A Poetry Reading At West Point Poem

Claude McKay was a black man born in Jamaica, he choose literature very on in life and kept with it. He moved to the United States at age twenty three to study at Tuskegee Institute and was immediately shocked by the blatant racism prevalent in Charleston, South Carolina. He moved to New York and shortly after became co-editor of The Liberator, a famous abolitionist newspaper, he wrote some of his most revered poems while working there. He was part of the Harlem Renaissance a movement that was a reawakening of artistic and cultural talents of African American people in the United States and helped to reinvigorate their pride in being black.

Richard Blanco is a Cuban- American poet who was given the oppurunity to write an inaugaration poem for Barack Obama's second swearing-in. He wrote a poem titled "One Today" that praised the good and unique things about the United States and also the everyday people who's daily routines help to make America the proud country that it is.

Lorna Dee Cervantes' poem, “Poema para los Californios Muertos” (“Poem for the Dead Californios”), is a commentary on what happened to the original inhabitants of California when California was still Mexico, and an address to the speaker's dead ancestors. Utilizing a unique dynamic, consistently alternating between Spanish and English, Cervantes accurately represents the fear, hatred, and humility experienced by the “Californios” through rhythm, arrangement, tone, and most importantly, through use of language.

In this essay I am going to compare and contrast ‘When we two parted’ a poem of George Gordon, Lord Byron’s written in 1815 and Letitia Elizabeth Landon’s ‘Love’s last lesson’ written in c1838, both poets are British and of the romantic period.

The author has shown his desires in the first verses of the poem. One of his wishes being that “[Students should] walk inside the poem’s room” with this stanza he states that a way to connect with a poem is if students would take in every detail of the poem’s words and structure the way they do when they are in a friend’s house for the very first time, to look around each word. After stating his desires, Collins is more realistic when describing how students treat poems. He illustrates that “[Students] torture a confession out of [the poem]”. This demonstrates that when people misunderstand the purpose of a poem, the poem itself feels tortured by students forcing its purpose. Collins has shared his desires and the reality of a poet through the use of personification by stating how a student should connect with a poem (by walking through its rooms) and how they treat the poem

Born in Senegal around 1753, Phillis Wheatley became an important American poetic figure. At the age of 8, she was kidnapped and brought to Boston on a slave ship and upon her arrival to Boston, she was quickly sold to John Wheatley (Bio). Under her new family, Phillis adopted the master’s last name, taken under the wife’s wing, and showed her deep intelligence. Even though suffering from poor health, Phillis’s intelligence did not go unnoticed; she received lessons in theology, English, Latin and Greek. Being a slave did not stop Phillis from learning and experiencing her life, she participated in the master’s family events and eventually became a family member. The irony in this situation is

In the middle of the poem, the speaker arrives at the number of casualties from the war. When he reads this number he can’t believe that he is still alive. As he reads down the names he uses the visual imagery and simile to describe how he expected to find his own name in “letters like smoke” (line 16). This helps the reader understand how lucky the speaker felt about somehow escaping the war still alive. As he goes

Now that you have read the poem and considered the meanings of the lines, answer the following questions in a Word doc or in your assignment window:

“The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” written by Randall Jarrell is a poem that introduces three major ideas in only five lines. These ideas are birth, death, and war. Jarrell is able to accomplish a lot in this short poem by using diction and syntax such as metaphor and figurative language.

Prompt: Read the following two poems very carefully, noting that the second includes an allusion to the first. Then write a well-organized essay in which you discuss their similarities and differences. In your essay, be sure to consider both theme and style.

Throughout the course we have learned how to read and interpret poetry with a better understanding of the mechanics that power the poem. Tone, pace, rhyme scheme, theme, and other various components within a poem develop an understanding of the work allowing for critical analysis. By reading poetry comprehending its various nuances and being able to reflect on the period of which it is written, provides a view into the past. Using culture, economics, and race are all factors that influence the writer and may even be the theme of the poem. A poem that had caught my eye recently, All-American Sestina although written in 1940, contains some of the issues that we are faced with today. It will be intriguing to consider the past before the united states entered world war two and examine how the author perceived the country at the time and how these matters have shaped over the course of 77 years.

Reflections Within is a non-traditional stanzaic poem made up of five stanzas containing thirty-four lines that do not form a specific metrical pattern. Rather it is supported by its thematic structure. Each of the five stanzas vary in the amount of lines that each contain. The first stanza is a sestet containing six lines. The same can be observed of the second stanza. The third stanza contains eight lines or an octave. Stanzas four and five are oddly in that their number of lines which are five and nine.

causes the poem to flow, and thus lightens up the dark and serious issue of war. The lines "But ranged as infantry, And staring face to face, I shot at him as he at me, And killed him in his place." are easy to read; however, their meaning is extremely

Use of free verse in this poem creates a lack of structure that appears to parallel the soldier’s own lack of structure and direction in his own life after he leaves the war. The poem begins with the image of a soldier's and his squadron raiding a farmhouse:

The poem begins with two lines which are repeated throughout the poem which convey what the narrator is thinking, they represent the voice in