Ross Gay's Poem To My Child, If Ever You Shall Be

Looking back at the amount of writing I’ve done for AP Literature, I can see growth in my understanding of poetry and of literature. There are skills and concepts that I need to focus on and refine as I continue on through the class, but I am confident in the abilities that I have picked up so far.

He obviously loved his father enough to write poems about him, so poetically so it even brings nostalgia to the audience who recall their parents and their childhood with them.

His language makes it easy to imagine the son leaving home and the way the father is reacting to this day finally coming. People reading can see the son packing his shirts and looking for his keys as the father screams. It’s easy to envision the boy sitting on his “Baba’s” lap waiting and the silence he gets in return. The visual use of language makes the poem more emotional and real; being able to picture the characters makes them more three dimensional and relatable to all whom read this poem. The father screaming as his son gets ready to go off into adulthood gives readers the image of a man's world falling apart, the father knew that this day would come but when it actually did, it broke him. “‘Are you a god' the man screams, 'that I sit mute before you? Am I a god that I should never disappoint?'” Lee’s words give off the picture of the desperate and overwhelming love that a parent can have for their child. “Please, Baba, a story? It is an emotional rather than logical equation, an earthly rather than heavenly one,” This sentence makes the poem so much more emotional, the language used implies that the son isn’t just asking for a story, he’s asking for his father’s affection, for his father to sit with him and make him laugh, keep him entertained. That’s all he wants and the line “an earthly rather than heavenly one” implies that the father knows his son isn’t

In the first stanza it is the semantic field of water: ‘waters’ (twice), ‘sea’, ‘drowning’ and ‘being drawn’. As I mentioned earlier, water is often the symbol of life but it also evokes tears, sadness and despair.

The poem seems to be narrative.  It conveys not only a story about his daughter, but a story of life, and paints distinctive images in the reader’s mind.

In today’s modern view, poetry has become more than just paragraphs that rhyme at the end of each sentence. If the reader has an open mind and the ability to read in between the lines, they discover more than they have bargained for. Some poems might have stories of suffering or abuse, while others contain happy times and great joy. Regardless of what the poems contains, all poems display an expression. That very moment when the writer begins his mental journey with that pen and paper is where all feelings are let out. As poetry is continues to be written, the reader begins to see patterns within each poem. On the other hand, poems have nothing at all in common with one another. A good example of this is in two poems by a famous writer by

The two short stories “Black Swan Green” written by David Mitchell and “Letters To A Young Poet” by Rainer Maria Rilke both share a common central idea. In both stories, there is a mentee looking for advice from their mentors. The mentees have a passion for poetry and are aspiring poets. The mentors inform their mentees that someone who wants to be a poet should get their motivation from natural aspects. For one thing, It’s your natural beauty that makes you who you are as a person and a poet. Poetry is for yourself, your thoughts and ideas, not an audience.

The speaker starts the poem in second person then switches to first person point of view to show a change in tone and meaning. At the beginning, the speaker is talking to her aborted child, she says to the child that “[y]ou will never neglect or beat them…” (5). The

The poem’s final lines can be understood as the grandmother being selfish. The grandmother doesn’t want her grandson to look outwardly gay to save herself the humility. However, the grandmother in reality accepts how her grandson is. The end of the poem resolves with, “you will not look like a goddamn queer, / … even if you are one” (69-71). The grandmother comes to terms with her grandson when acknowledging that he is gay. However the grandmother does not want her grandson to appear as gay to shield him from society. Being openly gay at the time was not largely supported and accepted. Being a loving grandmother, she still wants the best life for her grandson. The best way to live life according to the grandmother is to not be the odd one out, or queer. This may have subversive implications in the life of the grandson, even though the grandmother’s intentions are in good

My English Literature major has helped me to achieve an outstanding level of appreciation, enjoyment, and knowledge of both American and British Literature. As a high school AP English student, I struggled through great works like Hamlet and To the Lighthouse. My teacher’s daily lectures (there was no such thing as class discussion) taught me merely to interpret the works as critics had in the past. I did not enjoy the reading or writing process. As a freshman at Loras, I was enrolled in the Critical Writing: Poetry class. For the first time since grade school, my writing ability was praised and the sharing of my ideas was encouraged by an enthusiastic and nurturing professor. Despite the difficulty of poetry, I enjoyed reading it.

Throughout the poem, the speaker uses specific details that show the conflict between the speaker’s son and his parents. In the first stanza, the speaker recalls exchanges of dialogue between the speaker and his or her son. For example, the speaker’s son exclaims, “I did the problem / and my teacher said I was right!” (Nye 3-4). The child validated his teacher’s opinion but ridiculed his parents’ opinion. This is further explained through more details in a later part of the same stanza. The mother explains how the son believed his parents were “idiots / without worksheets to back us up” (Nye 9-10). The speaker’s son had entrusted his teacher and thought of his teacher as highly intelligent, but believed that way because of foolish reasoning. In addition, the speaker lists examples of minor mistakes the parents made that caused the son to be embarrassed of them. Through distinct details, the speaker describes how the son’s “mother never remembers / what a megabyte means and his dad fainted on an airplane once / and smashed his head on the drinks cart” (Nye 10-12). By choosing to include these particular details, the poet outlines the foundation of the conflict between the son and his parents.

The poem itself is discussing a man's journey from birth to death and how all around him life is interpreted by material possessions. At the beginning of the first stanza, the sentences have been made very short and simple, as if to demonstrate the thoughts of a new born child. The first voice that the baby hears when he is born is Bobby Dazzler, one of Australia's first game shows. The very first thing that the baby

The second stanza is almost like the first in the fact that it appeals to the same senses. It talks about the actions and the feelings of the child. It describes how the child would wake and wait for his father to call him. The second stanza also describes the mood of the house in the line, "fearing the chronic angers of that house." Perhaps that line is

The final stanza of the poem represents the woman going into labor and the delivery of her child into the world. “I wither and you break from me;” (16). This line represents the moment the

Finally the poem has an emotional appeal. The poems tone is positive in a negative way it is sort of uplifting even though there is nothing encouraging about the situation. This is shown tough the use of words such as " I am the thousand winds that blow/ I am the diamond glints on the snow" these phrases have positive connotation saying that he will always be with us