Saeed Jones’s debut poetry collection, Prelude to Bruise (2016), is an essential contemporary piece of work comprised of narrative free verse’s that tackle an African-American historical past that is present in our existing society. During the 1960’s African American Studies began to be implemented in American universities due to the Civil Rights Movement and the rise of Black Nationalism (penguin dictionary). While the title of the collection implies the commencement of bruising and its inescapability, the growth of the poems throughout indicate steady progress in our society. Much of the collections focus is on historical contexts of Jones past and beyond, integrating brutality, race, violence and power. An African-American Studies reading of the collection reveals that the brutal past of African-Americans still weighs on modern society.
Mary Oliver’s poem “Crossing the Swamp” shows three different stages in the speaker's life, and uses personification, imagery and metaphor to show how their relationship with the swamp changed overtime. The swamp is personified, and imagery is used to show how frightening the swamp appears before transitioning to the struggle through the swamp and ending with the speaker feeling a sense of renewal after making it so far into the swamp. Finally, metaphor is used to compare the speaker, who has experienced many difficulties to an old tree who has finally begun to grow. Mary Oliver uses the literary element of personification to illustrate the speaker and the swamp’s relationship. She portrays the swamp as alive in lines 4-8 “ the nugget of dense sap, branching/ vines, the dark burred/ faintly belching/ bogs.”
Ben and Jimmy vs. The Holocaust Ben and I were playing in the forest trying to find a way to survive the Holocaust. I was always trying to figure out a way to help Ben’s family because he was always thinking about them and doing risky stuff to help them. Ben sneaks into the ghetto to give food and supplies to help his family survive in the camp. It is very hard for two young teenagers to survive a war without any parents there to help you and with no money or shelter. Ben and I always do what we can with our strength and intelligence to survive the Holocaust, and try to at least get shelter for enough food for us.
The poem ‘Morning Praise of Nightmares One’ which is written by Lauire, Ann Guerrero depicts a strong notion about abuse and elements of despair when children at tender age are dealt with extreme abusive behavior. The overall theme of the poem is around the narration of a young girl who is living a life of pain in a house where she is inflicted with torture, pains and bruises. Despite of her miserable condition nobody is helping her. She is facing each morning with screams of nightmares which are never ending and no one is there to comfort her.
Jean Toomer’s “Georgia Dusk” reveals the remaining influence of slavery on a newly freed African American society. The title is especially relevant within Toomer’s poem, as it signifies a motif that exhibits lightness and darkness within the poem. “Georgia Dusk” signifies this fusion through the word “dusk”, or the time when day transforms into night. This has a possible relation to Toomer’s identity as a mixed-race person, in that he has several racial identities.
Author’s lives inspire their writing in many ways. An illustrious writer, Edgar Allan Poe, experienced continuous sufferings throughout his life. The heartaches he faced transferred into his writing. Poe’s works are dark and traumatic, such as “The Pit and the Pendulum.” He uses the unthinkable and shapes short stories out of them.
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.
• Historical Perspective of the Poem Most poem readers would take the poem at face-value, disregarding its poetic composition, rhyming and ideas asserted. According to Robert Frost, the poem was composed in just one night. The poem ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’ was composed in 1922 and published in 1923 in ‘New Hampshire’ volume. After pulling off an all-nighter on his poem ‘New Hampshire’, he stepped outside in wee hours of the morning and had a sudden inspiration for the poem.
This shows the juxtaposition of Incompatible objects that was a key component of the surrealist era. When the man arrives at the inn there is a lot of eye threatening imagery that relates to darkness. In this story there is a lot of frost imagery and explains the difference between the conscious and subconscious with the scene of the mirror. During this story he is narrating the events through surrealist imagery such as dream imagery and there is a sense of rupture when he shows the duet of thorns and violent. He paints the picture of the woman with her eyes on a tray and the sense of damage to the eyes is a Freudian idea and links in with the previous works of Dali and Buñuel.
I picked this poem solely because it was the second shortest poem out of our list of poems to choose from and last week I responded on the first shortest, so this looked like the next easiest. Now I thought it was going to be easy just because of the length of the poem, but it turns out I had to read this poem over and over just to understand it. Although after reading it countless times, I think I understand the poem now. The speaker talks about his father getting up early every Sunday morning to light fires all throughout the house in order to warm the house up.
The most influential Chinese poets, Du Fu, grew up motherless. Although he didn’t have a complete family, but he used this as the motivation in his poem. He had provided creditable poems by his early teens that had been widely spread through the nation. However, during his later years, he was suffering from illness, and financial problems that he needed to face by himself. Arthur Cooper, interested in Chinese Culture and history, translated Night Thoughts Afloat.
In the poem “For Poets”, by Al Young, the theme is the challenge of stepping out of your comfort zone and seizing moments in life. Young expands and argues his theme through the literary devices used in the poem. These literary devices include symbolism, hyperbole, and metaphor. Al Young portrays life’s obstacles, our society’s attitude towards self expression, and experiencing nature. In conclusion, life is a big obstacle and in order to live it, you must go out of your comfort zone and try your best to give it all you’ve
In “Acquainted with the Night”, it embodies the abyss of despair that the narrator finds themselves in. The poem centers on the qualities of the night, and the night’s defining characteristic is its never-ending darkness. The poem’s very title shows how deeply bogged down in darkness the narrator is; the speaker has, ironically, become friends with it. The motif of darkness manifests itself in other examples as well. The speaker writes, “I have outwalked the furthest city light,” showing that he or she has transcended the limits of a normal person’s misfortune and instead exposed himself to complete and utter desperation (3).
In the poems, Szymborska’s stance towards objective artistic judgement is that it is absurd and comical, due to the imprecise and subjective nature of poetry.
At first glance, a "house" and a "home" are the same words. Both describe a place where someone lives, but with a deeper look at the words, we find that a house is simply just a building. A home is much more complicated than that. It is filled with objects and memories, which grow and change along with the family inside of it. Home is a place we come back to after a long day's work, the place where we go to seek shelter and protection.
