Poetry Analysis - Passed on by Carole Satyamurti

The main ideas that we have read in our readings covered what Women’s Studies is and Dominant Ideas About Women. Three passages that caught my attention out of the 32 passages were “A Work of Artifice” by Marge Piercy, “Gender Inequity in School: Not a Thing of the Past” by Karen Zittleman and David Sadker, and lastly, “Have you Ever Heard of Asian-American Feminists” by Stacey Yap. With these three passages, there was good information for me to interpret and to reflect upon in these readings.

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.

Reflections Within is a non-traditional stanzaic poem made up of five stanzas containing thirty-four lines that do not form a specific metrical pattern. Rather it is supported by its thematic structure. Each of the five stanzas vary in the amount of lines that each contain. The first stanza is a sestet containing six lines. The same can be observed of the second stanza. The third stanza contains eight lines or an octave. Stanzas four and five are oddly in that their number of lines which are five and nine.

Gwen Harwood’s mournful laments Mother Who Gave Me Life and Father and Child explore the challenging ideas of nostalgia and mortality to provide valued texts.

Minorities struggle to break free from poverty, due to the systematic oppression and racism established in America. There is an odd belief that granting minorities rights would allow them to be on the same playing field as the majorities. However, the various death and injustice sentencing that has occurred for decades, proves civil rights were not the only problem. Pedro Pietri’s Puerto Rican Obituary and Wanda Coleman’s South Central Los Angeles Death Trip, 1982 shed light on what minorities face, with some stylistic differences.

Matt Skiba’s song “Blue In The Face”, performed by Alkaline Trio in 2003, is written in a first person narrative directed towards a former lover. Skiba uses dark connotations and satanic allusions to portray his emotions and describe the various reasons he thinks she left that night, how he feels about the situation that happened and lastly that he wants her back.

“Something More” by Tracey Moffatt is a formal and stylistic experimentation photography and her work draws on her own childhood memories, popular culture, as well as the history seen in still cinema, art and photography. Apparent in her works are themes such as childhood cruelties in suburban life, the mutiny of stereotypes and relations between white and black Australians. In her works, referencing to the artist’s own life and experiences, Tracey Moffatt draws on her Aboriginal background as a foster child growing up in Brisbane in a foster family in the sixties, avidly consuming images from magazines, films and television.

Emily Dickinson’s use of poetic diction in poems 585 and 754 brings to life two inanimate objects, a train and a gun, both of which perform actions that are useful to man. Though these items cannot act on their own, Dickinson’s diction provides them with their own movements, characteristics, and feelings. In poem 585, a train’s daily journey is given a meaning beyond that of a cold, iron machine when Dickinson describes its animal qualities to show its strength, stubbornness, and perseverance. In poem 754, a gun is portrayed as a protective, devoted servant. In both of these poems, Emily Dickinson uses diction to give a train and a gun characteristics of animals to explain their behavior and

The poem Medusa explores the theme of jealousy and anger; the poet illustrates this using the extended metaphor of a Greek mythological creature Medusa, whose story describes her as a beautiful maiden that is turned into a hideous creature after being raped by Poseidon. The poet furthermore links this metaphor to the theme of feminism when she describes the women in the poem overpowering the man that hurt her.

Night is filled with so many wonderful things, wouldn’t you say? Darkness slinking into the sky, emergent with madness and power—I always liked to think that Night was a character with assorted natures. Her beauty of an aurora, the grace of shaded streaks, peppered stars, then monsters and malevolent creatures, demons under your bed, waiting patiently for an arm or a leg to drop over the edge so they may drag you down to the depths of hell, masked figures of men gaping at your sleeping body with a leer, unseen white noises that seem to mock you, and so many more enchanting gears. Alone, your eyes are bolted and you’re clutching your bedsheets in hopes that the demons find you too unappealing to eat, but with friends? Spitting in their faces you laugh, and stride away hand in hand, not realizing you’re playing the demon.

I think your storyline for the poem worked well. I liked the contrast between beauty and anger-violence. I feel the contrast gave the poem consistency and really held my attention. You mention that you felt that you were focused too much on the storytelling and not on imagery but I feel you did both really well. I felt that you were very descriptive. The ways you write about blood are particularly effective.

I chose to read and analyze the poem titled “Curiosity” written by Alastair Reid. This poem conveys an underlying analogy made between the curiosity of the cat and the curiosity of a human. The speaker is trying to make the reader realize that the majority of mankind is apprehensive to the adverse universe that exists beyond their comfort zone. He states that people often encounter one bad experience and that decimates their perception of adventure, they begin to view adventure and stepping outside of their comfort as a malicious concept, in the beginning lines, the speaker states, “Curiosity may have killed the cat; more likely the cat was just unlucky…” he is inferring that the curiosity was not the culprit of the death, but just a normal

“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.

“I Shall Paint My Nails Red” by Carole Satyamurti, writes about how red nails show a bold statement about a simple woman. The color red is interpreted in poetry as a figure of speech for passion, anger and strong emotions. Satyamurti is suggesting that women who paint their nails red are trying to seek attention from the world. She uses different relationships to the women: her daughter, her lover, and the society and tell how they would react to red nails. The first word in every line starts with “Because”, why would she repeat this word ten times? She might be trying to give a good enough reason why she is painting her nails red maybe because she is a woman.