The church is most often associated with the idea of a sanctuary for peace and tranquility, a safe home. Everyone anticipates to be capable of going to church and get away from their concerns and not have to worry about whether they are in danger or not. However danger can appear in the least expected location. Dudley Randall's “Ballad of Birmingham” gives a poetic ballad of the bombing of the Birmingham church in Alabama in 1963. Its theme is revolved around the belief that no place is safe from racial hatred if a society doesn’t offer equal protection and punishment. Her mom trusts there is a place secure from racial hatred and violence. Her naïve belief cost her daughter’s life. “Ballad of Birmingham” specifically retells the story of Addie Mae Collins. Addie Mae Collins was one of four girls killed in the blast. The other four, “Denise McNair, 11, and Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley, all 14” (Raines, 1) were also killed. “The children were killed simply because they attended church on the wrong day.” (Raines, 1) Addie Mea Collins’ face was unidentifiable when they found her, but as soon as her sister Sarah Collins Cox saw her brown shoe, she quickly knew who it was from. In the poem the author changes it to a white shoe in the verse “white shoes on her feet” (Randall, 520) to demonstrate and symbolize purity and emphasize the mother’s pain and suffering. The daughter’s innocence is also described as a “bathed rose petal sweet” (Randall, 520). In literature, a white rose often is a symbol for perfection. They also represent new beginnings, which is what the bombing was for racism. The child was described like a bathed rose, cleansed and not yet touched by effects of racial hatred. On the other hand, we can also argue th... ... middle of paper ... ...ile the march was the safest place to be. Her daughter’s physical appearance was described as having combed hair, recently taken a bath, white gloves, white shoes, which was also ironic. The mother was confident that her angel was secure until she heard the bomb go off which started the firestorm from hell in the church. In conclusion, this whole poem has symbolic historic value because of its theme surrounding The Children’s March and The Birmingham Church Bombing. The author successfully brought the pain and impact the event made by taking Addie Mae Collins’ death. “He makes the sadness of an infamous tragedy vivid and heartfelt to everyone who reads it, whether they have connection to the tragedy or not.” (Devitt, 1) By approaching these events from a sentimental point of view rather than an objective one, Randall provides unique insight into the tragedy.
Dudley Randall was born on January 19, 1914 in Washington D.C. and died on August 2, 2000 in Southfield, Michigan. His mother Ada Viloa was a teacher and his father Arthur George Clyde Randall was a Congregational minister. His father was very much into politics because of that Dudley and his brother would listen to prominent black speakers. When Randall was about nine years old he and his family move to Detroit, Michigan in 1920. By the time he was thirteen he had his first poem published in the Detroit Free Press. At the age of sixteen he had graduated from high school.
“September Elegies” is a poem written by an American poet Randall Mann in memory of Seth Walsh, Justin Aaberg, Billy Lucas, and Tyler Clementi. It articulates a gloomy story about four young boys who took their own lives by jumping off the George Washington Bridge. The memorialization is a reminder of how cruel our world can be and how bigotry and indifference destroy people’s lives. The poet reveres their memory by making use of various literary devices in order to transmit the pain the boys experienced.
The poem 'The Ballad of Birmingham', by Dudley Randall, is based on the historical event of the bombing in 1963 of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s church by white terrorists. It is a poem in which a daughter expresses her interest in attending a civil rights rally and the mother fearful for her daughter's safety refuses to let her go. In the poem the daughter in fighting for the course of the operessed people of her time/generation instead of going out to play. She is concerned with securing the freedom of her people during the civil rights era in the 1960s. Hence, in lines 3 and 4 she says ?And marc the streets of Birmingham?. ?In a freedom march today.
The girl's mother is associated with comfort and nurturing, embodied in a "honeyed edge of light." As she puts her daughter to bed, she doesn't shut the door, she "close[s] the door to." There are no harsh sounds, compared to the "buzz-saw whine" of the father, as the mother is portrayed in a gentle, positive figure in whom the girl finds solace. However, this "honeyed edge of li...
The mother’s great concern for her daughter is relatable as well in the poem. Readers of the Ballad of Birmingham who have children will strongly relate to the mother’s spoken concern for her daughter’s safety:
The first four stanzas are a conversation between the mother and daughter. The daughter asks for permission to attend a civil rights march. The child is a unique one who believes that sacrificing something like “play[ing]” for a march that can make a difference will be worthwhile (2). However, the mother understands that the march is not a simple march, but a political movement that can turn violent. The mother refuses the child’s request, which categorizes the poem as a tragedy because it places the child in the chur...
In the year 1963, many events took place in this year from blacks boycotting Boston buses to the assassination of JFK. However, that is not what is going to be elaborated on in this essay. It is going to be about the 16th Street Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama (Simkin). There are a lot of things a reader may not know, unless that reader is a historian or has looked up this topic before. In 1963 a local black church was about to have their 11:00 a.m. service on Sunday, September 15 (Trueman). In the women’s room of the church are four African American girls, Denise McNair (11), Addie Mae Collins (14), Carole Robertson (14) and Cynthia Wesley (14), which were getting ready for the service while also talking about their first day of school (Simkin), until their whole world would be changed and they wouldn’t know it.
On the September 15th 1963, a bomb exploded in Birmingham, Alabama at the sixteenth street Baptist church. After the explosion, the church ground floor collapsed. During this time, a Sunday school session was going on and there were four children at the church basement preparing for the church service. The four children were girls and they died. These girls were the age of fourteen and many other people got injured during the situation. Although the place experienced many racial crimes, it is believed that this one was a major one, which left many people in a puzzle situation.
Although the little girl doesn’t listen to the mother the first time she eventually listens in the end. For example, in stanzas 1-4, the little girl asks if she can go to the Freedom March not once, but twice even after her mother had already denied her the first time. These stanzas show how the daughter is a little disobedient at first, but then is able to respect her mother’s wishes. In stanzas 5 and 6, as the little girl is getting ready the mother is happy and smiling because she knows that her little girl is going to be safe, or so she thinks. By these stanzas the reader is able to tell how happy the mother was because she thought her daughter would be safe by listening to her and not going to the March. The last two stanzas, 7 and 8, show that the mother senses something is wrong, she runs to the church to find nothing, but her daughter’s shoe. At this moment she realizes that her baby is gone. These stanzas symbolize that even though her daughter listened to her she still wasn’t safe and is now dead. The Shoe symbolizes the loss the mother is going through and her loss of hope as well. This poem shows how elastic the bond between the daughter and her mother is because the daughter respected her mother’s wish by not going to the March and although the daughter is now dead her mother will always have her in her heart. By her having her
The poem also focuses on what life was like in the sixties. It tells of black freedom marches in the South how they effected one family. It told of how our peace officers reacted to marches with clubs, hoses, guns, and jail. They were fierce and wild and a black child would be no match for them. The mother refused to let her child march in the wild streets of Birmingham and sent her to the safest place that no harm would become of her daughter.
The literary journey that Collins takes his readers when they read his poetry instills an assortment of powerful emotions. While acting as the poet laureate for the United States of America in 2001, he was asked by congress to write a poem recognizing the attacks on 9/11. The name of the poem is called “The Names” and it provokes a sense patriotism, sadness, a...
This idea of memories being forgotten is when there is a mention of graves being lost in “Elegy for the Native Guard”. This is further reinforced in the line “All the grave markers, all the crude headstones – water-lost.” (44) While the poem does allude to the fact that these graves were destroyed due to natural causes, that of a hurricane, it is still significant. This poem demonstrates that society’s memory is not permanent, it can and will be lost
Frank O’Hara’s The Day Lady Died is an unorthodox elegy to the great Billie Holiday, one that explores a more distant but no less human form of mourning a notable figure from afar when one feels personally invested in them. The Day Lady Died makes good use of a captivatingly talkative first person narrator with a penchant for mentioning seemingly insignificant details that end up being paramount to the poem’s narrative. Its run-on form lends to the nature of the poem being an internal stream of consciousness that aids in capturing those small details and utilizing them to paint a bigger picture of day that will live on both in poetry and in history as The Day Lady Died.
“Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” is a poem composed by Thomas Gray over a period of ten years. Beginning shortly after the death of his close friend Richard West in 1742, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” was first published in 1751. This poem’s use of dubbal entendre may lead the intended audience away from the overall theme of death, mourning, loss, despair and sadness; however, this poem clearly uses several literary devices to convey the author’s feelings toward the death of his friend Richard West, his beloved mother, aunt and those fallen soldiers of the Civil War. This essay will discuss how Gray uses that symbolism and dubbal entendre throughout the poem to convey the inevitability of death, mourning, conflict within self, finding virtue in one’s life, dealing with one’s misfortunes and giving recognition to those who would otherwise seem insignificant.
The poem in brief summary allows us to experience an outsider’s view of the death of Lucy Gray and her parents’ grief. The character narrating the poem tells the story of Lucy, a girl who was sent by her father with a lantern to light the way home, for her mother in town. On her way to town a snow storm hits and Lucy is never found neither dead nor alive. The fact that a stranger is narrating the story as opposed to one of the parents telling the story, allows the reader to witness the tragedy of Lucy Gray without feeling too tangled up in the parents’ grief. By having an outsider who is in no way involved in the tragedy tell the story, the writer of the poem William Wordsworth, gives the reader an objective point of view on the tragedy as well as room to relate the reader’s own experience to the poem without feeling uncomfortable. Had the poem lacked objectivity the reader would have surely felt uncomfortable and stifled by emotions of the parents’ or a parent telling the story of their daughter’s death. As well as that, the objectiveness of the stranger narrating gives the reader almost a communal experience. It is as if the reader was in a small town one day, and a local just happened to...