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Making A Fist Poem Analysis

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“Sometimes I live in a hurricane of words and not one of them can save me. (Naomi Shihab Nye)” Poetry is literary work in which special intensity is given to the expression of feelings and ideas by the use of distinctive style and rhythm. The tile of this poem is “Making a Fist” and it is written by Naomi Shihab Nye. “Making a Fist” is a free verse and lyric poem. Readers can better understand the meaning of the poem “Making a Fist”, by identifying figurative language, sound, imagery, and the theme of the poem. Throughout this poem there are many forms of figurative language that help the readers better understand the poem. The author uses personification in line 2 when she states, “I felt the life sliding out of me” and in line 16 “lying in the backseat behind all my questions”. Metaphors are used in lines 2 and 3 when she says “I felt the life sliding out of me, …show more content…

In line 5 she uses assonance with the words “pattern, past, and glass.” Those lines use assonance because they are the repetition of the sound of a vowel or diphthong in non-rhyming stressed syllables near enough to each other for the echo to be discernible. In line 3 “drum in dessert” is used as alliteration. That line uses alliteration because it is the occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words. In “Making a Fist” there is not a rhyme scheme because it is a free verse.
Naomi uses imagery as a way to help readers visualize the poem. Imagery is the name given to the elements in a poem that spark off any of the five senses that can respond to what the poet writes. In line 5 she states, “Watching palm trees swirl” and in line 17 "clenching and opening one small hand"; both of these lines use imagery. “Watching the palm trees swirl” is imagery because it uses sight. "Clenching and opening one small hand" is imagery because it uses both the touch and sight

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