The Use Of Literary Devices In Poetry

In the two forms of art, imagery is used to provide an audience with an insight to multiple senses. Carla Starrett illustrates, “Both poems and lyrics

“’ But this is merely a negative definition of the value of education’” (23-24). Mark Halliday wrote “The Value of Education” from a first person standpoint. The introduction and the use of “I” demonstrates the poem is about the speaker. Likewise, the speaker uses imagery, self-recognition, and his own personal thoughts throughout the poem. He goes on throughout the poem stating external confrontations he is not doing because he is in the library receiving an education and reading books. With this in mind, the speaker goes on to convey images in your head to show a realization of things he could be doing if he were not in the library getting an education.

Poetry is known to be a creative thought or impassioned feeling using language and is expressed in many places in the world. A poem can have many different meanings according to how an individual interprets it. Various literary devices are used to bring out that interpretation and the sense of what the person thinks that is going to happen. In the poem “Saturday at the Canal” by Gary Soto and “Nothing Better” by The Postal Service the theme is sometimes in life you may go through tough times but it is up to you whether they will continue. Some literary devices that show the coming up from tough times are figurative language, imagery, and the mood of the poems/songs.

In the short stories “Stones” and “To Every Thing There is a Season” the authors Sandra Birdsell and Alistair MacLeod both use literary devices in a similar manner in order to achieve their thematic objectives. This essay will compare the way the authors use three literary devices such as imagery, metaphor and similes in their short stories to portray the thematic objective of loss of innocence.

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.

Throughout time poems, books, and other forms of literature have been made to entertain and relax. However, songs are often said to not be poems or literature at all, more so do not show poetic merit. Hallelujah is one song that is a poem that shows poetic merit. Even though Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen is a song, it deserves poetic merit because it contains many types of figurative language, allows many to come up with a theme or a thematic statement from the lyrics of the songs, and also references many allusions from the Bible to other religious beliefs.

Take a minute to imagine “Men looking like they had been/attacked repeatedly by a succession /of wild animals,” “never/ ending blasted field of corpses,” and “throats half gone, /eyes bleeding, raw meat heaped/ in piles.” These are the vividly, grotesque images Edward Mayes describes to readers in his poem, “University of Iowa Hospital, 1976.” Before even reading the poem, the title gave me a preconceived idea of what the poem might be about. “University of Iowa Hospital, 1976” describes what an extreme version of what I expected the poem to be about. The images I

Poetry, what first comes to mind? If your anything like me, poetry can seem somewhat monotonous, rather like a locked door exclusive, complicated, and hard to understand. I think poetry tends to be a big game of “Guess what I’m thinking!” and I hate that game. I’m not a mind-reader. I think a lot of people who get excited about poetry are really pretentious. This possibly comes from believing that they actually can guess what other people are thinking. When we think poetry, we tend to know poetry by it’s traditional forms of having sonnets, ballads, often rhyming (but not always) and they tend to have a specific and symmetrical structure (APA). Throughout this essay I wanted to consider poetry through different explorations and how subverting the traditional conventions of poetry might be an effective way of engagement or in an opposing way of demotivating the reader.

As a growing number of teens use technology on a daily basis, teenagers are reading less poetry. Accordingly, they are listening to more and more music. Numerous examples of poetic merit can be found in music at their fingertips. Thus, it is safe to argue that song lyrics are today’s main form of poetry. “Rocky Mountain High” by John Denver and Mike Taylor is an excellent example of this, for it includes figurative language, imagery, and a thematic statement. All of which are elements of poetic merit.

Songs and song lyrics can take many different forms. Like poetry, they tend to use many different literary elements to convey a story. While most songs don't necessarily have a rhyme scheme like some poems, they do however use elements such as imagery, diction, and many more elements that can be found in poetry. The four songs “Rule Britannia”, “Land of Hope and Glory”, “Waltzing Matilda”, and “We are the Boys from old Florida” demonstrate the use of poetic elements to tell a story.

Both, the poem “Reluctance” by Robert Frost and “Time Does Not Bring Relief” by Edna St. Vincent Millay, revolved around the theme of lost love. Each poet used a similar array of poetic devices to express this theme. Visual imagery was one of the illustrative poetic devices used in the compositions. Another poetic device incorporated by both poets in order to convey the mood of the poems was personification. And by the same token, metaphors were also used to help express the gist of both poems. Ergo, similar poetic devices were used in both poems to communicate the theme of grieving the loss of a loved one.

"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.

Poetry allows the writer, the reader and even those listening to get a deeper sense of being. It gives us the opportunity to break free from simple and boring routine. If done correctly a poem will done correctly a poem will be able to stir emotion, and create wonder. In order to this however all the part that make up a poem must be in sync. Its tone, diction, imaginary, rhythm, symbolism and subject matter are all critical areas. A good poem will draw an emotional reaction from its audience, whether those are light and upbeat or darker more serious feelings they will come away with a new experience, changed by what they just experienced. Two such poems that embody what a good poem should be are “Lady Lazarus” by Sylvia Plath and “Harlem”, also published as “Dream Deferred” by Langston Hughes. These poems elevate the experience for reading, listening and writing poetry, and serve as an excellent reference for a poem should be.

In ancient times, lyric poems were sung to the accompaniment of the lyric, a type of stringed instrument. Modem lyric poems are not usually sung. However, they still have a musical quality that is achieved through rhythm and such other devices as alliteration and rhyme.

Some of the poems and essays I have read during this class were relatable to me. Being away from college, I have struggled with not being at home. I have become a different person when I am at school, but when I am home, I feel like I am my normal self again. Some of these authors of the poems and essays that I have read throughout this class has struggled with being somewhere where they don’t belong and that they are someone else when they are not home. Unlike the other poems and essays we have read throughout the course. I enjoyed reading the ones about “home” because I actually understood what they are going through and that I can relate. Some of these poems and essays include “Going Home” by Maurice Kenny, Postcard from Kashmir”, by Agha Shahid Ali, “Returning” by Elias Miguel Munoz and “Hometown” by Luis Cabalquinto. All of these poems deal with duality.