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Discussion on Gwendolyn Brooks poetry
Discussion on Gwendolyn Brooks poetry
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Recommended: Discussion on Gwendolyn Brooks poetry
“We Real Cool” "We Real Cool" by Gwendolyn Brooks have four stanzas, each of which is a two line couplet. Every word in the poem has only one syllable. This poem has a regular meter, with three beats and a pause. There is more to this poem that meets the human eye. “We Real Cool” have a compelling message behind it. Gwendolyn portrays the core of distraught teenagers living a carefree life. The teenagers in this poem are skipping school to be mischievous. Brooks is clearly portraying a message that if they continue to live the lifestyle that they are living they will eventually end up dead. The teens are obviously not affectionate about attending school. However they skip school to find pleasure in a pool hall. It seems like the teenagers absolutely do not care about their education and go day by day living a carefree lifestyle. The broad tones, numerous symbols, and vivid themes complement the historic poem “We Real Cool” marvelously. …show more content…
The tone of this poem is somewhat upbeat. Brooks’ tone is neither judgmental nor angry. The tone she signify is concerning. The tone makes dramatic changes toward the ending of the poem. The tone she setting is more of a concern about the juveniles. The way the teens conduct themselves is very nonchalant. Instead of getting their education by attending school they are out in the streets late at night being disobedient. Previously stated the tone makes a dramatic change. The dramatic change is at the end of the poem when Brooks states, “We Die Soon”. (7/8) So she is indicating in the poem that if the seven boys continue their behavior, the outcome could result in death. The dramatic change in the tone causes symbolic
The poem “We Real Cool” is the story of young kids, possibly teens, who are rebellious, uneducated, and arrogant. It states: “We real cool. We left school. We lurk late. We strike straight. We sing sin. We thin gin. We jazz June. We die soon.” (l.1-8) The poem talks about the pool players and their lives. It seems as though the pool players are school aged because the poet says, “We left school.” (l.1-2) This line shows how they have no interest in school or learning. Since they choose to ditch school, they are most likely uneducated or immature therefore, their behavior throughout the poem, is not too surprising.
Gwendolyn Brooks in “We Real Cool” develops an ironic, sarcastic tone through specific word choice. The poem begins with the phrase “We real cool” (Line 1) so immediately, the reader knows that these pool playing buddies define themselves as “cool”. In their minds, they are the epitomes of
The poem “Always Something More Beautiful” by Stephen Dunn is certainly about running a race, but the speaker is also arguing that pursuing something beautiful can help guide us through life. Through the title, we can see that we should constantly look for more beautiful things in life. The poem begins with the speaker describing his experience before a race. He uses words like “best” and “love.” The tone is extremely enthusiastic. In the first line, he talks about coming to the starting place. This can be a metaphor for beginning our lifelong journey. The speaker also implies that we need to approach it with a positive attitude. In the next few lines, the speaker indicates being tested in excellence
In Drea Knufken’s essay entitled “Help, We’re Drowning!: Please Pay Attention to Our Disaster,” the horrific Colorado flood is experienced and the reactions of worldly citizens are examined (510-512). The author’s tone for this formal essay seems to be quite reflective, shifting to a tone of frustration and even disappointment. Knufken has a reflective tone especially during the first few paragraphs of the essay. According to Drea Knufken, a freelance writer, ghostwriter and editor, “when many of my out-of-town friends, family and colleagues reacted to the flood with a torrent of indifference, I realized something. As a society, we’ve acquired an immunity to crisis. We scan through headlines without understanding how stories impact people,
The overall theme of the poem shows sadness and humor. The boy in the poem is very depressed about getting older, but there is some irony in the sadness that the boy is experiencing. He acts like getting older is a sickness. "The whole idea of it makes me feel like im coming down with somthing" (1-2). Collins does acknowledge that is hard for anyone to leave their childhood, and that it is not an enjoyable experience. However, Collins was not turning ten when he was writing the poem. Its seems as though he is making fun of how depressed the boy feels because he still has his whole life ahead of him. The little guy is not even close to being mature, and thats what is so ironic about the boy being sad. He acts like he will never have fun again, and that life will never be the same. Others would most likely agree with Collins that the boy is being over dramatic.
The death camp was a terrible place where people where killed. Hitler is who created the death camp for Jews. The death camp was used for extermination on Jews. This occurred on 1939 – 1945. The death camps were in the country of Europe. Hitler did all this because he didn’t like Jews and the religions. The book Night is a autobiography written by Elie Wiesel. The poem called First they came for the communist written by Martin Neimoller is a autobiography.
Brooks’ selection of single syllable words helps set the rhythm of a jazz mood. The monosyllable words provide a rhythmical tool for generating a snappy beat to her tale. Her repetition of rhyming words close together adds unity to the poem. By placing the one syllable words close together: “cool / school” (1-2) and “sin / gin” (5-6), it emphases each word. The feelings and imagery are clear in this poem. The rhyming lines in her verse contain only three words, and it keeps the poem’s rhythm moving. The short verse makes it easy to remember. The short lines speed it up, but the sound on each stop really stands out. Only the subtitle is longer, which Brooks utilizes to encompass the setting. Her careful use of short words keeps the beat and describes what the boys are doing, like leaving school, or staying out late. These simple
One of the great things about Composition and Literature is that the readings can relate to many other topics outside of the class. The poems and the stories read in this class give a more in depth look at a specific subject and give a clearer picture of what life was like and how people lived at that time. In most classes about U.S. History, the sections taught on segregation don’t give specific examples of how people were treated or the perspectives of the people who were mistreated. However, reading Gwendolyn Brooks’ poetry in the Composition and Literature course gives students an opportunity to learn greater details about segregation through the perspectives of the people most affected by it and the
"We Real Cool" is a short, yet powerful poem by Gwendolyn Brooks that sends a life learning message to its reader. The message Brooks is trying to send is that dropping out of school and roaming the streets is in fact not "cool" but in actuality a dead end street.
When sorting through the Poems of Dorothy Parker you will seldom find a poem tha¬t you could describe as uplifting or cheerful. She speaks with a voice that doesn’t romanticize reality and some may even call her as pessimistic. Though she doesn’t have a buoyant writing style, I can empathize with her views on the challenges of life and love. We have all had experiences where a first bad impression can change how we view an opportunity to do the same thing again. Parker mostly writes in a satirical or sarcastic tone, which can be very entertaining to read and analyze.
This darkly satiric poem is about cultural imperialism. Dawe uses an extended metaphor: the mother is America and the child represents a younger, developing nation, which is slowly being imbued with American value systems. The figure of a mother becomes synonymous with the United States. Even this most basic of human relationships has been perverted by the consumer culture. The poem begins with the seemingly positive statement of fact 'She loves him ...’. The punctuation however creates a feeling of unease, that all is not as it seems, that there is a subtext that qualifies this apparently natural emotional attachment. From the outset it is established that the child has no real choice, that he must accept the 'beneficence of that motherhood', that the nature of relationships will always be one where the more powerful figure exerts control over the less developed, weaker being. The verb 'beamed' suggests powerful sunlight, the emotional power of the dominant person: the mother. The stanza concludes with a rhetorical question, as if undeniably the child must accept the mother's gift of love. Dawe then moves on to examine the nature of that form of maternal love. The second stanza deals with the way that the mother comforts the child, 'Shoosh ... shoosh ... whenever a vague passing spasm of loss troubles him'. The alliterative description of her 'fat friendly features' suggests comfort and warmth. In this world pain is repressed, real emotion pacified, in order to maintain the illusion that the world is perfect. One must not question the wisdom of the omnipotent mother figure. The phrase 'She loves him...' is repeated. This action of loving is seen as protecting, insulating the child. In much the same way our consumer cultur...
In Conclusion, Billy Collins use of irony in both the setting and the description of the stereotypical students helped strengthen the allusion of the poem. The students in the poem are in an eternal school lifestyle as opposed to being in a normal town environment. Aspects of the setting, such as the landscape being made out of paper and the night sky being compared to a blackboard painted a descriptive picture in the mind of the reader, making the allusion more believable and relatable. Also, the use of stereotypes in this poem added on to the allusion of the school environment, giving life to the society in the town created by Collins. At first, the poem may seem like only an allusion, but with a closer look, you can see the reality behind it all.
The purpose of this essay is to analyze and compare and contrast the two paired poems “My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning and “My Ex-Husband” by Gabriel Spera to find the similarities presented within the pairs. Despite the monumental time difference between “My Last Duchess” and “My Ex-Husband”, throughout both poems you will see that somebody is wronged by someone they thought was a respectable person and this all comes about by viewing a painting on the wall or picture on a shelf.
Did I Miss Anything? is a poem written by a Canadian poet and academic Tom Wayman. Being a teacher, he creates a piece of literature, where he considers the answers given by a teacher on one and the same question asked by a student, who frequently misses a class. So, there are two speakers present in it – a teacher and a student. The first one is fully presented in the poem and the second one exists only in the title of it. The speakers immediately place the reader in the appropriate setting, where the actions of a poem take place – a regular classroom. Moreover, the speakers unfolds the main theme of the poem – a hardship of being a teacher, the importance of education and laziness, indifference and careless attitudes of a student towards studying.
Brooks writes, "the damp small pulps with little or no hair." In the last half of the poem (lines 20 to 33), she changes who she is addressing. Instead of telling the mother what she is missing she is now talking to the "child". When she does this it expresses other emotions. These new emotions are ones of sorrow, love, searching for forgiveness, etc.