The memoir opens with Jeannette, the author and main character, sitting in a taxi, wondering if she has overdressed for the evening, when she looks out the window and sees her mother rooting through a dumpster. She recognizes all her familiar gestures even as she is at times hidden by people scurrying home in the blustery March weather. It has been months since Jeannette has seen her mother, but she’s more overcome with panic that the woman will see her. She slides down in the seat and then orders the taxi to take her home again. She listens to Vivaldi, hoping the music will settle her down.
In the poem, “ Ode to Dirt,” Sharon Olds uses figurative language and specific word choice to detail her acceptance and apparent repentance of dirt. The author's attitude towards dirt evolves throughout the poem, words such as “slighted” that entail apologetic feelings soon change to words of awe and amazement. This creates an interesting poem based around dirt, the speaker makes an irrelevant object into an interesting subject. To start the poem, the speaker sets the stage with an apologetic tone, referring to how insignificant they previously perceived dirt to be, “ It's as if I had loved only the stars and not the sky that gave them space.” She realizes dirt's importance in the grand scheme of things, and begins to realize its grand importance.
In the representation, illumination of facial features are created by all the symbols and images that the person is made up of because it exemplifies the morals and characteristics of the person, but when the drawings and symbols are peeled away, the face is all saliently white, showing how there is no character or depth behind those drawings. This represents how people are now just made of the themes consumerism and materialism because they have no personality and morals anymore and that they are dehumanised and unidentified as a person. This shows the ideas portrayed in the poem as the family that it focuses on always wants more than what they have and how their main goal isn’t their care for their child, but to win money and spend it. The
Sharon Olds utilizes word choice, and figurative language to express the speaker's complex attitude towards dirt throughout the poem "Ode to Dirt". At the beginning of the poem, Olds apologizes to dirt for viewing it as a background character and claiming that “I thought that you were only the background for the leading characters—the plants and animals and human animals” proves how the speaker viewed the connection between dirt and other living things. The speaker's word choice here emphasizes sympathy towards dirt for not appreciating it enough. Olds also includes personification as a figurative of speech to give dirt a source of agency by describing it as a "guardian that protects and nourishes the earth.
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.
Poetry is an effective means used to convey a variety of emotions, from grief, to love, to empathy. This form of text relies heavily on imagery and comparison to inflict the reader with the associated feelings. As such, is displayed within Stephen Dunn 's, aptly named poem, Empathy. Quite ironically, Dunn implores strong diction to string along his cohesive plot of a man seeing the world in an emphatic light. The text starts off by establishing the military background of the main protagonist, as he awaits a call from his lover in a hotel room.
Here, Olds has the speaker using a metaphor to compare dirt to the skin of the Earth, showing how they themselves view it. This metaphor is important because it's a very different perspective from how they saw dirt in the beginning, with the "background" metaphor at the start of the poem. The speaker used to view dirt differently, as something that wasn't important, but we see by the end just how much they appreciate it. Olds effectively used metaphors to showcase the speaker's attitude toward dirt, but it wasn't just metaphors
Liza, for example, treasures the qualities of romantic love while the Underground Man is incapable of love. The Underground Man’s consistent theme of contradiction is exemplified throughout the story where he experiences a multitude of emotions ranging from narcissistic and egocentric to embarrassment and humiliation. Although the Underground Man envisions himself challenging those who have wronged him, he does not have the “moral courage” to stand up for himself. By remaining in the underground, the Underground Man is able to escape from reality where is able to manufacture his own world. An argument can be made that Dostoevsky used the personal aspects of the Underground Man to show the pattern of similarities between him and contemporary society.
Harwood therefore uses the poem as a social commentary on 1950’s Australia. Through figurative language, she shows a dark side to motherhood and how the repetitive and mundane lifestyle can be exhausting. The line “hatred forks between my child and me” shows that the persona is an honest reflection on how ultimately, a mother can resent her children at times. Harwood therefore uses the rhythm of her ‘vengeances’ to form the final couplet in each of her stanza’s which stress that they are related humorously. The quote “inside my smile a monster grins, and sticks her image through with pins.” contains a child like rhyme that contrasts against the dark statements suggesting that the humorous exaggerations could be the persona’s way of dealing with her own confinement.
The use of symbolism helps further expose this universal theme found in the two poems. In Outdistanced, Rubin, compares the old man to a “wooden gentleman”(5) and is curious if the “Grandfathers (will) turn to lumber above their graves”(8). He uses this symbol of wood and trees to represent the idea that the old man, representative of the elderly, is quiet, does not move fast, and is constantly in the way. He uses lumber to represent that the old man is then dead, but not being used to his full potential. The ignorance of the young men fail to heed to anything the old man says ultimately changing what shapes humanity in a negative way.
The poem begins with the speaker looking at a photograph of herself on a beach where the “sun cuts the rippling Gulf in flashes with each tidal rush” (Trethewey l. 5-7). The beach is an area where two separate elements meet, earth and water, which can represent the separation of the different races that is described during the time that her grandmother was alive and it can also represent the two races that are able to live in harmony in the present day. The clothing that the two women wear not only represent how people dressed during the different time periods, but in both the photographs of the speaker and her grandmother, they are seen standing in a superman-like pose with their hands on “flowered hips” (Trethewey l. 3,16). The flowers on the “bright bikini” (Trethewey l. 4) are used to represent the death of segregation, similar to how one would put flowers on a loved one’s grave, and on the “cotton meal sack dress” (Trethewey l. 17) it is used to symbolize love and peace in a troubled society.
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?
“On the Subway,” written by Sharon Olds, is written from the perspective of what is presumed to be an upper class white woman, who finds herself on a subway with a lower class black boy. In “On the Subway”, Olds focuses on the controversial issue of racial conflict, and the theme of White v. Black. She does so by use of contrast between whites and blacks, by using harsh enjambments, powerful imagery, and by using the tone to convey the purpose. A major strategy used by Olds throughout the poem is contrast; in this case, the contrast between blacks and whites.
In Sharon Olds poem, "The Race" she tells the story of how she rushed to the airport to fly home and see her dying father one last time. The poem is filled with suspense as aheraces throught the airport in order to reach the Gate that was departing in a few moments. Olds ' exssesive use of enjambments, metaphors, and personification demonstrates her sense of persistance all through the poem. Moreover she respectfully listens to the young man provide her instructions to catch another flight. As if from zero to one hundred she boosted up and ran to the next Gate.
The poem "Kindness" by Naomi Shihab Nye speaks about how you experience kindness and what it really is. The main point in this poem is that in order to experience people's kindness you need to experience hurt, sorrow, and loneliness. The author says that when you loose everything and have no one or thing that when kindness comes along it lifts you up "and then goes with you everywhere/ like a shadow or a friend" (33-34). When portraying this message the author uses a sad but hopeful tone to send the message she wants to say. This tone helps portray the message because you can feel how sad someone is when they are lonely and they have nothing.
