Paula Gunn Allen was an American Indian Poet that was the middle child of five siblings. She grew up on the Cubero Land Grant Reservation in New Mexico where she started her early education at St. Vincent Academy, followed by attending Missions School until the seventh grade at San Fidel in Pueblo town. She furthered her education by attending Colorado’s Woman’s College. Paula obtained her B.A. in 1966 and her M.F.A. in 1968 at the University of Oregon, that led to her receiving her Ph. D at the University of New Mexico in 1976. Paula was best known as the best Poetic, Novelist, and Critic. She wrote six volumes of poetry including her poem Recuerdo.
Poetry is based on eight factors that includes rhythm, imagery, figures, metaphor, symbols,
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personification, hyperbole, and allegory (Sporre 140).
Paula Gunn Allen’s poem Recuerdo is a poem of a woman’s memory when she was a little girl. The title Recuerdo is in Spanish meaning “I remember.” While visiting the Mesa Mountain with her mother either for a picnic or to gather up wood, she experienced an uninviting voice in the wind. In her memory, she wasn’t clear of what she heard or what it meant by the sound that she did hear. She couldn’t believe that something was in the wind that just didn’t sit well with her. The voice brought terror and tears to her eyes. Freighting her so bad that she couldn’t ask for her mother’s comfort to explain what she heard. She just stood there and let her mind wonder. What could be the reason for the terror in the wind? But instead of asking questions about her fearful thoughts she just stood there in the cold trying to warm up next to the campfire. “I wanted to cling to my mother so she could comfort me. explain the sound and my fear, but I simply sat, frozen, trying to feel as warm as the campfire (Allen).” She continues the poem with saying that she has never gotten over the memory that stuck with her from the terrified winds that spoke to her on that cold …show more content…
night. Still curious about the Gods in the mountains and the terror sounding voice in the wind. she still wonders why did the voice frighten her? Why didn’t she ask for clarification back when she was younger? She notions that it still haunts her to this day “I finger peyote buttons and count the stalks of sweetsage given me by a friend (Allen)”. Her mind is indecisive on what would happen if she went back to the Mesa Mountain now as an adult. Would she get a clear understanding on why the wind sounded so freighting? She wanted to get a clear understanding to see what the voice meant. Why was she stuck in between being both scared and comforted all the same time? In the end of the poem she goes on to state that she will go back to the mountain and get an understanding to the lack of meaning to why the voice in the wind was so scary. Being that it was on the peaks of the mountains that were silent and peaceful, where the Native Indians would get the shiny black volcanic glass that was used from the lava of the eruptions of the volcanoes from the surface of the earth to make Pottery, but still some fragments were left behind from old potters. Recuerdo, is a tetrameter poem.
The language of the poem holds five of the eight languages to poetry. Allegory, personification, symbols, figures, and metaphors. In the beginning of the poem she uses Allegory, Personification and a metaphor. “Allegory- related symbols working together with characters, events, or settings representing ideas or moral qualities” (Sporre). Paula compares the silence in the air to describe how clear the air was. Going on to using personification and a metaphor, “Peaks rise above me like the Gods. That is where they live, the old people say.” Personification is the figure of speech in which abstract qualities, animals, or inanimate objects take into many forms of literature (Sporre). Metaphors, are figures of speech by which new implications are given to words. Metaphors are implied but not explicit comparisons (Sporre). She goes on to imply that the Gods lives above us in the peaks, that’s where the old people say that they live. Using Symbols, “Which is critical to poetry, which uses compressed language to express, and carry us into its meaning (Sporre).” Ending the first line she writes “I listen and I heard”. Going on to explain how she heard the voice in the wind and by giving us the emotion of that feeling set the understanding of what the poem was all about. Following the next line Paula uses a form of Imagery. A verbal representation of objects, feelings, or ideas can be literal or figurative. figurative imagery involves a change in
literal meaning. (Sporre) “Now I climb the Mesas in my dreams.” She is saying that only in her dreams does she go back and visit the mesas mountains. Then Paula goes on to add more figurative imagery “I finger peyote buttons and count the stalks of sweetsage given me by a friend-obsessed with a memory that won’t die.” Paula shows us with her words how that weird feeling of hearing the winds in the mountains carried on into her adulthood and still the voice in the wind haunts her. Ending the poem Paula adds Literal imagery. She writes “Tomorrow I will go back and climb the endless mesas of my home. I will seek thistles drying the wind pocket bright bits of obsidian and fragments old potters left behind.” Literal Imagery involves no change or extension in meaning. She talks about the thistles drying in the wind, and being able to pick up Obsidian which is a shiny, using black, volcanic glass. It forms above the ground from lava that is similar in composition to the magma from which granite forms underground. But cools so quickly that minerals do not have a chance to form within it. Which is where Potters got most of their supplies from to make their amazing pottery from the simple forms that are provided by the earth itself. Adding figures also to her poem, which are like images, take words beyond their literal meaning. Much of poetic meaning comes in comparing objects in ways that goes beyond the literal. Paula ends the poem with a Figurer. “Maybe I will ask instead what that sounding means, Maybe I will find that exact hollow where terror and comfort meet”
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Natasha Trethewey is an accomplished poet who is currently serving as United States Poet Laureate appointed by the Library of Congress and won the Pulitzer Prize for her collection of poems, Native Guard in 2007. She grew up mixed race, black and white, in Gulfport, Mississippi, and when her parent’s divorced she moved with her mother to Atlanta. Her mother, Gwen, remarried and at a young age Natasha was a eyewitness in the physical and psychological abuse that her new stepfather hurled upon her mother. After graduating from high school, Natasha set off to go to school in Athens, Georgia at the University of Georgia. During Trethewey’s freshman year, her mother was murdered by her stepfather and she works through her grief by writing poetry
Elena Poniatowska escrita durante una epoca de cambio en Mexico. Antes de sus obras las mujeres mexicanas eran sometidos, docil, y pasivo. En la tiempo de sus obras las mujeres estaba tratando salir de los estereotipos de antes. Esta problema social tomo un afecto en Elena. Aunque ella no viene de un movimiento literatura directamente, ella escrita con el concepto de compremetido. En su narrative El Recado ella crea un mujer estereotipical que no puede controlar sus emociones. La titula es eso porque ella viene a ver su amante, pero el no esta, asi ella escribe las cosas que sentia. La perspectiva es de un personaje y ella nunca interacta con otros personajes. En facto la unica descripcion de un personaje otro de la protagonista es de su amante Martin. Habla de otros personajes, pero solamente de sus acciones. Porque ellas es la unica perspectiva que tenemos es sencillo a sentar compasion para una protagonista de quien nombre no aun sabemos. Ella da la descripcion de toda que vea, y mas importante todo que se sienta. Tambien tropos y figuras retoricas dan un tono significante al poema. Estos sentimientos de la portagonista y el tono emocional de la narrativa transporta una tema de una mujer estereotipical y debil quien quiere ser reconocido.
Figurative Language in used throughout poems so the reader can develop a further understanding of the text. In “The Journey” the author uses rhythm and metaphors throughout the poem. “...as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of the clouds..”(25-27). The author compares the star burning to finding your voice. Rhythm also develops the theme of the poem because throughout the story rhythm is presented as happy showing growing up and changing for the better is necessary and cheerful. In “The Laughing Heart” the author uses imagery and metaphors to develop the theme throughout the book. “There is a light somewhere. It may not be much light but it beats the darkness”(5-7). Always find the good out of everything, even it
Leslie Marmon Silko is a Native American from New Mexico and is part of the Laguna tribe. She received a MacArthur "genius" award and was considered one of the 135 most significant women writers ever. Her home state has named her a living cultural treasure. (Jaskoski, 1) Her well-known novel Ceremony follows a half-breed named Tayo through his realization and healing process that he desperately needs when he returns from the horrors of World War II. This is a process that takes him back to the history of his culture.
Throughout the poem, there are multiple instances of the personification of body parts. These body parts are personified to participate in language related activities, thereby enhancing the significance of the word “language” to the poem. For example, in the first stanza of the poem, the phrase “Her lips and teeth negotiate” (Reibetanz 3) allows inhuman body parts to be humanized. Instead of the woman herself negotiating, the lips and teeth are performing the task on her behalf, whereas, normally the woman would be controlling her lips and teeth on her own. The personification is allowing the reader to visualize that the lips and teeth are taking control of the words the woman is speaking, therefore, using the theme of language to create an image in the reader’s mind. The use of body imagery continues in the second stanza when the poem states “…his hands, grasping/ the branching, transformational/ syntax and deep structure of/ a dialect…” (Reibetanz 9-12). This phrase expresses that the man’s hands are literally grabbing at developed sentences, relaying to the reader the image of a hand itself selecting words and placing them together to create the well-formed stanzas of the poem. In this instance, the language of the poem is being formed from body movements, creating a link between “language” and the body parts mentioned in the poem. Therefore, the word “language” is important to “Speech Therapy” due to the visualization of body parts in the poem and the language associated with
The speaker uses the literary device of allegory as a large part of his poems message. He uses allegory to compare
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
...t is arguable that the birds fight is also a metaphor, implying the fight exists not only between birds but also in the father’s mind. Finally, the last part confirms the transformation of the parents, from a life-weary attitude to a “moving on” one by contrasting the gloomy and harmonious letter. In addition, readers should consider this changed attitude as a preference of the poet. Within the poem, we would be able to the repetitions of word with same notion. Take the first part of the poem as example, words like death, illness
First of alll, the poem is divided into nine stanzas, where each one has four lines. In addition to that, one can spot a few enjambements for instance (l.9-10). This stylistic device has the function to support the flow of the poem. Furthermore, it is crucial to take a look at the choice of words, when analysing the language.