Ted Kooser: Great Poet of the Great Plains

Style is the special way an author creates his or her work. Gabriela Mistral exploits an informal style in her poem “Ballad”. The poem discusses the poets feelings and is written in first person point of view validating its informality; “My heart’s blood.”-Line17 using ‘my’ and describing her heart confirm this. Diction contributes to style in an extensive way. Repetition is a form of diction that is heavily spread out through the poem. “Saw him pass by.”-Lines 2/6, “He goes loving.../...in bloom”-Lines1-2/11-12, and “He will go.../through eternity.”-Lines 19-20/23-24. The repetition emphasizes the authors style an diction. In this poem diction is displayed through negative connotation. Choosing to describe her emotional state as “,wretched,”-Line 5, instead of sad or unhappy, and by adding a

Imagery is used consistently right through the poem to evoke sensory experiences and to endorse the theme. For instance: ‘A stark white ring-barked forest’-‘the sapphire misted mountains’-‘the hot gold lush of noon’ and many more. All of these appeal to the readers senses and places brilliant visual image(s) in our minds by illuminating the various features of the country, from the perspective of the poems persona. This is attained using; adjectives, ‘the sapphire-misted mountains¬¬¬’, which gives us a picture of mountains with a bluish haze embracing it, this image would thus give an impression of a composed environment and evoke a sense of tranquillity. Additionally by using ‘sapphire’ to illustrate the mist surrounding the mountains we get a sense of Australia’s uniqueness as sapphire is a rare gem. Imagery is also displayed through a metaphor used to appeal to the sense of hearing. For example: ‘the drumming of an army, the steady soaking rain’. Here Mackellar depicts the rain as an army and allows us not only to visualize but get a sense of the sound of the rain, which is presented through the adjective ‘drumming’. This line also presents to us the intensity of the rain again through the adjectives ‘drumming, steady and soaking’.

Have you ever been in a place of green with forests and animals everywhere? Well, where some of the Native Americans lived, there were such things. Native American tribes such as the Crow lived in the Great Plains. The Crow tribe of the Great Plains were nomadic and followed the buffalo migrations which provided their food. This tribe spent a good part of the year living in camps that could easily be dismantled and moved to follow the buffalo migrations. Other tribes of the plains were more sedentary. These tribes lived in permanent villages year round.

As the poem progresses, the narrator continues to use certain terms that overall portray what he went through.

The poet uses many metaphors, repetition and morbid diction to illicit the response I had to this poem. Firstly, Butson compared the emotions and internal struggles of a

George Szirtes article “Formal Wear: Notes on Rhyme, Meter, Stanza, and Pattern” from the Poetry Foundation opens with opinions which focus on limitations of poetic form. As a counter to these common arguments, Szirtes claims, “Verse is not decoration: it is structural. It is a forming principle and words at depth” ("Formal Wear: Notes” 2). He then develops an argument explaining, “the constraints of form are spurs of the imagination: that they are in fact the chief producers of imagination” ("Formal Wear: Notes” 2). Taking these ideas into consideration Szirtes incorporates the idea of language explaining how language connects to memory and imagination which come together to form poetic images. Additionally, when poets use form it develops

Throughout the poem, the author creates different tones using different types of figurative language and diction. The poet starts off the poem with the metaphor, “Although she feeds me

He uses vivid words and feelings. He describes one feeling as “the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible.” Some of the more impacting words include decayed, depression, bitter, hideous, iciness, unnerved, and sorrowful; these all give off a gloomy attitude. They are all descriptive words that cause a negative effect upon the reader.

The position of US Poet Laureate is an exceptionally prestigious and challenging position to achieve, as any aspiring poet within the country is eligible. To quote the Library of Congress, the poet laureate “serves as the official lightning rod for the poetic impulse of Americans” (“About the Position”), which means that their duty is to increase the widespread national appreciation of the reading and writing of poetry, specifically those imbued with American themes. These duties as laureate are perfectly suited for Yusef Komunyakaa, who embodies all of the necessary qualities. Through jazz-infused poetry and personal experiences, Komunyakaa truly captures within his poetry what it means to be an American, and he continues to leave an impact on the world of literature both

symbolic richness, but at the same time the poem supplies the reader with a wide

In poetry, there is often the use of many words that may seem a bit strange to the average reader. These words are often more complex than what is actually meant, but are used to enhance the reading and make it more enjoyable to the reader. Other words would make the poem less smooth, and that is why such complexity arises. These words shape a type of metaphor, which is referred to as a kenning.

This poem opens with an extreme and vivid simile, “The bright wire rolls like a porpoise” (line 1). This beginning not only grasps the attention of the audience, but the image intensifying language that Kooser has chosen

his poetry has a rhythm that is natural and American, a gregarious appeal to the common man. In Spring and All

It is certainly true that one of the distinguishing features of poetic texts is the use of figurative or non-literal language – this essay highlights the fact that metaphors do contribute to the understanding of a poem. Ted Hughes’ poem, Sketching a Thatcher, is loaded with vivid imagery and ample metaphorical constructions which aids to validate this fact. In order to uncover the message behind this poem, one must take a closer look at the arguments, focus expressions and tenor/vehicle constructions of at least six local metaphorical constructions

The poets also use metaphors when writing poems. Metaphors refer to the use of certain words to mean otherwise in the context of the poem. However, metaphors are sometimes hidden in the poem such that they require the reader to figure out their existence in the poem. This will be easy when the poet employs the physical environment that is well understood by the reader. In addition, metaphors will strengthen the ideas that the poet wants to pass across. Metaphors will therefore make it easier for the readers to interpret and understand the meaning that the poet intended to communicate. Shelley has used a metaphor in his poem where he states ‘…Pestilence-stricken multitudes’. He states this to indicate to the reader that he is not just addressing a pile of leaves. Therefore, this helps to understand the deeper meaning of the poem.