Ashley Berry Professor Desens English 2391-005 February 26, 2016 Poetry Analysis Rough Draft Though the poems “At the San Francisco Airport” and “To a Daughter Leaving Home” both deal with the issue of the speaker’s daughters leaving home to begin their adult lives and forge their own paths, the attitudes of the speakers could not be more contrasting. Between their divergent tone and language of the stanzas, the sound patterns, and drastically different use of imagery, each speaker’s willingness to let their daughter go is showcased. The tone of these two poems is incredibly different, while “At the San Francisco Airport’ gives a sense of depression and hopelessness, “To a Daughter Leaving Home” seems much more optimistic with a definite nostalgic undertone. Yvor Winters makes the tone of the …show more content…
The speaker goes on to claim that he doesn’t even really remember what his daughter is leaving him for, “intent on things that I but half recall.” Sometimes when a person is feeling extremely emotional, they forget simple things- like what their daughter is going away for. The sound patterns of these two poems are also quite different. “At the Airport in San Francisco” has a set rhyme scheme, while “To a Daughter Leaving Home,” is free verse. The rhyme scheme of Winters’ poem is A-B-A-B-A, which does not change for the entirety of the five stanzas. One interesting thing that I noticed about stanzas 1, 3, and 5 were that words that rhymed on the ‘A’ lines seemed to correlate with the progression of the speaker’s emotions. I found that these three stanzas seemed to be the places where the most emotion was
The descriptions and words used create the most vivid images of a mother’s escape to freedom with her son. This poem takes you on both a physical and emotional journey as it unravels through the treacherous demands of freedom. A beautiful example of her ability to rhyme both internally as well as externally can be seen here,
Although both poems are set in the same environment, and that the visual structure of the poems are similar. Once you look deeper and analysis the poems it becomes clear that they have been written in very different styles, and very different but as powerful emotions running through them i.e. grief and resignment. One poet has a future to look forward to; the other knows that death is around the corner. One poet could not have for scene a death, the other is questioning weather the ‘black diamond dust’ was worth it on reflection.
The female, adolescent speaker helps the audience realize the prejudice that is present in a “melting-pot” neighborhood in Queens during the year 1983. With the setting placed in the middle of the Civil Rights Movement, the poem allows the audience to examine the experience of a young immigrant girl, and the inequality that is present during this time. Julia Alvarez in “Queens, 1963” employs poetic tools such as diction, figurative language, and irony to teach the reader that even though America is a place founded upon people who were strangers to the land, it is now home to immigrants to claim intolerance for other foreigners, despite the roots of America’s founding.
On an everyday basis teens all around the world fight and disagree with their parents. In the passages Confetti Girl and Tortilla Sun this very thing is clearly demonstrated. Both stories feature two teenage girls that have lost one of their parents. They both now face the daily struggle of agreeing and relating to their remaining parent. In Confetti Girl, the narrator is constantly overlooked and out shadowed by her father’s favorite thing, books and literacy.
This poem captures the immigrant experience between the two worlds, leaving the homeland and towards the new world. The poet has deliberately structured the poem in five sections each with a number of stanzas to divide the different stages of the physical voyage. Section one describes the refugees, two briefly deals with their reason for the exodus, three emphasises their former oppression, fourth section is about the healing effect of the voyage and the concluding section deals with the awakening of hope. This restructuring allows the poet to focus on the emotional and physical impact of the journey.
The poem is a combination of beauty and poignancy. It is a discovery in a trajectory path of rise and fall of human values and modernity. She is a sole traveler, a traveler apart in a literary romp afresh, tracing the thinning line of time and action.
Fulfilling the roles of both mother and breadwinner creates an assortment of reactions for the narrator. In the poem’s opening lines, she commences her day in the harried role as a mother, and with “too much to do,” (2) expresses her struggle with balancing priorities. After saying goodbye to her children she rushes out the door, transitioning from both, one role to the next, as well as, one emotion to another. As the day continues, when reflecting on
The poem is written in the father’s point of view; this gives insight of the father’s character and
The simultaneous distance and closeness within the relationship between the father and the child are inevitable even in the most tragic and happy events in life. The poems “Not Bad, Dad, Not Bad” by Jan Heller Levi and “In the Well” by Andrew Hudgins are both about the closeness and distance in a father and child relationship. Both poems are written in first person, or in the child’s point of view to emphasize the thoughts of distance and the experience of childhood thinking to the readers. The poems both use similar literary devices such as motifs and imagery to illustrate and accentuate the ideas of each event that the narrator, a child, experiences. Similarities between both poems are the use of water as a motif of the barrier to being farther away from the father, and the use of different synonyms for the word, father, to indicate the amount of distance at each point in the poems. On the other hand, each poem takes its route of distance in completely opposite directions. “Not Bad, Dad, Not Bad” by Jan Heller Levi and “In the Well” by Andrew Hudgins accommodate the similarities for the use of the same motif, water, and the use of several synonyms for “dad” throughout the poems, but also differentiate because they proceed in opposite directions from the beginning to the end.
Through diction, the tone of the poem is developed as one that is downtrodden and regretful, while at the same time informative for those who hear her story. Phrases such as, “you are going to do bad things to children…,” “you are going to suffer… ,” and “her pitiful beautiful untouched body…” depict the tone of the speaker as desperate for wanting to stop her parents. Olds wrote many poems that contained a speaker who is contemplating the past of both her life and her parent’s life. In the poem “The Victims,” the speaker is again trying to find acceptance in the divorce and avoidance of her father, “When Mother divorced you, we were glad/ … She kicked you out, suddenly, and her/ kids loved it… ” (Olds 990). Through the remorseful and gloomy tone, we see that the speaker in both poems struggles with a relationship between her parents, and is also struggling to understand the pain of her
“Those Winter Sundays” tells of Robert Hayden’s father and the cold mornings his father endures to keep his family warm in the winters. In “Digging” Heaney is sitting in the window watching his father do hard manual labor, which has taken a toll on his body. In “My Father as a Guitar” Espada goes to the doctors office with his father and is sitting in the office with his dad when the doctor tells him he has to take pain killers and to stop working because his body was growing old and weak. The authors of the poems all look at their fathers the same; they look at them with much respect and gratitude. All three poems tell of the hard work the dads have to do to keep their family fed and clothed. “The landlord, here a symbol of all the mainstream social institutions that hold authority over the working class” (Constantakis.) Espada’s father is growing old and his health is deteriorating quickly but his ability to stop working is not in his own hands, “I can’t the landlord won’t let me” (774.) “He is separated from the homeland, and his life in the United States is far from welcoming” (Constantakis.) Espada’s Grandmother dies in Puerto Rico and the family learns this by a lett...
My Papa’s Waltz and Those Winter Sundays are similar because they use tone, imagery, and sounds and rhythms to prove these two boys in fact love their abusive father. In both of these poems there is a movement from a cold and serious tone to a warm and happy one. The use of imagery successfully accentuates the good things the father does while marginalizing the bad. And the sounds and rhythms also add to the theme of love by manipulating how the poem is read. Roethke and Hayden are two skilled poets that have much control over the techniques they use. It is interesting that these poems are so alike and perhaps it is due to the time at which they were written. In any case, these two poets made a lasting impression on American poetry and will continue to appear in poetry anthologies for years to come.
Although the little girl doesn’t listen to the mother the first time she eventually listens in the end. For example, in stanzas 1-4, the little girl asks if she can go to the Freedom March not once, but twice even after her mother had already denied her the first time. These stanzas show how the daughter is a little disobedient at first, but then is able to respect her mother’s wishes. In stanzas 5 and 6, as the little girl is getting ready the mother is happy and smiling because she knows that her little girl is going to be safe, or so she thinks. By these stanzas the reader is able to tell how happy the mother was because she thought her daughter would be safe by listening to her and not going to the March. The last two stanzas, 7 and 8, show that the mother senses something is wrong, she runs to the church to find nothing, but her daughter’s shoe. At this moment she realizes that her baby is gone. These stanzas symbolize that even though her daughter listened to her she still wasn’t safe and is now dead. The Shoe symbolizes the loss the mother is going through and her loss of hope as well. This poem shows how elastic the bond between the daughter and her mother is because the daughter respected her mother’s wish by not going to the March and although the daughter is now dead her mother will always have her in her heart. By her having her
The author uses imagery, contrasting diction, tones, and symbols in the poem to show two very different sides of the parent-child relationship. The poem’s theme is that even though parents and teenagers may have their disagreements, there is still an underlying love that binds the family together and helps them bridge their gap that is between them.
The speaker reflects on the teenage girl’s childhood as she recalls the girl played with “dolls that did pee-pee” (2). This childish description allows the speaker to explain the innocence of the little girl. As a result, the reader immediately feels connected to this cute and innocent young girl. However, the speaker’s diction evolves as the girl grew into a teenager as she proclaims: “She was healthy, tested intelligent, / possessed strong arms and back, / abundant sexual drive and manual dexterity” (7-9). The speaker applies polished language to illustrate the teen. This causes the reader not only to see the girl as an adult, but also to begin to grasp the importance of her situation. The speaker expresses what the bullies told this girl as she explains: “She was advised to play coy, / exhorted to come on hearty” (12-13). The sophisticated diction shifts towards the girl’s oppressors and their cruel demands of her. Because of this, the reader is aware of the extent of the girl’s abuse. The speaker utilizes an intriguing simile as she announces: “Her good nature wore out / like a fan belt” (15-16). The maturity of the speaker’s word choice becomes evident as she uses a simile a young reader would not understand. This keeps the mature reader focused and allows him to fully understand the somberness of this poem. The speaker concludes the poem as she depicts the teenage girl’s appearance at her funeral: “In the casket displayed on satin she lay / with the undertaker’s cosmetics painted on” (19-20). The speaker elects not to describe the dead girl in an unclear and ingenuous manner. Rather, she is very clear and