Both swallowed in their job, the janitor in “Jorge the Church Janitor Finally Quits” by Martin Espada and the secretary in “The Secretary Chant” by Marge Piercy feel unappreciated and lost as employees. Jorge is “outside…of [Americans] understanding” and The Secretary is lost in her work and compares herself to objects such as her “hips are a desk.” The employees from these poems have become hidden behind their duties and are slowly sinking into the unknown.…
‘The Waking’ is a contemporary jazz piece written by American vocalist, Kurt Elling, and features Theodore Roethke’s 1954 poem of the same title. Released in 2007 on the album Nightmoves, Elling uses musical techniques to enhance the message of Roethke’s poem. However, in order to understand the reasoning behind the devices Elling has used, the meaning of Roethke’s poem must first be discussed.…
People have individual strengths, weaknesses, and individual capabilities, all of which are dependent upon human nature. While these characteristics are often difficult to alter and influence, humans, nevertheless, wish to change them. They are never satisfied with their appearance, never content with their lives, forever attempting to change, but in the end, always find themselves at the starting point, realizing that they, in fact, have not changed at all, for they have not accepted what they want. The citizens in David Wagoner’s narrative poem, “The Man Who Spilled Light” are no different. How do they face change which they cannot accept?…
In this piece, Alan Seeger uses diction, repetition, personification and rhyme scheme to relate to the reader that, death is not something to be feared, although it is inevitable and unpredictable. This gives a sense that Seeger sees death to be calmly be accepted and maybe likely. The poem is spoken by a soldier who knows that he or she may face death all around, and wishes they could avoid conflict but instead be safe in comfort. Death is personified in this piece with the use of the term rendezvous; like a meeting with someone you may know. As well as death, spring is personified, giving a stark contrast between the unexpected end of life, and the expected time of growth in the world. (“When Spring comes back with rustling shade… I have…
Cited: Dao, Bei. “He Opens Wide a Third Eye...” The Longman Anthology: World Literature. Volume F: The Twentieth Century. Eds. David Damrosh and David Pike. New York: Pearson, Longman, 2009. 325-326. Print.…
In the poem he's looking back at a moment of choice, and reflecting on how, at that moment in the past, not knowing where the chosen path would lead, he looked forward to the future, knowing that at some point in the future he would look back with knowledge of what had ensued, and would wonder what might have happened had he made the opposite choice.…
Read the poems a few times, noting each one’s theme, mood, form, structure, rhyme scheme, and use of imagery and figurative language. Use the provided table to record your analysis.…
The Carousel music serves as a symbol of untouchable childhood memories that will never change even when you grow up. When Holden and Phoebe get closer to the Central Park Carrousel, Holden hears the Carrousel music; “It played that same song about fifty years ago when I was a little kid” (Salinger 231). The hyperbole of “fifty years” represents Holden's love of childhood which for him seems so long ago. Holden misses his childhood and all that comes with it. Holden is saying that his childhood was “fifty years ago” because now he has to be an adult and take on responsibility. The repetition of playing the same song reflects the carrousel going around and around, which illustrates Holden staying in one place with his life. This depicts that…
The works we studied within Creative Writing were all helpful in creating my own works to submit to the class. Throughout all of the reading, many of the works inspired me in different ways, whether it was short story plot ideas or word usage in the poems. While crafting my work for the final portfolio, I reviewed many of the poems from our poetry packet in an effort to find inspiration and to create new interesting images. I took the most inspiration for my formal poem, which I found most difficult to write. One of the poems that was most useful to me was Jilly Dybka’s “Memphis, 1976.” Dybka’s poem follows the sestina form; I also wrote my last poem in this form, so it helped to follow the form by looking at her poem as an example. Dybka’s…
Lorna Dee Cervantes' poem, “Poema para los Californios Muertos” (“Poem for the Dead Californios”), is a commentary on what happened to the original inhabitants of California when California was still Mexico, and an address to the speaker's dead ancestors. Utilizing a unique dynamic, consistently alternating between Spanish and English, Cervantes accurately represents the fear, hatred, and humility experienced by the “Californios” through rhythm, arrangement, tone, and most importantly, through use of language.…
Life leads us to excessive wishes that often result in a man’s downfall. Sir Philip Sidney in “Thou Blind Man’s Mark” portrays his hypocrisy towards desire and shows how it influenced to their downfall and destruction. In his sonnet, Sidney uses metaphor, alliteration and repetition to convey his feelings for desire.…
This states that, to those who look closely, insanity is truly the best kind of sanity. The next line is an opposite of the first: “Much Sense - the starkest Madness-.” It claims that those seen as having the most sanity are truly those that are the most insane. These ideas seems quite odd; however, the next two lines throw everything into light. “‘Tis the Majority/ In this, as all, prevail.”…
This poem really contains the main theme of the nature of people. She describes a stereotypical view that people do not take the time to appreciate and understand things. The poem honestly causes me a lot of confusion, which is why I picked it. I do not know how to get a full understanding of anything in this poem, especially things such as themes and allusions so I do not really have anything to say about either of those things so I am going to move on.…
In the poem “An Echo Sonnet”, author Robert Pack writes of a conversation between a person’s voice and its echo. With the use of numerous literary techniques, Pack is able to enhance the meaning of the poem: that we must depend on ourselves for answers because other opinions are just echoes of our own ideas.…
The text that I will be analyzing is a poem by Lorna Crozier called The Child Who Walks Backwards. Throughout my analysis I will look into parental abuse, underlying meanings in the lines in the poetry, as well as connections I can make personally to the book. I think it is also important that I bring forth essential messages in the words and statements of the poem. The main theme I will choose to focus on is that abuse does not only happen at school or back alleys, but that it happens in homes as well.…