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The ballad of birmingham poem essay
An extended response on Birmingham Ballad
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One of the most beautiful things about poetry is the fact that one event can spark the most beautiful poems from an author’s mind. Similar events can be interpreted and presented in countless ways based upon the impact they held on the poet. Every poem is different in regards to form, rhyme scheme, rhetorical strategies, meaning, and countless other aspects, while they can still be mainly about similar events. Both Dudley Randall’s “Ballad of Birmingham” and Gwendolyn Brooks’ “A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi. Meanwhile, A Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon” are written in the same era and convey similar messages; however, each poem’s form, point of view, and how they each approach the idea of preconceived notions are what set the two
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
In “Ballad of Birmingham” the reader gets the direct words of the mother as she tells her daughter the streets are not safe and that the child should go to church to “sing in the children’s choir” (Randall 16). After the transition to the removed narrator, the last two lines of the poem are again from the mother. The words “O, here’s the shoe my baby wore, / But, baby, where are you?” (Randall 31-32) become even more powerful after the reader has been removed from the characters to experience the poem from an outside source, to be brought back again to the mother the moments after she loses her child makes the tragic ending have an even greater impact on the reader. “A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi. Meanwhile, A Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon” begins with a mother doing an everyday thing, making breakfast. She reflects upon the events of what happened the day Emmett Till died, wondering if he was guilty or not and questioning the true reason why her husband killed this boy. Her thoughts then return to the breakfast table where she looks at her own children and imagines what her husband is capable of within their own family, as he already destroyed one family: “When the Hand / Came down and away, and she could look at her child, At her baby-child,
Influenced by the style of “plainspoken English” utilized by Phillip Larkin (“Deborah Garrison”), Deborah Garrison writes what she knows, with seemingly simple language, and incorporating aspects of her life into her poetry. As a working mother, the narrator of Garrison’s, “Sestina for the Working Mother” provides insight for the readers regarding inner thoughts and emotions she experiences in her everyday life. Performing the daily circus act of balancing work and motherhood, she, daydreams of how life might be and struggles with guilt, before ultimately realizing her chosen path is what it right for her and her family.
Stanza two shows us how the baby is well looked after, yet is lacking the affection that small children need. The child experiences a ‘vague passing spasm of loss.’ The mother blocks out her child’s cries. There is a lack of contact and warmth between the pair.
When writing poetry, there are many descriptive methods an author may employ to communicate an idea or concept to their audience. One of the more effective methods that authors often use is linking devices, such as metaphors and similes. Throughout “The Elder Sister,” Olds uses linking devices effectively in many ways. An effective image Olds uses is that of “the pressure of Mother’s muscles on her brain,” (5) providing a link to the mother’s expectations for her children. She also uses images of water and fluidity to demonstrate the natural progression of a child into womanhood. Another image is that of the speaker’s elder sister as a metaphorical shield, the one who protected her from the mental strain inflicted by their mother.
The tragic poem, “The Ballad of Birmingham,” begins with a young child asking an imploring question to her mother, “May I go downtown instead of out to play” (Randall, 669)?
In today’s modern view, poetry has become more than just paragraphs that rhyme at the end of each sentence. If the reader has an open mind and the ability to read in between the lines, they discover more than they have bargained for. Some poems might have stories of suffering or abuse, while others contain happy times and great joy. Regardless of what the poems contains, all poems display an expression. That very moment when the writer begins his mental journey with that pen and paper is where all feelings are let out. As poetry is continues to be written, the reader begins to see patterns within each poem. On the other hand, poems have nothing at all in common with one another. A good example of this is in two poems by a famous writer by the name of Langston Hughes. A well-known writer that still gets credit today for pomes like “ Theme for English B” and “Let American be American Again.”
While reading the poem the reader can imply that the father provides for his wife and son, but deals with the stress of having to work hard in a bad way. He may do what it takes to make sure his family is stable, but while doing so he is getting drunk and beating his son. For example, in lines 1 and 2, “The whisky on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy” symbolizes how much the father was drinking. He was drinking so much, the scent was too much to take. Lines 7 and 8, “My mother’s countenance, Could not unfrown itself.” This helps the reader understand the mother’s perspective on things. She is unhappy seeing what is going on which is why she is frowning. Although she never says anything it can be implied that because of the fact that the mother never speaks up just shows how scared she could be of her drunk husband. Lines 9 and 10, “The hand that held my wrist Was battered on one knuckle”, with this line the reader is able to see using imagery that the father is a hard worker because as said above his knuckle was battered. The reader can also take this in a different direction by saying that his hand was battered from beating his child as well. Lastly, lines 13 and 14, “You beat time on my head With a palm caked hard by dirt” As well as the quote above this quote shows that the father was beating his child with his dirty hand from all the work the father has
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.
In conclusion, this whole poem has symbolic historic value because of its theme surrounding The Children’s March and The Birmingham Church Bombing. The author successfully brought the pain and impact the event made by taking Addie Mae Collins’ death. “He makes the sadness of an infamous tragedy vivid and heartfelt to everyone who reads it, whether they have connection to the tragedy or not.” (Devitt, 1) By approaching these
Poems, Poets, Poetry: An Introduction and Anthology. 3rd ed. Ed. Helen Vendler. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s,
Gwendolyn Brooks was born in Topeka, Kansas, in 1917. She grew up in a harsh, racist time period along with The Great Depression. Brooks’ poems were influenced from this and encouraged her to write many poems about the life of a black American. “She was inspired by the black power movement and the militancy of such poets as Amiri Baraka” (Barker, 448). During the 1960s her writing underwent a racial change in style and subject matter. Brooks learned to write such great poems at the Associate of Literature and Art, Wilson Junior College, 1936. Writing many known poems such as: A Street in Bronzeville, Annie Allen, Maud Martha, Bronzeville Boys and Girls, The Bean Eaters, etc. She’s a poet of contemporary writings; her poems mirror the ups and the downs of black American lives at this time. Although she writes with great encouragement and wisdom, she looks at everything with an open mind. Her characters speak for themselves. “Her works sometimes resembled a poignant social document, but her poems are works of art…” (Miller, 78). One can picture a vivid idea of Bronzeville, U.S.A. because of the great details she puts into her poems. A black district in her native Chicago, that serves as the setting for many of her poems. “Her characters are usually the unheroic black people who fled the land for the city- only to d...
culture here. The speaker is allowing the reader to make a mental picture of one
In the poem “Ballad of Birmingham” by Dudley Randall, a mother attempted to protect her daughter by sending her to church. However, in the end, the child has her entire life stolen from her. The dramatic situation in the poem is portrayed and developed through Randall’s use of descriptive imagery, dialogue, irony, and a tonal shift.
In this essay I will compare and contrast a collection of different poems by Carol Anne Duffy, Robert Browning, Ben Johnson and Simon Armitage.
During the early seventeenth century, poets were able to mourn the loss of a child publicly by writing elegies, or poems to lament the deceased. Katherine Philips and Ben Jonson were two poets who wrote the popular poems “On the Death of My Dearest Child, Hector Philips”, “On My First Son”, and “On My First Daughter” respectively. Although Philips and Jonson’s elegies contain obvious similarities, the differences between “On the Death of My Dearest Child” and “On My First Son” specifically are pronounced. The emotions displayed in the elegies are very distinct when considering the sex of the poet. The grief shown by a mother and father is a major theme when comparing the approach of mourning in the two elegies.
Two poems, Tennyson’s “Tithonus” and Langston Hughes’ “Mother to Son”, were written at two different times, focusing on two different stories, themes and characters. Though the two are similar in the fact that they are written in the same form, use many types figures of speech and poetic language along with the fact that they are both highly praised works of poetry.