The Poem Identity Annotated

Imagine a world without a race with diversity and a culture without differences. The world would be bland and a useless place to live. A place where life would truly be absurd.

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.

Although this is a short poem, there are so many different meanings that can come from the piece. With different literary poetic devices such as similes, imagery, and symbolism different people take away different things from the poem. One of my classmates saw it as an extended metaphor after searching for a deeper connection with the author. After some research on the author, we came to learn that the

An American essayist, H.L. Mencken stated, “The average man does not want to be free. He simply wants be safe”. I disagree with this statement because an “average man” wants to live. In order to live you must have two necessities; freedom and safety. I believe neither is more important than one another because being free gives you the opportunity to a safe nation, and a safe nation allows you to be free. You cannot live a life without exploring and growing because that would not be considered living. On the other hand, you cannot expect to be free without safety around you.

The author uses imagery in the poem to enable the reader to see what the speaker sees. For example, in lines 4-11 the speaker describes to us the

Imagery was also used in the poem.  I found that the yellow in the first line represented that the future the writer was facing was bright and warm regardless of his choice.  The undergrowth was, as undergrowth in any forest, damp and dank smelling, but not necessarily unpleasant, just something that the writer would have to face.  The image of traveling through a forest also brings to mind thoughts of birds in flight, chirping and singing.  Squirrels dashing through trees, rustling leaves and dropping the occasional acorn or nut also create an image of sight and sound.  The sun reflecting through the trees, casting shadows and creating pockets of warm and cool air and the occasional breeze stirring through the trees are also brought to mind by this poem.  The end of the poem brings to me

In this poem, we see the tone light and free, also much imagery. We see this immediately with the first line saying, the “afternoon was the colour of water falling through sunlight” (1). We immediately get a sense of a beautiful day, maybe even fall with the trees descriptions in the following line, “trees glittered with the tumbling of leaves” (2). Lowell shows such beautiful imagery throughout her poem especially in her first two stanzas, that when we read that they are in the middle of war in the third stanza, that it is slightly shocking. That there are “two little boys, lying flat on their faces” (7) and that they are, “carefully gathering red berries” (8). Here Lowell shows that it is still a beautiful day but the darker reality is that they are currently in a war. Then we start to see the poem more in a melancholy light. That these two little boys are picking berries to save for later, instead of enjoying it right now. However one day the boys wish that “there will be no more war” (10), and that then, they could in fact enjoy their berries, their afternoon and “turn it in my fingers”. In this poem, we clearly see the different tones throughout. Lowell shows us the light tone, then a more melancholy tone and then finally a hopeful tone.

The opportunity of freedom is a base for your life. It puts you in a position and gives you the time to look at yourself, to look at the world and to decide what you will do with your life. Everyone will look at life with a different approach. See life through different glasses. We all have our own approach to life and no matter what handicaps of scientifical fixes people try to do we can never be totally and fully equal to one another. All our differences put together form a community, a city and our

I believe the gender of the speaker is this poem “Aside” is a male. I think this because of the descriptions throughout the poem such as his addiction to alcohol and him taking an interest in amateur cartography and playing games. The man is someone who I believe is skinny and homeless. Due to “My ribs that show through t-shirts,” which refers to him as being thin and “And these shoes I got for free,” because of him not being able to afford his own pair. I thought the man was an addict “Rely a bit too heavily on alcohol.”

The poem, “Undertaking” describes the loss of a women’s husband. The wife cleans and treats her loved one’s body as if it is still alive. But she realizes the death, until his body is taken away and not treated with the love she gave him. Even though her husband has passed away, the speaker seems to still have a relationship with him through the description of her delicate treatment towards him.

Identity is about perception, the way someone sees themselves and their surroundings, the set of rules that they follow, their morals, the decisions they make, the way they look and the way they think. This is shaped by their location and experiences, as well as by other humans. Identity is represented in many ways through poetry, music, books, paintings and other mediums. Bruce Dawe represents the identity of two very different types of people in his poems "Homo Suburbiensis" and "Drifters" where he represents the identity of his subjects through more of a specific description of a certain set of people and not any person in particular in an informative tone , while Dorothea Mackellar focuses more on her own identity in her poem, "My

In stanza one, Judith Wright utilizes personification “rivers hindered him” and “thorn branches caught at his eyes to make him blind” coupled with metaphor “the sky turned into an unlucky opal” to emphasise nature’s hindrance of the blacksmith boy, if the poem is to be deemed as a metaphorical representation of

Question: What does this text suggest to you about the interplay between how individuals perceive themselves and are perceived by others ? Poetry Critical Analytical Response The opinions of others can have influence on the perception of yourself significantly.

The knots also symbolized of how patient the persona’s father, it definitely reflects the he tied the box.