The poem titled “Watching Boxing as a Young Child” is a humble piece of literature. It explores the mystery and complexity of boxing, and how it inspired a young boy and his father. Through poetry devices such as anaphora, irony, and allusion, the personae and reader learn the theme of this poem: Courage in the face of adversity.
The author begins the poem by stating “I didn’t yet know” (1). A variation of this line is repeated two more times throughout the first stanza. This anaphora gives the idea that the personae is in a state of innocence, yet about to learn a powerful lesson. As revealed in the title, this is a son speaking of his experiences watching boxing as a child. This recurrent phrase is counteracted in the second stanza with the line saying “Yet I somehow sensed” (16). While this young child did not know of the hurt and torture these boxers had to go through, he could sense the bravery required to endure.
The author also uses anaphora to stress the point that the poem is about the boxers. Third person pronouns are used repeatedly throughout the first stanza, such as they, their, and them. This gives the reader the idea that the young child is learning though example, not personal experience. This clue is reiterated in the last line which concludes, “The world inspired in its sons” (27). The theme of courage in the face of adversity is a lesson that, according to the author, is meant to be taught by the world.
When mentioning the names of the boxers, the author lists them in a unique way: “When my father said their names—Hearns Hagler, Leonard Ali Frazier, Duran Patterson” (18). At first, the reader might believe that these are the actual names of the boxers. However, these are not the full names of t...
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In “Football Dreams” by Jacqueline Woodson, the message that any dream can come true if you put the work in is supported by the structure of the poem. The structural elements that are most impactful are repetition and the title. While she talks about her father’s dreams at the beginning. Later towards the end of the poem, she starts to explain how they came true. “My father dreamed football dreams, and woke up to a scholarship at Ohio State University” (10-12). The repetition is “dreams” and “football” which tells the audience that her father dreamed of playing football and he put in the effort and got a “scholarship at Ohio State University.” The title “Football Dreams” is the repetition
The speakers in A. E. Housman poem “To an Athlete Dying Young” and Edward Arlington Robinson poem “Richard Cory” serve different purposes but uses irony and rhyme to help convey their message. In “To an Athlete Dying Young” the speaker’s purpose is to show the audience dying young with glory is more memorable than dying old with glory. In “Richard Cory” the speaker’s purpose is to show the audience “you can’t judge a book by its cover.”
As one grows up and experiences the taste of life, opening one’s eyes to both negative and positive aspects of the world, it is common that one starts to lose their innocence little by little throughout one’s journey. The title of novel, The Catcher in the Rye (1952) by J. D. Salinger, signifies the desires of Holden Caulfield, the narrator, to preserve innocence, and the allusion to the Robert Burns poem “Comin Thro’ the Rye” further emphasizes his desires and also represents his innocence.
“The Death of Benny Paret” is a invoking article that allows the reader to be surprised, sad, and makes the reader somewhat think about how it felt to be Benny Paret. It gives an inside look on what being a boxer takes.The author, Norman Mailer, uses diction, detail, and imagery to describe the death of Paret. Paret was a “welterweight champion”, which in layman’s term just means he was a boxer. Throughout the article Norman Mailer mainly uses details to help give the reader an image of Paret’s death.
In the final stanza, the poet claims that young men whom are of the same mind will look to the criminal for guidance. These young minds will relate to the social-stance of the criminal, and maybe follow in the same footsteps, treating the criminal as their role model.
enable us to understand the moral of the poem. Which is work hard and you will receive you goals and never give up.
"Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal [but] which the reader recognizes as his own." (Salvatore Quasimodo). There is something about the human spirit that causes us to rejoice in shared experience. We can connect on a deep level with our fellow man when we believe that somehow someone else understands us as they relate their own joys and hardships; and perhaps nowhere better is this relationship expressed than in that of the poet and his reader. For the current assignment I had the privilege (and challenge) of writing an imitation of William Shakespeare’s "Sonnet 87". This poem touched a place in my heart because I have actually given this sonnet to someone before as it then communicated my thoughts and feelings far better than I could. For this reason, Sonnet 87 was an easy choice for this project, although not quite so easy an undertaking as I endeavored to match Shakespeare’s structure and bring out his themes through similar word choice.
The use of anaphora is prominent in the poem as each stanza is initiated with the same or similar phrase. The second through eighth stanza begin with the words, “I see them,” this is to show the speaker’s sympathy for the slaves and the horrible lives they were given. He feels as if he is his great-grandfather and is responsible for the abhorrent crimes he committed. Berry then changes the phrasing to, “I know” signifying that he empathizes with the slaves, finally saying, “I am” showing that he feels similar to a slave. This anaphora shows the struggle of being a descendant of an evil person, the speaker’s inner demons make his life full of shame and guilt for the actions of his ancestors.
In the first half of the poem, the speaker reminds readers of childhood. She presents the readers with imagery, a form of descriptive language, by illustrating the colorful overshoes lined up against the wall of the kindergarten, “black, red, brown, all/ with those brass buckles” (lines 1-5). This part of the poem helps the reader settle into the setting and mindset of the speaker. She repeats “remember... remember,” inviting the readers to recall their childhood, how everything looked then, and how different aspects of life mattered (5, 15). “You couldn't/ buckle your own/ overshoe,” the speaker states as she continues to list the difficulties, failures, and impossibilities of life as a child (5-9). As children, people are completely dependent on others to do things for them and correct the world around them. It is frustrating for children to not be able to accomplish even simple, self-help tasks.
Before delving any deeper into this poem and its meaning, a few basic questions must be answered first. I believe the speaker to be William Blake himself. I am able to infer this from the repeated use of the pronoun “I.” Thought the course of the poem, the speaker’s temperament changes. At the start of the poem the speaker ...
In the essay I hope to explain why I picked each poem and to suggest
Novelist, Norman Mailer, in his narrative essay, “The Death of Benny Paret,” recounts his experience as he witnesses a first-hand account of the tragic death of the boxer, Benny Paret. Mailer’s purpose is to convince the audience that boxing is inhumane through the use of many rhetorical devices, such as simile, animalistic diction and syntax.
"Harlem" was written by Langsatn Hughes. This poem is focusing on the American-African neighborhood "Harlem" in New York City in mid-twenties while the society was filling with discriminations and racism. "My Father as A Guitar" was written by Martin Espada. In the poem, the speaker is comparing his father, who has a heart problem, with a guitar. "Charon 's Cosmology" was written by Charles Simic in 1977. This poem is mainly about a ferryman, whose job is to transfer souls of dead. These three poems have different themes, however, the speaker all used some literary devices to express their thoughts to readers.
The poem shows that the young man grows up to become a fighter who does not know when to stop all in the matter of a few lines that amount to one sentence. Then in an even shorter sentence, he dies in combat. Writing this as two sentences accentuates the idea that life is short, but can even be shorter if we can not get along. The speaker’s mourning tone probably ponders if the man avoided fighting maybe he could have lived longer as suggested when mentioning killing war elephants were not enough for the man who immersed himself in the battleground. By putting oneself in an environment of anger and aggression to the point of a questionable noticing of an arrow inside of oneself can only lead to a shortened
withholding the anger from the “foe”. Blake uses the simplicity of the poem to surprise his