Why Young Men Are So Ugly by Tony Hoagland is a fantastic poem because I think it gives a hidden reasoning for why a certain generation of people acts in the ways in which they do. Upon reading the name of the poem, I immediately noticed how out there it was, which gave me the idea that the author may be an outspoken person. The title was effective in making me interested in the poem, because it stuck out and wasn’t a topic I’d ever read a piece about. Why Young Men Are So Ugly is a poet’s explanation of what goes on inside a young man’s mind, and on the inside of his body, despite what that young man may be displaying through his actions and words. The fact that Tony Hoagland was once a young man himself, and so this need for explanation is somewhat personal. Hoagland is giving reasoning for an experience he’s been through, which is probably why the poem clearly demonstrates a familiarity with the topic. Personification is an extravagant part of the poem, and used frequently. The first major and significant example of personification is in the second stanza “Making the metal ring like sledgehammers on iron/like dungeon prisoners rattling their chains.” (Hoagland). These two lines created an apparent image in my mind of what the author described was going on inside a young man’s body. I thought these lines could have been a comparison to the emotions one may be going through, a way for the author to explain how he could have felt, and had gave me the feeling he was crying out for someone to understand a certain frustration. I thought the third stanza in Why Young Men Are So Ugly had a lot of hidden meanings and significance. “That is why they shriek their tires at the stopsign/ why they turn the bass up on the ster... ... middle of paper ... ... is the most important line in the poem. I think the author used personification here to make the image clearer to the reader, and help them make the connection from the line to life. The line gives the idea that the author has had to overcome his own struggles in life, and is describing how it felt in this poem. Why Young Men Are So Ugly by Tony Hoagland is a brilliant poem because it portrays one of society’s stereotypes in a different and personal way. I think by describing the physical and emotional sides of how it may have felt to go through things young men may go through in this poem, the author successfully caught the my attention with the sense of emotion behind the lines he wrote. I really liked this poem because I liked making the connections between life and the stanzas in it, and then relating it back to what I know about judgment, and struggle.
He uses personifications specifically in this poem to write about what is going on and to describe things. “It's a hard life where the sun looks”(19)...”And its black strip of highway, big eyed/with rabbits that won’t get across ”(2)...”A pot bangs and water runs in the kitchen” (13) None of these are really human body parts on things such as the sun, a pot, or a highway, but they help describe what something does or what something looks like. In the first instance, the sun cannot actually look at something, but it could mean that the sun is visible to the humans, and if humans are out for a long time in the sun, they can get hot and exhausted. For the second line, the big-eyed highway could mean that the highway has many cars with bright headlights that are dangerous for the rabbits, the immigrants, to get across. For the third and final line, pots are not able to bang things on their own, and it could have possibly been a human who made the pot bang, preparing the meal of beans and brown soup that they survive on. There is also a simile in this poem, “Papa's field that wavered like a mirage” (24). This simile could suggest that the wind is moving the grass or crops on his father’s field and looked like an optical illusion. According to Gale Virtual Reference Library, the literary device, “tone” is used to convey the significant change of the author’s feeling in the poem. In the beginning lines, the tone is happy. The poem talks about nostalgia of when he was little, “They leap barefoot to the store. Sweetness on their tongues, red stain of laughter (5-6). (GVRL) These lines illustrate the nostalgia and happy times of Gary Soto’s life when he was probably a child. However, after line 11, the tone becomes more of a negative one. Soto later talks about Farm Laborers and how the job was not a great one. After line 19, a brighter
It is not a question of good vs. evil. Morality is a conversation of opposing forces. It is a constant battle ground of different viewpoints and ideologies usually combining for the betterment of mankind. This poem is that conversation in writing. On the one side you have the forgotten man (or women), who wants desperately to be found. On the other side you have Society. Although this is a one sided conversation with the forgotten man doing all the talking, the silence of society speaks a thousand words. Society is dooming this person to the land of the forgotten, all this is said with society not saying a word. The “Unwanted” man is pleading with society with all his heart to be noticed which wouldn’t mean the end of his oppression, but with him being noticed it would show society that they are leaving him behind. With the simple act of noticing him it would force society to see that they are oppressing him and forcing him to live the way that he does continuing his
Whether it is consciously or subconsciously, who we are as adults is very much determined (or influenced) by the experiences that we live through during childhood. These experiences and relationships that we have at such a young age can shape who we are going to be for the rest of our lives. Sharon Olds is a great poet who dives very deeply into her own memories, particularly ones of her childhood, to figure out what they actually mean to her. In doing this, Sharon Olds writes some pretty edgy poems that can make people cringe from the extreme amount of sexual details and emotion that comes with them. The main ideas of these poems can range anywhere from the glass that the speaker’s father is spitting into before he dies (The Glass) to the speaker and a significant other considering suicide at a restaurant (The Promise). This is what makes her an awesome poet though; she digs through her memory to find the experiences that had the biggest impression on her life, evaluates them, and then unashamedly tells about every detail. While writing in this way, Sharon Olds has an amazing ability to point out social inequalities to the reader. These inequalities are specifically pertaining to the patriarchy that we live in today and what effect it has on femininity and masculinity, especially speaking in terms of father/ daughter relationships. The memories she writes about are all very personal and tell of many family problems that she had at the time of her childhood and adolescence. Whether it be the speaker and her sister playing with dolls while their parents fought (The Pact), the speaker remembering when her mother divorced her father (The Victims), the speaker telling about her feelings when her father died (The Feelings), or when t...
Throughout the poem, there is repetition of the line “I am the man, I suffer'd, I was there, ” to emphasize his empathy. He also includes alliteration such as “rent roofs” and powerful imagery like “the long roil of the drummers” to liven the poem. Additionally, he helps the reader experience the events in the poem by using similes to compare the challenges to things that the reader has experienced. One line reads, “The twinges that sting like needles his legs and neck”. In the poem, Whitman becomes the heroes, but by incorporating the literary devices, Whitman allows the reader to experience the same experience as the heroes as
This line was very unexpected and this line makes the poem what it is. The poem transition from a love poem to a darker more painful story. The tone of the poem also shifts to a more eerie tone. Another thing about the third stanza is that at this moment in the poem, I can connect the poem to the Greek mythological story of Persephone and Hades. The allusion sets up the rest of the poem and gives the poem a lot more meaning.
First, Hoagland characterizes American culture with the poem “Poor Britney Spears,” which uses a comical title that blends in nicely with the first couplet, “is not a sentence I expected / to utter in this lifetime”, while using word choice that is simple yet effective. Which leads to the subject of the poem, Britney Spears a celebrity whose rise and demise, most young adults/teenagers are familiar with therefore, allowing the reader to connect easily with the main idea of the poem. Which is that people find
Between the two authors, Hemingway and Eliot, a similar idea shows through their writing, connecting them. They both use the common aspect of negative tone to reflect how after being in a war, the purpose that used to drive one’s life grows pointless and irrelevant. In the text of “A Soldier’s Home,” Krebs tells his mother “I don’t love anybody,”(Hemingway) which shows the audience the bitterness which he has attained. One may assume this aggravation comes from war due to Kreb’s mother’s surprise at finding this new attribute. Like “Soldier's Home”, “The Hollow Men” by TS Eliot has an indignant tone that shows the negative responses one returning from war has of their surroundings. Eliot shows the melancholy of his text while saying “our dried
In the poem Larkinesque by Ryan Michael, the use of contrasting imagery exemplifies the drastic differences between how attractive people are treated versus those seen as unattractive. For example, the speaker uses the phrase “bloody noses” when describing his experiences as undesirable. These words have a violent connotation and provide an unappealing image. Furthermore, the idea that someone received bloody noses indicates that they were too weak to defend themself, and weakness is not considered appealing. Overall the idea of blood and pain causes the reader to feel uncomfortable. In contrast, the speaker uses the phrase “steel jawlines” to bring a positive image to mind when describing attractive people. The metal steel is strong, so by
The young man is continually talking about his feelings about being depressed, empty, and having horrible feelings. He writes poetry for one assignment, and we all know that poetry can capture true pain and sadness. The poetry that Andy writes evinces that emotional torture. His poem is called “Poem of Hope” and is on page 57 stating, “It’s dark where I am. And I cannot find the light. There are shadows all around me. And my heart is full of fright. (Lines 1-4) … I cannot see the future. And I cannot change the past. But the present is so heavy. I don’t think I’m going to last. (Lines 9-12)” It is fairly evident that he is talking about how his life is dark without any light, and he’s fearful of if he can handle all of his problems because of how much it is weighing on his shoulders. He will soon explode after so much pressure and negative build up. It is a metaphorical representation of how he truly feels. Next Andrew says how he feels in another, painful way on page 123. “It was dark, so I couldn’t see, and I was under the water, so I couldn’t breathe. I tried to scream, but water got into my mouth and my throat and my chest. I was crying out for help, but my cries only made things worse. That’s how I feel tonight, Mom. That’s exactly how I feel tonight. (Lines 21-26)” The water represents the suffering that he is experiencing;
The poem “Men at Forty” by Donald Justice is about the life of men growing older and reflecting on life. The persona of the poem describes the aging process as a man becomes more aware of the stages he grows and lives through. The poem also expresses the need to take responsibility for one’s life so that it does not slip away without notice. Ultimately, Justice uses the poetic devices of imagery, to develop an ironic and an ambiguous view of men at the age of forty that represents the aging process from childhood to adulthood.
While Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" overtly deals with the distinction between social class and the opportunity for greatness, the poem also contains a subtle yet strong message against the dominant role of men over women in society. Gray's tone throughout the poem is permeated with regret and a sense of something lost, voicing his opinions clearly against social class prejudice. This emotional tone, when applied to the stereotypical roles of differing sexes discussed throughout the poem, portrays the injustice of inequality between males and females.
The opening lines of the poem are more shocking than the grimness of the detail because they illustrate the bleak mood of the hero. He is distrustful "My first thought was, he lied in every word" and bitter: "That hoary cripple, with malicious eye". His despair and paranoia become evident in the inconsistency of his thought: if the man was lying about where to find
Life is meaningless, and the world is going to end. For anybody who sees the world the way it is. They truly know of the negativity it holds. In the poem The Hollow Men, by T.S. Eliot, he views the world in a very negative way. Eliot does not see any purpose in life, only darkness. In this poem, Eliot uses his diction to set the tone and the setting for the rest of the poem.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading David Berman’s poem “Self-Portrait at 28”. Reading this poem made me feel sad, pensive and nostalgic for the events in my life that I miss. I’m not twenty eight, but I feel like the events that the persona talked about in this poem were very universal. I also sympathize with the persona’s depression and feeling with loneliness. I can relate to feel like I am bothering someone while I am talking to them. I often get scared reaching out to people because I am always afraid I am bothering them. The voice is this poem were very strong. The uses of imagery, tone and symbolism help make this poem strong.
The short stanzas containing powerful imagery overwhelm the readers forcing them to imagine the oppression that the speaker went through in her short life. The tone of this poem is that of an adult engulfed in outrage and who oftentimes slips into a childlike dialect; this is evident when the speaker continually uses the word "Daddy" and also repeats herself quite often. The last two stanzas of the poem, especially, portray a dismal picture of life for women who find themselves under a dominating male figure. The passage seems to show that the speaker has reached a resolution after being kept under a man?s thumb all her life.