How Words Can Create Chaos and Stability by Sami How do poets make their stories come to life with a deeper meaning than what is just on your page? Kim Stafford, the phenomenal poet, can do all these amazing things. Born on October 15, 1949, Kim was raised by his mother and father Dorothy and William Stafford. Dorothy Stafford was a teacher and later became a widow. William was a poet just like Kim. Kim Stafford was not only a poet, but also a songwriter. Kim Stafford received a B.A. in 1971, an M.A. in English in 1973 and a Ph.D. in medieval literature in 1979 from the University of Oregon. Kim Stafford writes many poems. One of the poems that he wrote that was called “Mediation”. In this poem there are parents who are fighting at the dinner table. Their child tries to help them resolve the conflict by giving them rules that the teachers used to help resolve conflicts at school. Altho the child tries to make things better, it only gets worse, and results in a plate being thrown. …show more content…
One example of analyzing the poem is how the lines stop in random places. This can also be called, enjambment. The poem is describing a fight. When fights happen, they are fast and quick and intense, the author tries to recreate the chaos and speed of the fight by using enjambment. The second example of analyzing the poem is that the stanzas are broken up into four lines. The only lines that are not broken up into four lines are the last ones, which are broken up into couplets. The third example of analyzing this poem, is that there are a lot of metaphors that bring out the intense and vehement emotion, such as, “A wall of fire sethes…”. This brings out all the emotions in the air, and what the angry parents feel like, even though the author doesn’t say that they were mad, you can guess how much anger and tension is in the
“Poems differ as much as the people who write and read them, or as much as music and movies do” (Mays 846). Poems are the most difficult form of writing to analyze because they can be interpreted differently. Poems are composed of figurative language. Many times poems can be overanalyzed or not analyzed enough which could lead one to obtain an idea out of the poem that the writer never intended to provide.
Poetry has a way of making us feel every range of emotion, in some cases better than other forms of entertainment. Unlike a novel, which gives a wide field of vision on any subject, poems have a more focused look mostly on the raw emotion of any one topic. Understanding poetry is an art onto itself, to be able to peel back the words and feel the emotions within them is truly its own work. Harder yet is the ability to dissect and explain these ideas to another person (in this case through an essay)and have them feel and see the poem and the topic it brings to light in the same way that you do. The poem that we will explore is powerful and thought provoking, because it brings the ugly subject of oppression to the front of your mind and forces you to engage in a conversation that you have no control over. It makes you feel hopeless and angry at the same time. In the poem Unwanted by Edward Field we are going to explore the parts of the poem but mainly we will
In the given poem, there are many people or “characters” described. For example, the fourth stanza of the poem reads, “SAM. L GRAY, SAM. L MAVERICK, JAM. S CALDWELL, CRISPUS ATTUCKS & PAT. K CARR Killed” This is a list of the colonists killed on site during the Boston Massacre. The poem also reads, “Unhappy BOSTON! see thy Sons deplore…” This describes the setting of the events described in the poem, Boston, and gives more detail about the characters by identifying them as “Sons” of sons of liberty. The poem also conveys the emotions of the author. When he writes, “If scalding drops from Rage from Anguish Wrung If speechless Sorrows lab’ ring for a Tongue…” This conveys the sadness and anger felt by the author as a result of the massacre. He
The most noticeable aspect of the structure of the entire poem is the lack of capital letters and periods. There is only one part in the entire forty lines, which is at the very end, and this intentional punctuation brings readers to question the speaker’s literacy. In fact, the speaker is very young, and the use of punctuation and hyphens brings to attention the speaker’s innocence, and because of that innocence, the
Not only the words, but the figures of speech and other such elements are important to analyzing the poem. Alliteration is seen throughout the entire poem, as in lines one through four, and seven through eight. The alliteration in one through four (whisky, waltzing, was) flows nicely, contrasting to the negativity of the first stanza, while seven through eight (countenance, could) sound unpleasing to the ear, emphasizing the mother’s disapproval. The imagery of the father beating time on the child’s head with his palm sounds harmful, as well as the image of the father’s bruised hands holding the child’s wrists. It portrays the dad as having an ultimate power over the child, instead of holding his hands, he grabs his wrists.
Formal analysis of poetry helps to unfold the underlying meaning of a poem. This technique does not focus on the author of the poem, or what was happening in history during the time when the poem was written, but instead puts emphasis on the actual mean of the work. Formal analysis breaths life into the literary work and allows the poem to speak for itself. For example, in Thomas Grays' poem "Ode on the Death of a Favorite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes," paying close attention to word choice, structure, and rhyme scheme illuminates the actions of the prowling cat.
Writing the poem in ballad form gave a sense of mood to each paragraph. The poem starts out with an eager little girl wanting to march for freedom. The mother explains how treacherous the march could become showing her fear for her daughters life. The mood swings back and forth until finally the mother's fear overcomes the child's desire and the child is sent to church where it will be safe. The tempo seems to pick up in the last couple of paragraphs to emphasize the mothers distraught on hearing the explosion and finding her child's shoe.
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.
Imagery consists of descriptive language that can function as a way for the reader to better imagine which draws on the five senses, namely the details of taste, touch, sight, smell, and sound. As the author describes the feelings and emotions about letting go of their son, she uses imagery to describe the way they are feeling and their actions. For example, “Where two weeks ago, / holding a hand, he’d dawdle, dreamy, slow,” (lines 13-14). The example of imagery is the sense of touch when describing her son’s walk to school while holding his hand when he was not alone. This adds the meaning of the poem because he is comfortable walking with his parents but becomes more nervous and anxious when not comforted by them. The imagery adds to the effect of its
The first literary device that can be found throughout the poem is couplet, which is when two lines in a stanza rhyme successfully. For instance, lines 1-2 state, “At midnight, in the month of June / I stand beneath the mystic moon.” This is evidence that couplet is being used as both June and moon rhyme, which can suggest that these details are important, thus leading the reader to become aware of the speaker’s thoughts and actions. Another example of this device can be found in lines 16-17, “All Beauty sleeps!—and lo! where lies / (Her casement open to the skies).” These lines not only successfully rhyme, but they also describe a woman who
The first poem I am going to be analyzing is What My Lips Have Kissed, a sonnet written in the 1920’s. This poem is about numerous loves approaching a close, and the tribulations brought about by said conclusion. The main theme in the sonnet is focused on the transition that occurs in the Millay’s life; such as, the seasons changing. Edna St. Vincent Millay uses the difference between summer and winter to represent the utter contrast she goes through. Millay uses summer to correlate with a period of contentment, brightness, and affection; however, winter is used to correlate with monotonous, misery, and an emptiness. The changes in the seasons mirror the emotional state of the central figure of the narrative before and after the ménage à trois.
Ever since I can remember, I have always tried to negotiate for my family and friends during an argument or disagreement. I enjoy helping opposing sides of a quarrel come to an acceptable conclusion. Because of my mitigation abilities, many of my friends have suggested that they could see me becoming a lawyer when I grow up. However, I have little patience for all of the legal maneuvering and formalities found in a typical courtroom proceeding. I had all but dismissed this career path until I heard about the role of an arbitrator. Arbitrators function as a mediator between two parties that cannot come to an agreement about something but do not want to bring it to court. Since arbitrators typically do not carry out their hearings in a courtroom, they are usually more flexible and less strict than a typical court proceeding. After doing a little research, I decided that I wanted to become an arbitrator. My journey to become an arbitrator will be a very hard path to follow but will be very rewarding in the end. With this in mind, there will be many educational requirements that I will need to fulfill. Beyond obtaining a Bachelor’s or Master’s
The father is consistent in carrying out actions that the son does not agree with; resulting in feelings such as “rage” or “deadfaced.” The word “for” also distinguishes between the cause and effect of each point. Each stanza begins with “for,” which is immediately followed by an action of the father; this can be seen as the “cause.” The “effect” is then shown every time the speaker states that “he [the father] made…”Additionally, the effect expresses the sons reactions or feelings. For example in the fourth stanza, “for expecting my mother to make money like food… he made us go deadfaced.” The father expecting so much of the mother results in the children all “go[ing] deadfaced.” This list-like quality is reinforced by the lack of punctuation in the poem.
By analyzing “Ars Poetica” by Archibald MacLeish, I’ll gain a definition of a poem that can be used to analyze other piece of poetry. I start by looking at the layout of the poem. This poem is divided into three parts with four stanzas in each. This tells me that these sections could be read independently and interpreted separately from each other. The first section uses words relating to ‘quiet’ such as mute, dumb, silent, and wordless. The next part of these stanzas talks about something that doesn’t have meaning until we impose one on it. For example, “as old medallions to the thumb,” a medallion is, on its own, worthless. It is only a hunk of metal that has been engraved, that is, until he ‘put our thumb’ or assign meaning to it. From this I get that the reader should have to find their own meaning of a poem, and that the poem should not directly tell you what it means.
While analyzing a poem, a reader notices many things, things like rhyme scheme, word choice, different levels of a poem, and sentence structure. Each one of these things is an ingredient for the four main components of the formalistic approach to poetry. In the poem "Ozymandius" by P.B. Shelley, structure, style, form, and imagery, allow the reader to look deeper into the poem.