Tones of Poems

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Tones of Poems

It is easy to tell how somebody is feeling just by the tone of there voice during a conversation. If a person is happy or just being funny they usually have a smile on their face, but if they are mad their voice becomes more stern and loud. The author can use different techniques to show emotion in short stories and novels such as exclamation points or italicized words. These techniques make the reader more apt to figure out how the character is feeling. In poems it is harder to figure out the tone. The reader has to actually read the whole poem and not just look at a few words. The tone is made up of many different words. Poets Pat Mora and Anthony Grooms both convey feelings in their pieces, but in one the tone remains the same and the other changes with the setting.

In Pat Mora's "Elena" the person telling the story is from Mexico originally and moved to El Paso, Texas. She tells how her whole life has been changed due to this move. Right from the start you can tell the tone is negative because the speaker says "My Spanish isn't good enough"(L...

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