Poem Analysis: Aunt Ida

The poem “Aunt Ida Pieces a Quilt” by Melvin Dixon and the essay “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid are both from the book Rereading America: Cultural Contexts for Critical Thinking and Writing edited by Gary Colombo, Robert Cullen, and Bonnie Lisle. In “Aunt Ida Pieces a Quilt” by Melvin Dixon, the author describes a story of Aunt Ida and expresses her deep grief and memory of her niece through their former experience of making a quilt. The author wants to let readers understand that numerous people die because of AIDS, and all of them will be remembered in another way. The author tries to spark the readers to sense the sadness and frustration in Ida. In the reading “Girl,” Jamaica Kincaid uses a narrative mode to describe the heavy and tedious work a girl should do in her daily life. This poem-like essay contains a list of instructions given by a mother to her daughter. It seems that she cannot bear these rules anymore and begin shouting in the following article. She demonstrates her strong attitude of her annoyance and discontentment. The author argues the injustice between men and women and shows her willingness to live like men in the freedom. Both the poem and the essay use a lot of strategies in common to present their perspective towards gender such as they both use a narrative mode and they both can give us a feeling that we are at a rapid pace, what’s more, both authors are good at using comparison method in their work. Despite their similarities, each of them has some

This new founded quilt that she found reminded her about Meema and her yellow brown cheeks. The quilt also had a sweet gum leaf on every square of the quilt and ir correlated with the color of the army green blanket. With the leaves on the blanket that would mean that the whole blanket was the ‘tree’ of her new family tree. The different colored patches on the quilt would remind the character of her family and where she came from. The main character describes in the poem of vivid dreams the quilt would allow her to have.

When reading the poem, the reader can relate to Nelson by having a childhood memory imbedded into her mind that includes a certain item that holds a significant meaning. For Nelson, the item that holds a significant meaning is her Meema’s quilt. The theme Nelson relays to her readers in the poem is that a childhood item can hold sentimental value throughout life. In the first stanza she states how she fell “in love with Meema’s Indian blanket” when she was a child, and she even mentions the memories she made with her sister and the quilt. As she grew older, Nelson realized the significance the quilt had impacted on her life. Throughout the poem, Nelson makes connections to what the quilt means to her.

You selected a few different poems to interpret this week then my self. You have a marvelous post summarizing each peculiar one. I likewise read Nostalgia by Billy Collins this week. My conception of the author is he practically ridicules the diverse periods of time as they were portrayed. I enjoyed this poem considering the composer certainly drives the point home with this topic. An abundance of humanity complains about past generations although trends were not the greatest it's persistent rebalance of pros and cons about all aspects of life. I couldn't agree more with you that the theme of the poem demonstrates that humanity wishes regression to the way life once

Her own quilt satisfied her and gave her joy because of all the memories it held from her childhood just like Meema’s. The quilt described with this reminiscent tone enforces a feeling of comfort and serenity as it held past memories of family.

In the poem, “35/10” by Sharon Olds, the speaker uses wistful and jealous tones to convey her feeling about her daughter’s coming of age. The speaker, a thirty-five year old woman, realizes that as the door to womanhood is opening for her ten year old daughter, it is starting to close for her. A wistful tone is used when the speaker calls herself, “the silver-haired servant” (4) behind her daughter, indicating that she wishes she was not the servant, but the served. Referring to herself as her daughter’s servant indicates a sense of self-awareness in the speaker. She senses her power is weakening and her daughter’s power is strengthening. It also shows wistfulness for her diminishing youth, and sadness for her advancing years. This

The quilt that the speaker discovers contains earth tone squares. Each of these colors symbolizes a different family member. A single square that is “the yellowbrown of Mama’s cheeks”. The fact that there is a single square of this color shows that the speaker’s mother is unparalleled. The speaker’s father is described as having “burnt umber pride”. The father was a war veteran as revealed in the first stanza when the speaker talks about the “army green” blanket that was given to the speaker’s father by “Supply”. The reason that the father’s color is brown is because he passed away. The brown symbolizes his burial plot. When the speaker talks about having a brown father and yellow mother this also tells of their skin tones. The

After the long process of thinking of ideas on which to write this last essay on, I decided I would re-write the poem Girl by Jamaica Kincaid. I decided to re-write the poem from the words of a father towards his son as opposed to the words of a mother to her daughter depicted in the original piece. In my piece, I mimicked Kincaid in sentence structure and flow while swapping genders and keeping the overall meaning and significance to family.

Great pieces of literature allow for someone to relate to the piece. As I read “grandma, we are poets” by Lucille Clifton I could relate. I did not read it as if I related to autism, but as I remember all the words that define who were are by society’s standards. In Clifton’s poem emotion could be felt when portraying those with autism and I was determined to make a similar piece.

The poem begins with the speaker reminiscing about her childhood. The speaker describes how she and her sister would play with “Meema’s Indian Blanket” (ln 2) and sleep with Daddy’s “army green”

In the poem, we can observe that the dominant feeling is emotional. Through the stanzas, we can see Aunt Ida’s inner feelings about sending the quilt away from home. Aunt Ida exposes her disagreement about sending the quilt to Washington when she says “We need Junie here with us” (Dixon 71). You can deduce that she wants to keep everything on the family and not send away the only thing that makes her feel so close to Junnie. Moreover,

In the poem “To a Daughter Leaving Home” by Linda Pastan is filed with metaphors and symbols that represent the feeling of a child growing up and moving out onto their own. There comes a time when every parent must send off their child into the world, and these parents feel a multitude of things when sending them off. It paints a picture of a father teaching his young daughter to ride a bike, but uses this image to represent a child growing up. The mixed feeling of pride and fear as the child grows up and moves out of the nest. The use of first person past tense shows us that the narrator is recalling the time they taught their child to ride a bike and are reliving that experience with the child moving out again. The fright of watching your child speed down the road towards life is portrayed from the start and continues throughout the poem. A good parent is always worried about their child’s wellbeing; they will always worry as they watch their children head straight to the destruction that comes with living life. Though the good parent will try their best to teach their child how to ride their bike into adulthood. This poem uses imagery, word choice, and metaphor to express the fears a parent has when sending their child out on their own into the world.

Life is a gift, not lasting forever, where will you choose to end up? For worse or better? In this beautifully written poem by Linda Ellis she talks about how just one little dash represents our life from the day we are born until the day we die. A dash that means so much more than what it appears to be, representing a lifetime throughout that little dash. Sometimes in life we must look beyond just the writing, we must push ourselves to go deeper and find a hidden message.

“Aunt Ida Pieces a Quilt” is a poem about an elderly woman who is stitching a quilt in memory of her great nephew, Junie, who has died of AIDS. It is a remarkable poem about a close knit family who comes together to help each other during hardship. Like “An Indian Story” this poem speaks of long family traditions and illustrates the importance of family. “My mama and my mama’s mama taught me”, says Aunt Ida (49). The two writings are also similar, in that, the main maternal figure also makes sacrifices for her family. This is illustrated when Aunt Ida helps sew a quilt for her family even though, as she describes, “My eyes ain’t good now and my fingers lock in a fist, they so eaten up with arthritis” (49).It is evident throughout the text that this family spends a great deal of time together and have a very strong bond.

The poem “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid is a lengthy poem describing society and the social structure in the early 50’s from what it sounds. The short story “Girl,” deals with the experience of being young and female in a poor country. This poem describes a time when stereotypical gender roles where a huge part of society women had duties that only women could do such as clean, cook, wash clothing, watch the children and ect. And the men were head of the house hold and preserved as high and mighty, the untouchables by women and children. “This is how you iron your father 's khaki shirt so that it doesn 't have a crease; this is how you iron your father 's khaki pants so that they don 't have a crease;”(Kincaid) is an example of how the poem spells out how the women are supposed to cater to men, how to act in public settings and a variety of other things women were “meant to do” or as ordered by men.