piano poem analysis essay

“Piano” is a poem about the power of memory and about the often disillusioning disjunction between the remembered experience of childhood and the realities of adult life. The poem is nostalgic without being sentimental; that is, it captures the power of one’s experiences as a child without ignoring the facts that one’s adult memories are selective and one’s perceptions and perspective as a child are severely limited by lack of experience, ignorance, and innocence. Lawrence does, however, provide adequate reason for the intense feeling, and he supports it with concrete, physical detail about the piano and the child’s mother. The theme in “Piano” is a common one in much of Lawrence’s writing, from short stories such as “The Rocking-Horse Winner” to novels such as Sons and Lovers (1913). How do adults make their peace with the memories they have of their childhoods, and how do they separate memories of actual experience from imagined and invented moments? The speaker in this poem knows that his memory casts a romanticized and sentimentalized glow over the actual events that occurred, yet the power of the past, and his deep need to recapture a similar sense of the peace and protection he felt as a child, overwhelm his rational mind. In Lawrence’s world, the power of emotion is almost always too potent for the power of thought; what one feels intrudes on one’s thinking, even at times one does not wish it to. It is. (The entire section is 420 words.).
Lawrence centers much of his writing, both poetic and fictional, on the creation and development of a central metaphor. In “Piano,” it is the image, with all of its associations, at least in Western European Christian culture, of Sunday evenings at home with one’s family. No matter that most people’s experiences were seldom so peaceful and harmonious—Lawrence’s certainly were not either. It is the idea of a cozy and warm parlor on a cold winter’s evening, with a family gathered around a piano singing hymns and enjoying one another’s company, that is the important factor. The setting and the music combine to invoke the myth of the ideal family at home: warm, loving, reverent, and peaceful. Lawrence effectively juxtaposes this with the singer and the piano in the speaker’s present, a speaker who is about to “burst into clamor” (line 9), accompanying a piano which is reaching a crescendo with a “great black” apassionato. Notice that it is the present experience which is large, dark, and noisy; the speaker’s remembered experience is small, warm and “tingling” (line 3). The ironic tone in the poem, and the clear ironic distance between the poetic voice and his memories of childhood, are central to the poem’s success. Without them the tone might become maudlin, but with them one sees and experiences the clear disjunction between a child’s and an adult’s eye—between a child’s perspective that all is well in the world and the adult’s knowledge, after the fact, that this was not really the case. Lawrence’s poetic forms and devices, then, echo and reinforce the ironic gap between the original experience of the child, now transformed through the power of memory and imagination, and the current experience of the adult, which acts as trigger and catalyst for his descent into his own past.
Analysis of the poem 'Piano' by D.H.Lawrence done by the Yr.11 English group of.
The poem Piano by D.H. Lawrence is thoroughly analysed. This video serves as a guide to any student studying GCSE english Literature, or just anyone with.
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