Explication paper

“Kizer deals equally well with subjects that have often been treated by women and those that have not.”  says the Poetry Foundation, and I agree with them with a lawyer father and a Biology professor mother she was raised in an educated and intellectual home which was probably the reason why she studied not only at Sarah Lawrence College but at Columbia University and at University ofWashington. It seemed like she had some learning hunger and finally after satisfying it and learning from the best in the field she found that her passion was, writing poems. After reading her biography and getting an idea of her upbringing Kizer’s writing often has to do with: political concerns, feminine movements, “tensions between humans and nature, civilization and chaos,"  “The ungrateful Garden”seems to be concerned with the relationship between man and nature.

The story of king Midas s purpose is to teach the reader a lesson about greed and Kizer uses this to her own purpose to teach the reader of her poem a lesson about human greed with nature. (“Midas watched the golden crust that formed over his steamy sores.”) this first line demonstrates the curse of Midas at its highest pointeven now that he is injured his curse follows him making his crusts golden which is probably heavy and not very comfortable to carry over a streaming sore. The first 8 lines demonstrate just how much he has come to hate the outside of his palace, even though his roses and his garden where very famous for their beauty and grandiosity. The author uses imagery such as (“The serried Roses rosesmetal-bright”) she-‘s giving the reader figurative visual imagery where one can actually feel the blinding effect that those roses must have when “ Blazing motes of sun”
reflect against them. She finishes the second stanza by giving another figurative visual and why not kinesthetic imagery when she says “have scorched my retina with light” this just makes the reader understand how painful it is for Midasto go outside his garden on a sunny day, a garden that he worked on so much he’s not able to enjoy because of his greed.

In the third stanza she keeps explaining the disgrace of king Midas and his harmful garden. This is perhaps the where the reader has the most clear idea of the lesson when the author says (“The gift, he’d thought, would gild his joys”) this line explains how sometimes wehave what we want and we are happy but we think having more is going to make us happier, not knowing that the more we have the more we need to take care of which in the long run will bring us stress and concern. As the Free Dictionary by Farlex defines gild, the word can denote among other things “To adorn unnecessarily something already beautiful” or “To make superfluous additions to what isalready complete” this is exactly what happens in the case of Midas and that’s why the author uses that word, Midas already had lots of gold and money but when he got to make a wish he asked for more, greed in its rawest form.
She gives us another figurative image with the last 2 lines of the third stanza (“His lawns a wilderness of noise”) and (“The heavy clang of leaf on leaf”) this imagery is auralgiving the reader an idea of the annoying sounds a metal garden must make with the gold leafs falling on top of the gold grass, is no longer a retreat where one can hear the birds or meditate smelling the roses because none of the living things lives anymore.
The next two stanzas tell the reader of the physical impact this garden’s nature has over Midas first he’s drinking out from his goldencup of course having a golden cup is not bad but the mead he’s drinking has a yellow color this visual imagery makes us understand that he may be about to drink liquid gold. Not being able to drink or eat anything is just going to kill Midas in a short term. Next the golden thorn in his garden has made his fingers bleed, not even an inoffensive thorn escapes from being harmful to Midas. Once again...