The poem, At Mornington was written by Australian poet, Gwen Harwood. It was published in 1975 under her own name. At Mornington is about a woman reminiscing about her past when she is with her friend. There are many themes explored in this poem including memory, death and time passing.
In the poem Rain, Billy Collins’ establishes censorship relating to surveillance, creating societal issues, such as the deprivation of humanity extending to the destruction of the mind. The poet continues to construct negative connotations to the title, Rain, indicating the controlling metaphor as censorship’s effect spiraling into the negative impacts the populace faces discussed throughout the poem. Personification intends to reach the boundaries of nonliving objects into humanistic actions, for instance, “these birds have done nothing, a few protested. That is precisely the problem. The loudspeakers answered” (7-8).
A variety of issues are examined in Dawe’s poetry, most of which, aren’t uniquely Australian. In ‘The Wholly Innocent’, the poet utilises the narrator being an unborn baby to express their opinion on abortion. The emotive language; “defenceless as a lamb” and comparisons of abortion to “genocide”, all turn this poem into a type of activism, for pro-life; a concept that is certainly not uniquely Australian; as abortion is only legal (on request) in 4 states and territories. These issues aren’t always directly referenced in Dawe’s poetry, much like in ‘The Family Man’, which chooses to explore suicide and it’s effect. The man who killed himself had no name - he was just a statistic, that had “all qualifications blown away with a trigger’s touch”.
(First paragraph), in this particular sentence, he uses irony. He expresses how he feels about hip-hop and how it is so vastly different from what he’s used to. By using irony
Class Picture, 1954 by Billy Collins is about a man who reflects on his class picture and memories of childhood. I see the speaker as someone that stumbled upon this relic of a photograph when ravaging through old boxes in the attic. The speaker then has all the memories of childhood flood his mind and he giddily tells the reader who the other students are. In the way the poem is written, it seems like the reader is a spouse or the speaker’s children. The speaker begins the poem reflecting on memories in stanza’s one through four; his/her “normal” school, with his “normal” crush, his “normal” friends, and his “normal” family in the distance of this “normal” memory.
He could imagine his deception of this town “nestled in a paper landscape,” (Collins 534). This image of the speaker shows the first sign of his delusional ideas of the people in his town. Collins create a connection between the speaker’s teacher teaching life and retired life in lines five and six of the poem. These connections are “ chalk dust flurrying down in winter, nights dark as a blackboard,” which compares images that the readers can picture.
This also proves the theme of man’s inner struggle as White is shown to be facing an identity crisis. Similarly, in “Forgetfulness”, Collins develops the story by describing how he is lost and has nowhere to go because everything he once remembered is “slipping away” (Collin 4). By this, Collins is alluding to death. This meaning that the act of him forgetting his memories foreshadows the fact that his death is near. To demonstrate this point, Collins uses diction that resembles his emotional state of distress as he uses words such as “floated”, “oblivion” and “forgotten”
I really enjoyed reading this poem and I felt as if it had a lot of meaning. In the Insomnia poem the use of literary really gave me a image to me was Collins’s use of detail, instead of just skimming through what he goes through each night trying to fall asleep he has a lists that of things that will go on and on about how many different things he thinks about each night making the reader actually understand what it is like for him trying to fall asleep and it shows how much trouble he has sleeping. Collins also uses descriptive words to show the reader that he has been having trouble and he's been counting animals and trying to fall asleep with the line, “I picture all fish in leaping a fence in a field of water, and all the fish are beautiful
This tone change from carefree to serious portrays the complexity of his feelings towards growing up. On the other hand, he also demonstrates how he is nostalgic about growing up. Collins tone in the second stanza is very positive and suggests he enjoys reflecting on the past. He uses words
Collins opens up with this to show how important his lover is to him, by doing this he sets the tone of the poem. People tend to do this as well, often people tell each other how important or valuable they are to them to create a sense of love. Collins refers to Shakespeare when he compares a woman to his favorite season (1). As humans, love is a natural thing, and Collins makes that very prominent in the way he flatters his lover so easily. This is relatable because when people love each other they often say sweet complements.
‘For What It’s Worth’ by Buffalo Springfield has a logical message because it is referring to the Sunset Strip Riots that took place in Hollywood during the 1960’s. People protested when they lost their civil rights due to a curfew law that was put into place. The song says, “Stop, children, what’s that sound. Everybody look- what’s going down?”
Licata "After Us" Essay In "After Us" Connie Wanek uses imagery of rain to show that the human race will either continue to grow or it will destroy itself. "After Us" is talking about the human race, either at the beginning or end of its existence. It talks about a perfect world, one that has grown and flourished, but it starts to rain. They do not know if it is the rain will stop and they will continue to live, or if the rain will go on forever therefor eventually destroying humanity.
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.
The writer talks of when daylight begins and what he thinks about the beginning of the day. The hopeless lines of the poem are not describing
By nature, shorter poems are more densely packed with cues and devices because authors cannot express their intended message over the sweeping length of a poem but rather they must be more concise and creative. A poet may write a shorter poem to juxtapose a simple surface message to a more meaningful deeper message. Thus, complexity and artistic value are unrelated to length, but rather, they are developed through masterful writing. “Good Times” by Lucille Clifton embodies the double-edged sword of complex storytelling within a short poem, as she identifies the speaker 's occasional good memories to develop an image of the speaker’s typical abject life. The short poem is crafted with patterns of repetition, for there are so few lines to fit meaningful insight into.
