The Poetry of Sarah Kay

Sinclair’s use of imagery further enriches her poem by using sensory details that insert readers into the world created in the poem. “This smashed archipelago. Our wild sea grape kingdom” (line 30) depicts the speaker, mother, and setting to be shrunken by the ocean that surrounds and sustains them. Throughout Hands, the imagery depicts objects, actions, and ideas to appeal to the readers physical senses. Sinclair’s vibrant imagery injects inanimate objects, like the ocean and kingdom with soul and stirs them to life.

“Hands” by Sarah Kay: Explication Spoken word poetry is meant to be performed, not simply just read from paper. Spoken word conforms and defies the standards of traditional poetry simultaneously: the same rhetoric devices can be found, but there is much more creative space for the speaker because of the lack of a strict form (Olson). Sarah Kay’s spoken word poem “Hands” is about the significance hands hold in our lives. Kay’s main theme in this poem is that our hands have been put here to create and show love, not to be a symbol of war and evil.

|Spend about 1 hour on this section. Think carefully about the poems before you write your answer. |

The imagery used in this verse appeals to the sense sight. This helps the reader visualise what the writer is taking about. It also allows the reader to relate and connect more to the poem.

Nikki Giovanni, one of the most famous African American poet is widely known through her interesting style in her poetries. Giovanni’s innovative usage of poetic technique of allusion, wide range of imagery, excessive hyperbole and free verse conveys and emphasizes her style and persona as uncontrolled and unrestrained by rules.

An important aspect as to why this story was so well written was because of Anderson’s choice of narration. The point of view that Anderson uses in Hands can be identified as third person limited. Third person limited is a method of storytelling in which the narrator knows only the thoughts and feelings of a single character, while other characters are only presented externally. Although it is told in third person, at one point the narrator is speaking directly to the reader, just like its done in the tradition of oral story-telling, this brings the reader into the “creation” of the story. Twice in the story the narrator says that both the teller of the story and the listener, in this case, the reader, have to become poets, “Let us look briefly into the story of hands. Perhaps our talking of them will arouse the poet who will tell the hidden wonder…”(251). In the beginning of the story the narrator

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 lines six through nine the speaker says,”She was staring at me with her eyes, her breasts still sturdy, her thigh warming mine.” This sentence shows how the speaker began discovering his love for the first time with her(Harper 6-9). The speaker signifies that the woman is healthy and young when he refers to her still having sturdy breasts. The author uses imagery to represent the connection a person feels when they share a warm sensation of touch. When the speaker realizes she is staring at him he begins to wonder how long she had been staring at him and if she loved him.

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

Next, Alcala illustrates literal poetry elements of the image to request touch to involve the reader with greater depth in the attentive uncertain feeling of the poem. Alcala writes, “Tonight we/ lie awake, on hand/ on each other’s gate” (14). Alcala engages the sense of touch as she

Friendship is a blessing, people say, and it is. Men often express their appreciation and respect for male friends through literature. A fellowship, medieval authors call it. A deep and unbreakable connection between males, transcending romantic love. A relationship based on mutual support and admiration, thriving of intellectual stimulation. Nothing is more valuable to a man than a friendship, not even the love of a woman; it is only a man, after all, who can understand another man. To seventeenth century men, friendship (just like everything else) is a male blessing – a patriarchal gift – not for women. Female friendship was “impossible,” for an amicable and supportive relationship between women could never exist. Platonic friendships existed between men, not women. Yet, several female poets challenged this notion, emphasizing importance of female friendships as male authors and poets do. Friendship is defined through a feminist lens in Aemilia Lanyer’s “The Description of Cookham” and Katherine Philips’ poetry in which female characteristics that are often overlooked are deeming meaningful through friendship.

Nature has been a prominent theme in poetry. It is a subject that everyone can associate with. Nature is an eternal and everlasting part of our everyday life. Poets use nature as theme to remind us of the peaceful, magnificent, beauty many of us take for granted. Most of society does not take the time to stop and take a look at the flowers. Nature themed poems help us to experience appreciation for the earth.

“The relationship between the energies of the inquiring mind that an intelligent reader brings to the poem and the poem’s refusal to yield a single comprehensive interpretation enacts vividly the everlasting intercourse between the human mind, with its instinct to organise and harmonise, and the baffling powers of the universe about it.”

Poetry is a varied art form. Poetry is expression with words, using aesthetics and definition. Word choice in poetry is the single most important thing. Devices such as assonance, alliteration and rhythm work in a poem to convey a certain image or to facilitate understanding. Similes and metaphors can take two unlike objects, such as a potato and cinderblock, and if done the correct way use them to describe how Abraham Lincoln dealt with scoundrels. Poetry is beautiful. One of the best genres in poetry, let alone a great literary movement is Romanticism or the post-enlightenment Romantics.

Memories play a significant role in the poetry of Carol Ann Duffy, particularly her recollections of childhood places and events. The poem “Originally,” published in The Other Country (1990), draws specifically from memories of Duffy's family's move from Scotland to England when she and her siblings were very young. The first-born child, Duffy was just old enough to feel a deep sense of personal loss and fear as she traveled farther and farther away from the only place she had known as “home” and the family neared its alien destination. This sentiment is captured in “Originally,” in which it is described in the rich detail and defining language of both the child who has had the experience and the adult who recalls