Emotional Change (in Two Poems by Chen Chen) The two poems by Chen Chen, “Popular Street” and “Second Thoughts on a Winter Afternoon,” share a similar concept: the complexity of love between the author and his mother. The poems convey through language the changing the relationship with the mother, as the poet grew up; he lost stability with love from his mother. Both poems contain multiple uses of pronouns “I” and “you” as Chen converses with someone in the poem. The main contrast between these two poems is the tone; the author employs the same themes to convey his conflicted emotional meanings throughout the poem. “Popular Street” uses a playful and humorous voice while “Second Thoughts on a Winter Afternoon” carries a deep sadness through …show more content…
“Second Thoughts on a Winter Afternoon,” is comparing physical and emotional pain. In “Popular Street,” the mother’s love changes when the speaker became attracted to the same sex. Meanwhile, in “Second Thoughts on a Winter Afternoon” the context of the word changes it meaning from “illness” to “cool.” The author makes the contrast between physical illness and emotional sickness. In “Popular Street” the author states, “After my mother’s love became doubtful. After I told her, I liked a boy & she wished I had never been born.” (Line, 19-20) The author expresses his mother’s love has changed once she realized that he was attracted to the same gender. The author is hurt and trying to figure out how to deal with this change. Meanwhile in “Second Thoughts on a Winter Afternoon,” it speaks about how the concept of words changes its meaning in language. For example, the poet states, “your mother is sick & all I can think of is how sick’s also a word for cool, like ill.” (Lines 1-2) Chen speaks about how a change in a word’s meaning may reflect the changing emotions we experience. The main contrast in “Second Thoughts on a Winter Afternoon” is to show the emotional and physical sickness between the two people’s mothers. While in the “Poplar Street,” the poet is speaking to a stranger about the emotional changes of love from his mother; while he has become a stranger to his mother. The stranger is highlighting the …show more content…
“Popular Street,” uses a playful and humorous tone. In contrast with, “Second Thoughts on Winter Afternoon” which is full of depth and sad emotions. “Popular Street” entertains the stranger with a playful tone by saying “Oh. Sorry. Hello. Are you on your way to work, too?”(line, 1-2) The author’s tone is playful and humorous while conversing with the stranger. The second poem “Second Thoughts on a Winter Afternoon” has an opposite tone of “Popular Street.” The tone of “Second Thoughts on a Winter Afternoon” is expressing to his partner an emotional experience that he’s facing. In the poem, it states, “Mommy, though of course, this woman is the mom, mommy to you” (line, 9-10). Chen uses his partner to highlight how he is disconnected from his mother with his tone. He is conveying an emotional and a serious tone in the poems to express the same themes to the reader. By using the first-person perspective by the use of “I” and “you,” to converse with the person he’s talking to about his emotional experience. Chen mirrors the same theme in both of the poems but conveys the tone differently which has different aspects of his emotional conflict with his
In Robert Hayden’s poem “Those Winter Sundays” tells of an individual reminiscing about their father and the sacrifices he made to provide for them. In the poem, the father was not appreciated for his contribution but the narrator seems to now acknowledge the hard work of the father. As the poem progresses the tone of the narrator is one of regret and remorse. The relationship of the parent and child is often one of misunderstanding and conflict until the experiences life more and come in grasps of the parent’s intention. So, the relation between a parent and child evolves as the child emerges to adulthood.
The poem “The White Porch” by Cathy Song is an illustration of maturity and coming of age. There is an innocent tone to the beginning of the poem with sensual undertones as the writing progress’s. In the poem, a woman is reminiscing about her young womanhood as she sits on her porch awaiting her presumed lover. Song creates the character of the woman to be of a homemaker, describing her duties taking care of laundry, having a cake in the oven and snapping beans in her lap. Through the visualization that Song creates it is assumed that the woman is pregnant, and as she is waiting for her husband she thinks back to the things she herself used to do when she was younger with her own mother. She is reflecting on the way her mother raised her thinking about how she wants to raise her own child. The speaker admits to sneaking in her lover late at night behind her mother’s back, but does not seem to feel remorseful because all her decisions led to where she is in her life now. Cathy Songs poem “The White Porch” portrays the transition of a girl into a woman using symbolism, imagery and simile.
The same things in differnet environment can exactly different meaning. Both speakers use same imagery as setting to expresstheir attitude. The speaker in “The Lonely Land”shows his negative feeling. Nevertheless, the speaker in “the summer in Yakima Valley indicate opposite feeling in the poem. Both speakers understand the importance of nature; however the speaker in “The Lonely Land” express cold and loneliness feeling from setting and the speaker in “Summer In Yakima Valley” express relaxed and peaceful feeling in the poem.
poem it says, “…and looking down into…” as if to say that the Bin Men
One of the major differences that sets these poems apart from each other is that the narrator uses the pronoun “you” for “In the Suburbs.” The narrator could be an outsider looking in, offering a different perspective of the usual idyllic life of a middle class citizen. They could also be addressing themselves, and reflecting on the fact that they’re the one who is stuck in the suburb.
Dawn revisited is a poem about the new ideas one could have in life and how it is easy to start again if things don’t go too well, as the poem starts with ‘imagine you wake up with a second chance’ which automatically introduces the topic to the reader. The poem is laid-out in a way that – especially ‘hawks his pretty wares’ - gives us an unimaginable image of the beauty of dawn, a description that would want people to manage their time in order to see it. The poet states ‘if you don’t look back the future never happens’ which shows us that one could only learn by making mistakes and that she perhaps learnt from experience and does not want people to miss out on the beauty of nature just like she might have done previously. She suggests
In this literary analysis it is essential to compare and contrast Cathy Song’s poem “Heaven” and Bryan Thao Worra’s poem “Pen/Sword” to give the reader a better understanding of what the authors’ are conveying to their readers. The similarities in the style, word choice, and theme will be compared, along with the differences of style, word choice, and theme reflected throughout each poem. Furthermore, I will determine the meaning behind the broken up and/or the way the lines of each poem while describing why the lines are strategically placed throughout the pieces. This will allow me to identify the meaning that the authors’ are explaining to the reader. Each poet specifically writes to give the reader(s) a picture of what they are feeling and defining their emotion through their writing.
From the beginning of the poem, the reader can tell that the tone of the poem is consistent. There is no shift in tone, it’s simply sad and bitter. The father notices the innocence of his daughter and knows that there is bad luck that is coming for her future. The reader is able to see the father’s concern throughout the poem when he says that the “night’s slow poison” will change her. He knows that this issue cannot be changed, so he is doing what he can to avoid it becoming a bigger dilemma. By the end of the poem, it’s easy to notice that the father has become angry about the situation that is brought upon him. In the last two lines, the father decides that he doesn’t want to have children because of all the things he sees in their future, nothing but pain and suffering. His decision is expressed in the way he says “These speculations sour in the sun. I have
In the poem the speaker tells us about how his father woke up early on Sundays and warmed the house so his family can wake up comfortably. We are also told that as he would dress up and head down stairs he feared ¨the chronic angers of that house¨, which can be some sort of quarrel between his father and his mother in the house. This can also lead the reader to believe that the father may have had been a hard dad to deal with. However the father would polish his son's shoes with his cracked hands that ached. This shows the love that the father had for his son and now that the son has grown he realizes what his father did for him. The sons morals and feelings have changed him because as he has grown to become a man he has learned the true meaning of love is being there for one's family and not expecting it to be more than what it is. Consequently this teaches him a lesson on how much his father loved him and how much he regrets not telling him thank
The use of symbolism and imagery is beautifully orchestrated in a magnificent dance of emotion that is resonated throughout the poem. The two main ideas that are keen to resurface are that of personal growth and freedom. Furthermore, at first glimpse this can be seen as a simple poem about a women’s struggle with her counterpart. However, this meaning can be interpreted more profoundly than just the causality of a bad relationship.
The passage is written in first-person narrative, providing the reader with meaningful insights from the boy who has lost his mother. The author makes use of varying sentence styles. Simple sentences are used to merely narrate the event - ‘Mr. Chin was shouting instructions. Mrs. Chin called my name.’ These simple sentences help maintain a slow pace of the text, and create a dull tone to commemorate the death. Some sentences like the ones in Lines 3-5 are fragmented, revealing the incident one step at a time.
The second poem is “Home Burial”, by Robert Frost. The poem is about a couple, Amy and her husband, losing their son causing Amy to go through emotional turmoil. Amy is trying to avoid the situation by trying to leave, but her husband is trying to pull her back, so he can figure out what’s wrong with her and as the poem continues the drama increases. The topic of the poem is sadness, which ties into the theme of Amy and her husband’s relationship is on the rock. The theme in this poem is that everyone goes through sadness, but bottling it up doesn’t help the situation. This is due to the death of their son and as the story continues the husband is trying to understand, why Amy is acting the way she is but she receives the message as rude and offensive. Most of the tension is coming from the graveyard, which resigns on their lot that contains their relatives and son. In lines 1-2, it expresses my theme because it has both
A child’s future is usually determined by how their parent’s raise them. Their characteristics reflect how life at home was like, if it had an impeccable effect or destroyed the child’s entire outlook on life. Usually, authors of any type of literature use their experiences in life to help inspire their writing and develop emotion to their works. Poetry is a type of literary work in which there is an intensity given to the expression of feelings and ideas by the use of distinct styles and rhythm. These distinct styles include different types of poems such as sonnets, villanelles, free verse, imagist poems, and many more. And these distinct styles are accentuated with the use of literary devices such as metaphors, similes, imagery, personification, rhyme, meter, and more. As a whole, a poem depicts emotions the author and reader’s can relate to. In the poem’s “Those Winter Sundays,” by Robert Hayden, and “My Papa’s Waltz,” by Theodore Roethke, we read about two different parent and child relationships. These two poems help portray the flaws and strength’s parents exhibit and how their children follow their actions and use it as a take away in their grown up lives.
The atmospheric conditions may represent the hardships that the couple had to go through in their relationship, and may also be used contrast the unpredictability of the outside world compared to the steady relationship that the couple have. ‘A Youth Mowing’ is also a poem about relationships, this time it is between a younger couple. The river ‘Isar’ is a symbol of freedom, it represents the way that the men’s lives are. However, this sense of liberty is broken by the ‘swish of the scythe-strokes’ as the girl takes ‘four sharp breaths.’ Sibilance is used to show that there is a sinister undertone to the freedom that the boy has which will be broken by the news that his girlfriend is bringing. She feels guilty for ‘what’s in store,’ as now the boy will have to be committed to spending the rest of his life with her, and paying the price for the fun that they had.
The poem “How Do I Love Thee”, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and “What Lips My Lips Have Kissed”, by Edna Vincent Millay are both well-known poems that both have themes of love. (LIT, Kirszner & Mandell, Pg. 490). In both poems the poet helps the reader experience a lot of emotion with the use of certain words. There are speakers in both poems. In Mrs. Browning’s poem, the speaker is undefined, leaving open that the speaker could be a he or she. Millay’s poem which is written in first person, the speaker is more defined leading the reader to believe it is a she who is talking about love in the past tense. Both poems are sonnets written with fourteen lines, and written in Italian style. When comparing these poems we will be looking at the use of rhyme scheme and metaphors and how they were used to express emotions in these two sonnet poems.