Marilyn Nelson Waniek's 'The Century Quilt'

Terrance Hayes has an articulate style to his poem, “What it Look Like,” in that it has an abnormal flow to it. First, there is no rhyme scheme to it. There are numerous amounts of poems that do not have a rhyme, but for the most part they have some other type of structure to them. This type of structure could include a certain number of syllables per line or they could display a certain number of words per line. Other structures could include blank verse, epic, acrostic, etc. Terrance Hayes’s Poem, “What it Look Like,” is an example of a free

In “The Century Quilt”, the speaker illustrates the importance of the family quilt in which determines her future heritage to pass on. The speaker states “My sister and I were in love with Meema’s Indian blanket.” to create nostalgic tone and to relive a sentimental moment in her life. The blanket provided peace, love, and safety to the speaker during the times she spent underneath it. “I remembered how I’d planned to inherit that blanket, how we used to wrap ourselves at play in its folds and be chieftains and

The poem does indeed have a rhyme scheme, yet doesn?t conform to conventional forms of rhyme such as A, B, A, B, etc. Rather, each stanza seems to follow the order of A, B, C, A, C, B, which may not be apparent to the reader at first, but doesn?t

The most obvious poetic devise of this poem is the rhyming scheme. Rhyming is when there is close similarity in the final sounds of two or more words or lines of writin.

In “The Century Quilt,” Marilyn Nelson Waniek utilizes several literary techniques to represent the speaker’s undying heritage through her family heirloom that binds generations with one another. As an indication of the diversity and complexity within her family, the speaker goes into depth about the immense effect her Meema’s blanket had on her growth into a woman and the etching along her own quilt that represents her Native American pride. With the use of evocative imagery and symbolism of her culture’s oppression, Waniek depicts the speaker’s remorseful tone towards the recurring theme of absence within her family, that forces her to rely on the quilt for a sense of comfort and guidance.

She also presents a slight rhythm to the reading that allows for smooth reading. In keeping with her open form, there is no set scheme to the rhyme pattern. However, there is a single ending sound constantly repeated without a set pattern throughout the work. She also connects pairs of lines at random just for the sake of making connections to make that particular stanza flow. At the same time, she chose blatantly not to rhyme in certain parts to catch the reader’s attention.

The poem also uses end rhyme to add a certain rhythm to the poem as a whole. And the scheme he employs: aabbc, aabd, aabbad. End rhyme, in this poem, serves to effectively pull the reader through to the end of the poem. By pairing it with lines restricted to eight syllables. The narrator creates an almost nursery-rhyme like rhythm. In his third stanza however, his last line, cutting short of eight syllables, stands with an emphatic four syllables. Again, in the last stanza, he utilizes the same technique for the last line of the poem. The narrator’s awareness of rhyme and syllable structure provides the perfect bone structure for his poem’s rhythm.

In the poem “The Century Quilt” by Marilyn Nelson Waniek the “Century Quilt” is a nostalgic necessity of the narrator. The upbringing of nostalgia throughout the poem is the telling of an Odyssey, a journey home though not physical but emotional. Through the constant use of pragmatic imagery that is erupting with allusions to the past and the unusual use of form that gives the poem a platform to project itself Waniek is able to produce a stunning display of emotion and nostalgia that displays the complex meanings of the quilt and the vital importance of it to the narrator.

physically and mentally, quilting has acted as an art that transcends racial barriers and to bring

Another piece of the literature that has similar attributes to the is the poem “My Mother Pieced Quilts.” The poem uses a mother’s handmade quilt to access and explore the poet’s childhood memories. Like how a quilt is made, the poem pieces together memories in order to show the reader a complete image between the speaker’s childhood and the mother’s strong influence. The speaker shows how her mother’s influential ways shaped into the person the speaker is today. For example, “But it was just that every morning I awoke to these October ripened canvases passed my hand across their cloth faces and began to wonder how you pieced all these together.” This quote shows the interest that the speaker has towards her mother’s quilt, she then explains in great detail how her mother threads pieces of fabrics together, obviously admiring her mother’s works. This reason shows how a person’s identity is influenced by his or her environment.

In Marilyn Nelson Waniek’s poem, “The Century Quilt,” the poet illustrates a story of a family’s heritage and a quilt that stitches them all together. Waniek is able to develop a complex meaning of family within the poem by incorporating a chronological structure, vivid imagery, and a sentimental and dreamy tone. A crucial part of developing a complex meaning within a poem is the structure. Waniek’s poem is structured in chronological order; it goes from past, to present, to future.

In Marilyn Nelson Waniek’s The Century Quilt a strong sense of structure, tone, and imagery is employed to develop complex meanings that the speaker wants to convey to her audience. By organizing each stanza chronologically, using a nostalgic tone, and allowing for imagery to represent more than what is written, Waniek successfully creates a theme- family is a source of comfort and endures the course of life.

The sound of poetry is the most important element than anything else involved with poetry. The sounds of poetry are basically a foundation of desire. It is how the syllables are arranged in a pleasant-sounding pattern to satisfy and please desires even if they have a small meaning or no meaning to them. A poem that is filled with sound but little meaning can be “The Word Plum” by Helen Chasin. It is a poem that uses the sound devices of alliteration and onomatopoeia to bring the plum to life. Using alliteration and onomatopoeia it gives the plum a sound, a savory sound, it’s almost like you can taste and touch the plum in the palm of your hand and the sounds are just rolling off the tongue with every “delicious” bite of “luxury”. In the first line there is just a brief description of how delicious the plum is, but wait there is more. Then Chasin uses alliteration in (line 2) with the two words “pout and push” because they begin with p’s, they’re verbs, four letters, and are not capitalized. Chasin also uses onomatopoeia with the second line, same words “pout and push” to give a new sound of delicious from the first line, and to explain why the plum is so delightful. Once more, she uses alliteration in the third line using “self-love and savoring”; creating that delightful sound of juices from the plum.

Culturally, the symbolism of a quilt is understood to be an heirloom piece that is closely guarded and highly prized. The ownership of the quilt and the generational lines it passes down is known before the piecing is begun. Stitching the pieces together is done by groups of women. The tiny bits of cloth each carry a memory, one from grandpa's shirt, one square from an aunt's Christmas dress, a piece from the flannel nightgown a mother wore as she pulled her sick child close to her bosom. The pieces are carefully and artistically pieced together into a collage of

“love’s long” (line7) and “grieve at grievances” in (line 9) , “woe to woe tell o’er”