Paula Gunn Allen was an American Indian Poet that was the middle child of five siblings. She grew up on the Cubero Land Grant Reservation in New Mexico where she started her early education at St. Vincent Academy, followed by attending Missions School until the seventh grade at San Fidel in Pueblo town. She furthered her education by attending Colorado’s Woman’s College. Paula obtained her B.A. in 1966 and her M.F.A. in 1968 at the University of Oregon, that led to her receiving her Ph. D at the University of New Mexico in 1976. Paula was best known as the best Poetic, Novelist, and Critic. She wrote six volumes of poetry including her poem Recuerdo. Poetry is based on eight factors that includes rhythm, imagery, figures, metaphor, symbols, …show more content…
Paula Gunn Allen’s poem Recuerdo is a poem of a woman’s memory when she was a little girl. The title Recuerdo is in Spanish meaning “I remember.” While visiting the Mesa Mountain with her mother either for a picnic or to gather up wood, she experienced an uninviting voice in the wind. In her memory, she wasn’t clear of what she heard or what it meant by the sound that she did hear. She couldn’t believe that something was in the wind that just didn’t sit well with her. The voice brought terror and tears to her eyes. Freighting her so bad that she couldn’t ask for her mother’s comfort to explain what she heard. She just stood there and let her mind wonder. What could be the reason for the terror in the wind? But instead of asking questions about her fearful thoughts she just stood there in the cold trying to warm up next to the campfire. “I wanted to cling to my mother so she could comfort me. explain the sound and my fear, but I simply sat, frozen, trying to feel as warm as the campfire (Allen).” She continues the poem with saying that she has never gotten over the memory that stuck with her from the terrified winds that spoke to her on that cold …show more content…
The language of the poem holds five of the eight languages to poetry. Allegory, personification, symbols, figures, and metaphors. In the beginning of the poem she uses Allegory, Personification and a metaphor. “Allegory- related symbols working together with characters, events, or settings representing ideas or moral qualities” (Sporre). Paula compares the silence in the air to describe how clear the air was. Going on to using personification and a metaphor, “Peaks rise above me like the Gods. That is where they live, the old people say.” Personification is the figure of speech in which abstract qualities, animals, or inanimate objects take into many forms of literature (Sporre). Metaphors, are figures of speech by which new implications are given to words. Metaphors are implied but not explicit comparisons (Sporre). She goes on to imply that the Gods lives above us in the peaks, that’s where the old people say that they live. Using Symbols, “Which is critical to poetry, which uses compressed language to express, and carry us into its meaning (Sporre).” Ending the first line she writes “I listen and I heard”. Going on to explain how she heard the voice in the wind and by giving us the emotion of that feeling set the understanding of what the poem was all about. Following the next line Paula uses a form of Imagery. A verbal representation of objects, feelings, or ideas can be literal or figurative. figurative imagery involves a change in
There are multiple examples of visual imagery in this poem. An example of a simile is “curled like a possum within the hollow trunk”. The effect this has is the way it creates an image for the reader to see how the man is sleeping. An example of personification is, “yet both belonged to the bush, and now are one”. The result this has is how it creates an emotion for the reader to feel
The first aspect of language, which he uses is metaphor in the beginning of the poem when he is describing the dwarf sitting outside the church. He uses metaphor as he says, “The dwarf with his hands on backwards Sat, slumped like a half – filled sack On tiny twisted legs from which Sawdust might run.” The metaphor here of the dwarf sitting like a ‘half filled sack’ is describing the dwarf and how he has a deformed body. He is being compared to looking like a sack, which is slumped and half empty. This is effective as it seems as though the dwarf cannot help himself
First of alll, the poem is divided into nine stanzas, where each one has four lines. In addition to that, one can spot a few enjambements for instance (l.9-10). This stylistic device has the function to support the flow of the poem. Furthermore, it is crucial to take a look at the choice of words, when analysing the language.
In poetry, three things are used to help the reader understand the poem better. These things are syntax, imagery, and connotation.
...t is arguable that the birds fight is also a metaphor, implying the fight exists not only between birds but also in the father’s mind. Finally, the last part confirms the transformation of the parents, from a life-weary attitude to a “moving on” one by contrasting the gloomy and harmonious letter. In addition, readers should consider this changed attitude as a preference of the poet. Within the poem, we would be able to the repetitions of word with same notion. Take the first part of the poem as example, words like death, illness
Throughout the poem, there are multiple instances of the personification of body parts. These body parts are personified to participate in language related activities, thereby enhancing the significance of the word “language” to the poem. For example, in the first stanza of the poem, the phrase “Her lips and teeth negotiate” (Reibetanz 3) allows inhuman body parts to be humanized. Instead of the woman herself negotiating, the lips and teeth are performing the task on her behalf, whereas, normally the woman would be controlling her lips and teeth on her own. The personification is allowing the reader to visualize that the lips and teeth are taking control of the words the woman is speaking, therefore, using the theme of language to create an image in the reader’s mind. The use of body imagery continues in the second stanza when the poem states “…his hands, grasping/ the branching, transformational/ syntax and deep structure of/ a dialect…” (Reibetanz 9-12). This phrase expresses that the man’s hands are literally grabbing at developed sentences, relaying to the reader the image of a hand itself selecting words and placing them together to create the well-formed stanzas of the poem. In this instance, the language of the poem is being formed from body movements, creating a link between “language” and the body parts mentioned in the poem. Therefore, the word “language” is important to “Speech Therapy” due to the visualization of body parts in the poem and the language associated with
Figurative Language in used throughout poems so the reader can develop a further understanding of the text. In “The Journey” the author uses rhythm and metaphors throughout the poem. “...as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of the clouds..”(25-27). The author compares the star burning to finding your voice. Rhythm also develops the theme of the poem because throughout the story rhythm is presented as happy showing growing up and changing for the better is necessary and cheerful. In “The Laughing Heart” the author uses imagery and metaphors to develop the theme throughout the book. “There is a light somewhere. It may not be much light but it beats the darkness”(5-7). Always find the good out of everything, even it
Leslie Marmon Silko is a Native American from New Mexico and is part of the Laguna tribe. She received a MacArthur "genius" award and was considered one of the 135 most significant women writers ever. Her home state has named her a living cultural treasure. (Jaskoski, 1) Her well-known novel Ceremony follows a half-breed named Tayo through his realization and healing process that he desperately needs when he returns from the horrors of World War II. This is a process that takes him back to the history of his culture.
At the beginning of the poem, the speaker starts by telling the reader the place, time and activity he is doing, stating that he saw something that he will always remember. His description of his view is explained through simile for example “Ripe apples were caught like red fish in the nets of their branches” (Updike), captivating the reader’s attention
The speaker uses the literary device of allegory as a large part of his poems message. He uses allegory to compare
Elena Poniatowska escrita durante una epoca de cambio en Mexico. Antes de sus obras las mujeres mexicanas eran sometidos, docil, y pasivo. En la tiempo de sus obras las mujeres estaba tratando salir de los estereotipos de antes. Esta problema social tomo un afecto en Elena. Aunque ella no viene de un movimiento literatura directamente, ella escrita con el concepto de compremetido. En su narrative El Recado ella crea un mujer estereotipical que no puede controlar sus emociones. La titula es eso porque ella viene a ver su amante, pero el no esta, asi ella escribe las cosas que sentia. La perspectiva es de un personaje y ella nunca interacta con otros personajes. En facto la unica descripcion de un personaje otro de la protagonista es de su amante Martin. Habla de otros personajes, pero solamente de sus acciones. Porque ellas es la unica perspectiva que tenemos es sencillo a sentar compasion para una protagonista de quien nombre no aun sabemos. Ella da la descripcion de toda que vea, y mas importante todo que se sienta. Tambien tropos y figuras retoricas dan un tono significante al poema. Estos sentimientos de la portagonista y el tono emocional de la narrativa transporta una tema de una mujer estereotipical y debil quien quiere ser reconocido.
He uses personifications specifically in this poem to write about what is going on and to describe things. “It's a hard life where the sun looks”(19)...”And its black strip of highway, big eyed/with rabbits that won’t get across ”(2)...”A pot bangs and water runs in the kitchen” (13) None of these are really human body parts on things such as the sun, a pot, or a highway, but they help describe what something does or what something looks like. In the first instance, the sun cannot actually look at something, but it could mean that the sun is visible to the humans, and if humans are out for a long time in the sun, they can get hot and exhausted. For the second line, the big-eyed highway could mean that the highway has many cars with bright headlights that are dangerous for the rabbits, the immigrants, to get across. For the third and final line, pots are not able to bang things on their own, and it could have possibly been a human who made the pot bang, preparing the meal of beans and brown soup that they survive on. There is also a simile in this poem, “Papa's field that wavered like a mirage” (24). This simile could suggest that the wind is moving the grass or crops on his father’s field and looked like an optical illusion. According to Gale Virtual Reference Library, the literary device, “tone” is used to convey the significant change of the author’s feeling in the poem. In the beginning lines, the tone is happy. The poem talks about nostalgia of when he was little, “They leap barefoot to the store. Sweetness on their tongues, red stain of laughter (5-6). (GVRL) These lines illustrate the nostalgia and happy times of Gary Soto’s life when he was probably a child. However, after line 11, the tone becomes more of a negative one. Soto later talks about Farm Laborers and how the job was not a great one. After line 19, a brighter
Natasha Trethewey is an accomplished poet who is currently serving as United States Poet Laureate appointed by the Library of Congress and won the Pulitzer Prize for her collection of poems, Native Guard in 2007. She grew up mixed race, black and white, in Gulfport, Mississippi, and when her parent’s divorced she moved with her mother to Atlanta. Her mother, Gwen, remarried and at a young age Natasha was a eyewitness in the physical and psychological abuse that her new stepfather hurled upon her mother. After graduating from high school, Natasha set off to go to school in Athens, Georgia at the University of Georgia. During Trethewey’s freshman year, her mother was murdered by her stepfather and she works through her grief by writing poetry
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