Pomegranate Means Grenade Analysis

Pomegranate Means Grenade was written by Jamaal May in 2013 as a part of his collection Hum. Jamaal May is a 34-year-old poet, teaching poetry to middle school children in public schools. May wrote this poem talking about how a child’s, Jontae, first amendment right was being infringed. May used very many literary devices and terms to make the reader understand his warning. The most important uses that he used was his use of diction, allusions and apostrophe.
May certainly uses a high level of diction than most every day poets. May will use words to allow the reader to almost feel what is happening in the story. An example of this would be when May is describing how to classify wars, “Identify war by what it takes away / from fecund orchards” (7-8). May uses “fecund’ which means fruitful in vegetation and offspring so the use of diction in these lines means that you classify how the war is going on by how many offspring have been killed. Another example of diction that May uses very well is when May begins to talk to Jontae. May says “You are writing a stampede / into my chest . . .” (18-19) which I believe states how hurt May is by Jontae’s writings. These are great examples of May’s diction in this poem as these are words that have a very complex and not greatly known definition.
The second literary
Although Jontae is mentioned in his poem, Jontae is an absent character. May writes this poem almost like a letter to Jontae but Jontae does not include his thoughts while reading it, therefore leaving him out of it. The most clear example of this is when May says “. . . always know you will not stand / alone, but there will always be those / who would rather see you pull a pin / from a grenade than pull a pen / from your backpack. Jontae, / they are afraid” (32-37). As seen, the letter is set as Jontae being the reader, but May does not include Jontae’s thoughts in the