The contradictions in the poem provide a sense of surreality that aides in the deceiving aspect of art, i. The remainder of the first stanza establishes the salt mine as a wintery fantasy, with several references to its brilliant whiteness, describing it in terms of "banks" and "slopes", and closing with a description of "salt's lovely ice".
The first picture at the bottom of this page provides a good reference to this sort of imagery. The second stanza continues this theme, and ties it back into the overarching theme of innocence. In the first line of the second stanza, the connection between salt and snow becomes even more concrete, "And wonderful underfoot the snow of salt". This line is significant because it is the first time that an experience within the photographs is described. No longer is the poem described in terms of how things look, but how they feel.
See the fifth photo below to get a sense of these snow-like drifts. However, it is again prefaced with the caveat of "one thinks", indicating that it is only an illusion of the photographs. The third stanza returns the reader to the concrete world, describing action within the salt mine. New and powerful verbs like "outwork", "climb", and "probe" shift the tone in to a much more active one. There is no more whiteness and love, but there is still light, and action is viewed with an adventurous eye.
This stanza establishes a much more primal and grounded connection to the miners, as opposed to the previous imagined whimsical scenarios. The muckers are not imagined making snow angels here, but are seen climbing "miniature matterhorns" and probing "ancient folds of rock". See the seventh picture below for a good representation of this image. Note the instant change in light that occurs in this stanza. Where there was once a great whiteness, now the muckers must "probe with their lights" and "scoop from darkness".
Lighting is a powerful tool in photography, and just as brightly lit photographs lend themselves to notions of purity and innocence, dark ones tends to take the viewer's mind into the shadows as well. The second, fourth, sixth, and eighth photos below illustrate the effect lighting can have on perception, in the context of salt mines.
The fourth stanza emphasises the themes of depth and darkness that began to emerge in the third stanza. The fantasy here is destroyed not by a revealing photograph, but by an admission of reality. The first half of the stanza is devoted to action that would could not be adequately described by photographs. The "jewels" being doused to form a black-laquered lake deep within the mine are indicitive of the reality, not the photo-fantasy of earlier stanzas. The fantasy here is destroyed not by a revealing photograph, but by an admission of reality.
The first half of the stanza is devoted to action that would could not be adequately described by photographs. The "jewels" being doused to form a black-laquered lake deep within the mine are indicitive of the reality, not the photo-fantasy of earlier stanzas. This disjunction between reality and photography supports the theme of art as deceit. This transition from fire to brine to jet could be interpreted as implying that deception eventually leads, "slow fathoms down", to guilt white's opposite.
The second half of the stanza returns to the miners, floating along their lake of guilt, neither white nor black, but grey: somewhere in between guilt and innocence. Here, even tiny actions have massive repercussions, they "make a climate of a miner's voice".
This is as if to say that a small action that causes guilt will come back to haunt the perpetrator many times over. The final stanza brings the reader back to the notion of photographs in a summarising manner, as if the reader is being plucked out of the action and given a lecture by the poet herself. Now that it has been established that the whole operation is seeded in guilt, and the photos merely portray it as innocent, Page unveils the themes that have been developing throughout the poem.
This is followed by a description of the other, and up to this point undescribed, side of art: the filter of truth. The description of the last photograph echoes the fourth stanza's dark style, but with even sharper language.
Every line ends with a tense, and often unpleasant, word: shot, pit, lit, hell. The oppositions come rapid-fire, starting with a reference to Dante's nether hell of both fire and ice, and following with baffling images of "bright cold fire[s]" and "black inferno[s]".
These, combined with the "acute high angle" of the image, provide a very unsettling final photograph. The "filter" of this image is that of guilt, of reality. An Anthology of Canadian Literature in English. Toronto: Oxford UP, Cengage, Gale. Page Criticism. Greenspun, Philip. NameMedia, Inc. McConnell, Andrew. TIME Inc. Page: Biography. University of Toronto, Rooke, Constance. Patricia Kathleen Page.
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See the seventh picture below for a good representation of this image. Her diction is modern and playful. Note the instant change in light that occurs in this stanza. Now that it has been established that the whole operation is seeded in guilt, and the photos merely portray it as innocent, Page unveils the themes that have been developing throughout the poem. These initial stanzas give the salt mine a dreamlike setting. Photography, as a positive, radically distorts reality. The third year returns the reader to the concrete world, cloning action within the salt mine. I tilbury the unstructured form is successful.Shakataur
The first half of the stanza is devoted to action that would could not be adequately described by photographs. The first picture at the bottom of this page provides a good reference to this sort of imagery. Page Analysis Posted on "Photos of a Salt Mine" can be divided into three sections of two, two, and then one stanza. From a distance, the mine is a beautiful place, yet its beauty is deceptive.
Volrajas
The "filter" of this image is that of guilt, of reality.
Migore
This transition from fire to brine to jet could be interpreted as implying that deception eventually leads, "slow fathoms down", to guilt white's opposite. But hoses douse the brilliance of these jewels, melt fire to brine. I almost felt as if the scene of the salt mine was right in front of me. Page: Biography.
Zolotilar
Analysis Posted on "Photos of a Salt Mine" can be divided into three sections of two, two, and then one stanza. Where there was once a great whiteness, now the muckers must "probe with their lights" and "scoop from darkness". This is followed by a description of the other, and up to this point undescribed, side of art: the filter of truth.
Togore
Each line reads naturally, with natural pauses and natural line breaks. The imagery becomes much darker as the narrator makes surreal allusions to hell. The oppositions come rapid-fire, starting with a reference to Dante's nether hell of both fire and ice, and following with baffling images of "bright cold fire[s]" and "black inferno[s]". The first picture at the bottom of this page provides a good reference to this sort of imagery.