To An Athlete Dying Young Poem Analysis

I myself love reading and writing poetry; however, I had never come across a poem like “Is Arranged Marriage Really Any Worse Than Craigslist” (Pg 701, Literature & Composition) until now. It did not hold the typical elements of a normal poem, it read more like a short story and had no rhyme scheme or really any poetry attributes. The poem was about a young Indian girl in first person who talks about her parents attempts to marry her off as she grows up in modern day America. She addresses her culture's perspective, her family's perspective and her own perspective of her romantic situation throughout the poem. I found this piece to be difficult to understand because of its unusual structure and its dialect; I had to reread it a few times to

It uses metaphors, rhyme scheme, and imagery to create a sensational read. It's composed of seven quatrains with a rhyme scheme that follows AABBCCDDEEFFGGHHIIJJKKLLMMNN. Throughout the poem there are metaphors that relate to the athletes success. For example, towards the end of the athletes career or success an analogy of a rose withering away is made; something once beautiful slowly coming to an end. These metaphors really gave the image of an athlete from beginning to end. How their originally praised in the beginning of their career, and slowly their name begins to be forgotten as new athletes begin to attain the attention and

The fact that the man lies to the girl about his identity and meaningly flirts with her is a wild twist. His compliments and affection is true yet it is ironic that he lies to her about everything else. The speaker analyzes the girls social behavior, making his actions based on her behavioral cues. For example, he cracks a flirty joke with her and waits for her reaction to decide on how to approach the rest of the conversation. He’s obviously smart and has done this before which really grabbed my interest. However, its towards the end of the poem that really made this one my favorite. The women takes down the license plate, but he had taken those plates from a junker, and he admits to being proud of his “performance’’. She has no way of actually contacting or finding him and I just find the piece of work to be brilliant because of how normal everything is and he gets away with it in such a smooth