The poem I picked is called El Olvido by Judith Ortiz Cofer. The translation of the title is The Oblivion, which suits what the poem seems to be about. The poem seems to be about the author being scared about forgetting her roots and how that is a “dangerous thing”. The author lists out many examples of how one can forget their cultural origins and history and practices like giving up “the clothes you were born to wear/for the sake of fashion”. It seems like in the poem, the author is moving out, to college or an apartment or something, which symbolizes the oblivion because it is a “a bare, cold room with no pictures on the walls,/a forgetting place where she [her mother] fears you will die/of loneliness and exposure.” It is a shaming. In the poem, it seems like the author is talking about a personal experience that she went through. She talks about how she and her mother worry about her falling into the oblivion and forgetting her roots. I think this poem takes place as the author moves out into her new apartment or dorm for college. She wrote this sort of as an example or warning to others like her who are leaving their family to be on their own for the first time. Her attitude is serious and haunting. The author shifts from a dark and omnious tone as she talks about the voices of her dead relatives to more sad and …show more content…
She uses many metaphors and examples about dangerous things and actions that can lead someone to el olvido. The author uses a lot of strong words with a more negative connotation like choke, spurn, sharp, disdain, and exposure. This makes the tone of the poem more depressing and gloomy. I imagine in my head, if the poem was recreated into a drawing, more of a darker color scheme. I also feel like there is a sadder and cautionary tone since there is a repetition of the word dangerous throughout the
When I read this poem I felt the tone was very gloomy and somber, because the setting of the poem takes place in a cemetery. I also felt sad for the speaker because she felt “left out” as stated in line 15. I did find it peculiar that she used the word left out when referring to all of her family members dying. Pastan uses allusion when she refers to the “grown-up secret” said in line 16. What I think
In the poem’s opening lines, she begins her day occupying the harried mother role, and with “too much to do,” (2) expresses her struggle to balance priorities. After saying goodbye to her children, and rushing out the door, she transitions from one role to the next, as well as, one emotion to another. As the day proceeds, when reflecting on her life choices, she wonders “what she might have been as a mother” (23), fantasizing about being around, experiencing more of her children's development and daily life. By deciding to pursue her current situation, she must entrust her children’s wellbeing to another, rather than herself, and as she “feels the quick stab […]” (36) she experiences flashes of guilt. However, knowing she has happy and well cared for children, in spite of it all, creates recognition of the situation’s
...xperiences of their readers. The poems express critical and serious issues that surround the heartfelt childhood memories of the readers. The surrounding circumstances and situations are different in each household. The readers are personally drawn to feel expressions of abuse, emotional issues and confusion as the poets draw them into a journey through their own personal life experiences from childhood to adulthood. These experiences are carried throughout a person’s life. Readers are somewhat forced to immediately draw themselves closer to the characters and can relate to them on a personal level.
The metaphors are used in this poem to exemplify the somber tone of the family being portrayed. In past week, the father has laid “down to sleep,” (9) which indicates his death. On the outside, the father who died may of been like a “Snow-covered road,” (10) very put together and enjoyable, but it was hard to tell what was underneath. He had a “winding” lifestyle that makes him unpredictable and confusing to understand. The family has dealt with this for years, making his death even that much harder on them. He was “lonely” and lived “without any” people around him. He isolated himself.
In “The Author to her Book,” the book was about an unpleasing child whom she had worked so hard to improve. She tells her child not to fall into the wrong hands but to explain that her mother has had to turn her out of poverty; “rambling brat.” This metaphor is used in explaining the mockery tone that she uses when referring to her work. She reminds her fellow readers that only few women or parents would care to be held responsible for their offspring. Her children are mostly her true subjects in all of her writings. Her family poems avoid sentiments though but she loves her husband and children more than any other thing in the world. She addresses death in “Before the Birth of One of her Children” which was directed to her husband and shows the fear of being a housewife where every pregnancy was like a preamble to death. Her other poems are in memory of her grandchildren who died while they were still very young. Her feelings in these poems is repressed and her attitude is like surrendering to God’s will but she was always pained at every death situation which is not surprising as she has to mourn her lost loved ones. She designated two poems to her husband when he was away for business. She argues that her love is above a female deer whose mate is absent. In the first letter to her husband, she uses the sun to express her true feelings for him; “I wish my sun may never set, but burn.”
The second stanza moves into the woman recalling her past. The stanza begins with the simile describing the woman to be "as light as a sponge" (line 12) symbolizing her small state as a child in her past. In lines 14&15; this symbolism was prevalent, as the woman described her mother: "She is my mother. She will tell me a story and keep me asleep." The childhood innocence which the woman seemed to remember also obviously symbolized through the objects which she discussed. "I see leaves- leaves that are washed and innocent, leaves that never knew a cellar, born in their own green blood like the hands of mermaids" (lines 17-21). The leaves seemed to symbolize her childhood innocence, and obviously they also showed how the innocence was lost with her growing older.
...represent the stages of one’s life. She focuses on the most extreme sense of ends-death, and rejects it as final. What the poem arrived at is that some aspect of life or form of existence continues after death.
...the death of her husband and father, she finally decides to move on and forget about her husband and father completely. She succeeds in doing so for awhile, but five months after writing the poem, the speaker commits suicide, leading the reader to believe that she had some sort of a mental issue and was never able to completely, like she thought she would be able to. It is sad that the narrator had such a hard time moving on and was majorly depressed, but sometimes it is better to move on life and not dwell on the past.
The phrasing of this poem can be analyzed on many levels. Holistically, the poem moves the father through three types of emotions. More specifically, the first lines of the poem depict the father s deep sadness toward the death of his son. The line Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy creates a mental picture in my mind (Line 1). I see the father standing over the coffin in his blackest of outfits with sunglasses shading his eyes from the sun because even the sun is too bright for his day of mourning. The most beautiful scarlet rose from his garden is gripped tightly in his right hand as tears cascade down his face and strike the earth with a splash that echoes like a scream in a cave, piercing the ears of those gathered there to mourn the death of his son.
The poem begins with a childlike tone, misleading the reader on the upcoming subject matter. The first line echoes a nursery rhyme, feeling like a charm against some brooding curse. “You do not do, you do not do/ anymore black shoe” (lines 1-2). Metaphorically, the shoe is a trap, smothering the foot. The adjective “black” suggests the idea of death, thus it can relate to a coffin. The speaker feels a submissiveness and entrapment by her father. In an attempt to rid herself of the restriction in her own life, she must destroy the memory of her father. “Daddy, I have to kill you” (line 3). However, the description of the father as “marble-heavy” and “ghastly statue” reveals the ambivalence of her attitude, for he is also associated with the beauty of the sea. The speaker reacts with hate to her father who had made her suffer by dying at such a point in her development.
The speakers father was not much involved in the speakers life. In fact he was always outsized in the speakers life bank account. The speakers father might be a huge disappointment to the speaker as a father. This might might be for several reasons. May be the father was abusive to his daughter as well as her mother, maybe he was a person who drink, or maybe her father is a gambler and that result his family to not have food to eat. This caused the speaker pain that she can’t forgive describing him as “debt” a debt that can never be paid of. Lastly the speaker at the end the speaker pointed out one last piece of financial metaphor. She stated that “what am i doing he collecting? You lie side by side in debtor’s boxes and no accounting will open them up” this particular line is significant money metaphor in the poem. In line 3 and 4 the speaker says “ all week you have….. Asking for more time” the speaker emphasizes “like a ghost” specifying the death of her father. She also indicated down in the second stanza her father's death stating that the time has passed to forgive her father. It is significant because it is where the speaker realized it is late to be angry at her father and those debts cannot be collected as her father
In the second stanza the narrator describes the quilt and the dying process. The speaker imagines her mother holding and guiding her into the afterlife. By choosing the mother, the speaker stimulates a sense of compassion, love, protection and comfort which is attempting to change the ideology of death to the reader. That death is not something that the individual will have to face alone but there will be guidance and love not abonnement and loneliness. But mainly that death is not where everything stops but where people can be reunited with lost loved ones. Throughout the remainder of the poem the narrator describes individual memories that are joyful and cherished not just the speaker’s memories but memories that have been passed down the family line. The imagery of the memories do not have a sense of regret, longing or anger of the moment passing and time changing but a sense of blissfulness that those memories where ever even made. This type of imagery forces the reader to think of blissful memories of joy, family and love. That has made the reader’s life worth living. The times in our lives that resemble who we are as an individual. Since the imagery is extremely powerful but sidle, the reader gets a sense of gratefulness about having lived but an even greater sense of hope towards the future and peacefulness about dying. Attempting to show the reader dying is
It goes from admiring the father in the photo, to being hurt by her mother’s emotions in the family. In the beginning, it quotes, “He looks like Errol Flynn” (Stanza 1), which was a very famous man at that time. A lot of men wanted to be him and women wanting to be with him. Therefore, he was a player. This shows that she thought very highly of her father. Also foreshadowing, he is a player like Errol Flynn. But as the poem goes on, it starts to shift to talking about her mother. The first thing she said about her mother is that “She is not crying,” (Stanza 2), which shows that she significantly remembers her mother crying in her childhood, but has to explain that she is not at this moment. Since normally, people remember the good times when looking at an old photo, she remembered her mother was hurt, shows she is also hurting. It is not easy seeing mothers cry, therefore, it must have pained her knowing her mother always cries knowing her father is out cheating, then confronting him, but end up only forgetting about it and has to live with all that pain for the child. As the shift as the poem went from admiring to hurt, it leads up to the
In the beginning of the poem, the speaker seems to not mind death’s coming for her as she talks about how nice death is: “He kindly stopped for me— . . . For His Civility—” (2, 8). The speaker also states she is picked up by death in a carriage which seems somewhat luxurious: “The Carriage held but just Ourselves—/ Add Immortality—” (3, 4). The speaker in the prior quote states she was with “Immortality” in the carriage, which leads to the understanding she will never die in the state she is currently in. The speaker initially seems to be at peace as she rides in the carriage as she says, “And I had put away / My labor and my leisure too,” (6, 7). However, at the end of the prior quote, the speaker states she also put away her leisure too, which is the first sign of negativity in the poem. This boredom escalates further as she watches children at recess play, fields of grazing grass, and the sunset. As time went on she began to become to grow cold, which may have been symbolism for how she felt: “The Dews drew quivering and chill— / For only Gossamer, my Gown— (14-15). Next, she presumably speaks of the carriage stopping at her grave: “We paused before a House that seemed / A Swelling of the Ground— / The Roof was scarcely visible—” (20-22). However, the carriage only stopped briefly as it began to move again towards eternity: “I first surmised the Horses’ Heads / Were toward Eternity—” (27, 28). It is at this point the speaker truly grasps the concept of eternity and how she will be stuck in this carriage alone forever. This poem points out that maybe eternal consciousness is not as pleasurable as it may seem, and living people cannot truly grasp how long eternity is. This ending is why I believe this poem should be considered that of eternal misery, although it began with a positive
The poet is watching his infant daughter sleep. In the first stanza he starts with describing the setting of the poem. It is stormy outside, there is a kind of dark and gloomy weather and he prays for her. And he says that he has gloom in his mind and we will understand that what gloom is that in his mind.