Both swallowed in their job, the janitor in “Jorge the Church Janitor Finally Quits” by Martin Espada and the secretary in “The Secretary Chant” by Marge Piercy feel unappreciated and lost as employees. Jorge is “outside…of [Americans] understanding” and The Secretary is lost in her work and compares herself to objects such as her “hips are a desk.” The employees from these poems have become hidden behind their duties and are slowly sinking into the unknown.…
The wounded heart now enormous tune of sorrow, Skunk breath a force to linger tomorrow. Saint unreal a body-less per poster, Bound by force that will never divide as greater. Benevolent a flaunt of no remorse, Unmistakable tone unruly of course. Patch up the hole in your britches; water new soil, Be thankful thieves ravishes in turmoil.…
Peppers, parsley, pansy, pickles, and pears. Carrots, cabbages, celery, and cactus.There’s also rodgersia, rampion, and rapunzel.Oh, how I love my plants!…
"Hitcher" By Simon Armitage, "Education For Leisure" By Carol Anne Duffy, "My Last Duchess" and "The Lab" by Robert Browning are all poems that deal with violence or the prospect of violence. ‘The Laboratory’ is a dramatic monologue about a woman who has discovered her husband is having an affair with two other women. She is plotting to poison both of the mistresses. My Last Duchess’ is also a dramatic monologue in which the Duke is telling his new bride father’s representative about a portrait of his last wife and how he had to have her killed because he did not think she behaved like a Duchess or a wife should. ‘Hitcher’ tells the story of a disturbed man who picks up a hitchhiker, then brutally murder him and also seems satisfied about it. ‘Havisham’ is a monologue using a female voice who talks about emotions and memories of a woman who was jilted by a man on her wedding day. I will compare and contrast the ways violence is shown throughout the poems.…
During the time of the Harlem Renaissance, literature written by “colored folks” tended to have similar tones, messages, and visuals. These connections can be seen between the poems “We Wear The Mask” by Paul Laurence Dunbar, “If We Must Die” by Claude McKay, and an excerpt from Invisible man by Ralph Ellison, “Battle Royal.” A common tone between the three pieces would be pride. In “Battle Royal” the speaker is incredibly proud of his speech, to the point of delivering it despite coughing up blood and being ridiculed after the traumatic event that he had been put through. Paul Laurence Dunbar wrote his piece with a tone of pride in a sense of colored people not showing when their hurt but holding their heads up high and masking their pain.…
Kairos: The poem’s setting begins as the narrator is sitting in his wheelchair in the dark. It says that he was wearing a “Legless, sewn short at elbow” (line 2) which allows the reader to see that he has lost his legs. Then the setting moves in to the past as his memories become of topic. In his memories he remembers how it was to dance with girls and have a good time. Then at the end of the second stanza we move back into the present as the narrator reminds us that now the girls want nothing to do with him and look at him like a “queer disease”. Then, at the beginning of the third stanza we flash back into his memories as the narrator explains how handsome, energetic, and full of life he was before going into the war. He then flashes back on his days of playing football and when he was hurt he was celebrated as a hero. Then towards the end of the third stanza, he explains…
Dulce et Decorum est by Wilfred Owen and Homecoming by Bruce Dawe are about the disaster of war, yet they speak of different wars with different mindsets of the soldiers. In the following essay I discuss the history behind the poems, the poetic devices that Owen and Dawe used. Each poem addresses their own truths about war.…
In a dark room lies a dimly lit light, as bright as a Minecraft furnace during a pit black night, considering your Gammas turned down. The ball of light, as if pulled by a gravitational force, flies towards what seems like a black hole.…
The “Man I Killed” takes us into the Vietnam War and tell us about a soldiers first time of killing another human being. The author describes a Viet Cong soldier whom he killed, using meticulous and vivid, physical detail with clear descriptions of the dead mans’ wounds. Then O'Brien imagines the life story of this man and imagines the personal history of the dead Vietnamese soldier starting with his birthplace moving through his life, and ended with him enlisting in the army. It also details some of the dead soldiers’ hopes and ambitions. O'Brien uses this history in an attempt to make the dead man more realistic to the…
The works we studied within Creative Writing were all helpful in creating my own works to submit to the class. Throughout all of the reading, many of the works inspired me in different ways, whether it was short story plot ideas or word usage in the poems. While crafting my work for the final portfolio, I reviewed many of the poems from our poetry packet in an effort to find inspiration and to create new interesting images. I took the most inspiration for my formal poem, which I found most difficult to write. One of the poems that was most useful to me was Jilly Dybka’s “Memphis, 1976.” Dybka’s poem follows the sestina form; I also wrote my last poem in this form, so it helped to follow the form by looking at her poem as an example. Dybka’s…
My reaction to the poem “ We Wear the Mask” is a feeling of truthfulness. It tells about what people see and what others hide. People that I have met don’t really act like themselves. Like when it says “We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries to thee from tortured souls arise” those are the people who have hid themselves from others. They are people we wouldn’t know that are at home cutting themselves are even attempt to do suicide that only the lord knows. They can talk like anybody with friends “and with myriad subtleties” because they hide behind the mask so we don’t know what is happening behind them. From what we see is what we do not know “but let the world dream otherwise” because it takes time to learn about what…
A little about me? I’m a pretty simple person, kind of introverted. I hate crowds and drama; I love being out in nature and just spending the day in peace and quiet. I live in New York State, near Buffalo; it’s nice but too cold, too often. Most times you’ll find me hanging out with my dog Tipper while he pretends to pee on everything. Of course I love to read, television is just awful with the exception of The Walking Dead and the Buffalo Sabres whom hopefully will no longer be awful for the foreseeable future.…
Attack by Siegfried Sassoon; Anthem for Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen; Belfast Confetti by Ciaran Carson; No More Hiroshima's by James Kirkup Compare and contrast the attitudes to conflict shown in three or four of these poems, pointing out how the poets use language to explore their ideas and emotions. Two of the poems listed above, attack and anthem for doomed youth are to do with things that happened during world war 1. Both Wilfrid Owen and Siegfried Sassoon were involved with this war, fighting for their country.…
You’ve never known those endless nights, that I’ve known since the storm began. You’ve never felt the turbulence or the blue dimming of the lights. You’ve never met that lone feeling of praying for the sun to shine, when I’d hold my heart in both hands but still forget that it was mine.…
Poem - Battle Within. Battle Within. Each day gloomy as the last, with the dimmest light shining through.…