ipl-logo

Analysis Of Clint Smith's 'Playground Elegy'

419 Words2 Pages

In Clint Smith’s poetry collection, Counting Descent, he uses childhood toys to represent and explain the indefinable feelings surrounding experiencing racism. An example of this is a “little girl jumping rope” in “No More Elegies Today” (line 3). Smith illustrates her playing with the rope by describing the “back & forth bob of her head” and the “beads in her hair [bouncing]” on her back (lines 9, 20). With these descriptions, Smith creates an innocent and playful feeling that juxtaposes the melancholy of the previous poems, such as the detail of the child whose “body [was] strewn across / the street” in “Playground Elegy” (lines 9-10). Through the shocking simpleness of the jump rope, Smith conveys how tired he is of hearing yet another story …show more content…

Another example of this approach is in “Playground Elegy,” where Smith uses a slide in a playground to show the emotions he had when he “[held] his hands towards the sky” (line 2). He then expands on this feeling further by explaining how ever since he slid down that slide with his hands in the sky, he felt that the “defiance of gravity / [was] synonymous with feeling alive” (lines 7-8). Therefore, raising his hands represents the empowering feeling of going against “gravity” (line 7). This is the same feeling he gets when he goes against his oppressors in his adult life; when he fights against racism, he feels alive. Thus, racism acts as the “gravity” in his adult life. At another point in his childhood, Smith had “bought Super Soakers” to play with his friends, who happened to be white (“Counterfactual” line 4). After ten minutes, his father urgently pulled him away from the fun by saying he was “foolish” and “naïve” to be “out [there] / acting the same” as his white friends, even though the kids were only “pretending to shoot guns” (“Counterfactual” lines 18, 21, 22-23, 24). While Smith was unaware of how this looked at the time, his father saw the danger behind a black boy holding a pretend gun, even though no one would think twice about his white friends doing the

Show More
Related

Comparing Rhetorical Analysis Of Tim Wise's Logos And Pathos

445 Words | 2 Pages

It is through his clever word choice that Tim Wise attempts to provoke an emotional response from the reader. Wise’s essay immediately opens up with a statement that grabs the readers attention. Wise says “white folk need to pull our heads out of our collective ass,” which not only calls the white race in particular, including himself, but also includes profanity which grabs the readers attention (69). Wise goes on to say that these students are using their teachers and fellow classmates as “target practice” and it is through phrases like this that he intends to invoke shock into the reader which will hopefully make them consider the argument he is making (69). Perhaps Wise’s best effort to produce emotion is when he tries to cause anger.

Read More

Literary Analysis Of Danez Smith's Dinosaurs In The Hood

1135 Words | 5 Pages

Bluntly, Smith states in stanza two “don’t let Tarantino direct this” due to his overuse of racial slurs and violence, then goes on to explain the metaphor of “the boy with the gun.” In another poem by Danez Smith he shares

Read More

Black Kids Sitting Together In The Cafeteria Summary

765 Words | 4 Pages

In the first chapter of Beverly Tatum’s, “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?”, And Other Conversations About Race, the author immediately clarifies that racism is not a thing of the past. People in today’s society are merely raised with racial concepts at such a young age that they do not realize the injustice going on around them. She reinforces her statement by showing an example of a group of preschoolers who were told to draw a picture of a Native American. Most of the children didn’t even know what a Native American was, but after being told to draw an Indian, complied. Recurring elements in all of their drawings were feathers, along with a violent weapon, such as a knife.

Read More

Copper Sun Essay Questions

617 Words | 3 Pages

In Copper Sun it shows how slave owners have guns and are not afraid to use them. “Then with one hand, he cocked the musket and aimed it at Noah’s broad chest.” (183) (Mr. Derby, about to slay a slave named Noah). Slaves also had trouble using and understanding guns, as there was never a need for them in their homeland. This sentence shows how slaves didn’t even know what a gun was, let alone how it worked.

Read More

Research Paper On Natasha Trethewey

1395 Words | 6 Pages

Trethewey uses the influence of her culture along with valid historical events throughout her poetry (“Interchange”). The combination of historical views along with emotional ties allows for her poetry to be understood by anyone reading it. The use her writing style allows for forgotten details of racism and prejudices from her childhood to be seen by anyone who reads her poetry (Davis). In her collection, Domestic Work, she expresses the lives of the working class African Americans during the Civil Rights Movement. These poems were derived from her mother’s, grandmother’s and aunt’s perspective and interactions with prejudices during this time (Trethewey).

Read More

Rhetorical Analysis On Robert Peele

1754 Words | 8 Pages

He than Proceeds to pull two automatic guns out of his coat and fires (Key and Peele). The men laughing at Peele after his explanation of the potential destruction of guns and than Peele firing automatic weapons into the crows goes from the seriousness of signing an amendment to the ridiculousness of someone being from the future with automatic weapons uses pathos to highlight an issue that people in todays society see as a large flaw in the second amendment. That the amendment is out dated and does not appropriately address the issues of todays advanced guns. When the second amendment was signed a single gun could kill one person a minute from thirty feet away. Nowadays guns are capable of killing more people at a greater distance.

Read More

The Emperor's New Clothes By Patricia Williams

1213 Words | 5 Pages

She begins with her son’s teachers teaching him to be color-blind, and she comments that “the very notion of” color-blindness isn’t a reasonable practice because it promotes “ideological confusion at best and denial” of real and present day issues “at its very worst” (Williams 4). Williams argues that the principle of color-blindness is faulty, because these teachers are trying to promote unity in their classes by leading an example of ignorance between student rather than acceptances of people’s differences. In addition, Williams rhetoric use of pathos encourages the readers emotional attachment to Williams viewpoint, and therefore increases the support of her argument. Another example Williams provides is when she was blatantly confronted with racism on a train and she laments about “how precisely does the issue of color remain so powerfully determinative,...in a world that is, by and large, officially color-blind’?” (Williams 15).

Read More

Black Boy Rhetorical Analysis

839 Words | 4 Pages

Through this imagery, Wright gives the readers a chance to understand the ways in which racism was not just a matter of laws and policies, but a lived reality that had consequences for individuals and communities. Later in the memoir, Wright says "I would huddle in a corner, afraid to face the things I feared, trying to probe my past, to explore the depths of my feelings, to know myself. In the silence of my room, I would spend hours staring at the cracks in the ceiling, searching for the meaning of my life, seeking some glimmer of hope in the midst of despair" (Wright 71). In this quote, Wright uses imagery to describe the struggle to understand and define

Read More

Facture Anthology By Joshua Burton Annotated

1149 Words | 5 Pages

He reads, “I always thought my mother was crazy for the way she wore blackness like a new wristwatch… her sin was speaking, we are difficult in the sense that we can’t ungod ourselves” (Burton). Burton’s confusion over his mother’s pride in her culture stems from growing up in a society where African American men and women are racially profiled and targeted for their skin. Burton’s vocal emphasis and use of line breaks add an aural tone that simply reading the lines of the poem does not provide. In other words, reading the poem opens up his audience to those who may enjoy the more creative and expressive side of poetry. Similarly, on the “Bread & Poetry Podcast”, Burton shares that his origin story of poetry began when he first discovered the singer, Elliot Smith.

Read More

Biases In All American Boys

977 Words | 4 Pages

(Jason Reynolds, 157). Rashad’s dad's impulsive gunshot ruined the life of an innocent black boy who was defending himself from a fight. Him jumping to the conclusion of the boy being a criminal reveals some racist motives and stereotyping. Rashad’s dad speculating that he was the criminal based on his outfit is a racial stereotype against black people. Rashad’s dad’s actions when jumping to conclusions is a physical representation of his perspective on others and his racist

Read More

History Lesson Poem Analysis

792 Words | 4 Pages

Poetry Analysis Once the poem “History Lesson” was written numerous poetry foundations celebrated it for many reasons. “History Lesson” not only makes an impact on literature today it has also impacted people also. This poem inspires people and moves them to the point to where they can find a personal connection to the poem itself and to the writer. Not only does it hold emotional value for those who were victimized and those whose family were victimized by the laws of segregation, but the poem is also celebrated for its complexity. The poem uses many techniques to appeal to the reader.

Read More

Racism In Countee Cullen's Incident

1390 Words | 6 Pages

By using sparse and poignant language throughout the twelve-line poem and particularly in the second stanza in which the racist ‘incident’ occurred, Cullen is able to strongly impact the reader in a very short time, guaranteeing lasting interest and

Read More

Analysis Of Danez Smith's Dinosaurs In The Hood

1302 Words | 6 Pages

Smith says there are no stereotypes of “chicken jokes” in his movie and no more familiar bullets in the hero. Perhaps the most uncommon motive in this movie is “nobody kills the black boy, and nobody kills the black boy and nobody kills the black boy” (Smith, Dinosaurs in the Hood, 32). The repetition of this strong phrase and the poet’s insufficient punctuation creates an energy of passion that speeds up so the reader feels the intensity of the message being portrayed. Lastly, Smith ended this poem by recalling the only reason he wanted to make this movie was for the beginning scene anyway. A young African American boy not bound by stereotypes and whispered worries of who he will be, endless possibilities sparkle in his eyes.

Read More

Racism And Violence In Richard Wright's Black Boy

671 Words | 3 Pages

The story represents the culmination of Wright’s passionate desire to observe and reflect upon the racist world around him. Racism is so insidious that it prevents Richard from interacting normally, even with the whites who do treat him with a semblance of respect or with fellow blacks. For Richard, the true problem of racism is not simply that it exists, but that its roots in American culture are so deep it is doubtful whether these roots can be destroyed without destroying the culture itself. “It might have been that my tardiness in learning to sense white people as "white" people came from the fact that many of my relatives were "white"-looking people. My grandmother, who was white as any "white" person, had never looked "white" to me” (Wright 23).

Read More

Jazzonia Poem Analysis

948 Words | 4 Pages

Furthermore, the superficial simplicity of Hughes’ poems is not meant to deceive, but to encourage readers to engage in poetry from different perspectives because there is more to the poem than meets the eye. Additional questions remain, however. Does Hughes’ experimentation with form threaten to mischaracterize or further objectify the subjects of his poetry? Does Hughes ascribe too much value to these ordinary objects and places? Are there limitations to Hughes’ experimentation?

Read More

More about Analysis Of Clint Smith's 'Playground Elegy'

Related Topics

Open Document