George Watsky’s song “Cannonball”, off of his All You Can Do album, released in 2014, acts as a spectacular example of the San Francisco slam poetry scene. George Watsky started executing slam poetry when he was fifteen years old. His first album called Guilty Pleasures was dropped in 2009. A bountiful group of people hesitate to know who George Watsky is because he persists as a newer artist. His song “Cannonball” continues to be absolutely inspired by an accident that happened during the 2013 Vans Wrapped Tour; he had climbed onto one of the lighting fixtures, slipped into the crowd, and broke a fan’s arm. Immediately, he felt remorse over what had happened and two of the songs on the All You Can Do album consists of lyrics related to the …show more content…
incident. When analyzing George Watsky’s song “Cannonball”, it has superb examples of imagery, symbols, and figures of speech that prevail in poetry, this aides the song’s meaning thus making it authentically powerful for the listener. George Watsky’s appliance of imagery in “Cannonball” has an extremely profound hold that it captivates its listeners and makes it accessible for them to imagine the words he sings.
One of the lines in the song says “all of us are a galaxy of tiny little storms”, when read, it seems effortless to imagine people with galaxies of swirls of brewing emotions within them. Moreover, on numerous other occasions, lines can easily be illustrated in a person’s mind. There holds several vivid words wielded in this song that makes it easier for the reader or listener to embody what George Watsky tries to gain, the listener’s understanding. In other words, the song “Cannonball” inhabits frequent examples of imagery, allowing the listeners to further …show more content…
understand. The song “Cannonball” operates in Symbolism throughout the duration of the song seeing as the lyrics have a little spice of the “Iceberg Theory” in them. In “Cannonball” the lyrics that stick out the utmost is “I’ve seen daisies hold cannonballs above them.” The action in this line is so penetrating to the soul as a result of it depicting fragile daisies holding up burdensome cannonballs. The daisies work as a symbol for his crowds at concerts and the cannonball symbolizes him when he crowd surfs during every concert. The mosquito bites that George Watsky mentions towards the close of the song symbolizes a time of nostalgia, when he was with a girl all night long. As a result, there remain examples of poetry in George Watsky’s song cannonball that bring the song up to a greater level of philosophical understanding. Lastly, figures of speech persist in “Cannonball” because George Watsky exerts personification countless times from alpha to omega.
In the first verse of the song, he says “the good and evil in me wage a bloody civil war”, when he exercises the words good and evil together and considering they stand as opposites, it becomes an oxymoron. In addition, an example of figures of speech where he says “when the sprinklers cried on us” due to him giving the sprinklers human actions this makes the line personification. Undoubtedly, personification is worked various times all through the song. Overall George Watsky flourishes his song with uncounted usage of figures of
speech. In conclusion, George Watsky sets in motion many different characteristics of poetry such as: imagery, symbolism, and figures of speech. All of these poetry trademarks can easily be found in modern songs similar to “Cannonball”. In fact, George Watsky applying these components of poetry makes it easier for others to relate poetry to music and music to poetry. People would say after listening to George Watsky’s music they can further understand poetry furthermore, they can grasp the meanings of older perplexing poetry. All in all, George Watsky’s “Cannonball” can be classified as a poem.
In the third stanza, the language becomes much darker, words like: anger, explode, and against make this stanza seem even more warlike than the first stanza.
Out all of the figurative language used in the book, I chose three. The first one I used is found on page 2, “The Sun was climbing over the trees of city college and soon the black asphalt would shimmer with vapers.” This figurative language is personification because it is giving human-like traits to the sun. The meaning of quote is that the sun represents hope or a new day and the vapors of the onions represents the dreadful things that might happen; so basically, a hope versus evil scenario. It is significant to the book because the city is apparently cursed with onions that leaves vapor wherever a bad situation occurred. The whole hope vs evil is what really makes the book come to alive to. Next we will talk about the other figurative
Personification: 'When Fortune frowns her blackest' is the only example of a personification in this poem. Fortune, which is an inanimate concept, is given the human ability of frowning in this poem. This poetic device is used to capture the attention of the reader and enhance
There are multiple examples of visual imagery in this poem. An example of a simile is “curled like a possum within the hollow trunk”. The effect this has is the way it creates an image for the reader to see how the man is sleeping. An example of personification is, “yet both belonged to the bush, and now are one”. The result this has is how it creates an emotion for the reader to feel
“Power” is an outcry at what is going on and has been going on with the African American peoples throughout the last four-hundred years: “they had dragged her 4´10´´ black woman’s frame/over the hot coals of four centuries of white male approval” (35,36). The lack of rhyme scheme is the vent of the outrage of the speaker. When we are mad (as mad as this speaker is), things become jumbled. We do not think in a normal way. Things that are usually normal are not so normal. The speaker is only consumed by the anger built up inside of it, and we see that by some of the things that it says, and by the overall construction of its poem. The difference of the structures of the stanzas is another thing that denotes this `action´ of anger, and the thought that the speaker is consumed by its anger and showing it. The speaker, in its state of anger, is not thinking of how many lines it is putting into each stanza. The poem is also thought about , but the words are spilling out of the speaker’s mouth in an anger ridden breakdown.
This is about the bullets that puncture the air and the image of ‘smacking’ refers to the winded feelings the solider has as he runs for his life across the field. His ‘numb’ rifle and ‘smashed arm’ have a the same meaning: he could feel numb to the pain he has to cause with the rifle. He could have smashed his rifle into his arm in his panic. This highlights both the soldier’s inexperience and trauma at what he has had to do in the war. This poem highlights the reality of conflicts and the fear and terror that soldiers feel.
E: In the line “I am, you are, we are Australian” (stanza 4,8,9 & 10) repetition is used to create a metaphor which highlights the song’s central message - no matter your background, all Australians work together to make Australia great. This can be seen as an expression of cultural inclusion. E: “The rivers when they run” (stanza 7) is an excellent example of personification and alliteration. The poet used this clever image to describe areas of Australia that are usually in drought, but in flood times they flow wildly and dangerously.
He uses personifications specifically in this poem to write about what is going on and to describe things. “It's a hard life where the sun looks”(19)...”And its black strip of highway, big eyed/with rabbits that won’t get across ”(2)...”A pot bangs and water runs in the kitchen” (13) None of these are really human body parts on things such as the sun, a pot, or a highway, but they help describe what something does or what something looks like. In the first instance, the sun cannot actually look at something, but it could mean that the sun is visible to the humans, and if humans are out for a long time in the sun, they can get hot and exhausted. For the second line, the big-eyed highway could mean that the highway has many cars with bright headlights that are dangerous for the rabbits, the immigrants, to get across. For the third and final line, pots are not able to bang things on their own, and it could have possibly been a human who made the pot bang, preparing the meal of beans and brown soup that they survive on. There is also a simile in this poem, “Papa's field that wavered like a mirage” (24). This simile could suggest that the wind is moving the grass or crops on his father’s field and looked like an optical illusion. According to Gale Virtual Reference Library, the literary device, “tone” is used to convey the significant change of the author’s feeling in the poem. In the beginning lines, the tone is happy. The poem talks about nostalgia of when he was little, “They leap barefoot to the store. Sweetness on their tongues, red stain of laughter (5-6). (GVRL) These lines illustrate the nostalgia and happy times of Gary Soto’s life when he was probably a child. However, after line 11, the tone becomes more of a negative one. Soto later talks about Farm Laborers and how the job was not a great one. After line 19, a brighter
The author uses personification in lines 16-17 where he writes “ the shadows of this loneliness gripped loose dirt.” ( Soto 1). This use of personification is the narrator’s way of helping the reader to further understand the loneliness he experienced in life. The last use of personification relates back to the water in the last line where he describes it as “racing out of town”. The water racing out of town represents what the narrator wishes he could do. He is envious of the water’s ability to come and go as it pleases and that’s why he phrases this line in that
The author use personification in the poem because he sees but things will be easier to explain if he uses figurative language. The metaphor comparing to things without using like or as like when she said in the poem ´´ Big ghost in a cloud´ ´ She used metaphor to give a better example of what she sees and what she sees Is cloud shaped as different animals or anything but in the poem she pretty much-seen cloud shaped as the ghost.
Throughout the poem, the author uses various types of figurative language to immerse the reader in the thoughts and feeling of the speaker. The personification of fear in the form of Mr. Fear provides one such example.
Throughout the poem, there is repetition of the line “I am the man, I suffer'd, I was there, ” to emphasize his empathy. He also includes alliteration such as “rent roofs” and powerful imagery like “the long roil of the drummers” to liven the poem. Additionally, he helps the reader experience the events in the poem by using similes to compare the challenges to things that the reader has experienced. One line reads, “The twinges that sting like needles his legs and neck”. In the poem, Whitman becomes the heroes, but by incorporating the literary devices, Whitman allows the reader to experience the same experience as the heroes as
The personification in the poem is presented in line 29 where it states “A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty/ Was but to sing” (Poe). Echoes don't necessarily come in “troops,” like an army, but rather in ...
The trumpet is used in this metaphor to describe the loud and blaring noise that debuts out to the world. Further, the poet brings the word “sun” in line 8 to exemplify the speakers strive for light and happiness to come with
Figurative language is used by William Wordsworth to show the exchange between man and nature. The poet uses various examples of personification throughout the poem. When the poet says:”I wandered lonely as a cloud” (line 1),”when all at once I saw a crowd” (line 3), and “fluttering and dancing in the breeze” (line 6) shows the exchange between the poet and nature since the poet compares himself to a cloud, and compares the daffodils to humans. Moreover, humans connect with God through nature, so the exchange between the speaker and nature led to the connection with God. The pleasant moment of remembering the daffodils does not happen to the poet all time, but he visualizes them only in his “vacant or pensive mode”(line 20). However, the whole poem is full of metaphors describing the isolation of the speaker from society, and experiences the beauty of nature that comforts him. The meta...