“Good times” by Lucille Clifton, is a short poem about a child who has a good experience with her family. Even though everything is good now there once was a point where everything wasn’t going as well. This tells the reader one should always cherish the good times because these are the times to remember. Almost the entire poem is a flashback of the “good times” the child has experienced. In lines one and two, the poet writes, “My daddy has paid the rent and the insurance man is gone” (Clifton). Tells the reader that there was a point where the rent wasn’t paid and the insurance man was trying to cut off the lights. With the authors specific use of anaphora, diction, and symbolism; the author reminds us that good times don’t last forever. When those good times happen we should appreciate them because those good times come and go. With Lucille Clifton's specific use of diction, structure and symbolism, Lucille uses her remarkable skills to create poem that lets the reader know good times don’t last forever.
The use of diction and structure are the base of any literary work. Without the use of diction and structure how the author would get his message to the reader since this is not a conversation. Not being able to hear the tone of your voice or facial expressions. It is important that your foundation is strong and connects with the theme. Throughout the poem there is not structured rhyme scheme, though two lines do rhyme. In lines two and three, “And the insurance man is gone and the lights is back on” (Clifton). Here Clifton rhymes the words “gone” and “on” but there is a purpose for this. These two words are an opposite, that’s exactly why she made only these two rhymes. Emphasizing “gone” and “on” shows that good times come a...
... middle of paper ...
...he bad times may strike again. “My daddy has paid the rent and the insurance man is gone and the lights is back on” (Clifton lines 1-3). There was once a low point for this family but the child realizes that these times won’t last so it’s important to take advantage of them while they do.
With Lucille Clifton's specific use of diction, structure and symbolism, Lucille uses her remarkable skills to create poem that lets the reader know good times don’t last forever. The reader is led to understand that even though times may be rough there light at the end of the tunnel. This poem reflects on the moments and memories that you have. They both can not last forever, but you will always remember them, when their either good or bad. The grammar in this poem is appeared to be written by a child. The child does not know about capitalization, punctuation, or grammar.
The poem explains her hardships. Reading poetry is different from reading prose because you really have to dig deeper and study harder. A poem is not always straight forward like many other writings. You have to use context clues and understand imagery, tone, and sense. Summarizing a poem becomes difficult if you do not re-read several times. I learned that figurative language and lifestyle really tells a great story. Language especially helps you understand what is going on between the lines. Overall, family is always there at the end of the day. Sometimes situations get tough, but there is always a light at the end of the
Early on, poetry was often used with rhyme to remember things more accurately, this still rings true today, even though its use is more often to entertain. However, although it appeals to both the young, in children's books, and the old, in a more sophisticated and complex form, people are bound to have different preferences towards the different styles of poetry. Dobson’s poetry covers a variation of styles that captivate different individuals. “Her Story” is a lengthy poem with shorter stanzas. It’s free verse structure and simplistic language and face value ideas might appeal better to a younger audience. This poem includes quotes with informal language that children or teens would better understand. It’s narrative-based style is easy to follow, and although the poem covers very basic concepts, it’s message is still communicated subliminally. This particular poem is interesting because it focusses on the universal experience of pain and it’s relation to time. Similar to this is “The Householder”, written in a cyclical style, opening with a “house” and ending with a “home”. With only three stanzas, it is
Throughout the lives of most people on the planet, there comes a time when there may be a loss of love, hope or remembrance in our lives. These troublesome times in our lives can be the hardest things we go through. Without love or hope, what is there to live for? Some see that the loss of hope and love means the end, these people being pessimistic, while others can see that even though they feel at a loss of love and hope that one day again they will feel love and have that sense of hope, these people are optimistic. These feelings that all of us had, have been around since the dawn of many. Throughout the centuries, the expression of these feelings has made their ways into literature, novels, plays, poems, and recently movies. The qualities of love, hope, and remembrance can be seen in Emily Bronte’s and Thomas Hardy’s poems of “Remembrance” “Darkling Thrush” and “Ah, Are you Digging on my Grave?”
The poem is gentle and nostalgic. It seeks not only to recreate the scene for the reader, but
Poems are often designed to express deep feelings and thoughts about a particular theme. In Theodore Roethke’s poem, My Papa’s Waltz, and Ruth Whitman’s poem, Listening to grownups quarreling, the theme of childhood is conveyed through their details, although we can neither see a face nor hear a voice. These poems are very much alike in their ideas of how their memories pertain to the attitudes of their childhood; however, the wording and tones of the two poems are distinct in how they present their memories. The two poems can be compared and contrasted through the author’s use of tone, imagery, and recollection of events; which illustrate each author’s memories of childhood.
These final words sum up her feeling of helplessness and emptiness. Her identity is destroyed in a way due to having children. We assume change is always positive and for the greater good but Harwood’s poem challenges that embedding change is negative as the woman has gained something but lost so much in return.
“Lucille Clifton.” Poets.org. The Academy of American Poets, 1997-2014. Web. 12 Mar. 2014. http://poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/79 .
During the process of growing up, we are taught to believe that life is relatively colorful and rich; however, if this view is right, how can we explain why literature illustrates the negative and painful feeling of life? Thus, sorrow is inescapable; as it increase one cannot hide it. From the moment we are born into the world, people suffer from different kinds of sorrow. Even though we believe there are so many happy things around us, these things are heartbreaking. The poems “Tips from My Father” by Carol Ann Davis, “Not Waving but Drowning” by Stevie Smith, and “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop convey the sorrow about growing up, about sorrowful pretending, and even about life itself.
The poems facilitate the investigation of human experience through illustrating life’s transience and the longevity of memory.
We have all had those memorable moments that send us back in time; a song on the radio, the smell of cookies baking, driving in the car. They make you think of good times passed. But Billy Collins’s poem, “The Lanyard”, is not only a recollection of the past, but a personal insight to about the things his mother has done for him and what he has done in return.
...ur lines each. Each line ends with a vertical line that marks the feet. The rhyme isn't but there is rhyme in this poem like "Me" rhymes with "Immortality" and, farther down the poem, with "Civility" and "Eternity." This poem repeated the phrase, "We passed," which is changed a bit in the fifth stanza to, "We paused." This repetition of a word or phrase throughout a poem is called anaphora. The use of these poetic elements allows the words to flow as they describe an event.
The regular rhyme scheme -- A-B-C-C-B -- gives the poem a nursery-rhyme quality. In many places, the style seems to overpower the content: stanza 47 seems constructed solely to showcase the rhyme it contains: "Perhaps he's climbed into an oak / Where he will stay till he is dead" (ll. 233-234) is not really a worrisome fate, but it rhymes neatly with the last two lines of the stanza.
Frank O’Hara’s The Day Lady Died is an unorthodox elegy to the great Billie Holiday, one that explores a more distant but no less human form of mourning a notable figure from afar when one feels personally invested in them. The Day Lady Died makes good use of a captivatingly talkative first person narrator with a penchant for mentioning seemingly insignificant details that end up being paramount to the poem’s narrative. Its run-on form lends to the nature of the poem being an internal stream of consciousness that aids in capturing those small details and utilizing them to paint a bigger picture of day that will live on both in poetry and in history as The Day Lady Died.
Losing a loved one is one of the hardest experiences every person must go through. The experience does not end with the loss though, but begins with it. The loss of a dear person leads those left behind into a downward spiral of emotions and memories. A poem entitled “Lucy Gray” by William Wordsworth focuses on that loss and the emotions that follow it. By reading the poem one can objectively experience both the grief that Lucy Gray’s death brings on but also her parents’ acceptance of her death.
The speaker in this poem is portrayed as being immediately joyful, which represents Blake’s larger view of childhood as a state of joy that is untouched by humanity, and is untarnished by the experience of the real world. In contrast, Blake’s portrayal of adulthood is one of negativity and pessimism.... ... middle of paper ... ...