Margaret Walker’s poem “Childhood” talks about the speaker’s life and alludes to life in the south for African Americans in the line, “I also lived in low cotton country….where sentiment and hatred still held sway and only bitter land was washed away.” It has a lot of rhyming at the end of the stanzas and lines. The poem talks a lot about mining and the bad conditions of the mines.
After reading “After the Winter” by Claude McKay, I found out that he came here from Jamaica. He was a head figure in a revolution for racial rights and equal economic rights in the Harlem Renaissance. He also used his poetry to convince people and move people.
I read “Always Something More Beautiful” by Stephen Dunn. It written in a way that makes it seem as if it is about running, but I think it represents life when it says, “some feral distraction down a side path, allowing myself to pursue something odd or beautiful, becoming acquainted with a few of the ways not to blame myself for failing to succeed”. The poem is a sestet and all of the stanzas follow that form.
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It has an apostrophe when it talks about the girls. It has an A, B, A rhyme scheme, and 4 lines in every stanza. The meaning of this poem to me is the decisions that can completely change your life.
Linda Pastan’s poem “The Obligation to be Happy” reflects her dissatisfaction with being a house-wife and feeling that her true talent wasn’t being shown. She is Jewish and grew up in the Bronx and writes about how this affected her. She put writing on hold for her family, but soon started up
The poem is written in the style of free verse. The poet chooses not to separate the poem into stanzas, but only by punctuation. There is no rhyme scheme or individual rhyme present in the poem. The poems structure creates a personal feel for the reader. The reader can personally experience what the narrator is feeling while she experiences stereotyping.
...did through his poems. Although the themes of slavery, past and longing were depicted in Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poems, he provided a different aspect in each one; portraying ‘A Drowsy Day’ of a lonely reminiscent narrator, who was trapped in their confined home as well as their mind, being unable to escape from the constant swirl of memories. He uses ‘An Old Memory’ to convey the past as positive and full of hope, although disappointed by his present day, the past remained to have a ‘subtle charm’ – contrastingly in ‘Sympathy’, the poet describes the past as ‘cruel’, thus portraying it in a more dark and unwelcome light. Arthur Miller portrays the past as full of regret for Biff, but also of ambition for his father. All of these texts portrayed the past as a place where identity was stronger, however it could be argued that the past was where slaves had no identity.
In “We Real Cool,” by Gwendolyn Brooks, one can almost visualize a cool cat snapping his fingers to the beat, while she is reading this hip poem. Her powerful poem uses only a few descriptive words to conjure up a gang of rebellious teens. Brooks employs a modern approach to the English language and her choice of slang creates a powerful jazz mood. All of the lines are very short and the sound on each stop really pops. Brooks uses a few rhymes to craft an effective sound and image of the life she perceives. With these devices she manages to take full control of her rhyme and cultivates a morally inspiring poem.
...xperiences of their readers. The poems express critical and serious issues that surround the heartfelt childhood memories of the readers. The surrounding circumstances and situations are different in each household. The readers are personally drawn to feel expressions of abuse, emotional issues and confusion as the poets draw them into a journey through their own personal life experiences from childhood to adulthood. These experiences are carried throughout a person’s life. Readers are somewhat forced to immediately draw themselves closer to the characters and can relate to them on a personal level.
Feminist authors often tend to cast strict gender roles throughout their writings. Socially, economically, and politically it is known that women will always be inferior to men and these authors demonstrate this theory in a few words. Feminism does not favor the role of women, but rather prove that there is an distinct line that separates the two genders in society. Linda Pastan, a feminist critic, writes a short poem that focuses on a wife’s duties being graded by her family as if they were her homework assignment. In her poem Marks, Linda Pastan utilizes the reduction to body, denial of autonomy, and the act of ownership to temporarily re-evaluate her position within her family.
As far as organization goes, there are three stanzas which I believe represent three different ages of the main character. There is no rhyming nor iambic pentameter; this lends a casual and more natural tone to the piece. Also, the stanzas don't all have the same number of lines. This makes the poem less structured, formal, and loose as if the character is telling you the story of her past.
The poem America by Claude McKay is on its surface a poem combining what America should be and what this country stands for, with what it actually is, and the attitude it projects amongst the people. Mckay uses the form of poetry to express how he, as a Jamaican immigrant, feels about America. He characterizes the bittersweet relationship between striving for the American dream, and being denied that dream due to racism. While the America we are meant to see is a beautiful land of opportunity, McKay see’s as an ugly, flawed, system that crushes the hopes and dreams of the African-American people.
Fulfilling the roles of both mother and breadwinner creates an assortment of reactions for the narrator. In the poem’s opening lines, she commences her day in the harried role as a mother, and with “too much to do,” (2) expresses her struggle with balancing priorities. After saying goodbye to her children she rushes out the door, transitioning from both, one role to the next, as well as, one emotion to another. As the day continues, when reflecting on
oaken. His wife was oaken too. And his two girls and his good little man
The poem also focuses on what life was like in the sixties. It tells of black freedom marches in the South how they effected one family. It told of how our peace officers reacted to marches with clubs, hoses, guns, and jail. They were fierce and wild and a black child would be no match for them. The mother refused to let her child march in the wild streets of Birmingham and sent her to the safest place that no harm would become of her daughter.
I think it’s a very straightforward poem. How a home tenant talk or express his feeling to landlord.
The writing I have chosen is the journal entries of Hannah Tinti’s “Home Sweet Home,” Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour,” and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's “The Yellow Wallpaper.” I have selected these writings for the main focus of these writing is about the female protagonists and their mental war to be liberated from their oppressive husbands. In “Home Sweet Home,” the wife sees her husband having a malicious affair while she is taking care of his child born out of wedlock that she now loves and will seek vengeance by committing a double murder. In “The Story of an Hour,” the wife, with a heart condition, turned widow is distraught at the news of her late husband passing, but she then feels freedom in starting a new life without her husband
Born in 1917, Gwendolyn Brooks was born into a world where political views and discrimination plagued every day. Even at an early age, she began to write poetry; by the age of thirteen she had already published several poems in a nearby children’s magazine. By the age of 16, she had already published seventy-five poems. She began submitting her work to the Chicago Defender, a leading African-American newspaper. Her work included ballads, sonnets and free verse, drawing on musical rhythms and the content of inner-city Chicago, but she had yet to allow the unrest in the world around her influence her writing. Later on though, Brook’s environment and times influenced her writing greatly as well as how she reacted to it.
This poem speaks about children in the literal sense. Browning uses children to describe harsh conditions and uses these children’s feelings to really connect with her audience and to really connect the reader to these factories and coalmines, as if you were their working with these children. Browning says in the poem, “They are weeping in the playtime of others, / in the country of the free.” (Browning 1124) Browning was expressing her feelings towards child labor, and the treatment of these children under these circumstances. Browning also uses men a lot in this poem, almost degrading them. Browning was a feminist and she thought the way that t...
Margaret Walker is able to immediately draw the reader into the context of her poem, beginning it with a descriptive metaphor of her husband, while using singular, possessive pronouns which exemplify her love. By beginning “My monkey-wrench man is my sweet patootie,” Walker evokes not only her personal ties to her husband through the pronoun my, but she also uses the metaphor to demonstrate her husband is hard-working and lovable, which are both necessary components to the “American dream relationship” where both love and hard work are necessary to create a lasting relationship (1). Moreover, Walker reveals a relationship where feelings are reciprocated: “the lover of my life, my youth and age/ My heart belongs to him and to him only” (2-3). Walker demonstrates the permanence of her relationship as she asserts that she has given her heart to her husband, while acknowledging her husband has loved her throughout her life. Therefore, the possessive pronouns take the two individuals away from individuality and bring them together. Walker provides support for this interwoven relationship through her description of their childr...