Reading Thomas Lux’s poem, “A Little Tooth,” I can definitely understand what the author is saying. As a mother of a soon-to-be twelve-year-old, Thomas Lux’s poem shows parents how quickly children grow up and to never regret anything. The poem begins as a baby girl that has her first tooth come in, then another and another, until she is able to eat meat, a solid food, rather than soft or dissolvable foods (Kirszner & Mandell, 2012). As we remember those sleepless nights through teething, crying accompanied by a fever, and all our freezer packs that never seemed to get cold fast enough, the author reminds parents of those first few years. But just as quickly as that little girl grows up, the author states, “directly from bone,” as she now
Stanza six shows how toys and presents mark the child’s life rather than love and affection.
“Things” by Lisel Mueller is a very simple poem with a very simple message. We as human beings need to find comfort in anything that isn’t remotely human even though it’s completely natural. With everything that we personify, a sense of pity comes with the reasons of why change things to the way they are now. We cannot accept things in their natural state.
The speaker of the poem is six years old in the waiting room of a dentist office, waiting for her aunt’s appointment to finish. Prompted by both the cover of a National Geographic magazine and a scream from her aunt, the speaker begins to question how she got there, who she is, and how she is different from her aunt and the women who came before her.
As one of America’s leading contemporary poet’s, Sharon Olds is known for the intense personal and emotional poetry that she writes. Her ability to intimately and graphically divulge details of her personal life allows readers to delve into the deepest parts of not only her mind, but of their own as well. Sharon Olds uses her writing to allow readers to experience the good and bad of life through her eyes, yet allows readers the interpretive freedom to define her works as they fit into their own lives. Olds’ ability to depict both wonderful and tragic events in stories such as “First Thanksgiving” and “Still Life in Landscape”with beautifully gruesome clarity allow readers a gritty real-life experience unlike any other.
Beginning in residential school, Painted Tongue is called heathen by a religious school teacher, and after a while, he starts to question if maybe he is a heathen (Boyden 72-73). Boyden is illustrating the relationship between colonizer and colonized, with a repression of one’s spiritually by the preaching of another’s religion. This is another example of the effects of slow violence on Painted Tongue, where small differences such as contrasting religious or spiritual faiths, become the oppression of the minority
To me it feels Lucy Larcom feelings are kinda Typical. She did mention how she was a country girl and it was un usual for country girls to work out in bigger places because there used to being so independent. I think that she liked it because being a country girl they liked being put to work or were always working hard because working in the country isn't easy. And now they only have to work a few hours a day. And they in joyed only having to work a few hours. In the quote they said that “The preferred it to going out as “hired help.”” Then Lucy went on saying how it was like a mans pleasure in entering upon a business. I do think what he thought was pretty typical and she did In joy it because it was something she has never done before so
I could tell that he was not from Mississippi because he would definitely know better. I didn’t want to get him in trouble, or hell I did not want to get myself into trouble. But he was just so cute and articulate. I could not help but to keep talking to him.
The poem “LXXVI. Zhongzi, Please” from Classic of Poetry, is about a girl who is fearful that her lover, Zhongzi, coming into her life will bring disapproval from her parents, brother, and society. The meaning can be reveled through the use of literary qualities such as images and repetition.
In this poem, there is a young woman and her loving mother discussing their heritage through their matrilineal side. The poem itself begins with what she will inherit from each family member starting with her mother. After discussing what she will inherit from each of her family members, the final lines of the poem reflect back to her mother in which she gave her advice on constantly moving and never having a home to call hers. For example, the woman describes how her father will give her “his brown eyes” (Line 7) and how her mother advised her to eat raw deer (Line 40). Perhaps the reader is suggesting that she is the only survivor of a tragedy and it is her heritage that keeps her going to keep safe. In the first two lines of the poem, she explains how the young woman will be taking the lines of her mother’s (Lines 1-2). This demonstrates further that she is physically worried about her features and emotionally worried about taking on the lineage of her heritage. Later, she remembered the years of when her mother baked the most wonderful food and did not want to forget the “smell of baking bread [that warmed] fined hairs in my nostrils” (Lines 3-4). Perhaps the young woman implies that she is restrained through her heritage to effectively move forward and become who she would like to be. When reading this poem, Native American heritage is an apparent theme through the lifestyle examples, the fact lineage is passed through woman, and problems Native Americans had faced while trying to be conquested by Americans. Overall, this poem portrays a confined, young woman trying to overcome her current obstacles in life by accepting her heritage and pursuing through her
In a typical family, there are parents that expected to hear things when their teenager is rebelling against them: slamming the door, shouting at each other, and protests on what they could do or what they should not do. Their little baby is growing up, testing their wings of adulthood; they are not the small child that wanted their mommy to read a book to them or to kiss their hurts away and most probably, they are thinking that anything that their parents told them are certainly could not be right. The poem talks about a conflict between the author and her son when he was in his adolescence. In the first stanza, a misunderstanding about a math problem turns into a family argument that shows the classic rift between the generation of the parent and the teenager. Despite the misunderstandings between the parent and child, there is a loving bond between them. The imagery, contrasting tones, connotative diction, and symbolism in the poem reflect these two sides of the relationship.
At first glance Edna St. Vincent Millay's first recognized poem, Renascence, seems to be easy to understand and follow. However, as this sing-songy poem is dissected, the reader embarks upon a world full of emotion, religion, confusion, pain and sin. This poem is split up into six sections or stanzas which separate the action of the poem into easy to understand parts. I have chosen to discuss the first section of the poem for my close reading.
In the poem “A Story”, Li-Young Lee shows the complicated relationship between the father and the son by using point of view and structure. Italicized lines distinguish who is talking to draw on point of view to indicate the complex relationship. The poem’s structure also identifies the complex relationship by increasing the lines in each stanza by one-until the sixth stanza which goes down to four lines, and then in the seventh stanza which goes back to five lines.
Pattern 1A: Three UCLA basketball players were arrested for shopping lifting; however, they were not prosecuted through China’s stringent judicial system.
The literary comparison shall explore the following pieces: Plath’s “Lady Lazarus,” Woolf’s “A Haunted House,” and Atwood’s “Siren Song,” and “Happy Ending.” The first comparison is between Lady Lazarus and Siren Song, both poems contain themes of manipulation and the role of women in a patriarchal society. Furthermore, Plath’s “Lady Lazarus” contains two major ideas to be studied: role of women and manipulation. The role of women can be seen as the speaker struggles in her life as revealed by her suicide attempts. The quotes, “I have done it again / one year in every ten” and “I am only thirty / And like the cat I have nine times to die” reveal that she has tried it, it is now a tradition for her to attempt and cause her own death (Plath 1-2,
William Blake’s 1793 poem “The Tyger” has many interpretations, but its main purpose is to question God as a creator. Its poetic techniques generate a vivid picture that encourages the reader to see the Tyger as a horrifying and terrible being. The speaker addresses the question of whether or not the same God who made the lamb, a gentle creature, could have also formed the Tyger and all its darkness. This issue is addressed through many poetic devices including rhyme, repetition, allusion, and symbolism, all of which show up throughout the poem and are combined to create a strong image of the Tyger and a less than thorough interpretation of its maker.