Fresno City College teacher and writer Lee Herrick was born in Daejeon, South Korea and was adopted at ten months old, who currently lives in Fresno, California, is the author of two books, Gardening Secrets of the Dead and This Many Miles from Desire. He has written poems which have appeared in many literary magazines according to the Poetry Foundation. In 1996, he also founded a literary magazine called, “In the Grove”. According to Herrick, most of his poems are written stories that reflect his life from being adopted. Each of his poems is considered a great and valuable lesson about each inspiration to the poems that he’s achieved through his life. (Lantern Review Blog) Peter Everwine was born in Detroit, Michigan and raised in western …show more content…
The listener for “After the Funeral” sounds more like it’s meant for the speaker(s) of the poem. As the speaker(s) mentions about the items they pack like a check list to one another and has no directly intended target, just a widespread target. Though at the same time, it does give readers an idea of what’s being packed, which hints on who the passed on person is.
The focus of listeners for Herrick’s “My California” and Everwines “After the Funeral” are different, but also the same too. “My California” is directed towards its readers so that Herrick can share his views to others. “After the Funeral” though focused on readers as a secondary target, are primarily focused towards each of the other speakers within the
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Normally, poem lines would end in a punctuation, like a comma or period for it to continue the sentence into the next line, or starting the next sentence on the next line. Instead, it has a couple of sentences that continues onto the next line without any pause or stop, this is known as enjambment. The poem also has a few new sentences that start, end, or pause in the middle of the lines, which is known as caesuras. Herrick uses enjambment and caesuras often throughout this poem.
“Here, in my California, paperbacks are free, farmer's markets are twenty four hours a day and always packed, the trees and water have no nails in them, the priests eat well, the homeless eat well.
Here, in my California, everywhere is Chinatown, everywhere is K-Town, everywhere is Armeniatown, everywhere a Little Italy. Less confederacy.” (lines 16 – 22)
Lineation used for “After the Funeral” is at least half standard with each line having proper punctuations at the end of them.
“jars of tomato sauce, peppers, jellied fruit.
We dismantled, we took down from the walls, we bundled and carted off and swept clean.” (lines 7-9)
Exceptions are line 4, which follow caesuras by starting another sentence in the middle of the line, and 7 lines (4 included) follow enjambment.
“We sorted through cedar chests. We
Poems are unique in that there are no set rules for how they are formatted (Kirszner & Mandell, 2012). Poems may rhyme, or not. They can be presented in a narrative or lyrical format. The use of proper punctuation can be omitted such as periods, commas, or question marks (Kirszner & Mandell, 2012). The use of punctuation or lack there of, brings into play the use of enjambment, which is another term for what is commonly known in poetry as run-on lines (Kirszner & Mandell, 2012). If a poem is considered more proper and the author wants the reader to clearly understand how a line in the poem is read, the use of punctuation such as commas and periods are used to stress this point. This style is commonly known as end-stopped lines. (Kirszner
The funeral was supposed to be a family affair. She had not wanted to invite so many people, most of them strangers to her, to be there at the moment she said goodbye. Yet, she was not the only person who had a right to his last moments above the earth, it seemed. Everyone, from the family who knew nothing of the anguish he had suffered in his last years, to the colleagues who saw him every day but hadn’t actually seen him, to the long-lost friends and passing acquaintances who were surprised to find that he was married, let alone dead, wanted to have a last chance to gaze upon him in his open coffin and say goodbye.
last, which is four lines. In the first three stanzas, the poem is told in
Rhyme-The last words of line one and line three of each stanza rhyme. The last words of line two and line four of each stanza also rhyme. The rhyming words contribute to the rhythm and flow of the poem.
To that end, the overall structure of the poem has relied heavily on both enjambment and juxtaposition to establish and maintain the contrast. At first read, the impact of enjambment is easily lost, but upon closer inspection, the significant created through each interruption becomes evident. Notably, every usage of enjambment, which occurs at the end of nearly every line, emphasizes an idea, whether it be the person at fault for “your / mistakes” (1-2) or the truth that “the world / doesn’t need” (2-3) a poet’s misery. Another instance of enjambment serves to transition the poem’s focus from the first poet to the thrush, emphasizing how, even as the poet “[drips] with despair all afternoon,” the thrush, “still, / on a green branch… [sings] / of the perfect, stone-hard beauty of everything” (14-18). In this case, the effect created by the enjambment of “still” emphasizes the juxtaposition of the two scenes. The desired effect, of course, is to depict the songbird as the better of the two, and, to that end, the structure fulfills its purpose
The poem does not have a perfect rhyme; however, it still has some rhythms making the poem connected. For instance, “Immortality” (line 4) with “Civility” (line 8), “finally” and “Eternity”; they all make the poem has beautiful rhythms and poetic musicality. Dickinson also uses many art techniques; for instance, personification and metaphors, to make the poem more appealing. Dickinson personified “Death” as a gentleman in the poem, which it the most important personification in the poem. Dashes are another literary trope commonly used by Dickinson, in this poem she also uses many dashes. Dashes can make readers’ reader speed slow down. Hence, readers can have more time to consider the meaning of the poem. Besides that, the tempo of the poem also influenced by the use of capital letters for common nouns. The speaker of the poem is a woman who has an unusual trip with death and immortality, at the end of the trip, the woman realizes that death is not the end of the
For example, in “The Rain”, the entire poem has lines that are enjambed, “Is it / that never the ease, / even the hardness, / of rain falling”(8-11). The phrase or idea talked about in one line does not end at the end of a line, it continues on for several lines and sometimes several stanzas. In addition to the poem “The Rain”, enjambment can be seen in the poem “For Love”. Examples of enjambment can be found frequently throughout this poem, but specifically from lines 15, to 18. The poem reads, “I wouldn 't either, but / what would I not / do, what prevention, what...”. The subject talked about in these three lines is not thoroughly explained in the lines given, as the poem continues it discusses different subjects that are also spread out through several lines, with no one line being about one subject. The meaning of what Creeley is trying to describe can only be found by reading several lines of the poem because of the way he structured his poems. In the article "Love and Frangibility: An Appreciation of Robert Creeley", Heather Mchugh EXPLAINS, “ First of all, he 's often miscast as a rebel against poetic forms, foot soldier in the resistance against prosodic refinement... I believe that Robert Creeley 's abstemious formality nourishes a luxury of readings”. Mchugh SAYS that the line structure that Creeley uses is
I believe that the structure of this poem allows for the speaker to tell a narrative which further allows him to convey his point. The use of enjambment emphasizes this idea as well as provides a sense of flow throughout the entirety of a poem, giving it the look and feel of reading a story. Overall, I believe this piece is very simplistic when it comes to poetic devices, due to the fact that it is written as a prose poem, this piece lacks many of the common poetic devices such as rhyme, repetition, alliteration, and metaphors. However, the tone, symbolism, allusion and imagery presented in the poem, give way to an extremely deep and complicated
While reviewing "The Funeral" the first thing that became apparent was the title. A funeral is ceremony held in connection with the burial of a dead person. So already just by looking at the title we become aware that we are dealing with a dead body. Death, in some cultures, is the separation of the body from the soul. The soul continues to live and may even find shelter in another body. Again, from the title of the poem we can tell that death will be the main idea. Digging into the first stanza of the poem, we can begin with the analysis of the first few lines. "Whoever comes to shroud me, do not harm nor question much, That subtle wreath of hair, which crowns my arm; the mystery, the sign you must not touch, for `tis my outward soul" (line 1-5) The speaker is telling the people who come to mourn him not to disturb his body. He speaks about the hair that "crowns [his] arm" (line 3) is considered armor to his dead body. The hair is protecting his soul and this is why he must not be disturbed. What is being insinuated is that the soul has become vulnerable after th...
which each stanza is written in a quatrain gives the poem unity and makes it
The funeral took place in a small Presbyterian church in Sheperdstown, WV, a historic old town whose Town Square reflected that of a 18th century western town. A single road drives through all the center of the quaint town with smaller one way roads surrounding the outskirts. Mickie worked at the library right in the center of this little village. It was a shotgun building; the front spread out about 50 feet, while the back extended another 500 feet. On both sides were one way streets, surrounding it in an awkward fashion. Seeing the library makes you think it's some sort of fancy government building or a meeting place for the Masons given the big eye with a starburst behind it right above the door. Two streets back was the church where we gathered. We were overflowing with friends and family, as the building only supported 350 and with my mother's fami...
The poet's life story such as family, and love life will be appear in their literature.
Robert Frost’s poem “Home Burial” allows readers to consider the devastation that parents experience when they lose a child. “Home Burial” captures the differences in the ways people deal with loss and grief. Munaza Hanif, Anila Jamil, and Rabia Mahmood also analyze this fascinating poem in their paper, “AN ANALYSIS OF HOME BURIAL (1914) BY FROST IN PSYCHOANALYTIC PERSPECTIVE” for its representation of people and their grief. Hanif, Jamil, and Mahmood’s analysis of Amy’s psychological breakdown displays how she and her husband’s lack of communication leads to the death of the marriage.
Funeral Blues by W. H. Auden is a short poem that illustrates the emotions that he is dealing with after the love of his life passes away. The tone of this piece evokes feelings that will differ depending on the reader; therefore, the meaning of this poem is not in any way one-dimensional, resulting in inevitable ambiguity . In order to evoke emotion from his audience, Auden uses a series of different poetic devices to express the sadness and despair of losing a loved one. This poem isn’t necessarily about finding meaning or coming to some overwhelming realization, but rather about feeling emotions and understanding the pain that the speaker is experiencing. Through the use of poetic devices such as an elegy, hyperboles, imagery, metaphors, and alliterations as well as end-rhyme, Auden has created a powerful poem that accurately depicts the emotions a person will often feel when the love of their live has passed away.
Throughout the whole work no punctuations are used, which makes the poem hard to read, and forces the reader to focus on the story, even the smallest details. Although the work seems unorganized, because of the varying lengths of lines, there is a little organization. This relies in the fact that each new major idea starts in a new line with a capital letter, and until the next capital letter there is no new idea.