Amniocentesis
“Amniocentesis” is a 15 line poem written from the point of view of the author about being pregnant late in life. This poem consists of two stanzas, the first containing 6 lines and the second containing 9 lines. In the poem Wolfe comforts her unborn child during the surgical procedure that will require some of the amniotic fluid to be taken out of the womb so that the doctors can analyze it and determine whether or not the fetus has any genetic defects. In "Amniocentesis", Wolfe uses free form structure, dramatic tone, and several vivid metaphors describing this event and suggests calmness and protection throughout the poem.
The structure of this poem is very simple. She uses no apparent rhyme scheme or rhythm at all, and most of the lines are short. The title of the poem tells exactly what the background is for this work so that the reader has a clear view of what is happening and can understand the metaphores she uses much more easily. In this poem Wolfe uses no punctuation at all, only capitalization at the beginning of certain lines, seemingly where a ne...
One of the ways the author does this is by using enjambment to make the title and the first line of the poem flow into one single line. This symbolizes how when you are in jail there is no real beginning; one day flows to the next. His extensive use of figurative language, allows for the reader to paint a picture in his or her mind. “... to a dark stage, I lie there awake in my prison bunk.” This line can be interpreted literally and figuratively; he is really in prison in his bunk or it feels so much like a dream that it is as if he were on a stage. However, his diction shows that he has does this often. “...through illimitable tun...
The most noticeable aspect of the structure of the entire poem is the lack of capital letters and periods. There is only one part in the entire forty lines, which is at the very end, and this intentional punctuation brings readers to question the speaker’s literacy. In fact, the speaker is very young, and the use of punctuation and hyphens brings to attention the speaker’s innocence, and because of that innocence, the
... is shown moreover through these pauses. We also see that he places question marks at the end of sentences, which is another way he is showing us the uncertainty in the voice of society. Through his punctuation and word placement, we clearly see the voice of society in his poem, but in a way that tells us not to conform to it.
This work shows a number of things about Dickinson's style of writing. Firstly, it is another example of Dickinson's style of structure, with a loose ABCB rhyme and iambic trimeter. Its theme is of hope which hints at a cry for help signifying further isolation and depression. The poem seems to have an audience of just herself. This could be a poem that she wrote in an attempt to cheer herself up in a time of sadness with an uplifting verse or just a poem written because of how she felt that day; either way it is clear that this poem was not designed for a large audience.
In these lines “night” and “light” rhyme. This rhyme scheme gives the poem a sense of order which helps to establish a feeling of anger towards death for the reader. These two different rhyme schemes help to establish how the reader feels as they are reading the poem.
Initially, as one sees the form of the poem, the structure seem simple with five stanzas and an indentation in stanzas two and four; but as one closely analyzes it, it can be noted that there is an intricate pattern. For instance, stanzas 1 and 3 have five lines each also known as cinquains, while stanza two and four are sestets. In addition, stanzas one and three have the same amount of syllables within their corresponding lines and stanza two and four follow the same rule. The way that the poem is organized makes the tone both melancholy and systematic as if the speaker were a sergeant giving orders to the soldiers or in this case to the maidens, the children and mothers. Another reason why the tone sounds both depressing and formal is because of the regular use of caesuras, specifically at the end of the stanzas where it demands of the family, “Do not weep” (line 4). Since this phrase is repeated four times in the poem it has a strong impact on the tone, given that the phrase is so short and sharp. Moreover, the indented second and fourth stanza are significant because it is in these, that the poetic voice repeats the theme ve...
The more predominant sentence structure is complex. The first sentence of this poem is complex followed by another after that. The overall length of the sentences is lengthy. Browning incorporated a lot of commas in order to make his complex sentences, which are widespread throughout the poem. The level of formality of the sentences is somewhat high, due to the fact of the writing style and the incorporation of dashes, colons, and commas. It’s evident that Browning was an educated man due to his writing style because the formality of the sentences is very intellectual as opposed to a poem filled with simple sentences. Browning also incorporated into his poem the use of rhetorical questions, he only uses this technique a few times in his writing. For example, “How shall I say?” The context this is used is very sarcastic due to the fact it’s like he’s thinking of a way to say a rude remark in a not so rude way. Moreover, he also used “ Who’d stoop to blame this sort of trifling?” Similar to his other rhetorical questions, the way these questions are used in context seem to be very condescending. Apart from his syntax techniques, Browning uses his ability of rhythm and flow of the English language evident in this poem, with his couplets that are in iambic pentameter the reader will quickly notice how the poem is said effortlessly and has a
The poem's structure divides into three main stanzas with a one-line form at the end. Written in free verse, the poem is unencumbered from restrictions regarding its structure and rhyme scheme. The use of free verse adds to the poem's stream-of-consciousness flow. The rhythm found in the poem is a random mix of beats and stressed and unstressed syllables. Reading the poem aloud, the rhythm resonates like a jazz song. In addition to the three main stanzas, seven major sections appear as the writing progresses. The social situation of the 1950's is the basis for the poem. The antecedent scenario suggests a newly segregated university and an African-American student attempting to break racial barriers. The speaker of the poem feels uncomfortable in his class of all Caucasian students. Isolated in class, he is overwhelmingly reminded of his d...
Lastly, a poet will usually use some types of poetic devices to enhance the quality of the poem; such as similes and metaphors. Randall doesn’t use many of these things but he does use personification once in a while; for example when he said “she clawed through the bits of glass and brick”. He also uses hyperbole, which is an exaggeration, when he says “she bathed until she was rose petal sweet”. In sum, this poem is excellent in its storytelling and I would recommend this to anyone.
For this assignment, I chose the poem "The Mother" by Gwendolyn Brooks. This poem is generally about abortion and the feelings a mother has. It's about the remembrance of the children aborted and the little things children do that the mother will miss. Many images are conveyed throughout this entire poem. When Brooks mentions "the singers and workers that never handled the air" it gives off an air of sadness. You get the feeling that Brooks is trying to convey, to the mother, a sense of longing for those little things mothers are know to be good at. This is shown in the line, "you will never wind up the sucking thumb or scuttle off ghosts that come" .Then when she starts to address the child saying, "you were born, you had a body, you died." its hard not to feel some sadness or even a feeling of injustice.
While Randall and Brooks chose this as the structure of their poems, they each adapt the standards of ballads to better fit their intended goal. In Randall’s poem “Ballad of Birmingham,” the ballad is shorter and follows an ABCB rhyme pattern which makes the poem extremely rhythmic. This rhythm gives a song-like feature to the poem which conveys a certain happiness. As the reader follows the rhythm of the poem, it is hard to imagine anything bad happening and when the tragic ending ensues, it has a greater impact on the reader. Brooks plays with the strict structure of a ballad in “A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi. Meanwhile, A Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon” to help convey the meaning of the poem. The poem begins with the lines “From the first it had been like a / Ballad… Like the four-line stanzas of the ballads she has never / quite / Understood” (Brooks 1-2, 4-6). The speaker of the poem begins by addressing how this event, which is unclear at this point in the poem, is like the ballads she was taught in school and she begins to try to make the event fit into a typical romantic ballad. This, however, does not work because it is impossible to romanticize the murder of a child, and the speaker realizes that life cannot always follow a strict pattern where people have their set characteristics and fall into specific
Rhythm has not been used in the poem, it is very brief, and gives the
This part of the poem shows that rhythm makes poems more interesting and fun to read. When poems rhyme it makes it easier for the reader to picture what is going on and
The poem is eight lines that are broken up into two stanzas with four lines in each that follows an ABAB rhythm scheme (seal and feel in lines 1 and 3, fears years in 2 and 4, force and course in 5 and 7, and sees and trees in lines 6 and 8). Although this may be the case, Wordsworth was able to make his poem centered
Through alliteration and imagery, Coleridge turns the words of the poem into a system of symbols that become unfixed to the reader. Coleridge uses alliteration throughout the poem, in which the reader “hovers” between imagination and reality. As the reader moves through the poem, they feel as if they are traveling along a river, “five miles meandering with a mazy motion” (25). The words become a symbol of a slow moving river and as the reader travels along the river, they are also traveling through each stanza. This creates a scene that the viewer can turn words into symbols while in reality they are just reading text. Coleridge is also able to illustrate a suspension of the mind through imagery; done so by producing images that are unfixed to the r...