The Minefield by Diana Thiel starts with a heartbreaking story of a young boy and his friend running between towns ends horribly when they took a short cut to find food. One of the young boys ran off ahead only to accidentally step on a landmine, taking the young boy’s life. The story was being told by a father at dinner to his family, but the father did not seem fazed by the horrific story of his friend. The narrator states throughout the poem, it seems as if the father is still living in the minefield by the anger busts and the bruises he leaves on his family. With the father’s violent outbursts and the way, the author talks about the abuse is both the father and the narrator suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The structure the author used of the poem says a lot about what the author is trying to say. As well as the words themselves. The words and the structure may cause the reader to have mixed feeling about the father throughout the poem, do you feel bad for the father for what he has been through or anger for abusing his family? After the father told the story of him and his friend the narrator explains how the traumatic experience changed his father, “He brought them with him- the minefields / He carried them underneath his good intentions/ He gave them to us- in the volume of his anger, / in the bruises we coved up with sleeves” (line 12-15). The father was so devastated by experience of the minefield, he still carries the pain and disappear with him years later. Many times, in a Post-Traumatic Stress Victim they may have acts of violence like the narrator’s father. In some cases, the person with the disorder may feel better after they talk about what had happened to them. This may be what the father is trying to do, telling the family what happened to him to cause him act out in violence. Telling the story may have help the father get passed the experience of the painful childhood memory but then why did the father not seem bothered by the telling of his story instead he simply continued eating his dinner; “My father told us this, one night, / and then continued eating dinner.” (10-11) Maybe the father promised not to be fazed by the experience or maybe the experience was one of many
Society judges those who are different both physically and mentally and those that don’t fit in with the social norm but it is up to the individuals to look past that and rise against their judgement. Shane Koyczan’s ‘To This Day’, is a poem about those who have been bullied throughout their lives and its long term impact it leaves. The poem tells multiple stories of the victims of bullying due to their physical appearance or their mental state. The poem begins with a personal adecdote talking about how he earned his first nickname. The anecdote is used to allow the readers of the poem to relate as it doesn’t rely on the abstract logic as the anecdote provides proof. He tells his story about how he used to love pork chops, and didn’t know the difference between pork chops and karate chops, until he was called pork
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.
Clint Smith is a writer, teacher, and doctoral candidate in Education at Harvard University with a concentration in Culture, Institutions, and Society. Smith Clint wrote a poem called “Something You should Know.” The poem is about an early job he had in a Petsmart. The poet allows the readers into his personal life, but before he had trouble opening up to people and his work. Moreover, Clint wrote an insight in the poem about relying in anything to feel safe and he says it is the most terrifying thing any person can do.
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.
Words and actions have a large impact on the way you work with the world around you, they have the ability to make you feel indescribable emotions in every way. The poem “Little Boy,” written by B.H. Fairchild begins as a young boy questions his father’s hurtful past, as the speaker demonstrates that he asked the questions as he would’ve asked if he ever saw “Dimaggio or Mantle,” and develops into an examination of a lifeless relationship between father and son. In the poem the little boy’s persistent focus on the father’s brutal past reveals a case of PTSD from his involvement in WWII, and how it affects the advancement of an already bad and unsteady and unchanging relationship of a father and son.
In the passage, the narrator characterizes a young man by the name of McTeague. The narrator reflects his attitude of subtle admiration of McTeague through diction, detail, tone, and syntax.
My book “Two minute drill” By Mike Lupica is about a boy named Scott who just moved into a town and is the new kid at the school he is going to. Scott is a smart kid but is afraid to raise his hand for most of the questions even though he knows them because he doesn’t want to be teased for being to smart. But Scott gets bullied anyways and the coolest kid in school sticks up for him and becomes his friend. Scott isn’t good at football but after he creates a friendship with Chris he gets better and he helps Chris become smarter. Scott ends up makes the school football team, but after sitting on the bench for most season he decides he wants to quit. When he decides he won’t quit he goes to practice and breaks his arm and is not able to play in
Poetry can be divided up into different forms, more easily expressing an author’s emotions and intent with their poetry. For analyzing purposes I chose the poems Self-Help by Michael Ryan, Ghazal by Agha Shahid Ali, Psalm 150 by Jericho Brown, and Emergency by Michael Dylan Welch.
Audre Lorde, a well-known poet, utilized her poetry to call attention over the political issues of class, feminism, sexism and racism for decades. These political issues are the symbols that transformed her into someone who is not just a woman, but a person whom clarifies these issues using poetry as a voice to define herself as a Black lesbian woman and an individual. The poem “Coal” is a poem that represents her ideals and her feelings towards being a voice among other feminists. It also shows her struggle as an individual that is caught between the issues of feminism coinciding with race, class, and sexism, which is also known as Intersectionality. Because of the attention being called from Lorde’s poetry, people should continue to recognize this political issue and utilize it to spread awareness of the prejudice and marginalization of today’s society.
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The poem being analyzed is entitled, “I Go Back to May 1973” by Sharon Olds. In the beginning of the poem, the image of innocence is lost but as the reader goes deeper into the heart and core of the text, the tone rapidly spirals into violence as well as resentment.
Don't take me to that spoken phrase minefield. - My dignity slips a little further down. I never needed this before. Constant voice caressing my ears with lips that sting like your yellow eyes.
I crept the rest of the way through and stumbled out into the stone space. I must have looked like a dirty coal miner, but Bane was too interested in the Sade Stone to pay me much attention.
Poetry is a reduced dialect that communicates complex emotions. To comprehend the numerous implications of a ballad, perusers must analyze its words and expressing from the points of view of beat, sound, pictures, clear importance, and suggested meaning. Perusers then need to sort out reactions to the verse into a consistent, point-by-point clarification. Poetry utilizes structures and traditions to propose differential translation to words, or to summon emotive reactions. Gadgets, for example, sound similarity, similar sounding word usage, likeness in sound and cadence are at times used to accomplish musical or incantatory impacts.