Essay: "amends" by adrienne rich

Adrienne Rich, an influential contemporary poet born in 1929, is the author of the poem “Amends”. As we can see the title of the poem is emblematic, because it give us a previous idea of what thepoem is about: amends that we can later deduce are being made by someone or something. We can also appreciate that the poem is composed by four stanzas which each one has four verses.
In “Amends” thenight, and the moonlight’s effects or “actions” are being described, and it is established a relationship between the moonlight and the sleeping people. The moon introduces the light into the night,because it feels sorry for the sleeping people. So the moon tries to make night even better than the day, because it wants the sleepers to get rid of their bad memory while sleeping, that’s why it makesamends.

In the first stanza de poet describes the night and the surroundings. At the beginning it talks about the light in the bark of an apple tree. It tell us that is a cold night, probably anight of autumn or winter. “A white star, then another exploding out of the bark” suggests that time is passing by, as more light from the stars appear in the bark, “exploding”, each time reflecting astronger light.“ Picking at” is used to refer to the moonlight as something soft that is “touching” the rocks.
I would say there is a contrast between the image of the sky full of stars, which is“exploding” and is abrupt, with the image of the delicate moon “picking at small stones”. The first three verses presents us an energetic introduction, with a violent introductory tone, that is laterchanged into a calm tone.
We can also see the use of an aural imagery, which is the assonance, to achieve a particular kind of effect on us by: “Nights like this”.

The second Stanza shows therelationship between the moon and the nature. The first line shows how times goes by. As the night is getting deeper, it illuminates more stones as the tide rises. It uses the personification of the moon...