Alzheimer’s
In the poem “Alzheimer’s” by Kelly Cherry, the author puts a lot of emphasis on the tone of the poem. This aspect of the poem seems to be very important considering that it changes as the poem continues until the end. The change in tone is very clear from the beginning to the last few words.
“Alzheimer’s” is a poem about a man with Alzheimer’s who is coming home from the hospital. The tone in the first few lines initially are very harsh towards the old man with the speaker saying “He stands at the door crazy old man back from the hospital, his mind rattling like the suitcase, swinging from his hand that contains shaving cream, a piggy bank, a book he sometimes pretends to read…”(541). Although the tone sounds insensitive, this could also be the bitterness the speaker feels towards the old man and the
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“…This is his house. He remembers it as his…” (542). The man seems be remembering certain things like his specific details of his house and the car that he used to drive. “…remembers the walkway he built between the front room and the garage, the rhododendron he planted in the back, the car he used to drive…”(542). At this point in poem, the tone is becoming one of despair and sadness as the man is in some way revisiting the parts of his past that he remembers. Despite having Alzheimer’s he still remembers that he loved music and how the music made him feel and he remembers how his younger self was. “He remembers himself, a younger man, in a tweed hat, a man who loved music” (542). However, the speaker is saying that there is no longer any time to enjoy music because most of his time is focused on trying to remember important things and living with his disease which is shown when the speaker says “…no time for music, the peculiar screeching of strings, the luxurious fiddling with emotion. Other things have become more
The title of this piece, “Remembered Morning,” establishes what the speaker describes in the stanzas that follow as memory; this fact implies many themes that accompany works concerning the past: nostalgia, regret, and romanticism, for instance. The title, therefore, provides a lens through which to view the speaker’s observations.
The poet picked words like “a crazy old man” to describe the effects that Alzheimer’s has put him through. The old man’s “mind rattling/like a suitcase, swinging from his hand” (2-3) meaning it’s almost like a habit, he cannot change the way it’s been building in him since a very long time. The old man can’t seem to control his older years as he did in his earlier younger years.
As depicted in the poem "Kicking the Habit", The role of the English language in the life of the writer, Lawson Fusao Inada, is heavily inherent. As articulated between the lines 4 and 9, English is not just solely a linguistic device to the author, but heightened to a point where he considers it rather as a paradigm or state of mind. To the author, English is the most commonly trodden path when it comes to being human, it represents conformity, mutual assurance and understanding within the population. Something of which he admits to doing before pulling off the highway road.
Early on, poetry was often used with rhyme to remember things more accurately, this still rings true today, even though its use is more often to entertain. However, although it appeals to both the young, in children's books, and the old, in a more sophisticated and complex form, people are bound to have different preferences towards the different styles of poetry. Dobson’s poetry covers a variation of styles that captivate different individuals. “Her Story” is a lengthy poem with shorter stanzas. It’s free verse structure and simplistic language and face value ideas might appeal better to a younger audience. This poem includes quotes with informal language that children or teens would better understand. It’s narrative-based style is easy to follow, and although the poem covers very basic concepts, it’s message is still communicated subliminally. This particular poem is interesting because it focusses on the universal experience of pain and it’s relation to time. Similar to this is “The Householder”, written in a cyclical style, opening with a “house” and ending with a “home”. With only three stanzas, it is
In “Late Poem to My Father” by Sharon Olds, the speaker, who is likely a stand-in for Olds herself, takes us through the relationship her father had with her grandfather. She then relates this to her relationship with her father. Starting with the title, the word “Late” could suggest that the father has died or it could suggest how she didn’t fully value her father’s love until recently. The poem is written in free verse with no particular pattern or rhyme scheme. There are no stanza breaks, but there is a lot of enjambment throughout the poem. Olds’s syntax and placement of enjambment compliments the poem the whole way through. The first word of the poem is “Suddenly”, as if she hadn’t thought of her father in a long time. The poem can be
to the powerful imagery she weaves throughout the first half of the poem. In addition, Olds
When the man arrives at home from the hospital, he begins to remember that “this is his house” (line 15). This line of the poem is written in “Alzheimer’s” by Kelly Cherry. The poem expresses the confusions and difficulties of a man struggles in life with dementia. The man comes home from the hospital and conflicts with his memory loss; the speaker is close to the man and is frustrated with him at the beginning of the poem, but the speaker’s feeling toward the man eventually shifts to sadness. Caring for a person with Alzheimer’s disease can be painful and heartbreaking, though people need to understand that familiar environments and with family support can help the patients whose minds are gradually changing. Cherry poetically expresses the
Death is a topic heavily conveyed in "Before She Died" by Karen Chase; the title is hopeful in it's mention of a time before death, but the poem is not. The presence of autumn is made aware to us, 'all the leaves gone almost from the trees,' (Line 3/4). Autumn in poetry usually has to do with decline and tiredness, this evident with the speaker 'not walk[ing] briskly through [a] field' (Line 4) and having to '[Lean] on [the speaker's dog]' (Line 6/7) for support. Along with the speaker's dog being 'aged' (Line 6), the author conveys a cogitative and somber tone using dark imagery, the depressing 'blue' (Line 6) of the sky and a poisonous 'strand of hemlock' (Line 8) present. Time is a common theme, the speaker mentioning how 'finite these
Susan Donnelly’s poem “Inoculation” explores the comparison between sin, disease, and slavery, and initially, this connection is nonexistent to one of two characters: Cotton Mather. This piece opens by stating, “Cotton Mather studied small pox for a while, instead of sin,” and automatically there is implanted the idea that disease and sin are independent of each other; this diction is imperative for Donnelly because it gives the vantage point of Mather prior to discussing the small pox outbreak with his slave, Onesimus. The blatant introduction makes it clear by the end of the poem how terribly wrong Mather was in his ideology of a separation between small pox and sin: the topic of his studies does not change, unlike the claim of his first belief.
In “Forgetfulness” it states “Long ago you kissed the name of the nine muses goodbye.”(3rd stanza, Forgetfulness). This infers that the person reciting the poem is older because he says “long ago”, that could mean that that line occurred 40 or 50 years ago. It proves that he is older. When you age or get older you tend to forget things more frequently than you did in the past. Since you’re forgetting you try and remember everything but you just forget while thinking hard about something. That’s just life, some may always have a strong memory while others, like the person in “Forgetfulness” will forget more than they could remember. Next, in “Once More to the Lake” E.B., White uses many descriptive and hard words. Also, his choice of words goes very well with the theme. “I looked at the boy, who was silently watching his fly, and it was my hands that held his rod, my eyes watching. I felt dizzy and didn’t know which rod I was at the end of.” (5th Paragraph, Once More to the Lake) The wording in these sentences help contribute to the theme of Annihilating Time a lot. He says he felt “dizzy” and “didn’t know which end of the rod I was on”. The man is thinking a lot about his son. He stares at him forgetting what is going on with everything else. Once he was done looking at his son he felt dizzy and forgot everything that
In the world of teenagers everything seems to come and pass by so quickly. For instance the beginning of senior year. In Spite of being happy and excited were also generally nervous and anxious to see what our future holds. As senior year comes to an end, It then becomes as temporary as the summer sun but also the boundary of our life before we enter adulthood. Even then our future is still undefined.
In the end of the narrator’s consciousness, the tone of the poem shifted from a hopeless bleak
In Joy Harjo’s poem Remember, a person is being instructed to remember a number of different things in his/her life. It contains twenty-eight lines, which lack rhyme and rhythm. Conceptually, however, the poem divides itself; when mentioning another else to remember, a new line starts, beginning with the word “remember.” The speaker within the poem sounds like an elderly person, perhaps a grandfather due to the in-depth statement about “[your mother's] life, her mother's, and hers” and the subtle statement that “[your father] is your life” (10-11). The listener is a young child, maybe the grandchild of the speaker. Remember distinctly projects a reminiscent tone. The diction throughout the poem is mostly neutral, using common terms to
... Therefore, instead of losing mental stability because of old memories, one should try to embrace sanity and perpetuate it in life. Moreover, the poem emulates society because people fantasize about looking a certain way and feeling a certain way; however, they are meddling with their natural beauty and sometimes end up looking worse than before. For instance, old men and women inject their faces to resemble those in their youth, but they worsen their mental and physical state by executing such actions. To conclude, one should embrace her appearance because aging is inevitable.
The tone was referred to the author’s use of words and her writing style to convey the message of respecting nature and don't abuse nature. I believe the tone of the first stanza is optimistic and feeling accomplished. She is describing a hopeful situation in the first stanza of after working vigorously and taking a break. For instance, when it says, "knowing at last how you got there, and say, I own this." (Atwood 1).