Moving Between Different Cultures in Poetry
For my essay I will be looking at two poems which deal with the
experience of moving between different cultures, these are Half-Caste
and Search for My Tongue. These poems are written from experience.
John Agard the author of Half-Caste was born in Gugana and moved to
Britain in 1977. He is half-caste himself and his poem expresses his
feelings about the term half-caste.
Sujata Bhatt the authoress of Search for My Tongue was born in India
in 1956, her family moved to the United States of America in the
1960's and she now lives in Germany. In her poem Search for My Tongue
she explains how she feels about having two different languages her
birth language, Gujerati and her second language, German.
Half-Caste and Search for My Tongue, create very vivid images, which
makes it easier for the reader to interpret and understand both the
poems and the authors' opinion on the different cultures.
Half- Caste creates many images, by using descriptive language and
humour. It creates such images as a man, 'standing on leg' and having
'half mih ear' because he is only half-caste so he only has half what
a normal person would have but it also creates images about objects
'mix a red an green is a half-caste canvas' and even music 'mix a
black key wid a white key is a half-caste symphony'. This helps the
reader to understand how the author is feeling about the term
half-caste, and can also come to a conclusion about the term
themselves. All the imagery in this poem makes the reader think about
how anybody who has ever been called half-caste feels.
Search for My Tongue creates a very vivid image using very descriptive
metaphors, 'it grows back, a stump of a shoot, grows ...
... middle of paper ...
...age which creates vivid
images for the reader. Using gujerati in the middle of the poems shows
that her mother tongue, her birth language, is still strong and at
times, even stronger then her second language.
In conclusion both of these poems deal with the issues faced when
moving between different cultures in their own ways. They both use
language and imagery to express their messages Half- Caste explores
the way that we use the term 'half-caste' in our vocabulary and
exaggerates it. This is to a great effect as it makes the reader think
more about racial issues and the way that we treat people from
different cultures. Search for my Tongue deals with moving between
different cultures by actually writing about the language barriers and
losing your identity. This is how we can link the poems together and
show how people move between different cultures.
This quote describes how Louise Halfe uses all four common elements of native literature in her writings. I have chosen to discuss two of the elements she frequently uses, Spirituality and Orality in relation to three of her poems: My Ledders, She Told Me and The Heat of my Grandmothers.
This poem captures the immigrant experience between the two worlds, leaving the homeland and towards the new world. The poet has deliberately structured the poem in five sections each with a number of stanzas to divide the different stages of the physical voyage. Section one describes the refugees, two briefly deals with their reason for the exodus, three emphasises their former oppression, fourth section is about the healing effect of the voyage and the concluding section deals with the awakening of hope. This restructuring allows the poet to focus on the emotional and physical impact of the journey.
Lahiri, a second-generation immigrant, endures the difficulty of living in the middle of her hyphenated label “Indian-American”, whereas she will never fully feel Indian nor fully American, her identity is the combination of her attributes, everything in between.
Often times, writers have their own unique source of inspiration. Many write about what they know, what they have seen, or where they have been. Literature comes from all over the world and every piece contains a hint about the period and place it was written in. The authors of lyric poems have their own special way of demonstrating his or hers’ culture and way of life. Poems derived from Greece, China, and Egypt are different in their own ways due to the fact that beliefs and practices vary in each region. Some areas emphasize traditional values whereas some encourage adaptation to contemporary practices. Ways of life and romances are depicted in various manners because beliefs are not the same throughout the world nor are they written in the same era as shown by authors from China, Egypt, and Greece.
“Language and Literature from a Pueblo Indian Perspective” an essay written by Leslie Marmon Silko brings to life the diversified facets of the Pueblo Indian culture, sharing with readers the infrastructure of Puebloan dialect and folklore. Likewise, Amy Tan’s essay “Mother Tongue” details a series of prominent reflections of the nurturing voice responsible for constructing the author’s perceptions of the world. Both of these essays share a corresponding theme of the influence one’s culture can have on can have on individual styles of communication. The implication of the nonfiction elements plot and setting throughout the piece allows the author to adequately reinforce the theme of each piece. Each essay embodies commonalities, as well as, differences in the nonfiction elements used to depict the common theme.
One statement in the beginning of the book was especially poignant to any one who studies Indian culture, It is easy for us to feel a vicarious rage, a misery on behalf of these people, but Indians, dead and alive would only receive such feelings with pity or contempt; it is too easy to feel sympathy for a people who culture was wrecked..
The poem entitled “On the Pulse of Morning” is a time-honored piece unrolling the film of time, and featuring humanity and its travel through time. This poem is a requirement for United States History, section 2111, to analyze the poem in your own words. In doing so, you must somehow relate to the poem, channel a moment or two of you past, and conform it to the poem. Accounts of students from various other backgrounds provide the poet with support from genuine evidence. History and evolution is compared with certain elements of nature, specifically the rock, river, and tree. I like the poem. This poem is really interesting, very imaginative, and very inventive. It makes you think a lot. But while reading at the poem you really gaze at the stanzas with such amazement. It is quite a historical piece, discussing how the world was before people arrived, and the great effort they had to put forth till they reached the very day that the author ultimately dawns on the reader. When I first got this assignment, it seemed a bit complicated. You have to think a lot about how you fit into this poem. Constantly contemplating, deep in thought, immersed in my past, I thought maybe I could discuss the time I first moved to the United States. But before I began to write the poem, I thought that I might not much to say, and while saying it just happen it to be more than necessary. Yet the greatest challenge that lay ahead, as with any paper, is making this introduction. While reading this poem, it brought back plenty of information that we may have reviewed in past history and evolutionary courses. The rock is the Earth itself, particularly America in relation to the poem. The river may be the passage between the eastern and wester...
The title of the poem is ''Blessing'' and the poet is called Imtiaz Dharker. In my essay I will be looking at how the poet describes a culture different from our own and explaining how the poet brings this culture to life through his use of poetic techniques. The poem is set in a third world country which is in desperate need for water. A municipal pipe bursts and suddenly there is a flurry of people rushing to get that much desired water.
Great Britain as a worldwide system of colonies dominated the world for some three centuries. The first uncertain British attempts to establish overseas settlements were made as early as the sixteenth century. Huge economic and trade success, plus maritime expansion, resulted in the seventeenth century in the establishment of settlements in North America and the West Indies. The East India Company established its first trading posts in India at the beginning of the seventeenth century and the same company helped to establish British supremacy in Penang, Singapore, Malacca and Labuan. The first permanent British settlement in Africa was on James Island in the Gambia River in 1661.
Sharan Kumar Limbale’s novel ‘Hindu’ is a significant addition to the process of reformulating a new aesthetic rubric of Dalit literature. Moving away consciously from the mode of sentimentality, binaries and universality, Limbale’s novel attempts to negotiate a new artistic vocabulary for the Dalits in a fast changing world where old certainties are vanishing at a mind numbing pace. ArunPrabha Mukherjee,in her introduction to the novel points towards the significant departure that Limbale’s novel articulates, by undermining several practices of burgeois narrative technique. Both Limbale and Mukherjee seems to assert that in a complex and dynamic world of dalit realities, experiences and corresponding techniques of representation should be recalibrated to bring out the intricate nuances of the specific life-world of the erstwhile ‘untouchables’.
There are an assorted of various characteristics included in poetry including Rhyme, Rhythm, and Mood. Some poems use rhyming words to create a certain effect but not all poems rhyme, poetry that doesn’t rhyme is called “free verse poetry”. Sometimes poets use repetition of sounds or patterns to create a musical effect in their poems, rhythm can be created by using the same number of words or syllables in each line of a poem. Rhythm can be described as the beat of the poem. The mood of a poem is the feeling that it has. A poem can be sad, gloomy, humorous, happy, etc. There are many more various characteristics in poetry including shape, figurative language, descriptive imagery, punctuation and format, sound and tone, and choice of
Poetry unlike fiction is solely based on the author’s personal take on a certain subject. The tone, diction, syntax, and mood of a poem are all determined by the author of the poem. For some readers, to interpret a poem or explain the plot can be a difficult task. Other forms of literature such, as fiction is much easier to understand and discuss.
Lorca’s poetry is seen as dull and flat when translated into English, but when the original poem and the translation are side by side, they still manage to be captivating. The incorporation of musical knowledge was a nice touch on his work. Because he was also a playwright, some of his plays were found in his poetry as well. Readers can find repetition of nature-based imagery. He is constantly compared to Burns because of his realism, while he always admired Whitman (1).
Sheenagh Pugh and Carol Ann Duffy are two poets that have written many poems on the topic of language using linguistic features to enhance meaning and depth. In this essay, I am going to discuss the similarities and differences in how they portray this theme on the reader and the effects it creates. I am going to create an in depth analysis of three poems with this theme, two written by Carol Ann Duffy and the other by Sheenagh Pugh.
Dalit literature represents an influential, rising trend in the Indian literary scene. Dalit writing is a post-independence literary phenomenon. The emergence of Dalit literature has a great historical significance. It has served the purpose of awakening the consciousness of the downtrodden for forging their identities. The recent surge in Dalit literature in India is an attempt to being to the forefront the experiences of discrimination, violence and poverty of the Dalits. The emergence of low-caste literature has taken place alongside a broader growth of consciousness and activism, particularly in urban India. As an individual a dalit cannot forget his past. The humiliation tries to remember his past.