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The speaker is posing herself as a Cree student in school who is being silently ostracized. The student hates the education system, as she thinks it is dull and tedious, and the teachers have no faith in her intellect. However, she does not stop at her frustration, as, in the poem we see a certain turn-around: she is sick of playing dead, and as a result, she makes a firm decision to push for change. In the poem “Communications Class,” Connie Fife shows through form and school imagery, the frustrating experience of ostracization in school, but also the resilience a student can exhibit against it.
The speaker is expressing her determination through repetition of a negative phrase “do not.” The phrase “do not” infers a negative connotation, so
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by using these words, the speaker draws the reader’s attention to something important, implying that a confrontation is about to take place.
The poet expresses a lot of emotion through the imagery that she uses. At the beginning of her poem, we can see a silent frustration, as we read: “do not fool yourself that I have fallen off the face of the earth and/am just another statistical write-off.” She shares how frustrating it is to be ostracized in a class where no one understands her, or makes any attempt to do so, and expresses this through smooth sarcasm. In the education system, Cree students were always expected to drop out, so it made no difference when or how many did drop out, because it was assumed they would all drop out eventually. They assumed that it was either because the Cree people didn’t care about their schooling, or didn’t have the mental capacity to learn, so as a result the staff also failed to care. This naturally, did not make it easy for the Cree students who did care, and who did try their best, and the speaker was also one of these people. She indicates that she is very annoyed with the education system because of all the stereotyping that was happening between students and teachers alike, but also because the classes are extremely boring to her, for she
says, “tomorrow if you do not find me again, / dozing during another one of your lectures…” When humans are faced with a boring class, their first instinct is either to talk to their classmates, or “zone out,” the latter being the case with the speaker in this poem. However, her frustration does not end in passiveness, but we see a turn-around in her attitude. She says: “instead picture me wide awake at 3 am.” This indicates the fact that she would be usually awake now, because she draws attention to it. Nevertheless, she does not stop there, but she states that she is “throwing ink upon blank white squares/creating with your own language/a universal formula for change.” Through her express word choice “throwing” instead of, for example “writing,” she indicates the fact that she is done with the whole educational system of her day, done with all the stereotyping that was happening.
Susan Donnelly’s poem “Inoculation” explores the comparison between sin, disease, and slavery, and initially, this connection is nonexistent to one of two characters: Cotton Mather. This piece opens by stating, “Cotton Mather studied small pox for a while, instead of sin,” and automatically there is implanted the idea that disease and sin are independent of each other; this diction is imperative for Donnelly because it gives the vantage point of Mather prior to discussing the small pox outbreak with his slave, Onesimus. The blatant introduction makes it clear by the end of the poem how terribly wrong Mather was in his ideology of a separation between small pox and sin: the topic of his studies does not change, unlike the claim of his first belief.
Poverty is often taxing to one’s life in multiple ways, some of which include mind taxation, stress taxation, emotional taxation and of course money taxation. Mother Theresa once said “Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty”. How would you find time to look for the one that would make you feel special and wanted, while having to live in situation which doesn’t forgive free time? “Night Waitress” by Linda Hull is poem that looks at daily life of a waitress who struggles to answer just that question.
Rituals, teachings, ceremonies and identities of the Aboriginal people were lost and neglected in the past. Even today, those of the culture continue to heal and strengthen from the consequences. In Louise Halfe’s poem “My Ledders,” a native woman addresses the Pope expressing her passionate feelings towards the traditions that were robbed of her culture, while pleading him to change the teachings back to the original way. In the letter the speaker writes as if she was speaking, using phonetic spelling and broken English, asking the Pope if he could use his power to retain the native culture, as the government may listen to him. Directly linking the losses of native traditions, customs and languages to the residential school system, the speaker uses orature combining a native dialect along with satire to express how the losses in one generation continue to affect the aboriginal identity in future generations.
Because many people who read this poem were once in a student’s role, they start to relate more and more as the poem continues. The speaker talks of “sweating the final” and “reading disorganized essays” (Lines 9 and 11). Much like any school-goer, the scenes depicted in this section of the work are humorous because almost everyone can relate to them. The speaker mentions “the boy who always had his hand up” (Line 14). Everyone has had the geeky poindexter know-it-all kid that sits in the front of the classroom, eager to answer all of the teacher’s questions. “While he seldom makes actual puns, his wit is of the punning kind: he makes idioms ridiculous through inflation, hyperbole, and repetition” (Kirsch). Kirsch also says that , “...part of Collins's talent is knowing when to stop”(Kirsch). Collins does not overdo his puns and witty remarks ,which could become quite cheesy to some readers, but he knows how to make them work. Through the use of humor, Collins brings a lightheartedness to the work that appeals to readers.“The poem also alternates between humor (jokes about teachers and students) and pathos (sad aspects of some students’ later lives or some teachers’ later lives)” (Prinsky). He even goes on to make a reference to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. By using this analogy, Collins touches on the social crowd platform. He says, “The A’s stroll along with other A’s” and “The D’s honk
It is very clear that the narrator is aggravated with the ignorance of some people as they assume she is supposed to sound different than she does because she is black. To emphasize her agitation throughout the poem, the narrator asks rhetorical questions such as; "Was I supposed to sound lazy, dropping syllables here, there, not finishing words but slurring the final letter so that each sentence joined the next, sliding past the listener? Were certain words off limits, too erudite, too scholarly for someone with a natural tan? And Does everyone in your family speak alike?"
The speaker is angry and the fourth stanza on page 46 really stood out to me and I could feel how hurt and angry he was in the third line when he mentioned, “Shedeadshedeadshedead…”( Hayes, pg 46). The feeling of never being accepted in the white society is heartbreaking and will always be a struggle trying to accept ourselves because on one else
Kim Addonizio’s “First Poem for You” portrays a speaker who contemplates the state of their romantic relationship though reflections of their partner’s tattoos. Addressing their partner, the speaker ambivalence towards the merits of the relationship, the speaker unhappily remains with their partner. Through the usage of contrasting visual and kinesthetic imagery, the speaker revels the reasons of their inability to embrace the relationship and showcases the extent of their paralysis. Exploring this theme, the poem discusses how inner conflicts can be powerful paralyzers.
The negativity seen in today’s society and the awful stereotypes about Aboriginals would never exist if was not for all the racism and savagery they had to endure. Zen Master and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh said, “Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today.” A reader can identify that one of the main messages to be taken from Indian Horse, is that hope drove Saul to keep on working hard and that residential schools were never able to take away Aboriginal people’s hope. A reader would think that Saul’s acceptance of coaching the Moose is not for his own gain, but also to help the kids who play on the team, both physically and
In the world of teenagers everything seems to come and pass by so quickly. For instance the beginning of senior year. In Spite of being happy and excited were also generally nervous and anxious to see what our future holds. As senior year comes to an end, It then becomes as temporary as the summer sun but also the boundary of our life before we enter adulthood. Even then our future is still undefined.
In Billy Collins poem “Schoolsville”, a man is reminiscing in his memories of being a teacher. He creates an alternate world in his mind, where as he describes a town full of all his past students. The town itself shares characteristics of an actual school feel environment. At the end of the poem, Collins informs us that the speaker imagines himself to be the mayor of his town, and also that his students still “ appear in the windowpane to watch me lecture the wallpaper, quizzing the chandelier, and reprimanding the air” (Collins). Billy Collins used allusion in his poem to give the reader an ironic feel through aspects of its setting and also though its stereotypical comments addressed to his past students.
The rhetor for this text is Luther Standing Bear. He was born in 1868 on the Pine Ridge Reservation. He was raised as a Native American until the age on eleven when he was taken to Carlisle Indian Industrial School: an Indian boarding school. After graduating from the boarding school, he returned to his reservation and now realized the terrible conditions under which they were living. Standing Bear was then elected as chief of his tribe and it became his responsibility to induce change (Luther Standing Bear). The boarding schools, like the one he went to, were not a fair place to be. The Native American children were forced to go there and they were not taught how to live as a European American; they were taught low level jobs like how to mop and take out trash. Also, these school were very brutal with punishment and how the kids were treated. In the passage he states, “More than one tragedy has resulted when a young boy or girl has returned home again almost an utter stranger. I have seen these happenings with my own eyes and I know they can cause naught but suffering.” (Standing Bear 276). Standing Bear is fighting for the Indians to be taught by Indians. He does not want their young to lose the culture taught to them from the elders. Standing Bear also states, “The old people do not speak English and never will be English-speaking.” (Standing Bear 276). He is reinforcing the point that he believes that they
Connie Fife is a Saskatchewan, Cree poet who writes using her unique perspective, telling of her personal experiences and upbringing. This perspective is revealed to her audience through the poems “This is not a Metaphor”, “I Have Become so Many Mountains”, and “She Who Remembers” all of which present a direct relationship to her traditional background and culture (Rosen-Garten, Goldrick-Jones 1010). To show the relationship of her experiences through her poetry, Fife uses the form of dramatic monologue, as well as modern language and literal writing to display themes about racism presenting her traditional viewpoint to her audience.
That said, Dumont is fighting an uphill battle. The racism and hate started by the white settlers hundreds of years in the past has remained for ages, building into a veritable fortress upon which the ideals of white entitlement and power rest. To fight back against this, Dumont makes herself as loud as she can get in her compositions, acting as a proverbial cymbal to the ears of those above. Her poems are designed to be this way; they aggressively break the mold and rip apart traditional ideas of looking at natives. In turn, she gives her fellow aboriginals freedom to express themselves by allowing them to realize that they no longer have to conform to these generalizations. Simply put, by changing the status quo in how natives are generally viewed, she weakens the power that white society’s “small frame of mind” has and puts that power back in the hands of the
The setting of the poem is in a senior literature class, at South High School. The speaker in this poem is a teacher, who tells the reader about his or her students and about the course of his or her literature class. The teacher discusses poetry with his class, but at the same time compares the students and the classroom order to fish in an aquarium.
of the difficulty in acceptance. In the first few stanzas the poet creates the impression that she