Explication of Isiah Fish’s “Bananas on Fire:
The Virgin’s Guide to Surviving Automatic Heat Death” by Brittney Gruber
The poem “Bananas on Fire: The Virgin’s Guide to Surviving Automatic Heat Death” was written by Isiah Fish and appeared in the 2013 edition of the Zephyrus, Western Kentucky University’s creative writing publication. This poem is incredibly well done with many strengths and only one weakness as far as I can see. It is about the innocence and perversion of youth, the loss of virginity later in life, and even the future beyond. Fish’s writing style and frank diction speak directly to the reader. I believe it is one of the best poems, if not the best one, in the publication.
One of the major strengths of the poem is the stream
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The Zephyrus is a university publication so the target audience is college students, who are constantly thinking, talking, learning, or hearing about sex. In the seventh stanza, many readers will probably nod or laugh or somehow acknowledge that Fish knows exactly what he’s writing about. This poem will grab a student’s interest with the title—the Virgin’s Guide?—and keep it until the end. Not just because of the subject matter, though. Fish also uses humor that will make the reader smile or laugh out loud, as with the speaker’s anecdotes in the fifth and sixth stanzas. A reader can imagine a five-year-old’s surprise, “Is that a -? No, it’s just a marker,” and will approve of the response to Alexa. Fish has one more up his sleeve with “‘Hey that’s not corn on the cob’” (27) in reference to oral sex. Fish also connects to the audience with his language. In this poem, the speaker uses profanity multiple times. S/he stays at the reader’s level and talks plainly to him or her. I think this is why Fish wrote in free verse. The speaker is straightforward and has no need for any “sing song” quality, or to speak fancily. By speaking plainly and using profanity, the speaker gives the reader an opportunity to understand and connect to the poem. It is also a way to emphasize as in “they say your first time is so important? / That’s bullshit.” …show more content…
I’ve explained that Fish used humor, but he did so through exaggeration and irony. In the first stanza, the speaker uses a hyperbole that the weatherman burst into flame because it was so hot. Later, s/he rants “[third-graders] are out there having full on sex!” (16). Are eight-year-olds actually having sex? Probably not. In the next line, s/he juxtaposes “innocent” and “blowjob” (17), as if blowjobs are in any way innocent. Each of these instances makes the reader pause and think, “Yeah right,” along with a head shake or a laugh. “Cotton- / candy pink panties” (18-19) and “corn on the cob” (27) are examples of alliteration which help the flow of the poem, especially when read aloud. The speaker also ends with a simile and a metaphor suggesting “you’ll feel like you’re / swimming in who you were, and you’ll cautiously dive into who you’re / becoming
John Soluri 's Banana Cultures Agriculture, Consumption and Environmental Change in Honduras and the United States, (Which for spatial and repetitive purposes, I will refer to as Banana Cultures for the remainder of the paper), introduces the reader to a world of corporate greed, consumption, and environmental change using the history of the common, everyday, fruit, the banana. He explores the various political occurrences, health problems, and changes in mass media through the rise of the consumption of the banana in the United States, and around the globe.
"The Fish" is filled with poetic images all for the reason of making a powerful point,
The imagery in this passage helps turn the tone of the poem from victimization to anger. In addition to fire images, the overall language is completely stripped down to bare ugliness. In previous lines, the sordidness has been intermixed with cheerful euphemisms: the agonizing work is an "exquisite dance" (24); the trembling hands are "white gulls" (22); the cough is "gay" (25). But in these later lines, all aesthetically pleasing terms vanish, leaving "sweet and …blood" (85), "naked… [and]…bony children" (89), and a "skeleton body" (95).
Catching Fire: How Coooking Made us Human by Richard Wrangham is a fresh perspective on the evolution of humankind. Wrangham has made a concentrated effort to prove that humans have evolved particular adaptations, like bipedalism, due to the introduction of cooked foods into their diet. In his book, he is legitimately arguing that humans are the way they are because early on in human evolution, early man discovered fire, discovered the joys of cooked foods, and developed all sorts of fascinating traits still being utilized today.
Sex is more than just a physical act. It's a beautiful way to express love. When people have sex just to fulfill a physical need, as the poet believes sex outside of love-based relationship only harms and cheapens sex. In the beginning of the poem, Olds brilliantly describe the beauty of sex, and then in the second half of the poem, she continues reference to the cold and aloneness which clearly shows her opinions about causal sex. Through this poem, Sharon Olds, has expressed her complete disrespect for those who would participate in casual sex.
Humor and Irony are a unique combinations Collins displays in many of his poems, challenging the readers to interpret his work in different perspectives. In “Introduction to Poetry,” Collins offers a witty comparison between the definition of poetry and various other experiments. He asks the reader to “hold [the poem] up to the light/ like a color slide” (1-3), “press an ear against its hive” (4), “drop a mouse into a poem” (5), “walk inside the poem's room” (7), and “waterski across the surface of a poem” (9-10). Rather than stiffly explaining the definition of a poem, he finds creative and humorous approaches to explain his methods of enjoying the poems, and promote the readers’ interest towards discovering the true meaning of poetry. Just as the surrounding would seem different through color slides, he asks the readers to see the world in diverse viewpoints while reading and writing poems. Moreover, by listening to poem’s hive, dropping a mouse, and walking inside its room, Collins encourages readers to discover the concealed depth of poetry. He comments ...
In “Barn Burning” the setting is a time when people drove horse wagons and the workingmen were generally farmers. The major character in this story is Colonel Sartoris Snopes, called “Sarty” by his family who is a ten-year-old boy. In the beginning, Sarty is portrayed as a confused and frightened young boy. He is in despair over the burden of doing the right thing or sticking by his family, as his father states,” You got to learn to stick to your own blood or you ain’t going to have any blood to stick to you.”
Throughout the first half of the poem, Bishop describes the fish as an inanimate object, as reflected in her comparisons, which uses objects to describe the fish as shown when she says, “Here and there his brown skin hung in strips like ancient wallpaper…”. (9-11) She chooses a wallpaper to describe the skin of the fish in order to accurately portray its battered and worn state; her decision to compare the fish to an inorganic ...
These lines also symbolize their music tastes, as the pool players seem to know something about the deep jazz culture. Imagery is also used in this poem, as it also creates an image of their intense dancing and self-indulgent enjoyment of life which distracts them from the final sentence of the poem, “Die soon” (11). This explains why there is a cost to such enjoyment of life and why it cannot be ignored at the end of the day. Nonetheless, as there are no direct examples of figurative language in the poem, some of the descriptive details as being implied metaphors in their demonstration of young men.
The first element to analyze when looking at “The Fish” is figurative language. The reader is drawn to this element because of its heavy emphasis throughout the poem. Elizabeth Bishop profusely uses similes with the intention of heightening the sensation of fishing. She writes:
In fact, the fish story has become a metaphor reflecting the technique used by Finney for expressing the difficult thing beautifully, to compress a poem choosing what should be kept in a poem and what should be thrown away (Finney, “Interview with: Nikky Finney”), to express whatever difficult feelings she has without much noise or rage. Finney sees activism as a basic part of her work.
He uses powerful imagery and onomatopoeia to achieve the desired effects that make the poem more realistic. All this combined together produces effective thought provoking ideas and with each read, I gradually get an improved understanding and appreciation of the poem.
The poet seems to share the same pain with the fish, observing the scene and enjoying the detail just like enjoying an artwork. The poet lets the fish go because she is totally touched by the process between life and death; she loves life but, meanwhile, is deeply hurt by the life. In the poem, the fish has no fear towards her; the desire to live is in the moving and tragic details when she faces the death.
The poet uses examples of imagery in this poem. The poet uses a simile in the first line of the first stanza to start off the poem. The simile she uses is ''the skin cracks like a pod''. The opening of the poem gives a clear message that something is severely wrong. A pod cracks with barely any resistance so the comparison to the skin is a unreserved statement outlining how easily the skin is. There is obviously a drought or a vast undersupply of water. The opening surprises the reader and gives an indication of what is to come. The poet uses a short and abrupt line which is effective
The consistent pattern of metrical stresses in this stanza, along with the orderly rhyme scheme, and standard verse structure, reflect the mood of serenity, of humankind in harmony with Nature. It is a fine, hot day, `clear as fire', when the speaker comes to drink at the creek. Birdsong punctuates the still air, like the tinkling of broken glass. However, the term `frail' also suggests vulnerability in the presence of danger, and there are other intimations in this stanza of the drama that is about to unfold. Slithery sibilants, as in the words `glass', `grass' and `moss', hint at the existence of a Serpent in the Garden of Eden. As in a Greek tragedy, the intensity of expression in the poem invokes a proleptic tenseness, as yet unexplained.