Crystal Williams Enlightenment

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The poem "Enlightenment" is a narrative poem written by Crystal Williams in 1994. Most of Crystal's poems are sympathetic, which plays a huge role on the central message. Crystal writes narrative poems where she is the speaker. In the poem "Enlightenment" the speaker is directed at the woman, who seems to be driving angrily. The woman also seems desperate to have a race car, for she used tape to make her car look like a race car. The poems continues describing tragedies, where at the end the speaker teaches both the woman and the audience a lesson. The literary elements that are incorporated in the poem are structure, and point of view. These literary elements helped the readers understand that desires should come second to needs, and you should appreciate what you have. One of …show more content…

The poem is divided not only into stanza, but also lines. Most of the separate lines connect to other lines. "Our want is just one of many in line of wants & the line of wants is ancillary to the line of needs/ people close to you are hungry & you have ignored it. People close to you have lost their jobs" (Williams lines 10-13). This is an example of two sentences from the poem that connect with each other. This quote is connected with a similar idea, that your desire is secondary to your needs. The structure of the poem is significant because emphasizes the main idea of the separated lines. " Which she has done, which is what it means to want, but not have/ in a city stacked with desire, to know that desire is our most ruinous trait," (Williams lines 7-8). This demonstrates that desires could ruin people; furthermore, people have more important needs that should come before anything else. The poem's structure is significant in understanding the central message because it emphasizes the needs that should come before your

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