Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Poem the possession sharon olds analysis
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Poem the possession sharon olds analysis
In the poem, “35/10” by Sharon Olds, the speaker uses wistful and jealous tones to convey her feeling about her daughter’s coming of age. The speaker, a thirty-five year old woman, realizes that as the door to womanhood is opening for her ten year old daughter, it is starting to close for her. A wistful tone is used when the speaker calls herself, “the silver-haired servant” (4) behind her daughter, indicating that she wishes she was not the servant, but the served. Referring to herself as her daughter’s servant indicates a sense of self-awareness in the speaker. She senses her power is weakening and her daughter’s power is strengthening. It also shows wistfulness for her diminishing youth, and sadness for her advancing years. This wistful tone is again shown when she asks, “Why is it /they begin to arrive, the fold in my neck /clarifying as the fine bones of her/ hips sharpen?” (4-7). She is demanding an explanation for why she must turn older. She is jealous that as her daughter is on the threshold of puberty, becoming more beautiful, she is on the threshold of middle age, b...
In this poem, “On the Subway”, written by Sharon Olds brings two worlds into proximity. We will identify the contrast that develops both portraits in the poem and discuss the insights the narrator comes to because of the experience. The author refers to several literary techniques as tone, poetic devices, imagery, and organization. The poem talks about a historical view based on black and white skin. It positions the two worlds the point of view of a black skinned and a white skinned. The boy is described as having a casual cold look for a mugger and alert under the hooded lids. On the other hand, based on his appearance the white skinned person felt threatened by the black boy. She was frightened that he could take her coat, brief case, and
The poem “Always Something More Beautiful” by Stephen Dunn is certainly about running a race, but the speaker is also arguing that pursuing something beautiful can help guide us through life. Through the title, we can see that we should constantly look for more beautiful things in life. The poem begins with the speaker describing his experience before a race. He uses words like “best” and “love.” The tone is extremely enthusiastic. In the first line, he talks about coming to the starting place. This can be a metaphor for beginning our lifelong journey. The speaker also implies that we need to approach it with a positive attitude. In the next few lines, the speaker indicates being tested in excellence
The death camp was a terrible place where people where killed. Hitler is who created the death camp for Jews. The death camp was used for extermination on Jews. This occurred on 1939 – 1945. The death camps were in the country of Europe. Hitler did all this because he didn’t like Jews and the religions. The book Night is a autobiography written by Elie Wiesel. The poem called First they came for the communist written by Martin Neimoller is a autobiography.
trauma can have on someone, even in adulthood. The speaker of the poem invokes sadness and
One of the great things about Composition and Literature is that the readings can relate to many other topics outside of the class. The poems and the stories read in this class give a more in depth look at a specific subject and give a clearer picture of what life was like and how people lived at that time. In most classes about U.S. History, the sections taught on segregation don’t give specific examples of how people were treated or the perspectives of the people who were mistreated. However, reading Gwendolyn Brooks’ poetry in the Composition and Literature course gives students an opportunity to learn greater details about segregation through the perspectives of the people most affected by it and the
Patricia Young’s poem Boys is a representation of implied heteronormacy in society. Young uses tropes and schemes such as allusion, metaphors and irony to convey the ways in which heterosexuality is pushed onto children from a young age. Poetry such as Boys is a common and effective medium to draw attention to the way society produces heteronormativity through gendered discourses that are typically used to understand sex. Boys does an excellent job at drawing its readers to the conclusion that it is an ironic poem trying to emphasize the over-excessive ways in which we express heterosexuality in daily life.
The speaker also manipulates time to bring out his or her message. Lines 3, 8, 11, 21, 34, and 36 all contain some order of either “spring summer autumn winter” (3), as in lines 11 and 34, or “sun moon stars rain” (8), as in lines 11, 21, and 36. As the order of these seasons changes, it indicates the passage of time. This manipulation of time draws attention away from these lines and towards the lines with deeper meaning hidden within. However, there is another form of time: the progression of life. The speaker comments on the growth of children in terms of their maturity levels and how as they get older, children tend to forget their childish whims and fancies and move on. He or she says that they “guessed (but only a few / and down they forgot as up they grew” (9-10). He or she then goes on to say that “no one loved [anyone] more by more” (12), hinting at a relationship in development, foreshadowing a possible marriage.
The poem “The Old Maid”, by Sara Teasdale, takes place on a sidewalk on Broadway. The speaker in the poem is a woman walking with who you can infer to be her fiancée and she is describing a brief encounter she had with another woman in the car driving by her. The speaker describes the woman as “The woman I might grow to be,” She then notices how her hair color “…was as mine” and how “Her eyes were strangely like my eyes”. However, despite all these similarities the woman’s hair compared to the speaker’s was “…dull and drew no light”. Her eyes also did not shine like the speaker’s. The speaker assumed that the reason for the woman’s frail appearance was because she had never had the opportunity to know what it was like to be in love. In the last stanza, the speaker no longer looks upon the old maid but to her lover and knows that even though they may look similar she will never be like her.
The most preeminent quality of Sonia Sanchez “Ballad” remains the tone of the poem, which paints a didactic image. Sanchez is trying to tell this young people that we know nix about love as well as she is told old for it. In an unclear setting, the poem depicts a nameless young women and Sanchez engaged in a conversation about love. This poem dramatizes the classic conflict between old and young. Every old person believes they know more then any young person, all based on the fact that they have been here longer then all of us. The narrative voice establishes a tone of a intellectual understanding of love unraveling to the young women, what she comprehends to love is in fact not.
The poem begins with the speaker, the daughter, describing how the sky “has been dark for many years,” giving the poem a dark and murky mood. She compares her own skin to her mothers, pale from the lack of sunlight, realizing that her body is beginning to change just as her mothers did as she grew old. The realization worries her, as she secretly longs for freedom from the chore of taking care of her aging mother. But
In the world of teenagers everything seems to come and pass by so quickly. For instance the beginning of senior year. In Spite of being happy and excited were also generally nervous and anxious to see what our future holds. As senior year comes to an end, It then becomes as temporary as the summer sun but also the boundary of our life before we enter adulthood. Even then our future is still undefined.
Fear is an amazing emotion, in that it has both psychological as well as physiological effects on the human body. In instances of extreme fear, the mind is able to function in a way that is detached and connected to the event simultaneously. In “Feared Drowned,” Sharon Olds presents, in six brief stanzas, this type of instance. Her sparse use of language, rich with metaphors, similes and dark imagery, belies the horror experienced by the speaker. She closes the poem with a philosophical statement about life and the after-effects that these moments of horror can have on our lives and relationships.
Analysis of Leroi Jones' A Poem Some People Will Have To Understand There is an implied threat in "A Poem Some People Will Have To Understand" by Leroi Jones. Ostensibly, there is no intimidation. The poem is confessional, even reflective; the theme is one of mutability and change. However, there is something frightening and ominous in Jones1 vision, which he creates through attention to word choice and structure. Jones' warning is immediately evident in the title through his manipulation of words.
To what extent does the presence of nature impact the poems in “twenty love poems and a song of despair”
The three poets convey the feelings of seriousness, happiness, and failure. In the poem “Simile”, Scott Momaday explains how people and the actions we do are similar to animals in which the comparison was towards deer. In “Moon Rondeau” by Carl Sandburg he illustrates that working together in a relationship, you may be able to accomplish a task and generate a strong bond. In the final poem “Woman” by Nikki Giovanni she displays how one may want to grow and be someone special to your significant other but they may not care of what their other may want. The three poets are illustrating the theme of humans being similar to animals in which case they either work together or they just ignore each other within the literary similarities and differences of the three poems.