Comparing how the poets Levertov and Brathwaite use poetic techniques to convey ideas about belonging to a particular culture Both poets Brathwaite and Levertov describe how people belonging to a culture are changed by a more powerful culture. This is done in both poems by an amount of force. There are symbols and powerful techniques to bring you into this. In the poem ‘Limbo’, unable to protect and defend themselves, the West Africans find themselves exploited by the Europeans. Clearly, poetic techniques and structure are used to convey and influence the meaning of the poems. In the poems ‘Limbo’ and ‘What were they like?’, the poets create powerful symbols which can convey a range of key ideas. Levertov focuses on how …show more content…
Brathwaite however uses the ‘Limbo Stick’ Lowering to show signs of submission and getting higher to show the path they have to fight for, the path to freedom. Brathwaite too uses this technique too imply on the pain and suffering in everyday life the West Africans went through in the poem ‘Limbo’ before and after they were exploited, as did the Vietimese people of Levertov’s ‘What were they like?’ Sound techniques are useful to emphasise important ideas within a poem. Both poets’ poems use alliteration and onomatopoeia to help express the anger and bitterness in the words ‘burned mouth’ taken from Levertov’s ‘what were they like?’ Using alliteration of the sharp, almost pain sound of ‘b’ emphasising the excruciating pain sounds of screaming of the people of the vietimese culture as they burned to death. Then again in Brathwaite’s ‘Limbo’, ‘Dumb gods are raising me’ ‘Dumb’ meaning that the white mans gods will not answer a black mans prayers as proven in the death toll on the ship on the journey back to Europe. Both poets’ poems look deceptively organised, creating eight line stanzas and then breaking the pattern. If you look at the structure of Brathwaite’s ‘Limbo’ it is long and thin possibly representing the stick that the slaves were beaten with by the Europeans. Then again in Levertov’s ‘what were they like the structure of the poem is wavy possibly representing the flames of the Americans chemical weapons. In
Initial picture of a man detached from the world that surrounds him-shows immigrant isolation but also Feliks strength of character.
Many songs have deep and emotional messages throughout them, but few can match the aptitude portrayed in “The Dead Heart” This is depicted with the help of the text structure. “The Dead Heart” was made up of 8 stanzas. The rhyme pattern is ABCC, and changes throughout different stanzas this is to show the displeasure of the Indigenous people, when white men came and took their land. Indigenous people felt many things during this time period, happy and satisfied weren’t what they felt, instead they felt: hopeless, depressed, unfortunate and miserable. There are constant slant rhymes in the song, an example includes: Know your custom don't speak your tongue, white man came took everyone” The pure reason why “Midnight Oil” made these two sentences slant rhyme opposed to normal rhyme is to show the discomfort and distress when the British took their land, their most prized possession and their home. The structure used throughout “The Dead Heart” is phenomenal and truly captivates the true emotion the artist’s intended. Not only is the structure used extraordinary, but the poetic devices used truly entice the audience and elicit an emotional response.
Steven Herrick’s verse novel “By the River” is very successful in conveying the significant ideas about human nature. He uses key themes such as grief, environmental influence and coming of age to explore these ideas. To convey the themes Herrick uses multiple techniques such as imagery, repetition, personification and positive and negative influence throughout his text.
In the work of African descended writers’, water is used as a common symbol. In Edwidge Danticat's Krik? Krak!, Jacques Roumain’s Masters of the Dew, and Paule Marshall’s Praisesong for the Widow, tears, rivers, the sea and other forms of water are used to symbolize change. More specifically, it symbolizes the change between life and death; freedom and confinement. The three writers use water as an ironic symbol, representing life, liberty, and their contradictions.
The three poems show exile and keening, but the poems also show tactile imagery. The Wanderer show tactile imagery in line three, “wintery seas,” describes the setting is in this poem along with the tone. The Seafarer show’s tactile imagery as well, in line nine, “in icy bands, bound with frost,” the tactile imagery in this line describes the coldness of the thoughts in the lonely man’s head. In The Wife’s Lament the tactile imagery is shown in line forty seven, “That my beloved sits under a rocky cliff rimed with frost a lord dreary in spirit drenched with water in the ruined hall.” The wife in this tactile imagery is show how her husband is suffering just
The use of simile in the last stanza ‘matchstick hands as pale as the violet stems they lived among’ is used to compare a frog to violet flowers, which are very delicate and easily broken. The innocence of childhood is painted through this visual technique as the narrator only sees the frogs being very delicate, but to the readers the simile also creates a vivid image of the condition of the ‘Frogs’/ the French. The use of first person helps to create a reminiscent tone about the narrator’s experiences, and further helps to stress the ideas of childhood innocence and the influence of war on children because the poem is written from a child’s perspective. The use of enjambment generates a conversational and personal tone, emphasizing to the readers the reality of the themes discussed throughout the poem. The use of symbolism of frogs as pets and also representing the French highlights the idea that adults saw ‘Frogs’ as insignificant or unworthy to speak about, whereas the children could not understand this adult thought, and they placed exemplary regard to the wellbeing of the
Identity is portrayed similarly in “half caste” and “no problem” because they are both about race and their struggle to be acknowledged as a person. Both poets John Agard and Benjamin Zephaniah use language, for and structure to show the struggle.
of literary and poetic devices, and combined with the social context, form the changed voice of the
On screen there is an example of this device in The Apology Day Breakfast. This device runs on a thought from one line to another without punctuation, this causes breaks of rhythm and effects the rate of reading. The effect of using this device is the creation of a sense of disconnect, as a constant theme running throughout both poems. Similarly, both poems have no consistent rhyming scheme and lack basic punctuation. The decision of both poets to employ an unstructured approach in terms of form and punctuation creates discomfort within the reader and challenges them to makes sense of what has been written. The use of primary sources as annotations in Heart’s Core Lament brings further depth and provides the reader an opportunity to consider the implications of white colonisation on Australia’s indigenous people.
Furthermore, Nemerov also employed alliteration to the poem, reflecting the widower’s constant sorrow and agony. “And still the hungry, angry heart/ Hangs on and howls, biting at air.” (lines 14-15). The repetitive use of ‘h’ in words ‘hangs’ and ‘howls’, as well as the similarity of pronunciation in words “hungry” and “angry” adds emphasis to the suffering of the widower.
Poetry is used by writers such as Zora Neale Hurston and Kate Chopin to express ideas and words through a sense of writing and rhythm that is felt by the poet who is writing it. Years ago, poets would use poetry as a record of history where they told life events that was happening or how modern societies were expected to be. “The Poetry of this period forms the immediate background and matrix of their own work, so much so that unless one keeps the later nineteenth century.” (Venuti, The translator's invisibility, 2017.) Each author made poetry different by changing the tradition and outlook on poetry which is also known as the dead poet’s society. Authors from the past heavily influenced everything that was created in a poem. “Sweat” written by Zora Neale Hurston was written during a time period women didn’t have an opinion and it was frowned upon to disagree or go against your husband. This woman in the story over comes the current times cultural norms. The “Awakening” written by Kate Chopin, speaks out against societies gender roles and says women are evolving to hold more than the titles “mother” and “housewife.” It was the time of shifting order and woman gaining more rights than was handed to them. Kate Chopin used her poetry to give an insight of what limitations she might have encountered in her life as a woman and it explained her choices she chose to help the reader understand what she may have felt towards the subject during this
Because a good structural can make the poem more interesting, then it will be easy to remember for the readers. The main thing that the author want to present is that European dominated their culture and lifestyle, although it was extremely disrespectful. One evidence is “No more firestick that made whites scoff. Now all electric and no better off.” It rhyming sentence had shown the whites were scoff about the Indigenous tools, and replaced them into more advanced things. Another structural device is repetition. The start of the sentence in first two stanzas are “No more.” And “Now” For example the first stanza said “No more boomerang no more spear. Now all civilised colour bar and beer. No more corroboree gay dance and din. Now we got movies and pay to go in.” This repetition highlighted the difference of Indigenous life before and after the European came. Before, Indigenous people were living free and joyful, but after the European came, they lost all of the freedom and they must living like western
In this essay I will be comparing two poems which show connections between people and the places in which they live. The two poems I will be comparing and contrasting are “Blessing” by imtiaz Dharker and “Island Man” by Grace Nichols. Both of these poets express their feelings through these poems. Grace Nichols allocates her experiences of how people feel when separated from the environment and place they lived in for such a long period of time. On the contrary Imtiaz Dharker uses the poem “Blessing” to convey the importance of water for less fortunate people. From both of the poems I have chosen I can see that the poets have written about something they feel is important. The reason why I have chosen these two poems is because both of the
One of my favorite poems is People by Yevgeny Yevtushenko. It explores the devastating nature of what it means to be human and the tragedy that, “Not people die but worlds die in them.” I have always been deeply moved by the poem’s sentiment. However, by examining People through the lens of iconicity and also with Michael Burke’s Iconicity and Literary Emotion in mind, I gained a deeper understanding of how Yevtushenko employs iconic devices to underscore and bolster his poem’s emotional effect. This essay will explore a few of those linguistic techniques and how they enhanced my reading of the poem.
The poet uses different techniques to bring the out the impacts of slavery on the affected individuals (the slaves). The “grave/slave(s)” rhymed couplet recurs at