For this assignment we have to compare three poems; for mine I ended up choosing “I Want to Die While You Love Me” by Georgia Douglas Johnson, “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow” from play Macbeth by William Shakespeare, and the third is “ Song for a Dark Girl” by Langston Hughes. When you first read these three poems they really don’t have much in common, but once you begin to compare them all to one another you really start to apprehend what’s being written. Comparing poems has many benefits; you can discover different writing styles, different emotions the literature makes you feel, along with experiencing many different types of rhythm and rhyme.
The first poem “I Want to Die While You Love Me” is short and sweet. At the beginning of each stanza Georgia repeats the line “I want to die while you love me,” although in each one she expresses a different emotion or more so a different viewpoint of passing away with or without being loved. She uses a certain type of rhyme in her writing, every other line has a perfect end rhyme. For example:
I want to die while you love me,
While yet you hold me fair,
While laughter lies upon my lips
And lights are in my hair. – (Johnson)
She rhymes the words fair and hair, and then later on the words see and be, live and give,
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and in the last stanza bed and dead. Georgia uses the rhyme scheme of ABCB which is an alternate rhyme scheme. Reading this makes you feel a mixture of emotions.
In the first stanza the narrator tells about their love and the things she cherishes in it, things that make them happy and fell loved by someone. They take a turn in the second stanza by starting to explain their reasoning in not wanting to pass without having a love; it’s as if they’re afraid to experience what it’s like to be alone and on your own. They don’t want their love for each other to grow old and die out, Georgia carries these emotions into the third stanza as well. At the end Georgia goes back to talking about the narrators love and how they want it to end, with one last passionate kiss to send them
away. The second poem is an excerpt from the play Macbeth; it’s the monologue of Macbeth right after he gets the news of his wife’s death (Charters 772). Here is where Macbeth starts to question the point of life and how repetitive it is. Day after day it’s the same thing and it’s been like that since the beginning of time, life is short and to him has little to no significance. Shakespeare writes very dramatic pieces, and I think it’s because he’s not afraid to expose emotion to his audience. He uses metaphors as an advantage, for example when he compares the short length of life to an actor on stage. They play out all their emotions and then leave the stage after only an hour. This is a very short poem like “I Want to Die While You Love Me” even if it was just an excerpt from a screenplay. In the final poem “Song for a Dark Girl” Langston writes in a sort of blues song type of way. The rhythm of it just makes you want to sing along while reading it. Like Georgie’s poem, Langston uses the same alternate poem scheme ABCB. Langston also repeats the first line in the poem in each stanza just like Georgia had done in hers. He uses this interesting technique in his writing as well, when he adds the parentheses where the women states things ab out her broken heart and her bruised up lover. Even though you didn’t know this women Langston makes you feel so much emotion towards her pain and situation. She lost her love whom was beaten and hung, and for what? He hung at a crossroads as a warning for others like him. When the woman’s love is killed she questions all faith, thinking should she believe in “white Lord Jesus” if her prayers are never answered (Langston). The poem ends with a metaphor, which comes off a bit vague on what’s trying to be said. I interpret it as the women talking about her lover hanging there, (possibly naked to make it all the more humiliating and vulgar) on a raw tree that’s just as exposed. In all of these poems they speak of death or the aftermath of death, they carry all the emotions that come with it as well. The poets like Langston and Georgia share the same rhyme schemes, and they all keep their poems short while still maintaining a mass of emotions. They can follow song like rhythms of slow paced rhythms. There’s many ways to write poetry. There really aren’t any rules to it. I think that’s why it’s so easy for people to let out their emotions and thoughts. Poetry is a great gateway for many and is great for those who just want to feel.
The alliteration used is to emphasize rhythm in the poem. On the other hand, the poet also depicts a certain rhyme scheme across each stanza. For example, the first stanza has a rhyme scheme of this manner a, b, c, d, e, a. With this, the rhyme scheme depicted is an irregular manner. Hence, the poem does not have a regular rhythm. Moreover, the poet uses a specific deign of consonance, which is present in the poem (Ahmed & Ayesha, p. 11). The poet also uses the assonance style depicted in the seventh stanza, “Seven whole days I have not seen my beloved.” The letter ‘o’ has been repeated to create rhythm and to show despair in the poem. On the second last line of the seventh stanza, the poet uses the style of consonance, “If I hug her, she’ll drive illness from me. By this, the letter ‘l’ is repeated across the line. The poet’s aim of using this style of Consonance is to establish rhythm in the poem and add aural
Both authors use figurative language to help develop sensory details. In the poem It states, “And I sunned it with my smiles, And with soft deceitful wiles.” As the author explains how the character is feeling, the reader can create a specific image in there head based on the details that is given throughout the poem. Specifically this piece of evidence shows the narrator growing more angry and having more rage. In the short story ” it states, “We are below the river's bed. The drops of moisture trickle among bones.” From this piece of text evidence the reader can sense the cold dark emotion that is trying to be formed. Also this excerpt shows the conflict that is about to become and the revenge that is about to take place. By the story and the poem using sensory details, they both share many comparisons.
the poem is that all she wants is some happiness and to be able to
The speakers in A. E. Housman poem “To an Athlete Dying Young” and Edward Arlington Robinson poem “Richard Cory” serve different purposes but uses irony and rhyme to help convey their message. In “To an Athlete Dying Young” the speaker’s purpose is to show the audience dying young with glory is more memorable than dying old with glory. In “Richard Cory” the speaker’s purpose is to show the audience “you can’t judge a book by its cover.”
...r’.” Poetry for students. Ed. Sara Constantakis. Vol. 43 Detroit: Gale, 2013. Literature Resource Center. Web. 30 Mar. 2014. http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?>.
For my poetry paper I chose to examine poetry from the family album. The family album stood out to me significantly because I thoroughly enjoyed all of the poems because I had a personal connection with it. Family has always been an important part of my life and I think this particular album speaks volume. This album has many levels to it, some deeper than others. I feel that from reading poetry, it expands our ability to think and form ideas that we would have not thought about before. Poetry gives readers the ability to make connections on a deeper level and see things from a different perspective. The two poems that spoke to me in this album specifically were “Those Winter Sundays” By Robert Hayden and “Begotten” by Andrew Hudgins. These two poems are both similar because they are from a son’s point of view, talking about their parent(s). “Those Winter Sundays” was one of my all-time favorite poems from this album because it shows a hard working father who is dedicated to his family, but does not get any recognition for his hard work.
Good poetry provides meaningful commentary. One indication of a poem’s success in this is the depth of thought the reader has as a result of the poem. The poems I anthologized may take different
In this stanza there is a question asked to the question reveals that the girl is puzzled about the lord is after her. This suggests that she is aware that he has different motives, rather than love and romance. This also shows that she knows the compliment is false and just a way of seducing her into bed. The second stanza is where the great lord isn’t so “great” anymore. He lured and tricked her into going to his palace home.
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.”
The first literary device that can be found throughout the poem is couplet, which is when two lines in a stanza rhyme successfully. For instance, lines 1-2 state, “At midnight, in the month of June / I stand beneath the mystic moon.” This is evidence that couplet is being used as both June and moon rhyme, which can suggest that these details are important, thus leading the reader to become aware of the speaker’s thoughts and actions. Another example of this device can be found in lines 16-17, “All Beauty sleeps!—and lo! where lies / (Her casement open to the skies).” These lines not only successfully rhyme, but they also describe a woman who
Stanzas one and two of the poem are full of imagery. The first stanza sets the scene for the poem “in a kingdom by the sea” (Poe 609) which makes you feel as if the story is going to have a “romantic” (Overview) feel to it. Then Annabel Lee comes into the story with “no other thought than to love and be loved by me” (Poe 609); This sentence is full of imagery in the sense that it makes you feel the immense capacity of love Annabel Lee had for the speaker if that was her only thought. In the second stanza the imagery takes a turn that shifts from loving and inviting to pain; The love between Annabel and the speaker was so strong that
In the first stanza, first line; I saw two trees embracing, this means that there is a couple that is in love. In the second and third line we see that the male is weaker “one leaned on the other, as if to throw her down” and in the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh line we notice that the female has the strength, willpower and is dominating. In the second stanza, line one, two and three we see that the female being dominant makes the male feel broken and intimidated. In line four “the most wind-warped, you could see”, hear we see that there is a major problem between the two.
Written in iambic form, the meter alternates from tetrameter to trimeter, which when incorporated with quatrain creates the same form and verse as that in “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, / that saved a wretch like me.” Although the poem lacks much rhyme, the speaker rhymes “me”, “immortality”, and “eternity” to reinforce her description of life after death. In the fourth stanza, the speaker seems to stumble or have a lapse in concentration, realizing that she is in the process of dying, as she uses slant rhyming, reverses the meter, and has a misstep in form, such as in, “The Dews drew quivering and chill—,” (line 14). The meter and form returns to normal in the next stanza as the speaker recovers from this realization and it remains normal
of the difficulty in acceptance. In the first few stanzas the poet creates the impression that she
When reading the title, we often associate a love song as something jaunty, pleasureable, and celebrating, or its other extreme, regretting, nostalgic, and full of pity for the singer’s troubles in love. With Williams the singer, the main idea revolves around the concept of an incomplete union in first person point of view, which makes the reading more personal as the reader is using I instead you or he. From this concept stem the ideas that this poem is about hopelessness or happiness, communal sex or masturbation. Delving into history, literary techniques, association with the author, and own opinion of it, there is easily more to it than meets the eye.