Poem Analysis: The Boss By Victoria Chang

On November 2nd, 2017, I attended a poetry reading for the first time in my life. The performance was held at a decent sized auditorium, packed mostly with middle-aged adults. After a short introduction speech about Poetry@Tech, a poet named Victoria Chang was on stage with a book in her hand. She began to read “The Boss” out loud with her clear, soothing tone. The poem was long-lined and unpunctuated, so she read the poem without breaks. I felt as if she was not breathing at all as she read the poem. Without pauses and breaks, the poem ended quickly. Overall, her oral modality of fast-paced reading correlated very well with the meaning of the poem that describes a child experiencing mixed emotions from the news of her dad’s stroke. Chang’s oral performance was presented in a way that encompasses the hectic situation that the speaker was facing. Reading the same poem by myself would have been different since I would be more focused on the actual content of the poem, not the speed. Although I missed some of the words from

In his reading of “Radiant Reflection,” Hart effectively incorporated nonverbal modality with oral modality by moving his body and legs whenever he spoke. However, he paused his movements after a punctuation within the lines of the poem. Hart’s nonverbal modalities gave emphasis on his words and helped the listeners to visualize the lines and the breaks inside the written poem. One interesting part of his performance was when he sang punk rock very loudly on the top of his lungs. In contrast to Chang’s subtle, soothing voice, Hart was almost yelling during the climax of his poem. Although his loud singing in the middle of the poem reading caught my attention, I could hardly grasp the words he was saying. Moreover, his dire poems had too many convoluted words that was hard to follow. On the other hand, I liked that his long poems contained a story inside like a