Will award 30 points for a good answer. Please help! Analyse the key points and literary devices used in the poem: In the Time of Plague by N. Scott Momaday.

In the Time of Plague

We keep indoors.
When we dare to venture out
We are cautious. Our neighbors
Smile, but in their eyes there is
Reserve and suspicion.
They keep their distance,
As we do ours, in mute accord.
Much of our fear is unspoken,
For there is at last the weight of custom,
The tender of rote consolation.
We endure thoughts of demise
And measure the distance of death.
Death too wears a mask.
But consider, there may well be good
In our misfortune if we can find it. It is
Hidden in the darkness of our fear.
But discover it and see that it is hope
And more; it is the gift of opportunity.
We have the rare chance to prevail,
To pose a resolution for world renewal.
We can be better than we have ever been.
We can improve the human condition.
We can imagine, then strive to realize,
Our potential for goodness and morality.
We can overcome pestilence, war and poverty.
We can preserve our sacred purpose. We can
Determine who we are in our essential nature
And who we can be. We are committed to this end
For our own sake and for the sake of those
Who will come after us. There is a better future,
And we can secure it. Let us take up the task, and
Let us be worthy of our best destiny.
N. SCOTT MOMADAY

Explanation:

Two themes predominate in all of N. Scott Momaday’s work, both poetry and prose. First, he celebrates material, sensory existence. The writer lovingly examines nature and the artifacts of human life, from the smallest creature to the most vast panorama. Whether describing a ghost town in Colorado or the coming of rain to a southwestern desert, he is concerned to express the perceptual and emotional experience of physical life with eloquence and precision. The prose is often lush; the poetry can be spare, but exceedingly resonant.

A second preoccupation is with imagination, that power of mind that transforms and illumines the perceptible world and endows it with meaning. Momaday sees language as the primary vehicle for this transformation and affirms again and again the elemental importance of words. Collective imagination working on natural existence creates culture, and in his examination of the contrasts and interweavings of the cultures of his experience, Momaday explores them as products of the human imagination. In an early essay, he speaks of two Kiowa legends, which he then shows to be emblematic of Kiowa thought and history and of the Kiowas’ response to their history. In the same essay, he points to the metaphorical language of a non-Indian historian whose imagery betrays his fundamental bias and underlies a whole theory of civilization versus savagery.

Momaday’s prose works—his essays, autobiographies, and fiction—treat the dynamic of the two elements—sensory life and the power of imagination—discursively and sometimes analytically. His poetry, on the other hand, focuses most often on the fundamental meeting of nature and imagination in the act of perception itself. This is a consummately introspective procedure, and the poetry collected in The Gourd Dancer demonstrates a loving attentiveness to the natural world as it impinges on the mind.

The number of Momaday’s published poems is small—The Gourd Dancer contains fewer than fifty—and he has spoken of the slowness of writing. Nevertheless, the poems derive from a wide variety of traditions, from the eighteenth century epigram to Whitmanian self-celebration to Native American ceremonial lyrics. They consist of free verse, metrical verse, prose poems, and syllabic verse. Throughout Momaday’s poems, in those reflecting his time in the Soviet Union, astronauts’ lunar explorations, a vision of planetary holocaust, reflections on landscape—and in his prose works as well—there is woven this theme of the relationship between material reality and the signifying imagination.

Explanation:

Two themes predominate in all of N. Scott Momaday’s work, both poetry and prose. First, he celebrates material, sensory existence. The writer lovingly examines nature and the artifacts of human life, from the smallest creature to the most vast panorama. Whether describing a ghost town in Colorado or the coming of rain to a southwestern desert, he is concerned to express the perceptual and emotional experience of physical life with eloquence and precision. The prose is often lush; the poetry can be spare, but exceedingly resonant.

A second preoccupation is with imagination, that power of mind that transforms and illumines the perceptible world and endows it with meaning. Momaday sees language as the primary vehicle for this transformation and affirms again and again the elemental importance of words. Collective imagination working on natural existence creates culture, and in his examination of the contrasts and interweavings of the cultures of his experience, Momaday explores them as products of the human imagination. In an early essay, he speaks of two Kiowa legends, which he then shows to be emblematic of Kiowa thought and history and of the Kiowas’ response to their history. In the same essay, he points to the metaphorical language of a non-Indian historian whose imagery betrays his fundamental bias and underlies a whole theory of civilization versus savagery.

Momaday’s prose works—his essays, autobiographies, and fiction—treat the dynamic of the two elements—sensory life and the power of imagination—discursively and sometimes analytically. His poetry, on the other hand, focuses most often on the fundamental meeting of nature and imagination in the act of perception itself. This is a consummately introspective procedure, and the poetry collected in The Gourd Dancer demonstrates a loving attentiveness to the natural world as it impinges on the mind.

The number of Momaday’s published poems is small—The Gourd Dancer contains fewer than fifty—and he has spoken of the slowness of writing. Nevertheless, the poems derive from a wide variety of traditions, from the eighteenth century epigram to Whitmanian self-celebration to Native American ceremonial lyrics. They consist of free verse, metrical verse, prose poems, and syllabic verse. Throughout Momaday’s poems, in those reflecting his time in the Soviet Union, astronauts’ lunar explorations, a vision of planetary holocaust, reflections on landscape—and in his prose works as well—there is woven this theme of the relationship between material reality and the signifying imagination.

Explanation:

Two themes predominate in all of N. Scott Momaday’s work, both poetry and prose. First, he celebrates material, sensory existence. The writer lovingly examines nature and the artifacts of human life, from the smallest creature to the most vast panorama. Whether describing a ghost town in Colorado or the coming of rain to a southwestern desert, he is concerned to express the perceptual and emotional experience of physical life with eloquence and precision. The prose is often lush; the poetry can be spare, but exceedingly resonant.

A second preoccupation is with imagination, that power of mind that transforms and illumines the perceptible world and endows it with meaning. Momaday sees language as the primary vehicle for this transformation and affirms again and again the elemental importance of words. Collective imagination working on natural existence creates culture, and in his examination of the contrasts and interweavings of the cultures of his experience, Momaday explores them as products of the human imagination. In an early essay, he speaks of two Kiowa legends, which he then shows to be emblematic of Kiowa thought and history and of the Kiowas’ response to their history. In the same essay, he points to the metaphorical language of a non-Indian historian whose imagery betrays his fundamental bias and underlies a whole theory of civilization versus savagery.

Momaday’s prose works—his essays, autobiographies, and fiction—treat the dynamic of the two elements—sensory life and the power of imagination—discursively and sometimes analytically. His poetry, on the other hand, focuses most often on the fundamental meeting of nature and imagination in the act of perception itself. This is a consummately introspective procedure, and the poetry collected in The Gourd Dancer demonstrates a loving attentiveness to the natural world as it impinges on the mind.

The number of Momaday’s published poems is small—The Gourd Dancer contains fewer than fifty—and he has spoken of the slowness of writing. Nevertheless, the poems derive from a wide variety of traditions, from the eighteenth century epigram to Whitmanian self-celebration to Native American ceremonial lyrics. They consist of free verse, metrical verse, prose poems, and syllabic verse. Throughout Momaday’s poems, in those reflecting his time in the Soviet Union, astronauts’ lunar explorations, a vision of planetary holocaust, reflections on landscape—and in his prose works as well—there is woven this theme of the relationship between material reality and the signifying imagination.