Short Fiction And The Ballad Of Birmingham

The topic that chosen was to compare the way a short story treats death with the way a poem reveals death. The short story chosen was “The Story of an hour” by Kate Chopin and the poem chosen was “Ballad of Birmingham” by Dudley Randall. They each have their own way of expressing the nature of death.

When I first saw the title, "Ballad of Birmingham" I thought that this poem is going to be about the city of Birmingham and how beautiful it is. Then I saw what was beneath the title which said, "On the bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama, 1963." I now know that the poem is going to be about a bombing, something I know but the characters don't. That sentence also tells me it takes place in 1963 which is around the time of the civil rights movement.

Poetry is considered to be a representational text in which one explores ideas by using symbols. Poetry can be interpreted many different ways and is even harder to interpret when the original author has come and gone. Poetry is an incredible form of literature because the way it has the ability to use the reader as part of its own power. In other words, poetry uses the feelings and past experiences of the reader to interpret things differently from one to another, sometimes not even by choice of the author. Two famous poets come to mind to anybody who has ever been in an English class, Robert Frost and E.E. Cummings. Both of these poets have had numerous famous pieces due to the fact that they both

In 'Ballad of Birmingham,' Dudley Randall illustrates a conflict between a child who wishes to march for civil rights and a mother who wishes only to protect her child. Much of this poem is read as dialogue between a mother and a child, a style which gives it an intimate tone and provides insight to the feelings of the characters. Throughout the poem the child is eager to go into Birmingham and march for freedom with the people there. The mother, on the other hand, is very adamant that the child should not go because it is dangerous. It is obvious that the child is concerned about the events surrounding the march and wants to be part of the movement. The child expresses these feelings in a way

Boom! Imagine, in the blink of an eye, everything in your world has fallen apart. Your child’s soul is sucked out of her body by a stranger your child has never met before. Imagine your child making world news and being put in history books because of the evil negligence of another fellow American. This reality was true for the families of the victims in the Ballad of Birmingham poem.

Another example of their difference would be the vibe they give off. The poem gives off a facetious and funny tone while the song gives off a more serious and straightforward giving them different moods when reading/listening to

In the poem “Ballad of Birmingham”, by Dudley Randall, many different things can be analyzed. The difference in the two translations; one being a literal translation, telling the true meaning of the poem, and the other being a thematic translation, which tells the author’s theme and symbolism used in his/her work. Another thing that all poets have in common is the usage of poetic devices; such as similes, metaphors, and personification.

This poem has numerous allusions to the civil rights movements. Such as “No No No I’m not going to move” (7) this quote alludes to when Rosa Parks would not give her seat to a white man. “…Montgomery... Birmingham…Selma…” (9) alludes to the freedom marches during the civil rights movement. “Four little girls” (9) this quote alludes to the 4 little girls killed sparking the civil rights movement. This

For centuries, racism has plagued America. People of black ethnicity have been specifically targeted at the most. The bombing of Birmingham, Alabama was an especially tragic example of said attacks. Countless innocent black men, women, and children were shot and killed in the events following the bombing.

     The Ballad of Birmingham resembles a traditional ballad in that it tells a story in a song-like manner. The didactic tone seeks to teach us something; in this case it’s the theme of needless destruction. There are many devices the author uses to create such a tone and to tell such a story.

If you have ever read a book or listened to music, you have probably experienced poetry. Poetry is a literary work in which special intensity is given to the expression of feelings and ideas by the use of distinctive style and rhythm. There are many types of poetry and each has its own effect on the words. There are over fifty types of poetry. Poetry is categorized by the number of lines in the poem, the words in the poem, whether it rhymes or not, and what it is about. Some types of poetry examples include haiku, free verse, sonnets, and name poems, although there are many more types as well (Oxford living dictionaries ).People usually use the types of poetry they like best. I will tell you a little bit about a few types of poetry that are my favorite.

Dudley Randall’s “Ballad of Birmingham” is a look into the effects of racism on a personal level. The poem is set in Alabama during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. The tone of the title alludes to the city of Birmingham as a whole. The poem gives the reader, instead, a personal look into a tragic incident in the lives of a mother and her daughter. The denotation of the poem seems to simply tell of the sadness of a mother losing her child. The poem’s theme is one of guilt, irony, and the grief of losing a child. The mother feels responsible for the death of her child. The dramatic irony of the mother’s view of church as being a “safe haven” for her child is presented to the reader through the mother’s insistence that the young girl

Poems let the reader see a glimpse of the time period they were written in. From a poem, a reader can look at the time period from an emotional and logical standpoint. One could see the events and people of the time as well as the history and social situations. “Ballad of Birmingham” is a poem that contains many insights to the historical and social happenings of it’s time. Civil rights and the 1963 Birmingham church bombing is the historical and social context that come together in “Ballad of Birmingham”.

Ballad of Birmingham, written by the poet Dudley Randall relives a tragic moment in time in which four little girls died when a church was purposefully exploded. This poem is based on the incident that occurred in Birmingham, Alabama. This poem vividly shows the perspective of a mother losing her child. Most of the poem includes a mother daughter discussion regarding the participation of the freedom march. The mother explains to her daughter that it is far too dangerous for her to be participate, therefore she sends her daughter to church, where she believes that she would be safe. The mother later hears of the explosion and runs over to find out that her daughter had been killed by noticing her daughter’s shoe on the ground. In Ballad of Birmingham, Dudley Randall uses voice, imagery, and sound to show how the tragic event revolves around a theme of racism/mother’s love, which most readers can empathize to.

To begin with, the meaning of literature to me is way for the author to express a fictional or non-fictional story. Lyric poetry are a type of poem that express emotional feelings in the present tense. The majority of the time lyric poems rhyme but they are not required to. The Lyric poem “Eve’s Apology in Defense of Women” written by Aemilia Lanyer is a beautiful lyrical poem that demonstrates what every lyrical poem should include. All lyric poems depend on some type of meters(the rhythm of the poem)