Do you remember your first love? How you felt at night, unable to sleep because of the lopsided ratio of infatuation-induced adrenaline to blood? The feeling of the pedal shuddering against the bottom of your toes as you start your clunky first car? The years between thirteen and nineteen are filled with acne, first loves, tough crowds at school, and first tastes of freedom. The concerns and passions during this period of life are well expressed through tones, perspectives, and a myriad of literary devices in Tony Hoagland’s “History of Desire” and Audre Lorde’s “Hanging Fire”. Although these two poems share the same themes, Hoagland’s reflects back upon this time, while Lorde’s is still enmeshed in these adolescent struggles. Both poems are sans rhyme scheme and have informal structures, which intentionally or not, fit very well with the frantically changing mood of the teenage years. For instance, a formal villanelle structure and iambic rhythm are left out because they are organized and premeditated, which are two adjectives that do not describe the typical teenager’s life. If one could turn these years into paper and ink, it would look like “History of Desire” and “Hanging Fire”; they are messy enough to show the angst, and neat enough to show hope for adulthood. This is why these poems are both grouped into stanzas. “History of Desire” is grouped into ten four line stanzas, followed by a final couplet. “Hanging Fire” is built from three stanzas; eleven, twelve, and twelve lines respectively. Both “History of Desire” and “Hanging Fire” reflect on former loves, and are narratives about being seventeen and fourteen years old. Therefore these qualities are purposely included to convey the distracted and unconstructed life of a t... ... middle of paper ... ...alities of Tony Hoagland’s “History of Desire” and Audre Lorde’s “Hanging Fire” are compared and contrasted. Although these two poets have very different tones and other idiosyncrasies, they share the same theme of young love and teenage struggles. Works Cited 1. "Audre Lorde (1934-1992)." Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Thomas J. Schoenberg and Lawrence J. Trudeau. Vol. 173. Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2006. 36-148. Literature Criticism Online. Gale. . 14 November 2011 2. "Audre Lorde (1934-)." Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Thomas Votteler, Laurie DiMauro, and Sean R. Pollock. Vol. 71. Detroit: Gale Research, 1992. 230-264. Literature Criticism Online. Gale. . 16 November 2011
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I first came across “Spring and Fall”—as I did a similar poem, Frost’s “Nothing Gold Can Say”—through two teen movies of the 1980’s. The Frost poem was featured in Copola’s adaptation of the popular S.E. Hinton young adult novel, The Outsiders, and Hopkins’ in Vision Quest, a forgettable movie about a young man searching to find himself by taking on the unbeatable state champion in a wrestling match. (Our hero beats him!) In both films, the themes of the pains and triumphs of growing up are presented in familiar formulas, and the poems lend a sense of gravity to that theme. In any case, lots of my friends in high school, who never would have read poetry otherwise, knew these poems and could recognize them, having heard them in a movie. (The same can be said of my generation in terms of another Victorian poem in our reading, “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” recited in class memorably by Alfalfa in one of the “Our Gang” comedies.) That said, hearing these poems in contexts outside of an academic setting really made them stick with me, and I’d like to use this paper as an opportunity to examine precisely what lends “Spring and Fall” in particular its haunting power.
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In "Hanging Fire", Andre Lorde writes the poem that sets a tone in motion. As the audience reads the poem, they can feel as if the poem is in their thoughts. She discusses the physical, emotional, and mental turbulence of adolescence. She also continues to point out how adolescents gets or feels when they have been neglected, judged, alienated, and pressured by the people around them. Therefore, she captures her audience attention by using tone and personification.
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