Maxine Kumin
Maxine Kumin, who experienced many different views of the world through travel, feels the most comfortable in New Hampshire, her rural home. In any area that she travels, she always makes a similarity to her home, as expressed in her poems. In her poem, “The Long Approach”, she is driving in her Saab hatchback from Scranton to her farm in New Hampshire. She also discusses her plane ride back from Orlando to New Hampshire the week before. Throughout the poem she makes references back to the animals she cares for and comes in contact with on the farm. Her knowledge of rural life is shown, by describing details of animals; such as, “eel-thin belly”, “life as loose as frogs”, “slag heaps stand like sentries shot dead”, and “I'm going home with the light hand on the reins”.
Next in her poem, “How It is”, she puts on a blue jacket that belonged to her recently deceased friend, whom played a major role in her life. By putting on the jacket, she tries to relive the past by, “...unwind(ing) it, paste it together in a different collage...”. In this poem, Maxine Kumin, uses plants to describe her feelings, as in; “scatter like milkweed” and “pods of the soul”. These similes show what she sees and feels.
“The Longing to be Saved”, is a dream, where her barn catches fire. “In and out of dreams as thin as acetate.” She visualizes herself getting the horses out, but they “wrench free, wheel, dash back”.
In, “Family Reunion”, she writes that “nothing is cost efficient here”.
Vegetables are grown on the farm, and animals are raised to be killed. “The electric fence ticks like the slow heart of something we fed and bedded for a year, then killed with kindness' one bullet and paid Jake Mott to do the butchering.” “Waiting for the End in New Smyrna Beach, Florida”, Maxine Kumin notices in her venture in Florida a homeless couple with a baby. In her poem she describes the couple watching the passing cars at Lytle and South Dixie to an “ egret grazing the canals who darts and pecks and lunges and after an eternity at Lytle and South Dixie the light changes.”
In her last poem written in the booklet, “Getting Through”, she describes different types of snow.
The poem explains her hardships. Reading poetry is different from reading prose because you really have to dig deeper and study harder. A poem is not always straight forward like many other writings. You have to use context clues and understand imagery, tone, and sense. Summarizing a poem becomes difficult if you do not re-read several times. I learned that figurative language and lifestyle really tells a great story. Language especially helps you understand what is going on between the lines. Overall, family is always there at the end of the day. Sometimes situations get tough, but there is always a light at the end of the
Margaret Wise Brown was truly fascinated by animals, and she understood children’s attraction to animals. Tellingly, when Brown reflects on her childhood she mentions her “thirty-six rabbits, two squirrels…a collie dog, and two Peruvian hens, a Belgian hare, seven fish, and a wild robin who came back every spring” (Days Before Now). From this information about Brown, one understands where her love of animals originated--her childhood. Additionally, animals were kind to her and did not restrict or belittle Brown the way some individuals did regularly. Brown was allowed to have constant interaction with animals, which proved to be influential in her writing career. Overall, Margaret Wise Brown used numerous animals, especially rabbits because of her love for creatures and the understanding she possessed of children’s love of and interest with animals.
By presenting the competing sets of industrial and rural values, Jewett's "A White Heron" gives us a rich and textured story that privileges nature over industry. I think the significance of this story is that it gives us an urgent and emphatic view about nature and the dangers that industrial values and society can place upon it and the people who live in it. Still, we are led to feel much like Sylvia. I think we are encouraged to protect nature, cherish our new values and freedoms, and resist the temptations of other influences that can tempt us to destroy and question the importance of the sublime gifts that living in a rural world can bestow upon us.
The purpose was she believed God told her she should sojourn, or travel around the country, and deliver the truth. One of the many accomplishments she has done as Sojourner Truth was she roamed around the nation to deliver powerful, passionate speeches. She attended the Women’s Rights Conference in Akron, Ohio to fight for women 's rights. She was very unique and stood out at the conference because she was a tall woman and the only African American among the other white women. She promoted one of her most well-known speeches, “Ain’t I A Woman?”. In her speech she talked about how men treat her differently from white women but that she was also a woman so she questioned why weren’t men treating her the same. She believed that all men should treat all women the same way regardless of their race. She continued her speech by saying how all men and women should have the same rights and be treated equally. If all women join forces, they could make this desire come true. This speech inspired many women, black and white, to be involved in the women 's movement socially. Furthermore, Truth was also involved in the Northampton Association of Education and Industry, which was an utopian community that showcased equality of all races. She, along with other abolitionist there such as Frederick Douglass, delivered many powerful, passionate speeches. Truth was able to get many people’s attention with her experience as a slave and the hardships she had to go through. She became an important advocate who impacted many women to fight for their
Sojourner Truth was a born slave named Isabella, delivered her speech at a woman’s convention in Ohio in 1851. Women’s rights were a big issue but Black Women’s rights were in worse condition. She stood for feminism, racial equality and religion. She supported freedmen and corner preached about Evangelism after she understood the bible and Christianity more.
Therefore, Oliver’s incorporation of imagery, setting, and mood to control the perspective of her own poem, as well as to further build the contrast she establishes through the speaker, serves a critical role in creating the lesson of the work. Oliver’s poem essentially gives the poet an ultimatum; either he can go to the “cave behind all that / jubilation” (10-11) produced by a waterfall to “drip with despair” (14) without disturbing the world with his misery, or, instead, he can mimic the thrush who sings its poetry from a “green branch” (15) on which the “passing foil of the water” (16) gently brushes its feathers. The contrast between these two images is quite pronounced, and the intention of such description is to persuade the audience by setting their mood towards the two poets to match that of the speaker. The most apparent difference between these two depictions is the gracelessness of the first versus the gracefulness of the second. Within the poem’s content, the setting has been skillfully intertwined with both imagery and mood to create an understanding of the two poets, whose surroundings characterize them. The poet stands alone in a cave “to cry aloud for [his] / mistakes” while the thrush shares its beautiful and lovely music with the world (1-2). As such, the overall function of these three elements within the poem is to portray the
Sojourner Truth, an African American woman and former slave, fights a double war within winning her rights. The fact that Truth is an African American female put an addition strain on her journey. Truth traveled thousands of miles giving speeches against slavery and for women’s rights. In 1851, Truth gave her famous speech, “Ain’t I a Woman” at the Women’s Convention. In her speech, she attacked the idea of women and blacks being inferior. Truth used her personal experiences to describe the discrimination she faced as a black, ex-slave woman. Truth’s main objective through her speech was to show how she is equal to any man. She declared,
She proved those who believed blacks were inferior or that woman could not do things men could do, wrong. One example is of when she won her son, Peter, back in a court case. Shortly after she had run away in 1826, Truth discovered her son was illegally sold to a man in the South. Determined to get her son back, Sojourner took the case to court and successfully sued the men involved, even though so many odds were against her. She became the first black woman to successfully win a court case against a white man (Sojourner Truth Mini Bio). Truth truly made a difference for blacks, women, and the Union and also helped set
In Nya’s story line, she endured varies hardships. In the beginning, Nya walks to the pond and back, two times a day, to collect water because this is how she supports her family. As she walks to the pond, she endures heat, time, and thorns. The obstacles that Nya faces will never change because her life will never change. What Nya does is fetch water, every day, as this is expected of her. As the story progresses, Nya’s younger sister, Akeer, falls ill. The reason Akeer becomes ill is
Harwood wrote the poem with relatively simple composition techniques but it provides a rather big impact which helps to give an insight into the life of a mother or nurturer which bares the burdens of children.
Fulfilling the roles of both mother and breadwinner creates an assortment of reactions for the narrator. In the poem’s opening lines, she commences her day in the harried role as a mother, and with “too much to do,” (2) expresses her struggle with balancing priorities. After saying goodbye to her children she rushes out the door, transitioning from both, one role to the next, as well as, one emotion to another. As the day continues, when reflecting on
In the second half of the poem, a new facet of the speaker's attitude is displayed. In line 17, she wants to improve the ugliness of her "child" by giving him new clothes; however, she is too poor to do so, having "nought save homespun cloth" with which to dress her child. In the final stanza, the speaker reveals poverty as her motive for allowing her book to be sent to a publisher (sending her "child" out into the world) in the first place. This makes her attitude seem to contradict her actions.
Five years later her father retired from his job to take care of all of the children and happened upon Lazarus’ poetry notebooks. After reading them and taking a great liking to them, he carried the poems off without Lazarus’ consent and had them published for private circulation. When Lazarus was informed, her poems had already received much praise so, adding t...
He sees her as an animal ("Rannie Mae, leaning over him out of the rain
Mrs. Mallard’s repressed married life is a secret that she keeps to herself. She is not open and honest with her sister Josephine who has shown nothing but concern. This is clearly evident in the great care that her sister and husband’s friend Richard show to break the news of her husband’s tragic death as gently as they can. They think that she is so much in love with him that hearing the news of his death would aggravate her poor heart condition and lead to death. Little do they know that she did not love him dearly at all and in fact took the news in a very positive way, opening her arms to welcome a new life without her husband. This can be seen in the fact that when she storms into her room and her focus shifts drastically from that of her husband’s death to nature that is symbolic of new life and possibilities awaiting her. Her senses came to life; they come alive to the beauty in the nature. Her eyes could reach the vastness of the sky; she could smell the delicious breath of rain in the air; and ears became attentive to a song f...