The Cool Web – What does the poem suggest about language and how does it do it?
The title of the poem, The Cool Web, is a metaphor of the language itself. The remarkable connection of words is quite suggestive of something clinging, inevitable but also youthfully detracting. The language is essential to make un-seen dreams real, visible in others boundless imaginations and using magic words to draw accurate maps of thoughts.
‘Children are dumb to say how the day is’ The first stanza treats of the limitation of children’s articulation. During the early years of childhood, children are unable and limited to use the power of language, to express through it feelings, make themselves feel better or simply be informed about the outside world’s loss incurring events. ‘But we have speech, to chill the angry day’ By we, the author means the adult world. Children perceive the surroundings the same way we do, however they are speechless. Adults have the ability to create using their tongues words, sentences and whole stories. ‘We spell away…’ Spell is in another words a charm, it can magically turn the negative into a positive done only with one single word. Spell is also a verb, with the meaning of dividing a word into letters. Can this be conceptualized that the power of word has the same weight as the charm’s one? Probably yes. The third stanza discourse of how the language helps to regulate the joy and fear. ‘We grow sea-green at last and coldly die in brininess and volubility’ The line is a metaphor, the sea-green isn’t grown by the humans but we glorify the language. When the death comes, the language remains like the salt in the sea-green. The last stanza deals with the danger of losing the language. The author is aware of the protection and joy the language afford us. The service provided doesn’t have to last forever. The improper use of the speech may lead to lose of self-possession therefore to a disaster of becoming speechless children even before our...