Life Is Like The Stanzas Of A Poem

Society judges those who are different both physically and mentally and those that don’t fit in with the social norm but it is up to the individuals to look past that and rise against their judgement. Shane Koyczan’s ‘To This Day’, is a poem about those who have been bullied throughout their lives and its long term impact it leaves. The poem tells multiple stories of the victims of bullying due to their physical appearance or their mental state. The poem begins with a personal adecdote talking about how he earned his first nickname. The anecdote is used to allow the readers of the poem to relate as it doesn’t rely on the abstract logic as the anecdote provides proof. He tells his story about how he used to love pork chops, and didn’t know the difference between pork chops and karate chops, until he was called pork

Cinderella is a childhood fairytale that we all love and remember. It is a tragedy that turns into love and happily ever after in the end. In contrast to this popular story, Anne Sexton's version of Cinderella is a dark and twisted version of the classic fairy tale. It takes on a whole new perspective and is fairly different from the childhood fairytale that most of society knows. The poem takes less of a focus on the happy ever after in Cinderella and makes it into vivid bloody and violent images. She retreats more toward the pain and neglect. The poem is not based off the Disney version of Cinderella, but rather original dark version by Brothers Grimm. Sexton uses a very sarcastic and

Anne Sexton was a junior-college dropout who, inspired by emotional distress, became a poet. She won the Pulitzer Prize as well as three honorary doctorates. Her poems usually dealt with intensely personal, often feminist, subject matter due to her tortured relationships with gender roles and the place of women in society. The movies, women’s magazines and even some women’s schools supported the notion that decent women took naturally to homemaking and mothering (Schulman). Like others of her generation, Sexton was frustrated by this fixed feminine role society was encouraging. Her poem “Cinderella” is an example of her views, and it also introduces a new topic of how out of touch with reality fairy tales often are. In “Cinderella”, Anne Sexton uses tone and symbolism to portray her attitude towards traditional gender roles and the unrealistic life of fairy tales.

Our identity is inimitable, yet ironically it is affected by society and enigmatic forces that define our external relationships. This inextricable link between identity and social environment not only shape our identity, but gives us a sense of purpose, however when we fail to establish our sense of congruity with society through metaphysical acceptance, as a result of social isolation we can feel an abyss within our lives often forcing us to look into our inner self, as exemplified in Gwen Harwood’s poetry, especially her poems “At Mornington” and “Mother Who Gave Me Life”. These also reflect and force us to explore the impact time has on people and how this can inevitably lead to a reassessment of one’s life.

In chapter one, also known as ‘the hurting’, the author focuses on trauma that people have dealt with such as sexual abuse from a father or relative, failed relationships with parents, and difficulty with one’s self-expression. One of the poems in chapter one states that the girl’s first kiss was by the age of five and was carried out in an aggressive manner by the young boy, she assumes that he had picked that up from his father’s interactions with the mother. In the poem it says “He had the smell of starvation on his lips which he picked up from his father feasting on his mother at 4 a.m.” It is insinuated that the father uses forceful actions towards the mother during times that should be gentle and affectionate. In that specific poem she felt as if that was when she was taught that her body is only for giving to those who wanted out of satisfaction but she should feel ‘anything less than whole’. In another poem in chapter one, there is a family setting during dinner in which the father orders the mother to hush. This represents how women are constantly oppressed in their own

Gwen Harwood’s poetry endures to engage readers through its poetic treatment of loss and consolation. Gwen Harwood’s seemingly ironic simultaneous examination of the personal and the universal is regarded as holding sufficient textual integrity that it has come to resonate with a broad audience and a number of critical perspectives. This is clearly evident within her poems ‘At Mornington’ and ‘A Valediction’, these specific texts have a main focus on motif that once innocence is lost it cannot be reclaimed, and it is only through appreciating the value of what we have lost that we can experience comfort and achieve growth.

Take a minute to imagine “Men looking like they had been/attacked repeatedly by a succession /of wild animals,” “never/ ending blasted field of corpses,” and “throats half gone, /eyes bleeding, raw meat heaped/ in piles.” These are the vividly, grotesque images Edward Mayes describes to readers in his poem, “University of Iowa Hospital, 1976.” Before even reading the poem, the title gave me a preconceived idea of what the poem might be about. “University of Iowa Hospital, 1976” describes what an extreme version of what I expected the poem to be about. The images I

The authors use of imagery paints a disconsolate scene of the struggles of young women. Anne Sexton grew up in a rather dismal home, noting abuse and neglect. Her parents were moderately wealthy, but mentally unavailable. Her depression took a turn for the worst after the birth of her first child. Since that severity wasn’t always there to haunt her, it

Anne Sexton was a junior-college dropout who, inspired by emotional distress, became a poet. She won the Pulitzer Prize as well as three honorary doctorates. Her poems usually dealt with intensely personal, often feminist, subject matter due to her tortured relationships with gender roles and the place of women in society. The movies, women’s magazines and even some women’s schools supported the notion that decent women took naturally to homemaking and mothering (Schulman). Like others of her generation, Sexton was frustrated by this fixed feminine role society was encouraging. Her poem “Cinderella” is an example of her views, and it also introduces a new topic of how out of touch with reality fairy tales often are. In “Cinderella”, Anne Sexton uses tone and symbolism to portray her attitude towards traditional gender roles and the unrealistic life of fairy tales.

You know those memories that never seem to go away like the ones that you look back on for the laughs, midnight memories, or the stories that you will tell your children. Unfortunately, not all memories are that happy. In the poem, "A Litany", Gregory Orr is recalling the day that he accidentally shot his brother when they were both children. The poem portrays a time of great sadness that Orr wants to share with the world as a way to cope and to speak to others who have had significant death experiences. In his poem, Gregory Orr utilizes poetic elements to show that one event can change one’s life for forever.

The poem starts with the statement, “a woman who loves a woman is forever young” (Sexton 1-3). These beginning lines set a common theme of eternal youthfulness and lesbian desire. In her introduction, Sexton also plays on the imagery of old versus young in her descriptions of “old breast against young breast”

Every author, poet, playwright has a subtle message that they would like present to their audience. It may be a lifelong struggle that they have put into words, or a multiple page book that took a lifetime to write. A poet by the name of Anne Sexton sought out to challenge society’s views of women by writing “Her Kind”. A poet, a playwright, and an author of children’s books, Anne Sexton writes about the conflicts of a social outcast living in modern times. She voices the hardships she faces through three different speakers in her poem. At the end of the poem, the woman is not ashamed nor afraid of whom she is and is ready to die in peace. In Anne Sexton’s poem “Her Kind”, the main idea the speaker is depicting is the multiple stereotypes placed on a woman, by society. Sexton’s vivid use of imagery paints a picture of the witch, house wife, and mother cliché, while also implying the poem is autobiographical as Sexton went through her own personal struggles during her life.

Another useful tool in analyzing a poem is to identify poetic devices, meter, and a rhyme scheme. Through her deft use of extended metaphor, Bradstreet weaves an intricate web of parallels between parent and author and between child and book--both relationships of creator to creation. This use of metaphor allows the reader to relate emotionally to Bradstreet’s situation. In line seven, we see the uses of litotes, “At thy return my blushing was not small,” to express the depth of her embarrassment. She also uses metonymy in line eight to express her pain more clearly, “My rambling brat (in print) should mother call.” The simile used in line nine stresses her objection to the published work, “I cast thee by as one unfit for light.” Then in line 19, the poetic device of consonance is used which provides emphasis on her warning, “In this array ‘mongst vulgars may’st thou roam.” In this poem, through the use of personification and apostrophe Bradstreet conveys her feelings and emotions. Anne Bradstreet ensures her poem’s success by linking the triumph and tragedy of authorship with the pain and pleasure of creating and nurturing human life. The meter used is

The poem “Her Kind” by Anne Sexton describes different scenarios of a woman. In the poem, Anne Sexton uses three different characters to explain that she has been each of them in some way. Society places a gender role on what women are allowed to be and how they should behave, condemning the women who do not conform, trying to change them into society’s perfect view of what a woman should be. While this poem shows the author describing herself in terms of the supernatural, it ultimately shows that rebellion against societal norms for women comes at a cost, sparking judgement from a society that sees women as common housewives. Her imagery in the poem represents how she is seen as a disfigured and

Margaret Atwood creates a haunting and beautiful piece describing the experience a sad child goes through. She structures her poem by using five stanzas; two stanzas consisting of five lines, then one stanza with ten lines, and ending with two stanzas consisting of five lines. She uses simple yet powerful diction, tone, metaphors, similes, symbolism, and imagery to show the unknown speaker giving advice to a sad child. Her message/theme is sadness is a part of life and there are different ways to deal with it, but when death comes the thing that one is being sad about doesn’t matter.