Compare And Contrast Randall And Brooks

Poems are like snowflakes, while they may share some similarities, no poem is the same as another. Every poem is different in regards to form, rhyme scheme, rhetorical strategies, and meaning. Both Randall’s “Ballad of Birmingham” and Brooks’ “A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi. Meanwhile, A Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon” are written in the same era and convey similar messages, however, each poem’s form, point of view, and how they each approach the idea of preconceived notions are what sets the two works apart. Each of these works are written as ballads, which are poems that generally are written in quatrains, follow a strict rhyme scheme, and tell a story. While Randall and Brooks chose this as the structure of their poems, they

By doing this, they are able to add more details and give accounts from specific people that were impacted by the events and may not have gotten their voices heard otherwise and portray a deeper meaning to the events that occurred. Each of the poems also address people’s preconceived ideas about various things. In Randall’s poem, “Ballad of Birmingham” the mother wants her child to go to the church because a church is much safer than the streets where the riots are taking place. The mother is calmed by the idea and in fact, “The mother smiles to know her child / Was in the sacred place,” (Randall 21-22). When people think about a church, the often associate it with prayer, peace, and many consider churches to be a safe place. This is the case of the mother in this poem, she knows her daughter wants to go out, so she sends her to the safest place a person can imagine, a church. Her ideas of churches were shattered when she heard the explosion and found only her daughter’s shoe. Knowing her daughter died at the church, the church she went to because her mother told her she would be safe, leads to lines 23-24 “But that smile was the last smile / To come upon her face” and a sense of grief and guilt that this mother would now feel forever. A similar aspect of preconceived ideas and guilt occur in “A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi. Meanwhile, A Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon.” The speaker in this poem is thinking about romantic ballads and the damsel in distress saved by the prince master plot, “Herself: the milk white maid. The “maid mild” / Of the ballad. Pursued / By the Dark Villain. Rescued by the Fine Prince. / The Happiness-Ever-After” (Brooks 6-9). These are well known by all people, however, the speaker realizes life does not follow these specific types. The boy who was supposed to be the villain was too young and innocent and her husband, the supposed prince, was supposed to