“These Poems, She Said” by Robert Bringhurst is a poem about a woman who is subjected to an ill-natured man. Throughout the entire poem the woman is explaining how she feels about her husband by supplying examples of how and why he (her husband) was such a vindictive man. However, the writer Robert Bringhurst, is of course a man so this concept can be hard to understand and follow. The poem is portraying the man as a hard-hearted man that also has characteristics of narcissism. In life, I have seen and been around a lot of men that put me in the mindset or reminds me of the husband in the poem. I see these men as cynical, not because I am a “man hater”, but because I consider myself to be a feminist. Within the poem, particularly the beginning, the woman in the poem uses multiple examples to give a summary or back story of the family’s life. “…These are the poems of a man who would murder his mother to claim the inheritance.” (Bringhurst 5-7), these few lines are so vile because killing one’s own family is one of the most heinous crimes and sins that a person can commit. …show more content…
“…These poems are as heartless as birdsong, as unmeant as elm leaves, which if they love love only the wide bluesky and the air and the idea of elm leaves.” (Bringhurst 17-21). Elm leaves are known to be beautiful and known for having good connotations because it is related to Christmas as of the modern day, but in actuality elm leaves are related to blood sacrifice and death during the ages of B.C. and A.D. In relationship to the poem, she’s saying that his love may look pure and honest, but in reality it’s worse than death because she is sacrificing herself by being with him, and like the idea of elm leaves, people may see their relationship as perfect. I look back on the past and reflect on how everyone that was on the outside looking in thought their relationship was great and how they thought he was a good man but it wasn’t
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
As mentioned, the parents’ pains, negative emotions and hatred are presented in the first part. Even from the first few lines from the poem: “Ulcerated tooth keeps me...
was written in order to show what a family was going through, at this time
...nal family. The second poem uses harsh details described in similes, metaphors, and personification. The message of a horribly bad childhood is clearly defined by the speaker in this poem. Finally, the recollection of events, as described by the two speakers, is distinguished by the psychological aspect of how these two children grew up. Because the first child grew up in a passive home where everything was hush-hush, the speaker described his childhood in that manner; trying to make it sound better than what it actually was. The young girl was very forward in describing her deprivation of a real family and did not beat around the bush with her words. It is my conclusion that the elements of tone, imagery, and the recollection of events are relevant to how the reader interprets the message conveyed in a poem which greatly depends on how each element is exposed.
This poem is about abortion and the narrator used the mother’s point of view to express her feeling of how she felt after she aborted her unborn child. The mother felt terrible and remorse about what she did. In this poem I think that the Brooks might had experienced of abortion herself so she wrote this poem to let the reader know how terrible it is to have a abortion. So this will reduce to process of having a abortion.
While reading the poem the reader can imply that the father provides for his wife and son, but deals with the stress of having to work hard in a bad way. He may do what it takes to make sure his family is stable, but while doing so he is getting drunk and beating his son. For example, in lines 1 and 2, “The whisky on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy” symbolizes how much the father was drinking. He was drinking so much, the scent was too much to take. Lines 7 and 8, “My mother’s countenance, Could not unfrown itself.” This helps the reader understand the mother’s perspective on things. She is unhappy seeing what is going on which is why she is frowning. Although she never says anything it can be implied that because of the fact that the mother never speaks up just shows how scared she could be of her drunk husband. Lines 9 and 10, “The hand that held my wrist Was battered on one knuckle”, with this line the reader is able to see using imagery that the father is a hard worker because as said above his knuckle was battered. The reader can also take this in a different direction by saying that his hand was battered from beating his child as well. Lastly, lines 13 and 14, “You beat time on my head With a palm caked hard by dirt” As well as the quote above this quote shows that the father was beating his child with his dirty hand from all the work the father has
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.
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
On the surface the poem seems to be a meditation on past events and actions, a contemplative reflection about what has gone on before. Research into the poem informs us that the poem is written with a sense of irony
“We pluck and marvel for sheer joy. And the ones still green, sighing, leave upon the boughs…” (14-16). This emphasis on nature reflects the respect and connection to the natural world the culture was trying to convey in their poetry. The colorful and illustrative descriptions of the physical world are indicative of the mindset and focus of these poems. Namely the fact that they were concerned with the world around us and the reality we experience as opposed to that of abstract concept of god or the supernatural as seen in other historical texts. This focus on nature is important because it sets the context in which the major theme of loss and separation originate from. In this poem the poet chooses to emphasize the passing of time in the choice of comparing the two seasons. Spring, in which life begins a new, and fall, in which the leaves begin to fall off and die. The poem reads “And the ones still green, sighing, leave upon the boughs- Those are the ones I hate to lose. For me, it is the autumn hills” (15-18). This juxtaposition of these two
A specific example of a man who tosses three girls out the window and then plunges to his own death serves to show us the horror of the situation. the poem then continues on to tell us of in humane conditions in Scotland. It ends by telling us about the slaves who picked and planted the cotton. The speaker seems to be telling us a story in order to inform us of what's going on in the shirt industry.Robert Pinsky doesn't have many obvious examples of diction in his work, although hints of it can be found. There is a simile in the first line of the tenth stanza.
During the early seventeenth century, poets were able to mourn the loss of a child publicly by writing elegies, or poems to lament the deceased. Katherine Philips and Ben Jonson were two poets who wrote the popular poems “On the Death of My Dearest Child, Hector Philips”, “On My First Son”, and “On My First Daughter” respectively. Although Philips and Jonson’s elegies contain obvious similarities, the differences between “On the Death of My Dearest Child” and “On My First Son” specifically are pronounced. The emotions displayed in the elegies are very distinct when considering the sex of the poet. The grief shown by a mother and father is a major theme when comparing the approach of mourning in the two elegies.
Stanzas one and two of the poem are full of imagery. The first stanza sets the scene for the poem “in a kingdom by the sea” (Poe 609) which makes you feel as if the story is going to have a “romantic” (Overview) feel to it. Then Annabel Lee comes into the story with “no other thought than to love and be loved by me” (Poe 609); This sentence is full of imagery in the sense that it makes you feel the immense capacity of love Annabel Lee had for the speaker if that was her only thought. In the second stanza the imagery takes a turn that shifts from loving and inviting to pain; The love between Annabel and the speaker was so strong that
To begin, the sound of this poem can be proven to strongly contribute an effect to the message of this piece. This poem contains a traditional meter. All of the lines in the poem except for lines nine and 15 are in iambic tetrameter. In this metric pattern, a line has four pairs of unstressed and stressed syllables, for a total of eight syllables. This is relevant in order for the force of the poem to operate dynamically. The poem is speaking in a tenor of veiled confessions. For so long, the narrator is finally speaking up, in honesty, and not holding back. Yet, though what has been hidden is ultimately coming out, there is still this mask, a façade that is being worn. In sequence, the last words in each of the lines, again, except for lines nine and 15, are all in rhythm, “lies, eyes, guile, smile, subtleties, over-wise, sighs, cries, arise, vile...
Throughout the poem two phrases are repeated many times, emphasizing their importance, and giving them more power. As they are repeated the reader is shown the indifference of the narrator when he says, "First they came for the ..." "and I did not speak out Because I was not a..." (Niemöller, 1-6). These phrases and their interchangeable endings show how the narrator does not care who is facing troubles as long as it is not them. This indifference is detrimental because it shows a lack of empathy and cares for others in the narrator. Niemöller's repetition of these two phrases during his poem highlights the narrator's consistent disregard for people different than them. A shift in the pattern of thinking of the narrator is seen when he says, "Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me." (Niemöller, 7). After repeatedly ignoring the injustices against others the narrator realizes their mistake when they find themself in the same situation as the people they had previously ignored. This change in how the narrator thinks shows how their lack of action to help others face their injustices was done so partly in ignorance. The narrator had not yet realized that everyone faces struggles at a point during their lives, and that the only way to get through them is by supporting and having the support of