feeling of despair by writing about a time that cannon be returned to. In line 13 he writes, “Remember? We sat on this slab of rock.” This seems to imply that he is remember times past. Also, in line 29 he writes, “We wished our two souls might return like gulls.” This implies that he is missing someone that is no longer in his life. This creates emotion in the reader while at the same time steering clear of sentimentality, and allows the reader to feel his or her own emotions. Galway Kinnell’s “First song” was also a good example of poetry that avoided sentimentalism. I think that Kinnell accomplishes this by describing someone else’s feeling, although it could have actually been a personal experience. In this piece the descriptions of the sounds of nature create a feeling of peace and contentment without saying it directly. Although the word “joy” was used many times I do not think that created a feeling of sentimentality. Perhaps is more emotions were directly stated it might have come off as a more sentimental. Both of these poems are successful at conveying emotions without coming across as sentimental. This allows the reader to better interpret the writing and experience their own feelings about it.