Analyzing Some of Anna Akhmatova's Poetry

The protagonist of the poem is Rosa Parks, a seamstress and an active member in the local NAACP, who refused to give up her seat for a white man. Parks was arrested, which led to a boycott against Montgomery bus system. As a result of more than one year of boycott, the segregation law was announced unconstitutional.

The dramatic realization of the absence of objects during the brief moments of sunset on a snowy evening comes fast under

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.

When I think of a poet, images of scowling, mustached men whose 19th century wardrobe could use an update spring to mind—a somber Edgar Allen Poe type whose ink strokes inquire of unrequited love interests and dreary days alone in the snow. I certainly do not imagine modern, multi-ethnic women who live in the same state as me. However, as soon as I read Natasha Trethewey’s poetry, I immediately admired the way her words so effortlessly danced on the page, my mind’s eye watching the elegant choreography with each syllable read. Moreover, when I learned of her tragic history, and the strength and resilience she possessed to carry on, I could not help but to respect the way she turned pain into beautiful art. The right words carry great power

Clint Smith is a writer, teacher, and doctoral candidate in Education at Harvard University with a concentration in Culture, Institutions, and Society. Smith Clint wrote a poem called “Something You should Know.” The poem is about an early job he had in a Petsmart. The poet allows the readers into his personal life, but before he had trouble opening up to people and his work. Moreover, Clint wrote an insight in the poem about relying in anything to feel safe and he says it is the most terrifying thing any person can do.

Beauty is a subjective idea that focuses on the characteristics preferable to a single species that gives an advantage over another and at the cost of another species survival. Humans have created astounding empires with beautiful cities and monuments because they were the most progressive species that are able to do so because of their capacity for violence. Some empires fear for their survival, so they must eliminate any threat whether it be humans or other animals. The poem, “Thanks” by Yusef Komunyakaa, it symbolizes how humans can become single minded only driven by their own personal desires at the sake of anyone else. Humans naturally commit ugly atrocities to progress their own beauty, or at least idea of, and they instinctively oppose nature because mankind is the dark side of nature.

Young women in particular face serious forms of abuse during this time. The author describes on multiple occasions when she was assaulted by Russian soldiers. While she describes how horrible this makes her feels, she knows that having the Russian officers around her does protect her in certain ways. She is the companion of Russian soldier by the name of Anatol. He and other soldiers

The experience of darkness is both individual and universal. Within Emily Dickinson’s “We grow accustomed to the Dark” and Robert Frost’s “Acquainted with the Night,” the speakers engage in an understanding of darkness and night as much greater than themselves. Every individual has an experience of the isolation of the night, as chronicled in Frost’s poem, yet it is a global experience that everyone must face, on which Dickinson’s poem elaborates. Through the use of rhythm, point of view, imagery, and mood, each poet makes clear the fact that there is no single darkness that is too difficult to overcome.

Abandoned by her mother at three-year-old, married at the age 19, three children at the age of 26, and with only a fifth-grade level education. My mom was in prison for a month after struggling to cross the Mexican border into the United States. My mom came to American seeking a better future where my siblings and I did go hungrier to be able to survive. The poet is describing the word “Migration” that takes a different method in relating what is crossing the border as well as tense perceptive effects that occur when it comes to crossing the border. Rosa Alcala’s poem has persona, metaphor, images and figures speech the author can illustrate the feeling of the poem as attentive vagueness.

However, the poem has fluidity despite its apparent scarcity of rhyme. After examining the alteration of syllables in each line, a pattern is revealed in this poem concerning darkness. The first nine lines alternate between 8 and 6 syllables. These lines are concerned, as any narrative is, with exposition. These lines set up darkness as an internal conflict to come. The conflict intensifies in lines 10 and 11 as we are bombarded by an explosion of 8 syllables in each line. These lines present the conflict within one's own mind at its most desperate. After this climax, the syllables in the last nine lines resolve the conflict presented. In these lines, Dickinson presents us with an archetypal figure that is faced with a conflict: the “bravest” hero. These lines present the resolution in lines that alternate between 6 and 7 syllables. Just as the syllables decrease, the falling action presents us with a final insight. This insight discusses how darkness is an insurmountable entity that, like the hero, we must face to continue “straight” through “Life” (line 20).

In the poem “Passed On” by Carole Satymurti, the speaker tells a story almost as in a novel of their mother and how she left them a box of index cards with advice on life when she died. The speaker’s gender seems to be female. In the poem, the poet presents the theme of growing up and becoming one’s own person through the maturation and acceptance process. She personifies the index cards themselves, comparing them to her mother. They also characterize the speaker and her mother and create a mood of sadness and longing, implying that perhaps the mother has been dead for some time, but the speaker has never truly accepted this.

With “Night,” the eighth poem and first of the second section, darkness descends, bringing with it a series of scenes horrifying and pathetic.

Love makes people become selfish, but it is also makes the world greater. In this poem, the world that the speaker lives and loves is not limited in “my North, my South, my East and West / my working week and my Sunday rest” (9-10), it spreads to “My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song (11). The poem’s imagery dominates most of the third stanza giving readers an image of a peaceful world in which everything is in order. However, the last sentence of the stanza is the decisive element. This element not only destroys the inner world of the speaker, but it also sends out the message that love or life is mortal.

The short stanzas containing powerful imagery overwhelm the readers forcing them to imagine the oppression that the speaker went through in

Some of the poems and essays I have read during this class were relatable to me. Being away from college, I have struggled with not being at home. I have become a different person when I am at school, but when I am home, I feel like I am my normal self again. Some of these authors of the poems and essays that I have read throughout this class has struggled with being somewhere where they don’t belong and that they are someone else when they are not home. Unlike the other poems and essays we have read throughout the course. I enjoyed reading the ones about “home” because I actually understood what they are going through and that I can relate. Some of these poems and essays include “Going Home” by Maurice Kenny, Postcard from Kashmir”, by Agha Shahid Ali, “Returning” by Elias Miguel Munoz and “Hometown” by Luis Cabalquinto. All of these poems deal with duality.