Hisaye Yamamoto Seventeen Syllables Analysis

Poetry is a reflection of the poet’s life experiences through the use of various poetic devices as well as imagery (Poetry, 2015). The audience is able to comprehend an understanding about the poet’s message and the influence of the idea. Poets generally write from personal experiences, which form a narrative or reflective piece relating to a place, person or thing (McCabe, S, 2010.) Clive James started his poetry career at the University of Sydney, however over a period of time James began to understand the meaning of successful poetry through crafting a poem with an interesting or personal life events. James understood personal experiences created interesting poetry, with the display for love of language (Patrick, 2009). James uses alliteration,

Language is a remarkable thing. It can convey every thought, feeling, and emotion with perfect accuracy. Almost exclusively, language has taken awkward, unfit animals out of nature and made them rulers over the earth and many of its elements. When used well, it has the power to change an individual's view of the world, make someone believe they have seen something they have not, and even more astonishingly, look inside one's self and see what exists. If language is mixed with the tempo of music, something new arises; poetry is born. When words and ideas are set to a beat, they can far more subtly convey concepts that would otherwise need to be explicitly stated and the poem can be appreciated more as a whole,

Not only do these poems share differences through the speakers childhood, but also through the tones of the works.

Language is hard for others to learn and is a challenging to master. Mora creates an obstacle that the mother faces throughout the story by using repetition in the poem, “Elena”. Mora establishes just how embarrassed the subject of the poem is and this further emphasizes the repetition in the poem. In “Elena”, Mora illustrates the obstacle by including “Embarrassed at mispronouncing words/Embarrassed at the laughter of my children” (Mora 16-17). These two lines show that “Embarrassed” is this key word and the mother is giving up slowly because she tries and cannot master the language. At the beginning of the poem she makes an effort and the towards the end she give not as much effort. “Embarrassed of the laughter of my children” (Mora 17), also gives

24). This rhyme helps to flow the emotion from the speaker to the reader. The reader senses the

The poem Suicide Note, written by Janice Mirikitani (1987), talks about a young lady, who has studied in an Asian-American female college. The lady, unfortunately, committed suicide by jumping through her dormitory’s window. She left behind a note, citing reasons that led to her actions. After a critical analysis of the note, her parents were held responsible for her actions; they were pressurizing her to perform better in her exams. The poem, thus, describes the real feelings and the emotions of this young lady, who believes that committing suicide is the only option left to please her parents and to escape the enormous pressure placed on her. The persona uses voice in the poem to bring our attention to the sufferings she was going through, and that led to the devastating event. Voice in poetry is the strong words of a line, stanza or a page that creates a relationship between the audience and the persona. Voice can, therefore, be categorized as imagery, patterns of sounds created, rhythm, tone, and diction (Gahern 166). The following is a description of how the voice in Mirikitani’s suicide note helps the reader understand the persona’s reasoning.

In today’s modern view, poetry has become more than just paragraphs that rhyme at the end of each sentence. If the reader has an open mind and the ability to read in between the lines, they discover more than they have bargained for. Some poems might have stories of suffering or abuse, while others contain happy times and great joy. Regardless of what the poems contains, all poems display an expression. That very moment when the writer begins his mental journey with that pen and paper is where all feelings are let out. As poetry is continues to be written, the reader begins to see patterns within each poem. On the other hand, poems have nothing at all in common with one another. A good example of this is in two poems by a famous writer by

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.

This collection of over ninty words is much more than just a poem. It’s a story of millions of people. It ties in rhymes, sadness, happiness, religion and anger though a broad spectrum of other ideas.

In “Seventeen Syllables”, written by Hisaye Yamamoto, and “Everyday Use”, written by Alice Walker, the relationship between the mother and the daughter is portrayed. In “Seventeen Syllables”, the protagonist, Rosie is an American born Japanese (Nisei) who does not understand well about the Japanese culture, whereas her Issei mother, Mrs. Hayashi was born and raised in Japan and married to America. Mrs. Hayashi loves writing haiku, a traditional Japanese poetry, to escape from the reality of her loveless marriage. In “Everyday Use”, Mama is a traditional Afro-American woman, who receives little education and raised her two daughters by doing ‘man’s job’. Dee instead influenced by the Black Power Movement, tried to trace back her African

poem is not merely a static, decorative creation, but that it is an act of communication between the poet and

Another similarity is that this inter-generational difference both leads to isolation and difficulty in understanding each other in the two stories. In “Seventeen Syllables”, Rosie lacks interest in learning and understanding the Japanese culture as a whole. Even when Rosie goes over to see the Hayano family, she and the four sisters discusses the new coat in English. They have no interest in the Japanese manners which is a major part of the Japanese culture. This difference in lifestyle and habits cause her hard to communicate with her traditional Japanese mother. The conflict between Rosie and Mrs. Hayashi mirrors the conflicts between the Issei and Nisei. The Nisei generation, who knows “formal Japanese by fits and starts”, has no interest

This poem that the mother has written for her daughter is better seen as a “guide” to adulthood due to her use of an extremely long run-on sentence and choice of diction. The run-on sentence consists of a list of commands like “this is how you sweep a corner; this is how you sweep a whole house; this is how you sweep a yard" (22-24). Not only does the run-on sentence depict that this is a guide, but so does the constant repetition of “this is how” and “don’t

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.

Poetry is a reduced dialect that communicates complex emotions. To comprehend the numerous implications of a ballad, perusers must analyze its words and expressing from the points of view of beat, sound, pictures, clear importance, and suggested meaning. Perusers then need to sort out reactions to the verse into a consistent, point-by-point clarification. Poetry utilizes structures and traditions to propose differential translation to words, or to summon emotive reactions. Gadgets, for example, sound similarity, similar sounding word usage, likeness in sound and cadence are at times used to accomplish musical or incantatory impacts.