Janice Mirikatani
Janice Mirikatani is the poet Laureate of San Francisco and a very accomplished poet. As well as being a poet Mirikatani is also a choreographer, an administrator, and a community activist. Most of her poetry deals with the after shock of World War II, and other violent and traumatic events. Her poems are meant to shock the reader, but with a specific purpose. One such poem is "Suicide Note" written in 1987. This poem was written about a female Asian-American college student's suicide note which was left after she leapt from her doom window. The girl's body lay in the snow, undiscovered for two days. As a student my reader response to "Suicide Note" was very familiar and hit close to home.
The poem begins with an apology to her parents for not being what they wanted. The student is saying how very hard she worked, and even harder for them, but still was not good enough. She then wishes she were something else, a son, something they could have been proud of. She imagines her life as a son. She thinks if she were a son she could have become all the things they wanted her to be. She believes had she been a boy she would be living a happy life making her parents proud. I think many student's parents push them and try and shape them into something they can not, or do not want to be. Many students start out in a certain major because that is what their parents want them to do. Many students feel they may never live up to their parents standers, while others end up resenting their parents for all the pressure that is put on them. This is one of the reasons this poem is so effective it identifies with these feelings and created a very strong message.
The student goes on to apologize for the tasks which were not easy for her. She says each "failure, disapproval, and disappointment" was another "glacier, a boot print" that eventually became too much for her to handle. These disappointments were also the reason she continued to work so hard. It was never for herself but always to try and make her parents proud. The repeating stanza which begins in the third line of the poem is representative of the feelings of suicide, and the feelings of inferiority that we all feel but may not vocalize.
This is shown through the tone changing from being disappointed and critical to acceptance and appreciative. The speaker’s friend, who after listening to the speaker’s complaints, says that it seems like she was “a child who had been wanted” (line 12). This statement resonates with the speaker and slowly begins to change her thinking. This is apparent from the following line where the speaker states that “I took the wine against my lips as if my mouth were moving along that valved wall in my mother's body” (line 13 to line 15). The speaker is imagining her mother’s experience while creating her and giving birth to her. In the next several lines the speakers describe what she sees. She expresses that she can see her mother as “she was bearing down, and then breathing from the mask, and then bearing down, pressing me out into the world” (line 15 to line 18). The speaker can finally understand that to her mother the world and life she currently lived weren't enough for her. The imagery in the final lines of this poem list all the things that weren’t enough for the mother. They express that “the moon, the sun, Orion cartwheeling across the dark, not the earth, the sea” (line 19 to 21) none of those things matter to the mother. The only thing that matter was giving birth and having her child. Only then will she be satisfied with her life and
At the beginning of the poem, the audience is able to witness an event of a young boy asking his father for story. While the father was deemed a “sad” man, it is later shown that his sadness can be contributed to his fear of his son leaving him. The structure then correlated to the point of going into the future. The future was able to depict what would happen to the loving duo. The father's dreams would become a reality and the son's love and admiration would cease to exist as he is seen screaming at his father. Wanting nothing to do with him. The young, pure child can be seen trying to back lash at his father for acting like a “god” that he can “never disappoint.” The point of this structure was not really a means of clarification from the beginning point of view, but more as an intro to the end. The real relationship can be seen in line 20, where it is mentioned that the relationship between the father and son is “an emotional rather than logical equation.” The love between this father and son, and all its complexity has no real solution. But rather a means of love; the feelings a parent has for wanting to protect their child and the child itself wanting to be set free from their parents grasp. The structure alone is quite complex. Seeing the present time frame of the father and son
She gets to the point and proves that in our current world we tend to say more than we should, when just a couple of words can do the same. In her writing, it is evident that the little sentences and words are what make the poem overall that perfect dream she wishes she were part of.
middle of paper ... ... Her actions of comparing herself as a son in her family, failing to recognize the importance of hard work, and discovering her own happiness symbolizes a person who fails to acknowledge that perfection is not as important than being satisfied with her accomplishments of attending to college, passing all her classes, and receiving family support. To emphasize, if the speaker had realized that getting a perfect grade point average is not what defines her as a person, then she would have comprehended that grades are just a way to motivate her to not forfeit on herself. Therefore, if the speaker desires to find her personal satisfaction, she should look at all the hard work that she has achieved in her classes and comprehend that life is not all about getting a perfect grade point average and perfection.
In the end, the poem is looking to show what actions can do in the long run. It teaches us to be very cautious with everything we do since it can affect the people around us. It can have good or bad
Each line of the poem reads as an incomplete thought, except for lines 1 and 10, which read: “I am choking /.../ I was not well” (Nave). Even though these lines can be considered complete thoughts, they are still choppy and short in content. These two lines introduce us early on to the student’s internal conflict versus the setting that the student is currently in. Besides the fragmented thoughts, the poem as a whole appears as one large stanza and there are not clear breaks where a new stanza begins or ends; or in other words the syntax of the poem is difficult to cipher through. In order to help piece things together, I broke it up into four stanzas for each sentence of the poem. Three out of four of the sentences begin with “I,” while the other begins with “my algebra teacher.” This is important to note because the student, 75% of the time, is thinking about his personal situation rather than the subject of class. The disjointed thoughts throughout the lines of the poem standout in the last couple of lines of the poem. Evan Nave writes: “my thoughts are not / math.” (lines 19-20). These two lines exemplify how our educational system is focused on what a student can bring as a statistic. It exemplifies this because math is a black and white subject, and one can infer that these lines are saying
These sets of lines express the frustrations of a mother who worked through a hard time, and is telling her son her story. She is telling her son this is the adversity she when through to become who she is today in spirit. ...
enable us to understand the moral of the poem. Which is work hard and you will receive you goals and never give up.
Stating “Write It” ( line 19) , “ And Look!” ( line 10) are climactic points in which the speaker wishes to believe herself, that losing really is no disaster, so she must see it, and write it. In the beginning, the poem seems bubbly and unremorseful but as it develops, the speaker shows her real passion for something lost, “.
The poem begins with a childlike tone, misleading the reader on the upcoming subject matter. The first line echoes a nursery rhyme, feeling like a charm against some brooding curse. “You do not do, you do not do/ anymore black shoe” (lines 1-2). Metaphorically, the shoe is a trap, smothering the foot. The adjective “black” suggests the idea of death, thus it can relate to a coffin. The speaker feels a submissiveness and entrapment by her father. In an attempt to rid herself of the restriction in her own life, she must destroy the memory of her father. “Daddy, I have to kill you” (line 3). However, the description of the father as “marble-heavy” and “ghastly statue” reveals the ambivalence of her attitude, for he is also associated with the beauty of the sea. The speaker reacts with hate to her father who had made her suffer by dying at such a point in her development.
The mother, on the other hand, is very adamant that the child should not go because it is dangerous. It is obvious that the child is concerned about the events surrounding the march and wants to be part of the movement. The child expresses these feelings in a way the appears mature and cognizant of the surrounding world, expressing a desire to support the civil rights movement rather than to?go out and play.? The desire to no longer be seen as a child and have her voice heard by those being marched against and by her mother (who can also be seen as an oppressive form of authority in this poem) is expressed by the first few lines. The opinion of the child is much like that of all young people who want to fight for their freedom.
spite of her hardships, she is happy through her words and expressions in the poem.
of the difficulty in acceptance. In the first few stanzas the poet creates the impression that she
The tone in the first 11 stanzas of the poem seems very resigned; the speaker has accepted that the world is moving on without them. They says things like “I don’t reproach the spring for starting up again” and “I don’t resent the view for its vista of a sun-dazzled bay”. By using words like “resent” and “reproach”, the author indirectly implies that the speaker has a reason to dislike beautiful things. The grief that has affected the speaker so much hasn’t affected life itself and they has come to accept that. The author chooses to use phrases like ‘it doesn’t pain me to see” and “I respect their right” which show how the speaker has completely detached themself from the word around them. While everything outside is starting to come back to life, the speaker is anything but lively. “I expect nothing from the depths near the woods.” They don’t expect anything from the world and want the world to do the same thing in return. This detachment proves that the speaker feels resigned about themself and the world around
Frost communicates this message through the exploration of themes of death as well as maturity to a lesser degree. When one is old they realise they should have enjoyed their youth, when one is young they do not realise that they are in what should be the glory years of their life. The youth of personification and repetition throughout make the poem memorable and increases the potency of the