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.…
Unfortunately the relationship between the speaker and the mother in the poem is unclear as it is stated that her mother has passed away and is in a grave, which is shown here in the following excerpt “… into the grave!” but all throughout the poem she speaks of her mother’s courage, which is shown here “courage that my mother had. Went with her, and is with her still… if instead she’d left to me. The thing she took into the grave!–That courage like a rock” which is not typically something that is said by someone who didn’t have a good relationship with the person who’d passed…
Upon reading the poem, imagery can be found throughout the entire poem. For example, in the first two lines you can imagine a doll being put away like a dead child in a chest, you cannot bring a dead child back to life. This is the burial of her childhood only to keep her memories and carry them with her for the rest of her life. Also, the second to last line where she is “wound,” twisted, “like the guts of a clock,” referring to her stomach. She feels a sense of anxiety here. This is her final emotion to conclude the poem. She fears growing up because of the responsibilities she will have to take on, the shame she felt when her period started, will…
For example the first stanza, lines 1 through 5, tell of her first heartbreak from her husband. the caesura puts expression of sadness,sorrow, and grief. As well, in the fifth line states right out “my exile”.…
Stanza two develops the poet's ability to shelter her pain. "I am industrious and clever" Here she states plainly that she is gifted at hiding her true feelings. She paints "Landscapes on door panels and screens." Here symbolism is developed further as door panels may represent doors to her heart or other aspects of her being. In parallel, the screens she paints provide illusion to the way she feels. By painting the "the doors and screens" she hopes others will follow the illusion instead of looking at what she really experiences.…
She begins the poem with a neutral tone. In the last two lines of the first stanza, she introduces complication when the young girl goes through puberty and the outcome is less than delightful. Here the tone is resentful, that anything less than perfect is flawed. The second stanza begins back in the neutral tone, but not as neutral. The stanza begins with a list of qualities that the girl has, which is everything a "normal" happy girl could have; yet she still did not meet the norms of society. Then the tone changes in the last two lines to express a sense of frustration as the girl feel the need to go through life apologizing for her image. She was not what society expected a girl to look like and she slowly became a victim of society's expectations. The third stanza is full of aggravation and frustration. The girl is fed up with her image and decides to have plastic surgery done to her nose and her legs. She then dies but ultimately achieves a happy ending of finally being accepted by society. Through tone, Piercy helped the reader understand the meaning of the poem.…
In order to convey meaning to her poem, Old's utilizes imagery to allow the reader to locate themselves in the poem. Her vivid and descriptive diction add credibility to her imagery. For instance, she writes, "The jet was full, and people's hair was shining, they were smiling, the interior of the plane was filled with a mist of gold endorphin light...". In this part of her poem, Old describes when the women, rushing to see her ill father, finally steps foot into the plane. She describes what the women saw aboard the plane. Her choice in diction here complements her use of imagery as she chose descriptive phrases such as "people's hair was shining", "smiling", and "gold endorphin light". With such imagery, the audience is able to feel the same relief the women felt as she finally boarded the plane and kept an optimistic mind now that she was headed to her destination. Such meaning and emotion would appeal more to an audience who had experienced a…
The next verse is “See the lights, see the party, the ball gowns.” As said she is reflecting on the party and what she saw and her…
for a reader than the message' of the poem, which can be taken as a wry comment…
After she and her ex-lover talk “from his neat head…rises a small balloon- but for the grace of god.” Here is the main point the writer makes. In this line, the writer illustrates and image of her previous life, enabling us to conjure and guess at her life before and wonder how wonderful it was then; because, why else would the man be so curious of her diminished state if she hadn’t changed so drastically? The composer of this poem further emphasizes her lethargic, depressed and aimless life by using coloured words such as “whine, bicker,tug,aimless.”…
Following the theme of identity not through language but through the mark a person can leave on the world the poem “Dusting” was written. In its simplest form a signature is the easiest way for someone to expresses who they are and to leave their mark. In the poem this is the focus of the little girl who “each morning wrote [her] name on the dusty cabinet” and every other available surface in her house as her her mother to erased them all everyday (line 1-2,DUSTING). In order to emphasises every action in this poem, to hyten the importance of the simple signature that the little girl put into the dust there were many alliterations, assonance used with personification as the main tool. For example, “my name was swallowed into the towel (…
Life leads us to excessive wishes that often result in a man’s downfall. Sir Philip Sidney in “Thou Blind Man’s Mark” portrays his hypocrisy towards desire and shows how it influenced to their downfall and destruction. In his sonnet, Sidney uses metaphor, alliteration and repetition to convey his feelings for desire.…
The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler was crying his wares. The note of a distant song which someone was singing reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering the eaves.” This is ironic because she is admiring the fresh spring life as an aftermath to her husband’s death. This contradicts the mood of the story. Then she could now be seeing a new life for herself now that her husband in no longer with her. This would make since, because as previously stated, her heart trouble could mean that she is unhappy in her life. This event of her husband dying could be opening new doors and that is why she is seeing light out of all this darkness happening around her.…
The text that I will be analyzing is a poem by Lorna Crozier called The Child Who Walks Backwards. Throughout my analysis I will look into parental abuse, underlying meanings in the lines in the poetry, as well as connections I can make personally to the book. I think it is also important that I bring forth essential messages in the words and statements of the poem. The main theme I will choose to focus on is that abuse does not only happen at school or back alleys, but that it happens in homes as well.…
to the powerful imagery she weaves throughout the first half of the poem. In addition, Olds…