Lorde Poetry Analysis

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

In analyzation, the connotation aspect of this poem is how women during this time, specifically white women, used their power over black men and their freedom. Although the texts’ literal interpretation, or denotation,

To begin with, the author’s implementation of short sentence fragments throughout the poem illustrates the exasperation and frustration bottled up in women in response to

In “It’s a Woman's World,” Eavan Boland utilizes several literary techniques to reveal the poem’s complex conception of a “woman’s world.” Boland sheds light on the static nature of a woman’s role in society, which sparks their desire to overcome the societal limitations that is put upon them by men. Through her sarcastic title, use of personification, and critical tone, Boland is able to expose both genders stereotypical responsibilities and to convey society’s desire to silence women’s outrage against their role in this world.

The 2016 census reported that 14% of the United States population was living below the poverty line. And sometimes, desperate times call for desperate measures. Leading people to go as far as committing a crime just to feed their family. This was the theme of Cage The Elephant’s song, “Ain’t No Rest For The Wicked,” written by Matt Schultz. In the song, Schultz utilizes personal experiences and an emotional appeal to address the issues of poverty to the upper classes and to justify how people in poverty or “the Wicked” handle their situation by the means of crime and immoral ways.

One reason I liked this poem was because of the concept and the way it flowed together, I really enjoyed how she described things thoroughly and caused deep observations to be made. One of my favorite lines is “A man leaves the world and the streets he lived on grow a little shorter.” I hold this line to be special because it really stuck with me and opened my eyes somewhat.

Someone once said, the identity of one changes with how one perceives reality. As we try to find our purpose in life, we begin to create an identity different from the one given to us. “From the House of Yemanja”, author Audre Lorde conveys a story of a speaker who tries to create her own identity but does not know which identity is truly hers’. Lorde develops the idea of the speaker’s dual identity through juxtaposition as well as imagery. W.E.B DuBois’ piece, “The Souls of Black Folks”, talks about the struggles African Americans face in a white dominated world. Dubois develops his theme by using eloquence as well as magniloquence language to develop a persuasive central idea to ultimately destroy the double-identities. Both Lorde and DuBois develop a central idea around the idea of twoness: the sense that mentally, one is split into two different personalities. By using rhetorical devices; a technique designed to have a persuasive or impressive effect on its audience, Lorde and DuBois convey their stories how twoness through their writings.

The 1920’s were an eventful time in history for both men and women alike. There were laws preventing the consumption of alcohol and women’s suffrage movements. Since Edna St. Vincent Millay was a young woman during the 1920’s, she easily wrote poems about the changing societal values and structure, especially from a women’s perspective. Many poets, like Millay, use techniques in their poetry such as imagery and tone to convey a particular message to their audience. In this case, Millay uses techniques such as imagery and extended metaphor to describe the relationship between man and woman and how the changing times have brought about a type of woman who is not as “obedient” as she has been before. The poem she writes is a sign of the changing

Audre Lorde once said, “I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different than my own.” These “shackles” Lorde referred to are the almost inescapable gender constructs seen across society. The injustice women face affects all layers of their lives and freedom. In her novel, Sandra Cisneros, poignantly depicts the oppression women face by demonstrating their limited future opportunities, forced dependency on men, and aggressive sexualization from a young age.

Audre Lorde also uses situations that the reader can relate to making the poem more meaningful to the reader. An example of this is in her poem “Hanging Fire”, This is a poem about a girl who has a hard time being a teenager, who worries about acne, boys, grades, clothes, and what others think of her. In this poem, the teen also worries about dying and starts to think that death could prevent her from doing things in life, through all of her struggles the young woman also lacks support from her mother, shown in the poem when the girl says “And momma’s in the bedroom with the door closed”.But the part of this poem that most people can relate to is the character discovering the difficulties of being a teen. In stanza 3 line 31 the poem

Akin to intersectional romance fiction, poetry is equivalently as radical. Poetry magnifies the significance of language as a revolutionary tool, one that liberates women and cultivates an environment in which women are free to address their aspirations and anxieties while condemning the ideals of a society that operates under the canons of male chauvinism. In a collection of letters published as a tribute to the late Audre Lorde in Off Our Backs, a feminist newspaper journal written for women by women, one anonymous contributor discusses how Lorde “encourages all women to find their own means of expression, their own poetry to value and to use” (Tyler 32) in her piece “Poetry Is Not a Luxury”. In the piece, Lorde discusses how for women, poetry is not a nonessential indulgence, as Caucasian men throughout history have suggested through how they render poetry as an opportunity to “cover [a] desperate wish for imagination without insight” (Lorde, “Poetry Is Not a Luxury” 36). Lorde contends that poetry is a “vital necessity of [the] existence” (Lorde, “Poetry Is Not a Luxury” 36) of women because it establishes the infrastructure on which women “predicate [their] hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action” (Lorde, “Poetry Is Not a Luxury” 36). Lorde’s text motivates women to exercise “the power of the word, a freedom for women greatly feared by…patriarchal society” (Tyler 32). Lorde states the poetry

the quote I chose for this blog is from page 21. I wanted “I had been trying to use my brain on my problems for twenty years. I was over my brain” This is a quote from the Pharmacists mate by Amy Fusselman the new book we are reading. In this part of the story the main character is having a crisis trying to find a healer that will help her. She found a healer in New York city only to find out that healer had moved.

Great writers convey their message without bluntly stating it to their audience. Hardy’s insightful poetry conjures the minds of his audience and encourages them to reflect on how inhumane the social classes were and how poorly women were treated without every saying it. Because of its’ simplicity and relatability Hardy’s clever use of an everyday conversation between two women is more powerful than any lengthy lecture or straightforward statement he could have given.

(Meehan, 32-33) He reaches the conclusion that “in view of the dehumanizing iconic functions that woman has been assigned in the male literary and political tradition, such as the ever-beautiful muse, the static national symbol, the woman poet must now strive to put herself as a human being back into the poem, with all its existential consequences. Still, to become a heroine, to carry her mother’s spear, in Paula Meehan’s words, must not mean imitating the strategies of the immortal male hero. It must imply the courage to admit to her own inevitable death, to the ageing of her body” (Sedlmayr, 270). Even though male poets no longer possess complete domination over the poetry genre, female poets still face several challenges related to this past dominance.