Sherman Alexie Poems Analysis

The protagonist of the poem is Rosa Parks, a seamstress and an active member in the local NAACP, who refused to give up her seat for a white man. Parks was arrested, which led to a boycott against Montgomery bus system. As a result of more than one year of boycott, the segregation law was announced unconstitutional.

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.

A distinguished sense of hollowness, and darkness is discernable in George Elliot Clarke’s poem “Blank Sonnet”. This poem expresses, the author’s difficult and awkward communication with a lover through a broken relationship. word choice and imagery is imperative to the overall effect and tone of the poem. The usage of an atypical sonnet stylization, broken sentences, forms of metaphors, symbolism, sensory language, and alliteration form strong imagery, and a sense of disconnect. The overall effect leaves the reader with a resonating feeling of emptiness.

To begin, Alexie shows his negative feeling towards Facebook throughout the entire poem. The sarcastic tone of the poem is prevalent in the first 3 lines. “Welcome to the endless high school/ Reunion. Welcome to past friends/ and lovers” Alexies opinion towards the online friends is that users do not actually consider the friends they have on Facebook as true friends but more as a number on the screen. While one may have

In the two sonnets, “Remember” by Christina Rossetti and “The Cross of Snow” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the authors address death and remembrance indicating similarities when exploring grieving process but also demonstrate its differences through literary techniques. They both utilized symbolism, imagery, and metaphorical language but showed differences in tone.

Poets have the power to present their perspectives of the human experience through their poetic voice. Gwen Harwood, Judith Wright, and Bruce Dawe, all Australian poets have all expressed common ideas expressed by their unique poetic voice.They also speak for those who have no voice, such as the soldiers in Bruce Dawe’s poem Homecoming and in Gwen Harwood's poem Mother Who Gave Me Life where she gives a voice to the Mothers. A key theme resinating through all of these poets poems would be their common ideas on society and the role of a mother.

The second essay, titled Brenda Gutierrez (2013), also speaks about Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 30” and Millay’s “Sonnet”. Gutierrez’s essay and Similarity and Differences in Shakespeare and Millay Sonnets, talk about the same theme, making it easier to see the similarities and differences between the two essays. The common idea of the two essays is that the speaker in “Sonnet 30,” “does not rely on something like time to end his sorrows but rather the simple thought of his ‘dear friend’”. Gutierrez’s idea that both speakers, “mention their troubles though one goes into more detail than the other” is defended clearly in the essay through the meaning and theme of “Sonnet” and “Sonnet 30”. Gutierrez's essay shows once again the absence in quoted material to support the claim and the absence in the ability to see things in a new and bigger perspective.

Writers write for a reason, they try to tell a story, describe an image or an emotion or an idea. And they do this to share a message. Metaphor is more than a 65 point scrabble word, it’s a decision that an author makes in order to further a message that the author is trying to share. Writing has a point. Both sherman alexie and joy harjo wrote for a reason, in their pieces “ a drug called tradition” and “ the women hanging from the thirteenth floor window” they talk about individuals relationships with their own future and past and the relationships of others.

In this interview Sherman Alexie talks about how he views his dad as a person who seemed destined to become great. Sherman can be compared with Victor and Arnold Junior Spirit, as he also had an alcoholic father. His father fell into the stereotype alcoholic Indian living on the reservation. But his father also is the reason why he began to read and why he became such a successful writer. Seeing his dad not escape the reservation lead him to have a drive into overcome these stereotypes through

Sherman Alexie's "On the Amtrak from Boston to New York City" is a free verse poem that gives voice to Native American resentment and contempt. It is composed in a series of quatrains, with the last line of the poem standing alone, symbolizing the poet himself who feels alienated a stranger in his own land, now overrun by an "enemy." This paper will examine the poem's use of meter, imagery and symbolism, and give an interpretation of Alexie's thoughts and feelings in "On the Amtrak."

Sherman Alexie grew up with a troubled childhood. His mother, worked as many as six jobs to provide for her family and to put food on the table. His father, who was absent most of the time, was set apart from his family due to his alcohol addiction. With that, Alexie also grew up poor and in a very economically unstable area, the Spokane/Coeur d’Alene indian reservation which put strain on his career and him as person. Alexie's poem “The Limited” is about Alexies encounter with a man who tried to run over a stray dog. As the two men pulled up to each other at a red light, the man shouted from his car that he couldn’t do anything about it. Alexie didn’t do anything about the situation. As both men drove off, Alexie immediately went to his house

Evidence of this can be found in the second stanza and in the multitude of rhetorical devices described in the preceding paragraphs. In lines 19 and 20, the speaker reveals his primary reasons for composing his elegy when he says “so may some gentle Muse / with lucky words favor my destined Urn;" he writes hoping that one day when he dies another will do the same for him. This surprising revelation is the first and obvious indicator of the speaker’s self-centeredness even while mourning the death of his friend. Subtler indicators of this lie in the complexity of the elegy itself. The poem is dense with rhetorical devices and allusions from Greek mythology that hint at the intellectual sophistication of the speaker. For example, “the sisters of the sacred well” (15), refer to the nine ancient muses who inspired poetry, “the laurels”(1) are a reference to story of Apollo and Daphne, “the myrtles”(2) to Venus, et cetera. There’s so much detail and complexity melded in just two stanzas the elegy begins to border on mannerism. This leaves readers wondering if the poem is really intended to mourn the loss of a friend or to show off the poetic skill of the

The astonishing level of agony presented in a person when losing a loved one is described in the poem, “Stop All of the Clocks, Cut off the Telephone” by W.H. Auden. In this poem, the poet describes the pain of ending an intense sensation of love when one of the partners passes away. The inability to cope once one’s love has ended provokes the feeling that life has ended due to the thought of not being able to live alone. This is found in the poem when Auden states, “For nothing now can ever come to any good” (Auden, 16). The author’s use of figures of speech, imagery, and diction allow her audience to understand the speaker’s true emotions over its’ overwhelming grieving period.

Several poems in the anthology explore the intensity of human emotion. Explore this theme, referring to these three poems in detail and by referencing at least three other poems from your wider reading.’