The first observation I had was the division of the chapbook into chapters or sections. Initially, I believed that this would make the book easier to read, but then I realized that the title pages for each section were actually another poem: where boulder riprap, hard scrabble grass geyser up across the hard-reaped field leave a fork of locust in the wake . . . wet canvas shelter, awkward trees wild red dirt chatter through the night This shows the reader the creativeness in how she put together her chapbook. She did not stay in the conventional mode and snuck a subtle final poem into her piece of art. There were many times as I read through her words that I would utter to myself sounds of astonishment as I was taken aback by the brashness …show more content…
“The Many Day Rag” understandably is a personal narrative of the waiting game as a military spouse. When she writes “waited for someone / anyone to come through a door,” I was left questioning who she was waiting for and subsequently in the next poem the poet is interacting with a soldier which clarified the overall theme for the book. “In the Glass Bowl” specifically references the poet as a teacher as she advises the soldier that “war is everywhere / raise your child” as she fills his mind with knowledge. This particular poem has the best allusion to her teaching profession when the poet writes “opened his skull / inflated the shrunken hippocampus / with helium” and yet she abandons the theme of teaching after this poem. Her remembrance of their lives as a couple is clear in the poem “Why Men Divorce” when she speaks about the attempt at reconciliation over a phone line as “he is breathing down [her] phone” and it is clear that their relationship was filled with strife. She associates their entire relationship with specific moments in time when disaster struck and she was privy to violence. Her words convey a feeling that as a teacher she did not sign up for the violence yet she has to live through it in the memories of their life together. She speaks specifically of blood throughout her book in regards to the violent memories of the middle east, …show more content…
The specific word “after” shows that the previous poems were about the before and the poet is now in the future. The second and third line in the same poem “the bluebird dived just over the rail / into a dogwood” alludes to the new day. The reference to a bluebird generally shows a moment of clarity, hope and focus on a new day. The poems are not presented in a disconnected style and are placed evenly throughout the book. The use of white space allows the reader to follow the poet’s train of thought and the concrete imagery running alongside the enjambment adheres to a presentation that is pleasing to the eye. This particular chapbook was the easiest to read yet the context was unnerving and disheartening. Clearly, the poet is trying to convey the painful parts of a time when the world was encased in violence and
Although this section is the easiest to read, it sets up the action and requires the most "reading between the lines" to follow along with the quick and meaningful happenings. Millay begins her poem by describing, in first person, the limitations of her world as a child. She links herself to these nature images and wonders about what the world is like beyond the islands and mountains. The initial language and writing style hint at a child-like theme used in this section. This device invites the reader to sit back and enjoy the poem without the pressure to understand complex words and structure.
She gets to the point and proves that in our current world we tend to say more than we should, when just a couple of words can do the same. In her writing, it is evident that the little sentences and words are what make the poem overall that perfect dream she wishes she were part of.
“Poet Billy Collins has said of her work, “Julie Sheehan possesses a range of tones- tender, sassy, quietly observant, deeply cutting” (www.poetryfoundation.com). In an interview with Julie Sheehan, the interviewee h...
Just as the surroundings would seem different through color slides, he asks the readers to see the world from diverse viewpoints while reading and writing poems. Moreover, by listening to the poem’s hive, dropping a mouse, and walking inside its room, Collins encourages readers to discover the concealed depth of poetry. He comments that the readers should enjoy the poem in a way they would like to water ski.... ... middle of paper ... ...
The free-style structure and imagery of the poem show the speaker’s memory of the summer. The blank verse demonstrates the point of view of a young, pure, ten year old girl, it is unstructured and lively. The speaker’s memory moves easily through summer. The speaker was very determined to create her horse the way she wanted it, the horse was “long,” “limber,” and had a “good thick knob” for his head after she cut it with her brother’s knife. The imagery also demonstrates the speaker’s
Far from the usual poems that I am familiar with, this poem consists of fragments. When read with the expectation of instantly gaining a coherent idea or message, one would be puzzled of the writing style and might initially think it’s full of senseless lines. It’s quite a challenge to gain full understanding of the message the poem wants to give out.
The poem immediately establishes a controlling metaphor comparing the book to a child, illustrating the speaker's inherent attachment to her work while also describing her irritation towards it. Establishing the metaphor by using terms such as "offspring" and "birth", the speaker shows that she is attached to her work, as a mother is to an infant child. (1-2) However, she simultaneously establishes that while the child is imperfect, so is she, calling her mind "feeble." (1) It is this duality of both the mother and the child having flaws that drives the speaker's sentiment of attachment to her work: as a depiction of her thoughts, it is a piece of her, and a flaw in it reflects a flaw in her.
To begin, the episodic shifts in scenes in this ballad enhance the speaker’s emotional confusion. Almost every stanza has its own time and place in the speaker’s memory, which sparks different emotions with each. For example, the first stanza is her memory of herself at her house and it has a mocking, carefree mood. She says, “I cut my lungs with laughter,” meaning that...
Collins himself was the speaker and author of this poem. When learn that Collins himself was the author and speaker of the poem when he says, “I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide” (Collins, Billy). When Collins says I ask them, it shows that he is the author and speaker. An example that I find is the huge difference between the tone of the last two paragraphs between the rest of the paragraph. Collins uses a cheerful tone in his first five paragraphs of the poem when he is explaining how people should examine a poem, but then changes to an unpleasant tone when he starts explaining how people examine a poem. This poetic device helps us understand how Collins feels about how we examine a poem and how he really wants us to examine a poem. Another poetic device Collins used in his poem is metaphors. A good example of a metaphor is “walk inside the poem’s room and feel the walls for a light switch” (Collins, Billy). The reason that is a metaphor is because a poem is compared to a room. All the metaphors used throughout the poem helps us understand just how much Collins wants us to dive in deep and examine a poem to understand the meaning of the
The usage of all these literary elements really brings the poem together. The usage of language, voice, and style can invoke feelings in the reader that are not expected. The reader feels for the Duchess because due to her childlike demeanor and innocence, which all people go through when they are younger, eventual became the “issue” that decided her
As a housewife and a mother, Godwin's protagonist leads a fairly structured life. Her activities are mostly confined to caring for her husband and child and caring for their home. Though she is obviously unsatisfied with this, as shown by her attempts to discard this role, she is not comfortable without such a structure. Even when she has moved into the white room, she develops a routine of brushing her hair in the sun each day. When she decides to write a poem, she shies away from the project once she realizes how many options are open to her; the idea of so much freedom seems to distress her. Even when she thinks that "her poem could be six, eight, ten, thirteen lines, it could be any number of lines, and it did not even have to rhyme," the words themselves are rushed, the pacing of the sentence communicating her nervousness and discomfort.
The heartbreak and shaming has given her a new creative energy and an awareness that provides her a canvas to write her own treatise. One that is beautifully relayed to her writing teacher in the final minutes of this film. One cannot help but be moved as we hear her read these words:
The narrator is a young girl, living with her mother, yet she’s old enough to think about leaving home and being who she’s meant to be. The speaker is using “first person, narrative”, and her audience is herself. She’s talking to herself to boost her own confidence in her own individuality. This poem’s structure has no rhyming scheme or organized pattern, which could symbolize her desire to be free from her mother’s need to dictate her daughter’s life. Does freedom to a young girl, anxious to see the world , ever seem frightening? When she writes her name using all capital letters, it shows she has a need to be ‘important’. She writes her name in various ways: ‘script, capitals, scrawled, and scribbled’. This is an analogy for the various aspects of her personality. She will try new things like; travel, and see/experience new cultures. She will further her education by going to college. It says ‘.....She’s practicing signatures like scales’. This indicates her desire to become one of the best of whatever her goals will/might be, reinforcing her need to be an independent
William Blake is a poet most noted for the engravings that accompany his works of poetry. These engravings included with the poems help to depict the meaning of the poems. However, at times the engravings he includes with his poem can lead to complications for the interpreter of the poem. There are a multitude of variations of the same engraving that accompany a poem, all of them originals; some of these engravings compliment the poem, while others complicate the poem. One example of this occurrence, where one engraving may compliment the poem and the other complicates it, is in William Blake’s work “The Ecchoing Green” which can be found in Blake’s Songs of Innocence. The important thing to recognize is that regardless of whether the poem is further complicated or simplified because of the image, the poem and its accompanying image are still evoking thought, and discussion from the reader.
From the second she walked in, she began to inspire me. She shuffled with her papers in a way that made us all wonder whether it was pure disorganization or classical genius. Her hair aflame spirals of pure citrus fruit, her long flowery skirt welcoming every bored teen aged eye; she woke me up. The woman woke me up from the longest sleep I had ever had. R, R, Ms. R. I remember her icy blue eyes and how she almost flew up at times when she got really excited about some poem or character sketch. She walked in and immediately asked us what we thought about poetry, about fiction, about the world, about ourselves, about love and sex and how we wanted to express that to the world. And so for a first assignment, she asked us to write about something we lo...