Gina Meyers and Jill McDonough both illustrate a lack of control within the poems “Hold it Down” and “Accident, Mass. Ave.”. “Hold it Down” by Gina Meyers describes a long narrative of the problem, a lack of control, impossibilities and frustration in everyday life, while “Accident, Mass. Ave.” presents a narrative of a problem, a moment of loss of control, aggression and frustration in a single moment that happen on a specific day. Similarly the poems are long and include long enjambed lines disturbed by few short and small lines. Contrasting the poems are ordered and structured very differently. Loss of control depicted in “Hold it Down” is evident in the structure of the long narrative of the poem. The form is free flowing, and does not have a formal or any type of rhyme scheme. Ideas jump from one thing to the next, connected only by the four …show more content…
Ave” depicts a sense of some control in its structure. The poem is broken up into three stanzas. The first stanza is the description of the accident and the actions of the speaker and the woman who ‘hits’ his truck. Moving along the next stanza portrays the speakers realization of what had actually happened, looking past the anger and frustration. The third and final stanza is an image of the speaker and the woman coming together in a moment of sincerity. Contrasting to Meyers in “Hold it Down”, the concrete and logical structure of the poem gives the reader a structure they can follow, and the speaker controls. There is a sequencing effect in the first words in each stanza, “I stopped” (McDonough 1) introducing the moment and problem, “But she hadn’t” (19) introducing the conflict and dialogue, and “Well, there’s”(34) bringing the moment to a close, each beginning shows a change in time of the moment and the narration. Where in “Hold it Down” the process is flowing from one idea to the next, “Accident, Mass. Ave.” is concrete and moves chronologically through the moment in which is
“Watch your tone young lady” a phrase known all too well to the American culture, whether it be from mom giving her children a lecture or on a television screen being spoken out by an actor. The tone of voice that one uses while speaking plays an extremely significant role in what the spoken words actually mean. Many times one can say one thing and mean another just from placing emphasis on a particular word. With tone of voice plays such a vital role in the meaning of a sentence it becomes clear that poetry, although often times found in books as written work, is meant to be read aloud; this was not all that clear to me until I attended my very first poetry reading. On November 10th Ramapo College welcomed the marvelous poet Mark Doty to its campus. Through Mark Doty’s reading of “House of Beauty” and “Theory of Marriage” it became clear that the use of emphasis and tone are vital characteristics that allows for the poet to challenge poetic traditions and conventions.
Strand, Mark and Evan Boland. The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms. New
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.
This creates a despair, of hopelessness and of downheartedness. The woman, on multiple occasions, wrote down, “And what can one do?” This lets the reader know that women as a whole were very oppressed in ...
On the surface the poem seems to be a meditation on past events and actions, a contemplative reflection about what has gone on before. Research into the poem informs us that the poem is written with a sense of irony
On December 29, 1876, a train was crossing over a railroad bridge spanning the Ashtabula River when the entire bridge collapsed, sending most of the train into the frigid water below. This disaster would be the deadliest bridge disaster in the United States. Investigators quickly tried to determine why this bridge, after eleven years of service, collapsed. The investigators would ultimately place the blame on the president of the Ashtabula Railroad Company, Amasa Stone. The bridge was constructed with many flaws, both known and unknown. This disaster would lead to people realizing the need for structural standards for bridges and qualified engineers.
Ferguson, Margaret W., Salter, Mary J., and Stallworthy, Jon. The Norton Anthology of Poetry. fifth ed. N.p.: W.W. Norton, 2005. 2120-2121. 2 Print.
Throughout the story Kincaid uses a series of long sentences to convey both the tone of the text and the theme of it as well. The tone of the text comes right from the mother who we clearly see is strict and obedient. The mother preaches to her daughter explaining how to do certain household chores and how to act. The long sentences symbolize the many orders that the mother gives to her daughter. The text flows as a stream of consciousness with the ideas coming right from the mother. This style shows the reader how repressive the mother’s demands are to a modern women that we wou...
The poem focuses on the son’s feelings and thoughts as he is looking up at what he perceives to be his father’s hospital window. The second stanza concretes the literal foundation for the poem—the son is despondent about the gravity of the situation revolving around his father’s cond...
Rothenberg, Jerome and Pierre Joris, eds. Poems for the Millennium: The University of California Book of Modern and Postmodern Poetry, Vol. 2. Berkeley: University of California, 1998.
The construction of the poem is in regular four-line stanzas, of which the first two stanzas provide the exposition, setting the scene; the next three stanzas encompass the major action; and the final two stanzas present the poet's reflection on the meaning of her experience.
It will further deal with the development of tension throughout the poem. By making a distinction between tension through formal aspects, such as rhyme scheme, and tension through content it will try to show the interconnection between both of them. Additionally, the paper will deal with the possible effect of tension on the reader and how the poem might be perceived by him/her.
Disappointment, disbelief and fear filled my mind as I lye on my side, sandwiched between the cold, soft dirt and the hot, slick metal of the car. The weight of the car pressed down on the lower half of my body with monster force. It did not hurt, my body was numb. All I could feel was the car hood's mass stamping my body father and farther into the ground. My lungs felt pinched shut and air would neither enter nor escape them. My mind was buzzing. What had just happened? In the distance, on that cursed road, I saw cars driving by completely unaware of what happened, how I felt. I tried to yell but my voice was unheard. All I could do was wait. Wait for someone to help me or wait to die.
The poem dramatizes the gradual process of falling apart. Dickinson speaks abstractly of the crumbling of the soul as a dimension of time, rather than being instantaneous. Man falls as a result of a continuous and small-scale decay of the spirit by way of evil inclinations. The complex structure of the poem reflects the underlying figurative meaning. The poem consists of three quatrains in iambic meter, alternating between tetrameter and trimeter. The poet’s use of hyphens guides the reader to read the passage slowly and thoughtfully. The slow pace mirrors the theme of slow decay. The most obvious factor of the poem’s structure is the seemingly random capitalization of mid-sentence nouns. The stress and personification of certain nouns emphasize the small elements of crumbling. The figurative meaning of the poem is built upon by showing that all things can be broken down, slowly but surely.
	The speaker of the poem is a civilian observer, probably a local. There is a sense of tension and fear in the speaker’s tone. The speaker uses an observatory tone in the poem, a combination between 1st and 3rd person. The author shows us that the speaker is an observer when he says "They are not there…/You finger the trigger of your Bren." (ll. 8&10) You can clearly see that the author creates tension when he says "Half-fearing, half-desiring the sudden hell/ Pressure will loose." (ll. 11-12) The poet has a way of building us up to a climax then letting us down, and again he gets us on the edge of our seat, only to sit back down quickly.