Poem Analysis: Ballad By Sonia Sanchez

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The most preeminent quality of Sonia Sanchez “Ballad” remains the tone of the poem, which paints a didactic image. Sanchez is trying to tell this young people that we know nix about love as well as she is told old for it. In an unclear setting, the poem depicts a nameless young women and Sanchez engaged in a conversation about love. This poem dramatizes the classic conflict between old and young. Every old person believes they know more then any young person, all based on the fact that they have been here longer then all of us. The narrative voice establishes a tone of a intellectual understanding of love unraveling to the young women, what she comprehends to love is in fact not. With the opening of the poem Sanchez laughs at how sure the young women is about love: “forgive me if I laugh you are so sure about love” (1-2) by her statement, she seems content that the young women clearly does not …show more content…

She remembering what it felt like when it rain when she was in love which she describes as being an explosion. Imagery is used to compare love and “rain exploding in the air” (5-6), a miracle of nature that people that isn’t in love would never otherwise experience. She also express the texture of a blade of grass became factual to her because of the love she felt once upon a time: “the green grass excreting her green wax is love” (7-8) Sanchez uses personification in this line making the grass to appear human. She then goes into depth describing her encounter with a man: “ I fixed my body under his and went to sleep in love” (17-19) getting lost in his love “all trace of me was wiped away” (20-21). Sanchez is thinking back when she was young and what she felt when she was in love, contradicting herself. She keeps telling the young women “you are too young for love (11-12) but then remembers while thinking back on her experience with love that she was once young and in love, this is want you call

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