Half Caste and Two Scavengers in a Truck, Two Beautiful People in a Mercedes Of the two poems from the other cultures booklet, I have decided to compare “Half-caste” by John Agard and “Two Scavengers in a Truck, Two Beautiful People in a Mercedes” by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. In this essay I will discuss the meaning of the two poems and what the poet is trying to get the reader to think and / or realise. The poem describes four people held together for a moment at a red traffic light. There are two scavengers, garbage men 'on their way home' after their round, and two beautiful people, an elegant couple 'on the way to his architect's office'. The garbage men’s day ends where the young couple's begins. The poet compares the two pairs in detail, and then seems to ask - at the end of the poem - whether America really is a democracy. The poem's structure is fairly free. The poet doesn't use punctuation; instead, he begins a new line when he wants us to pause in our reading. This slows the poem down and gives us time to appreciate each idea. The poem appears very fragmented on the page. This might suggest the fragmented or 'broken' nature of society? The language used in this poem is used in different ways to convey his ideas. For example; the title shows us straight away that the poem will be about the contrasts between two pairs of people. ‘Scavengers’ is a belittling term for the garbage men because it suggests that they live off the rubbish of others - a scavenger beetle lives off rotting flesh. However, Beautiful People is a compliment. So, right from the start, we feel the garbage men are at a disadvantage. In line 7 Ferlinghetti writes the garbage men are 'looking down' into the Mercedes. This is literally because the garbage truck is taller than the car; there is a hidden ironic message too. You might have expected the rich couple to 'look down on' the garbage men, not the other way round. The descriptions of the four people are very visual, making it easy to imagine the scene. Appearances tell us a lot. The rich couple are very fashionable: he has an expensive 'hip three-piece linen suit' (line 11) while her blond hair is 'casually coifed' (line 13). On the other hand, the garbage men are grungy (line 17). The younger one has sunglasses & long hair (line 24) just like the Mercedes driver, which forces us to compare the two. The poem wants us to seriously consider how different two people of the same age and race could be so
Good poetry provides meaningful commentary. One indication of a poem’s success in this is the depth of thought the reader has as a result of the poem. The poems I anthologized may take different
In this essay I am going to discuss two poems. "Woman Work" written by Maya Angelou, is about a woman who works all the time and just wants to rest. The second poem is called "overheard in County Sigo" written by Gillian Clarke which is about a married woman having a conversation with her friend about her life and looking back at what her ambitions were.
The last two lines of the poem state that “the boy’s supplications and the father’s love add up to silence”
In the essay I hope to explain why I picked each poem and to suggest
The poetry by these two poets creates several different images, both overall, each with a different goal, have achieved their purposes. Though from slightly different times, they can both be recognized and appreciated as poets who did not fear the outside, and were willing to put themselves out there to create both truth and beauty.
These poems have many different things in it. Both of them have mentions of a higher power. For example Songs of Innocence “ and by came an angel who had a bright key,” and Songs of Experience “ and are gone to praise God and his Priest and King.” Also both poems have a mostly negative tone, and have a child as the speaker whether it is third person or first person.
‘We may have a new constitution, we may have on the face of it a
Presenting People in Two Scavengers in a Truck, Two Beautiful People in a Mercedes, and Island Man
treatment of his people and of himself show up in his poems in both blunt and subtle
Both poems where written in the Anglo-Saxton era in Old English and later translated into English. As well as both poems being written in the same time period, they are both elegiac poems, meaning they are poignant and mournful.
I am going to start by comparing the form of each poem. The souls of
of the poem. The end of the poem is also very sad and lonely, enhanced
In the last line of the second stanza, the subject enters dramatically, accompanied by an abrupt change in the rhythm of the poem:
The first stanza of the poem starts out narrative but then alternates from narrative to a father speaking to his son in the second stanza. The “son” in the second stanza must go on a journey where he will encounter beasts his father admonish him about (lines 5-8). The reader immediately understands the task is not an easy one...
people to read for generations to come. By doing so, both of the poets are