Poetry Set 6 “Taste the Pain”
The poem “Taste the Pain” by The Red Hot Chili Peppers is a very interesting and intimate poem that was actually performed musically and rendered into a song. This poem tell the story of a guy who is in denial about the strong and intimate feelings that he has for someone. Throughout the poem the author strongly develops this theme and even teases the reader/listener through slight acknowledgement of the cause of his distress quickly followed up by another statement of denial.
My favorite thing about this poem is that it is very literal and straightforward, yet does such a fantastic job of capturing and describing what it feels like when you first start to have strong feelings for someone. One part of the poem that does this well, while still capturing the full sentiment of the theme is what the author writes, “Crying eyes open / because I cannot fall / in love with you / no not at all” (9-12). In the few lines in this verse/stanza that come before these ones, the speaker describes how he has trouble sleeping. He gets distracted, looks at the walls and ceilings, and watches the car headlights drive by his window. After thoroughly describing the situation he then comes to the obvious conclusion that he is in love, or at least experiencing strong feelings for someone. As soon as he admits this to himself however he immediately retracts his statement and completely denies it. The truth of this poem is what makes it so relatable, accurate, and enjoyable.
In Tim Seibles' poem, The Case, he reviews the problematic situations of how white people are naturally born with an unfair privilege. Throughout the poem, he goes into detail about how colored people become uncomfortable when they realize that their skin color is different. Not only does it affect them in an everyday aspect, but also in emotional ways as well. He starts off with stating how white people are beautiful and continues on with how people enjoy their presence. Then he transitions into how people of color actually feel when they encounter a white person. After, he ends with the accusation of the white people in today's world that are still racist and hateful towards people of color.
In Drea Knufken’s essay entitled “Help, We’re Drowning!: Please Pay Attention to Our Disaster,” the horrific Colorado flood is experienced and the reactions of worldly citizens are examined (510-512). The author’s tone for this formal essay seems to be quite reflective, shifting to a tone of frustration and even disappointment. Knufken has a reflective tone especially during the first few paragraphs of the essay. According to Drea Knufken, a freelance writer, ghostwriter and editor, “when many of my out-of-town friends, family and colleagues reacted to the flood with a torrent of indifference, I realized something. As a society, we’ve acquired an immunity to crisis. We scan through headlines without understanding how stories impact people,
The poem ‘uncoiling’ by Pat Mora is a poem designed to attract the attention and explain to the audience about a certain happening around that place or locality. The poem is an explanation of the blowing tornado in that region and how effective or strong the tornado is at that particular moment. The author has utilized the use of figurative language which is part of the writing towards communicating the intended meaning to the target group. The figurative language applied in the poem entail different aspect or drive as discussed in the paper.
“They say God gives his toughest battles to his strongest soldiers and what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.” This, lyrics from the Intro of her album, justifies how Kehlani, an artist from Oakland, the third largest city in the Bay Area, have put in so much effort and hard work to be able to set herself apart and stand out from all the other aspiring singers.
“A Story about the Body”, a prose poem by Robert Hass, is literally about a man who supposedly loves a woman but then finds out about her health conditions and then changes his mind. This poem, when I read it, was more like a short story than a poem. The poem uses imagery and a variety of adjectives which allow the reader to put themselves in the story as if they were watching it happen.
Beginning in residential school, Painted Tongue is called heathen by a religious school teacher, and after a while, he starts to question if maybe he is a heathen (Boyden 72-73). Boyden is illustrating the relationship between colonizer and colonized, with a repression of one’s spiritually by the preaching of another’s religion. This is another example of the effects of slow violence on Painted Tongue, where small differences such as contrasting religious or spiritual faiths, become the oppression of the minority
When I first watched the video “Strange Fruit” I found it nothing short of gruesome. The words swelled my eyes with tears as the images thwacked into my empathetic heart like an axe cutting into a tree. I could feel each clang as each picture changed. I listened intently to the words that sadly sawed through the lyrics leaving sawdust and residue in my mind. The song bears the pain of the fruit that has been lost. The title, like the trunk of a tree, is the foundation of the song, the representation of its strength but not what is most remembered. The pictures, are the flowers, of the video blooming of the face of each hanged man. The leaves, as Billy Holiday sings them, so simple but yet the crown of the tree, the sadness over the hierarchal rank
Pain can be expressed in both sorrow and anger. Sappho creates great imagery in this fragmented poem by taking pain into natural moving actions. She expresses how her feelings change from hurt to anger and how heavy pain can really be. Sappho uses physical movement to express her emotions in different directions. She also emphasizes how she sees revenge is the ultimate goal in order to recover from that pain.
Did I Miss Anything? is a poem written by a Canadian poet and academic Tom Wayman. Being a teacher, he creates a piece of literature, where he considers the answers given by a teacher on one and the same question asked by a student, who frequently misses a class. So, there are two speakers present in it – a teacher and a student. The first one is fully presented in the poem and the second one exists only in the title of it. The speakers immediately place the reader in the appropriate setting, where the actions of a poem take place – a regular classroom. Moreover, the speakers unfolds the main theme of the poem – a hardship of being a teacher, the importance of education and laziness, indifference and careless attitudes of a student towards studying.
Many people find it hard to imagine their death as there are so many questions to be answered-how will it happen, when, where and what comes next. The fact that our last days on Earth is unknown makes the topic of death a popular one for most poets who looks to seek out their own emotions. By them doing that it helps the reader make sense of their own emotions as well. In the two poems “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” by Emily Dickenson and “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas, the poets are both capturing their emotion about death and the way that they accepted it. In Dickenson’s poem her feelings towards death are more passionate whereas in Dylan’s poem the feelings
“Didn’t you know, I was waiting on you” is a quote from the song “Bad News” (Bhasker, West, Simone, and Bass, 2008, p. 1). The theme of this particular song is about heartbreak in relationships, and many times the woman is the one breaking a man’s heart. Three songs sung by Kanye West tell the tale of heartbreak caused by a woman and how the man has emotional pain, deals with heartbreak, and loses the woman to someone else.
“The Spring and the Fall” is written by Edna St. Vincent Millay. The poem is about two people, the poet and her significant other that she once had love for. The poem integrates the use of spring and fall to show how the poet stresses her relationship. Of course it starts off briefly by having a happy beginning of love, but the relationship soon took a shift for the worst, and there was foreshadow that there would be an unhappy ending. “I walked the road beside my dear. / The trees were black where the bark was wet” (2-3). After the seasons changed, the poet begins to explain why the relationship was dying, and all of the bad things she endured during the relationship. So, to what extend did the poet’s heart become broken, and did she ever
Heart of Gold is about a man- we’ll just say it’s Neil Young himself for the convenience of giving him a name- who feels like he is running out of time to become who he really wants to be. He feels like he’s gone through his whole life, but not had enough good things come out of it. He’s getting old. Most of his life has passed by and he feels he is running out of time and wanting to be a better person and be content with himself. Throughout his whole life, he’s searched for meaning and virtue in himself but hasn’t achieved it. He wants to have had a life that has brought good to the world and had some value before it’s too late. He wants peace within himself and to know that he is a good, genuine, golden person.
Swimming through the river, like a red bolt of lightning, the salmon tries to find the place it was born at so it can spawn. It has learned this through the species’ trial and error, which is acquiring knowledge, one of the most important parts of a journey. As we’ve seen through many journeys, such as the poem by CP Cavafy “Ithaka”, and the migrations of animals like salmon, beluga whales, and horseshoe crabs, the journey is the most important thing out of an adventure. Although the destination still matters, the journey is where you gain all of your knowledge and your important items from.
The three poets convey the feelings of seriousness, happiness, and failure. In the poem “Simile”, Scott Momaday explains how people and the actions we do are similar to animals in which the comparison was towards deer. In “Moon Rondeau” by Carl Sandburg he illustrates that working together in a relationship, you may be able to accomplish a task and generate a strong bond. In the final poem “Woman” by Nikki Giovanni she displays how one may want to grow and be someone special to your significant other but they may not care of what their other may want. The three poets are illustrating the theme of humans being similar to animals in which case they either work together or they just ignore each other within the literary similarities and differences of the three poems.