Essay on The Death and Transfiguration of Poetry

Aaliah Mubarak Rhetorical Analysis Essay English Composition 101-05 Due: September-5-2014 Rhetorical Analysis of “Losing Bodies” “Losing Bodies” by Susie Orbach is an essay I found to be more effective in its ability to confuse its readers with its argument, than it is to convince them. The negative attributes of this essay: its disorderly placement of evidence for her argument, tendency to deviate significantly from its proposed thesis, the author’s decision to oversimplify the target of her argument and use of logical fallacies, greatly overshadow the more positive attributes of the essay: its effective use of emotional appeal and its method of getting the reader involved in the argument through the use of rhethorical questions.

The poem focuses around the author’s childhood memory of his school day. However, there is a much deeper meaning to his typical school day as he remembers vividly the repetition of events surrounding him in the classroom. He remembers the day being dark, gray, and rainy, instantly setting the tone of the poem. With dark images like the gray sky, continuous rainfall, and the continuous children’s choir

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.

“Dead Poet’s” Society is about an elite prep School that hires a new teacher named Mr. Keating, Who’s hired to teach English. Mr. Keating ends up teaching the students that their life beyond conformity and letting their parent plan their life. I will compare Dead Poet’s Society to Salvation, Walden, The Lottery showing how their peer pressure and conformity.

I’m an author and columnist who currently lives in Oregon. I’ve contributed to periodicals like The Source Weekly and Shred NW Magazine. I have a degree in English literature and currently volunteer at my local library. In my free time I enjoy running, surfing, climbing, and being outdoors.

“The School” is a short story written by Donald Barthelme and published in 1974 in The New Yorker. Donald Barthelme is a post-modernist writer known for his deceptively simple yet powerful and insightful short stories. “The School” is a story that takes a good hard look at the sensitive topic of death. The theme of this story is about the cycle of life and how death is an integral part of it. The story is written in first person narrative. The narrator here is the teacher and he talks about how he and his young students of 30 kids encountered death throughout their time together in class. He uses edgy humor and a conversational tone in his seemingly complex plot with a surprising effect that will stick with the reader long after they are done reading it.

b) This story is ironic since eventually everything the student have dies tragically. Throughout, deaths builds upon the little things starting with trees, continuing with rodents and reptiles. Then, a puppy and the foreign student Kim they adopted had died. This is ironic because when the children have these wonderful pets, one by one they suddenly die. However, Edger the teacher tries to make the thought of death not important. Edger portrays death to the children as a natural thing and they shouldn’t care. Furthermore, he makes a lot of excuses to avoid the thought and dismiss death but the amount makes death The story is all about death and life is just part of it.

While the spectres of darkness and decay are not as overtly present in ‘Model School’ as Kinsella’s other poems, knowledge of them is certainly forming in the young Kinsella’s mind. The poet’s religion classes bring him face to face with disturbing

Following the narrative of a young boy who brutally murders his cat, A Case of Murder explores the consequences of guilt- an emotion relevant to all of humanity. Internally focalized and told through omniscient third person narration, the poet uses the speaker to draw readers into the mind of the boy, evoking empathy from the reader. Further, the somber emotion of the poem corresponds with the darkness of guilt, and the poet embodies a deep sense of regret in the line ‘they should not have left him there alone’. Evidently, the piece does not to conform to a particular structure and the size of the stanzas and length of lines varies. This unclear pattern allows readers to comprehend a change in the boy’s emotions once he realises that his exploration with power has seen him kill the cat.

The poem Suicide Note, written by Janice Mirikitani (1987), talks about a young lady, who has studied in an Asian-American female college. The lady, unfortunately, committed suicide by jumping through her dormitory’s window. She left behind a note, citing reasons that led to her actions. After a critical analysis of the note, her parents were held responsible for her actions; they were pressurizing her to perform better in her exams. The poem, thus, describes the real feelings and the emotions of this young lady, who believes that committing suicide is the only option left to please her parents and to escape the enormous pressure placed on her. The persona uses voice in the poem to bring our attention to the sufferings she was going through, and that led to the devastating event. Voice in poetry is the strong words of a line, stanza or a page that creates a relationship between the audience and the persona. Voice can, therefore, be categorized as imagery, patterns of sounds created, rhythm, tone, and diction (Gahern 166). The following is a description of how the voice in Mirikitani’s suicide note helps the reader understand the persona’s reasoning.

“Whose canon is it anyway?” is an article written by Bethan Marshall. In the article, Marshall analyzes a review by Tom Paulin of a book by Anthony Julius about the anti-Semitism and literary works of T. S. Elliot. Despite being a well-known anti-Semite, Elliot and his poetry were studied in schools around the world. Therefore, by questioning his beliefs, we also question our own culture because Elliot’s works are closely related to its foundation. So, Elliot poses the question: Is culture something we can control or deliberately influence? In 1993, the head of the National Curriculum Council, David Pascall, changed the curriculum in an effort to try and answer Elliot’s question. Five years earlier,

To those who lack the real understanding of poetry, it is seen no differently as any other literary composition; a text, written and understood by a certain group of people. However to those who appreciate, and possess even the slightest bit of understanding that the poet intended, is considered an accomplishment. Poetry is an art of discovery, it requires immense effort not only to understand but to compose. Indian Woman, a poem written by Jeanette Armstrong, evokes a number of emotions and thoughts. The poem describes the unfortunate lifestyle of an Indian women in that day and age, the duties and tasks which were performed, whether willingly or not. Indian Woman is a poem containing painful images,

The personified “My saddest lines wish to know how they left this pen” (1-3) suggests that as the persona writes of their emotions (which could allude to a suicide note), they question what has led them to the thought that death will resolve their emotional experiences. Although it is not stated in the poem, the persona’s questioning of how they came to write their “saddest lines” (1) suggests that it was not one event that contributed to inner conflict, but their emotions have been pushed to the side over time. This contrasts with Sexton’s poem, as it was inspired by the death of her parents that led to her grief and loss. Although death is universal, each individual experiences and copes with the subject in a different way. This thought is further highlighted using the word “imprison” (4), suggesting that the persona conceals their emotions. Furthermore, the metaphor “Abbreviated but exhausted from labour” (6-7) alludes to the thought that the persona doesn’t face their emotions, instead pushes them to the side. However, their emotions are personified in “Wreck revenge on my moral hand,” (8-9) as they have been ‘bottled’ up for so long, they are becoming prominent to the persona and cannot be concealed anymore. This leads the persona to question their place in the

The statement that conformity and tradition are in opposition to individualism and defiance of authority is very true in The Dead Poet Society, and even more so in today’s society in general. One can walk into any high school and see this is true. In a typical high school, people seem to have very much in common, especially in dress, hair style, etc… which is in opposition to individualism in and of itself. People are so caught up in conforming to how society says they should live their lives, it really tarnishes the spirit of individuality human beings are meant to have.

"The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor." [It is] "a sign of real genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars." Aristotle in Poetics.