Lost: Poem Analysis

Richard Blanco is a Cuban- American poet who was given the oppurunity to write an inaugaration poem for Barack Obama's second swearing-in. He wrote a poem titled "One Today" that praised the good and unique things about the United States and also the everyday people who's daily routines help to make America the proud country that it is.

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.

Clint Smith is a writer, teacher, and doctoral candidate in Education at Harvard University with a concentration in Culture, Institutions, and Society. Smith Clint wrote a poem called “Something You should Know.” The poem is about an early job he had in a Petsmart. The poet allows the readers into his personal life, but before he had trouble opening up to people and his work. Moreover, Clint wrote an insight in the poem about relying in anything to feel safe and he says it is the most terrifying thing any person can do.

Dawe in his poem ‘Drifters’ presents the inevitable nature of change, particularly change that is unwanted. Moreover, Dawe manifests the diverse responses individuals have when encountering change in their lives and the transformative impact of change. These prominent themes are manipulated through the motif of travelling, flashbacks and symbolism.

The speaker then moves to a restaurant where he picks up a chicken noodle soup and gets his want across to the staff by simply pointing at it. The stanza ends with the line “I am adjusting well to the new way”(10), showing that according to the speaker the new law is working fine for him and he is able to live a normal life. However, with the entrance into the third stanza we begin to question whether the speaker naturally only acted this way towards the phone call and the staff in the restaurant, without using any words or he was actually saving them for his lover. The second reason is more likely to be true, due to his statement in the next verse “I call my long distance lover, proudly say I only used fifty-nine today. I saved the rest for you”(11/13). Here, the second character is introduced in the poem – the long distance lover. It becomes obvious that the speaker, who is most probably a man, is in a long distance relationship with a woman and the way communicate is via phone call. The speaker tells his lover proudly he has only used fifty-nine words today and has saved the rest for her. This shows the speaker’s devotion towards his lover because he has chosen to use most of his words on her.

Death is a topic that unites all of humanity. While it can be uncomfortable to think about, confronting death in unavoidable. “Dying” addresses that discomfort and universal unwillingness to consider the inevitability of death. Pinsky’s use of imagery, symbolism, and tone create a poetic experience that is like death, something every reader can relate to. In “Dying,” Pinsky describes how people are oblivious and almost uncaring when it comes to the thought of death. Pinsky is trying to convince the reader that they shouldn’t ignore the concept of death because life is shorter than it seems.

The Vacuum by Howard Nemerov talks about a widower and his late wife, and how he uses the vacuum as a symbol for her death. The poem expresses deep sorrow and sadness that derive from the loneliness of the speaker, after his other half’s passing away. Nemerov attempts to take his readers on a grief-stricken journey, by strategically employing figurative language (mainly personification, metaphor, simile, and alliteration), fractured rhyme schemes and turns in stanza breaks in the poem.

is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and

"Grey's Anatomy" is a popular drama doctor show to this day. They had a music event episode where everyone sang and they had two songs that display the symbolic cycle. Both pieces compliment each other because of their similarities in the symbolic cycle, birth and death. The visual display of the songs fit together because of the setting and how the music itself develops throughout each song. These songs were chosen to be in "Grey's Anatomy" because they illustrate real life of losing someone and being blind to someone's pain they try to hide. In "How to Save a Life" and "The Story" the composers develop the theme of life and death.

Is there a future to look forward to beyond life itself? This is a thought that is often posed in, famous poet, Tracy K Smith’s poems as well. She has been named the U.S. Poet Laureate and has written several successful, meaningful poems in her career. No one knows what is after life, but could one at least have hope for what is to come to be pleasant or look forward to whatever the future holds. Smith, in several of her poems such “The Universe as a Primal Scream” and “Flores Woman,” displays a hope for better events to come, despite the pains and hardships she faced during the course of her lifetime.

we do not realize how things that we do every day are a determination of not only our current but

Poetry can be divided up into different forms, more easily expressing an author’s emotions and intent with their poetry. For analyzing purposes I chose the poems Self-Help by Michael Ryan, Ghazal by Agha Shahid Ali, Psalm 150 by Jericho Brown, and Emergency by Michael Dylan Welch.

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.

“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed” declared by an influential leader Martin Luther King Jr. As a soldier againsts unfairness, King strongly states that people should fight for freedom. Driven by human nature, humans are always chasing freedom. In “A Century Later,” the Pakistan-born British poet Imtiaz Dharker uses the poetic devices of symbolism, diction, and allusion to explore how perseverance drives freedom.

Some of the poems and essays I have read during this class were relatable to me. Being away from college, I have struggled with not being at home. I have become a different person when I am at school, but when I am home, I feel like I am my normal self again. Some of these authors of the poems and essays that I have read throughout this class has struggled with being somewhere where they don’t belong and that they are someone else when they are not home. Unlike the other poems and essays we have read throughout the course. I enjoyed reading the ones about “home” because I actually understood what they are going through and that I can relate. Some of these poems and essays include “Going Home” by Maurice Kenny, Postcard from Kashmir”, by Agha Shahid Ali, “Returning” by Elias Miguel Munoz and “Hometown” by Luis Cabalquinto. All of these poems deal with duality.