A sestina is a poetic technique that achieves amazing effects through complex repetition. It is a thirty-nine line, seven stanza poem that repeats the six words that end the lines in the first stanza. It achieves this in very complex pattern of repetition with the first six stanzas having six lines each, and the last stanza being a tercet, or envoi, having only three lines. Florence Cassen Mayers is a well known American poet who commonly used the sestina technique. All American Sestina is a light hearted poem depicting the “all American lifestyle.” Keep Your ----s Off Me is a heavier poem that leaves interpretation up to the reader. All-American Sestina and Keep your ----s off me use the same poetic structure, and it is the use of metaphor and symbolism which draw similarities between these two poems. Due to the more frequent use of metaphor and symbolism in All-American Sestina, this poem is more accurate at exploiting these poetic devices.
Mayers uses metaphor and symbolism as key poetic techniques that underline the all American dream in All-American Sestina. The poem plays on the use of numbers. Mayers begins each line of the poem with a different number, the first word of every line in the first stanza being one through six. Mayers uses the pattern in a typical sestina to continue her number pattern throughout the poem. The poem is about typical American traditions, events and commodities. Mayers refers to specific events in history when she says “fourscore and seven years ago” (11), specific yearly events such as “Fourth of July” (38), and personal events like “sweet sixteen” (29). All of these events are highly identifiable by the average American, and most people can associate one of these with a specific time in their ...
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... contrary, Mayers uses metaphor and symbolism in Keep Your ----s Off Me less frequently. Therefore the reader is not required to think as much, rather passively accept the words they read and consequently they associate those words with their commonly understood meaning. Thus, the potential for new meaning is removed.
The use of repetition in sestina poems make them very beautiful to read. All-American Sestina and Keep Your ----s Off Me by Florence Cassen Mayers no exception. They are both written using the poetic technique of a sestina. They use metaphor and symbolism to effectively illustrate the meaning of each poem. However, due to the larger number of poetic devices in All-American Sestina, this poem is more effective in exploiting such devices, making it easier for the reader to interpret its message, and gain a full understand of what the poem is about.
With the coming of the new century America under goes a change led by many different events. The collection of poems written in Lee Masters book Spoon River Anthology portrays the typical small town at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. Show the different social, economical, and political trend and influences throughout the United States.
Alice Fulton’s modern sestina “You Can’t Rhumboogie in a Ball and Chain” finds unity in the repetition of similar images throughout the closed form poem. These images hold together to create a unique and disturbing picture of the young rock icon Janis Joplin. Addressed directly to Joplin, the poem strictly follows the sestina form: six six-line stanzas, followed by a three-line “envoy.” The distinct feature of the sestina is that the same six words conclude the lines of every stanza, simply changing order according to a set pattern from one stanza to the next. I imagine that to write a sestina, the poet...
One of the most well known historic characteristics of poetry is that of rhyme, a technique that Alexander rejects. In American Sublime, every poem is written in free verse. Although some poems may contain an occasional slant rhyme, there is no fixed rhyme scheme in Alexander’s works. Along with her lack of rhyme, there is a no consistency in the structure of Elizabeth Alexander’s poetry. This is best demonstrated in the “Amistad” section of American Sublime. Each of the poems in this part tell a piece of the story of the Amistad ship and the slave revolt. However, only a few of these poems share similar structures. While some poems contain seven stanzas, others a written in haikus, and while others do not contain stanza breaks, making the poem one long stanza. By doing this, Elizabeth Alexander keeps herself from having a signature structure for her poems. Instead, by neglecting to use a specific style, Alexander creates a stark distinction between herself and other
In the perspective as an African American woman, Maya Angelou speaks of the issue of sexism in her poem. In this quote, “You may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lies…”, Angelou sheds light on the problems women faced during her time. Many had to also face the discrimination from men as men control them and put words in women’s mouths. This indicates the doubled amount of burden that African American women had to go through and it was important for Maya Angelou to speak of this issue through literature and give a voice to women who were struggling with the same conflicting situations. In contrast, Hughes’s, “I, Too,” poem states the African American inequality more generally than Angelou’s
Poems are forms of communication that give an applicable view of the past, present and future events. Reading the poem titled “America”, written by Richard Blanco brought me memories from my childhood in my parent’s house and also what is happening now in my house as a parent. The poem explains how one person doesn’t have all the knowledge about something. It also, describes the daily life struggles I experienced during my childhood, when my parent 's and I moved from our hometown to live in another town becuase of their work and it brings to light the conflict of cultures I and my children are going through since we moved to United State of America .
The nature of an ideology is completely personal; one’s interpretation may vary greatly from another’s interpretation. This is demonstrated in the two poems, “America” by Claude McKay and “Let America be America Again” by Langston Hughes. Both of these poems emerge from the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, and though these two poems each describe an ideological viewpoint of America as a place and a concept, the two speakers view the subject differently from one another. Both poets employ similar sound devices, yet the tones and themes vary between the two works.
Note that the tile of this collection is “The Diary of a Black Woman”, not, “The Diaries of Black Women”. This was done intentionally to address that fact that women are dynamic and complex beings, and one aspect of their life does not represent them as a whole. That is why throughout this anthology, each poet and each poem serves as a diary entry about a life experience that a black woman may encounter and inquiry about. Collectively, this makes the sum of all the entries represent the diary a single women.
Langston Hughes, a renowned poet from the early 1900s, has written numerous poems that have various themes and meanings. Although a lot of his poetry has to do with the struggles of African Americans during the time of slavery or during the early 1900s, Langston Hughes’ themes differ from poem to poem. One theme that appears in multiple poems of his is the theme of race, Langston Hughes uses the theme of race in his poems as a way to challenge the racial barriers that are placed on society. The theme of race is discussed in a plethora of his poems and it is important to examine a few of these poems which include, “I too, sing America”, “Theme for English b”, and “Let America be America Again”, to point out that Hughes tries to implement the sense of hope into African Americans of the time, also he uses race as a way to provide a focus on the oppression of slaves.
Influenced by the style of “plainspoken English” utilized by Phillip Larkin (“Deborah Garrison”), Deborah Garrison writes what she knows, with seemingly simple language, and incorporating aspects of her life into her poetry. As a working mother, the narrator of Garrison’s, “Sestina for the Working Mother” provides insight for the readers regarding inner thoughts and emotions she experiences in her everyday life. Performing the daily circus act of balancing work and motherhood, she, daydreams of how life might be and struggles with guilt, before ultimately realizing her chosen path is what it right for her and her family.
During the years of 1914-1945, Americans experienced suffering and sadness. The poem explains how the people suffered and lived with sadness but it made them stronger and taught them lessons. For example, Americans experienced The Great Depression which led to the stock market crash. ("Disillusion, Defiance, and Discontent..." 689-701). An important person living during this era was Amelia Earhart because she was the first women to fly across the Atlantic. Furthermore, an event that had a major impact at the time on Americans was Pearl Harbor. It was the attack
Lisa Parker’s “Snapping Beans”, Regina Barreca’s “Nighttime Fires”, John Frederick Nims’ “Love Poem”, and John Donne’s “Song” all demonstrate excellent use of imagery in their writing. All of the authors did a very good job at illustrating how the use of imagery helps the reader understand what the author’s message is. However, some of the poems use different poetic devices and different tones. In Lisa Parker’s “Snapping Beans” and Regina Barreca’s “Nighttime Fires”, both poems display a good use of personification. However in John Donne’s “Song” and John Frederick Nims’ “Love Poem, they differ in the fact that the tone used in each poem contrasts from each other.
Every story, poem, or anthology alike has a part of the author’s feelings or past between their lines, which dictates their origins. The Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters is not anything different in that regard. Every piece of writing has it’s origins and those origins can be not only interesting, but change the way the reader views the writing. This paper will not only discuss the origins of the famous Anthology, but show Edgar Lee Masters’ personal side of the origins and how those instances influenced his writing of The Spoon River Anthology.
In his poem, Whitman expresses the American Dream in its most traditional sense. He portrays the very basics of the dream itself; American pride, hard work, unity, and individuality. Whitman mainly conveys the sense of pride when talking about the everyday people of America. He focuses on the hard work the citizens partake in within a variety of jobs; from seamstresses to masons, Whitman celebrates them all. Throughout celebrating the people of America, Walt Whitman provides a sense of individualism without straying from the idea of unity. The entirety of the poem insists that every individual in America sings in unison while maintaining their “varied carols”. By focusing on the simplicity of the everyday individuals as well as the ordinary jobs held by those in his poem, Whitman is able to relay his belief of the American Dream as a reality. The freedom the American people have to live the lives they desire throughout the poem is a reflection of the reality in which Whitman existed. The idea that each person could create their own dream and their own opportunities were the foundation of Whitman’s “American
Luci Tapahonso uses the same format and them in her poem, "The American Flag" in that poem is describing what the American flag means to her, even though the American government had cause a lot of historical trauma for tribes. Tapahonso writes that the Navajo had taken on a new meaning to the flag, and it is not anger or hatred for the United States, as she states,
Marianne Moore ranked with Emily Dickinson among America’s finest woman poets. Moore crafted her poems superbly. She generally used poetic forms in which the controlling element is the number and arrangement of syllables rather than c...