And you'll finally be home I believe the poem “The Secrets We Hide” by Tiffany Franklin, is about struggling to find the meaning of our life. While struggling we don’t realize that answers were hidden with us all along. Even though the answers we may find are not something we want to accept, it’s something we need to learn to embrace instead of hiding it. The poem suggests that we needs to release this secrets because the more we hide the things that cause us pain the more we struggle to enjoy a happy life. The author’s purpose of writing this poem is to help people learn to accept who they are instead letting the pain inside of them destroyed them. Two key words my group decided upon in my poem is hidden and struggle because we found that
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.
Kim Addonizio’s “First Poem for You” portrays a speaker who contemplates the state of their romantic relationship though reflections of their partner’s tattoos. Addressing their partner, the speaker ambivalence towards the merits of the relationship, the speaker unhappily remains with their partner. Through the usage of contrasting visual and kinesthetic imagery, the speaker revels the reasons of their inability to embrace the relationship and showcases the extent of their paralysis. Exploring this theme, the poem discusses how inner conflicts can be powerful paralyzers.
This darkly satiric poem is about cultural imperialism. Dawe uses an extended metaphor: the mother is America and the child represents a younger, developing nation, which is slowly being imbued with American value systems. The figure of a mother becomes synonymous with the United States. Even this most basic of human relationships has been perverted by the consumer culture. The poem begins with the seemingly positive statement of fact 'She loves him ...’. The punctuation however creates a feeling of unease, that all is not as it seems, that there is a subtext that qualifies this apparently natural emotional attachment. From the outset it is established that the child has no real choice, that he must accept the 'beneficence of that motherhood', that the nature of relationships will always be one where the more powerful figure exerts control over the less developed, weaker being. The verb 'beamed' suggests powerful sunlight, the emotional power of the dominant person: the mother. The stanza concludes with a rhetorical question, as if undeniably the child must accept the mother's gift of love. Dawe then moves on to examine the nature of that form of maternal love. The second stanza deals with the way that the mother comforts the child, 'Shoosh ... shoosh ... whenever a vague passing spasm of loss troubles him'. The alliterative description of her 'fat friendly features' suggests comfort and warmth. In this world pain is repressed, real emotion pacified, in order to maintain the illusion that the world is perfect. One must not question the wisdom of the omnipotent mother figure. The phrase 'She loves him...' is repeated. This action of loving is seen as protecting, insulating the child. In much the same way our consumer cultur...
“We Wear the Mask” by Paul Laurence Dunbar and “Richard Cory” by Edwin Arlington Robinson are two poems that depict how many people hide their feelings from others. The two poems are similar in theme, but are told from different points of view and differ in plot.
In the poems “We Wear the Mask” by Paul Laurence Dunbar and “I Can’t Face the Music” by Billie Holiday, it is shown that the effects of going through a painful experience is unbearable. At the start of the poem “We Wear the Mask”, Dunbar speaks to the reader in a depressed tone about hiding one's pain and emotions, saying, “We wear the mask that grins and lies,/ It hides our cheeks and shades our eye (...)/ With torn and bleeding hearts we smile” (Dunbar). This quote shows the way a person ignores the way they feel as if it were the best way to overcome it. The words “lies” and “hides” reflects a dejected tone which reveals his belief in happiness in being all a lie that is hidden. The phrase “We wear the mask that grins and lies” relates to the idea that people hide their feelings rather than confronting the difficult truth and overcome it, the “mask” is symbolized as the refusion of showing one's feelings or their external image rather than their internal sentiment.
The first world war, also known by the natives of Canada as the Great War, was one of the most brutal, horrific, and tragic wars in human history. In order to help fight this war, Canada forced thousands of Native citizens to fight in a war that was not theirs to fight. These men fought alongside British and American soldiers, and over the course of the war many stories and tales were written. One notable piece of work from the Great War is the poem “The Night Patrol,” written by Arthur Graeme West. This poem details the horrifying experience of going “over the top,” referring to the act of climbing over the trench and onto no man 's land. The poem does a great job of depicting the gruesome reality of warfare during WW1, however, along with
Sylvia Plath was known as an American Poet, Novelist and Shorty story writer. However, Plath lived a melancholic life. After Plath graduated from Smith College, Plath moved to Cambridge, England on a full scholarship. While Plath was Studying in England, she married Ted Hughes, an English poet. Shortly after, Plath returned to Massachusetts and began her first collection of poems, “Colossus”, which was published first in England and later the United States. Due to depression built up inside, Plath committed suicide leaving her family behind. Sylvia Plath was a gifted and troubled poet, known for the confessional style of her work, which is how “Mirror” came to be. Although this poem may seem like the reader is reading from first person point of view, there is a much deeper meaning behind Plath’s message throughout the poem. Plath uses several elements of terror and darkness to show change to the minds of the readers.
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.
“For The Fallen” by Robert Binyon is about our fallen servicemen and servicewomen who fought for us. Describing how we will not see them again and how they will not be returning home.
The title of the poem is extremely significant. It is the only time in the poem that the word “books” is used, and thus the readers’ only clue to the identity of “they” used over and over in the poem. The phrase “secret life” carries the connotation of glamorous and exciting dual identities, lending the poem a touch of whimsy.
The poem “Warned’ by Sylvia Stults, first seems to be about the ways human are hurting nature. However, when we look at the poem through the lens of John Shoptaw’s essay “Why Ecopoetry,” we see the evidence that this is an ecopoem and is asking people to take action to protect the environment. The poem is about the destruction of earth. The poet also tries to raises some awareness about the environment. Additionally, the internal meaning of the poem is that we, humans depend on the world’s resources, therefore we should take care of the natural world.
The world of dreams is a confusing and ever shifting place. In Edgar Allan Poe’s poem, “Dreamland” the reader is brought into his world of dreams and shown not only the odd and boundless landscape, but also Poe’s own feelings toward his dreams and even his waking world.
“The Tyger” is a popular and much quoted poem from William Blake’s anthology ‘Songs of Experience’ in which he describes the creation of the tiger and in doing so, emphasizes the dichotomy between good and evil. The poem deals with Blake asking how the creator of such good could create such evil. Blake uses a powerful rhyming scheme, with allusions and rhetorical questions to reflect the evil within The Tyger.
Sylvia Plath’s confessional poem is a free formed twenty line poem consisting of ten couplet stanzas which illustrate death as a state in which our imperfections are ignored. The subject of the poem is a woman who has been ‘perfected’ in death, having been released from her own personal suffering. For Plath death seems to be an achievement and just like the woman in the poem, Plath feels she will ultimately become ‘perfected’ when she too is dead. By not using the first person, Plath causes ‘the woman to become depersonalised’ and as a result the woman is distanced from the reader. This could possibly foreshadow how Plath herself, was withdrawing from life and people as she became more engulfed by depression and anxiety.
Sir Philip Sidney’s defence essay, “An apology for poetry,” refers to poetry “as an art of imitation […] [that] speaks metaphorically” (Ferguson, Salter & Stallworthy, 2005: 331). Sidney’s essay epitomises the pivitol importance and art of creating poetry. From the 1500’s to the 1660’s, England found itself a process of complete rebirth of all its important facets. Transformation in its social and cultural, as well as philosophical and religious approaches was evident. This transformational process, with regards to literature, resulted in the redesign of old, successful forms, such as the Petrarchan sonnet. Francesco Petrarch, the genius behind the 14th century Petrarchan sonnet, was legendary in creating a form in which to convey messages mostly thematic to the courtly love tradition. He was, however, completely unaware of the impact and influence the sonnet will have in the rebirth of culture and poetry in England, evolving from Sir Thomas Wyatt’s translations of Petrarch’s sonnets, to Sir Edmund Spenser’s rationalistic approach to the same form. Wyatt’s choice to use a form that already proved to be successful in conveying messages that matter, led him to translate Petrarch’s work, however, with a completely different contextual, individual message. Spenser, on the other hand, used the same frame of the Petrarchan sonnet but making quite significant changes to it, in as much as metamorphosing it into the Spenserian sonnet. Although both Wyatt and Spenser borrowed from the Petrarchan sonnet to appropriate it as a vehicle to convey their particular messages, this essay will aim to give clarity on how their strategies differed. It will make mention of how both Wyatt’s and Spenser’s approaches made use of restructuring and manip...