By using the figurative language of alliteration, allusion, and personification in the poem “ New Day’s Lyric”, author Amanda Gorman emphasizes the theme of unity in today’s society. Amanda Gorman uses alliteration of repeating the same sound in lines to show unity. In line 5 of the poem states “Torn, we come to tens.” This illustrates alliteration by repeating the t sound the author puts more emphasis on words showing unity.
In his pom entitled “Evening Hawk”, Robert Penn Warren characterizes human nature by a transition between the flight of the hawk during the day and that of the bat, or the “Evening Hawk” during the night. The hawk, as it soars in daylight, portrays how humans appear in clear light of their peers, while the bat, cruising the night sky, symbolizes what humans hide within themselves. Warren effectively expresses the meaning of this poem and its serious mood by the use of diction and imagery to appeal to the reader’s perception of sight and sound. Throughout the first part of the poem, Warren describes the journey of the hawk in the daytime to symbolize how one’s character may seem to other beings.
The poems “A Barred Owl” and “The History Teacher” were both written around the year 2000 by Richard Wilbur and Billy Collins. In past poems, these two poets loved throwing in hidden themes and figurative language throughout each of their poems. These two men, though they have never met, have many similarities when it comes to their moral outlook. At the same time, Wilbur and Collins have different ideas for how their beliefs are put into action. With this in mind, the poems “A Barred Owl” and “The History Teacher” use a central theme of fabricating reality, but the motives behind each the lies are of opposite intent and will wage different outcomes in the future.
In his poem “an Echo Sonnet, To an Empty Page” poet Robert Pack introduces a narrator and his alter ego who exchange questions and answers that subsequently reveals the poet’s prospects and attitudes toward life. The narrator, or “the voice,” seems like a timid man who is afraid to plunge into his own life, because he fears the future and inevitable consequences of his mortality. The “echo,” which is the narrator’s alter ego, or a persona, answers the the voice’s questions in a way that drive the voice to take a certain prospect in life. Pack designed the poem masterfully in a way that it utilizes the traditional form of a shakespearean sonnet and an addendum of on “echo,” which communicates a cleaner and more direct message to the readers. Furthermore various literary techniques such as symbols, extraposition, and imagery add to the meaning of the poem Through form and literary techniques, Robert Pack emphasizes, through the answers of the “echo,” that no matter how frightening life seems to be, it is important to take a “leap.”
For my first poem, I chose to construct this piece in the form of a “title poem,” using a direct quote from Jason Reynolds’ novel, Long Way Down. In doing so, I labeled my poem, “Title Poem: ‘Somewhere between guilt and grief”’ (Reynolds 218). Reynold’s protagonist, Will voices this line when describing the empty eyes of his Father and Uncle. By combining Reynolds’ literary and my own poetic technique, I was able to create a moment inside Will’s mind and what he was possibly thinking while staring into the lifeless eyes of his family members.
When I first opened my book to start reading Easter Wings, I was taken of guard by its shape as well as the fact that it was side ways. I did not understand why this poem, reading, was different form all the other ones we had read in the past. However, once I finished reading it became a bit clearer as to why this one was different from all the rest. Easter Wings is a two-stanza poem's built on a back-and-forth between hopelessness and optimism. First comes the disappointment; in the first half of each stanza, Herbert describes the downward spiral of human life.
What is the purpose of all the contrasting, descriptive imagery? What elements underlyingly stand for other items? The poem opens with the speaker reflecting on their past and relating to frogs asserting that they
The poem uses sophisticated words to remind us of the hawk’s obvious intelligence, but also of his cockiness. He repeatedly talks about his vantage point and how it is an advantageous perspective. The hawk believes he is
One of the aspects of “Wild Geese” that truly struck my fifth-grade self was its use of imagery—I was drawn in particular to the extensive visual imagery in lines 8-13 (“Meanwhile the sun…heading home again”) and awed by the ability of text to evoke images of such clarity. Moreover, in addition to the intrigue of its use of literary devices and the complexity of its recitation, interpreting “Wild Geese” and finding meaning within it was a process that continued well beyond the end of my fifth-grade year, and the connotations of that poem continue to resonate with me. While the entirety of this story is too personal to share herein, “Wild Geese” was a poem that spoke to me on a very personal level. As I sometimes have a tendency to hold myself to unrealistic standards, “Wild Geese” was to me a reminder of the relative insignificance of the trivial matters with which I would preoccupy myself; nature became a symbol of that which existed beyond my narrow fixations and the wild geese a reflection of the inexorable passage of time—in essence, a reminder that “this too shall
Paul Laurence Dunbar's poem "The Mystery," published in 1896, presents a contemplation of the speaker's existence. Through the masterful utilization of literary elements and techniques, Dunbar portrays the complexity of the speaker's introspection and his conclusions about the mysteries of life. In this essay, I will analyze how Dunbar employs imagery, metaphor, symbolism, and tone to convey the speaker's contemplation of existence. Dunbar employs vivid sensory imagery to depict the mysterious and ephemeral nature of life. For example, he evokes the reader's senses through the following lines: "We are but bubbles on a sea of doubt, / We rise, we break, and then are heard no more."
“I Was Sleeping Where the Black Oaks Move” written by Louise Erdrich focuses on a child and a grandfather horrifically observing a flood consuming their entire village and the surrounding trees, obliterating the nests of the herons that had lived there. In the future they remember back to the day when they started cleaning up after the flood, when they notice the herons without their habitat “dancing” in the sky. According to the poet’s biographical context, many of the poems the poet had wrote themselves were a metaphor. There could be many viable explanations and themes to this fascinating poem, and the main literary devices that constitute this poem are imagery, personification, and a metaphor.
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?
By setting a standard through the innocent, “little black dog” and the content bird, the poet makes the harsh man stand out and really fail to be an ideal person. The bird and the dog live life without a care, knowing that “everything is answered, all taken care of”, although the speaker has worries about life and cannot escape the ideas of yesterday. Instead of being okay with the present moment, the speaker is stuck in a time that he can’t change, rendering him unable to focus on the positives that the morning has to offer. The poems “Five A.M.” and “Five Flights Up” have contrasting ideas.
In the poem The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe, figurative language is used to emphasize and intensify the growing emotions of the narrator. To the narrator, the raven symbolizes bad fortune. Moreover, the raven is black and black can represent death or evil. Poe twists the bird into a controlling being who torments him over the death of a loved one and he is able to enhance that effect with the use of metaphors. The use of metaphors in this poem adds an eerie background to the bird and adds quality to the writing.
In “Acquainted with the Night”, poet Robert Frost examines the inner workings of a lonely, depressed mentality. Through his extensive use of symbolism, Frost demonstrates exactly how confined and flustered someone in that conditions feels. There are two specific symbols that, if analyzed, unravel the meaning behind the poem: the symbol of darkness, the symbol of walking, and the symbol of large distances. Darkness is a perpetually popular symbol, and in this poem, it is certainly prominent/ Historically, darkness has been used to symbolize malice, evil, sadness — generally, anything adverse.
