“To Katherine: At Fourteen Months” by Joelle Biele is a mother’s declaration to her one-year-old daughter. The author, Joelle Biele blends the simplistic world of a 14-month-old Katherine and creates descriptive narrative of a child on a quest for constant discovery. Through the authors expressive language Katherine’s plight shifts from that of a child and blends to treat Katherine as some sort of Celestial mad scientist trying to understand the world as she grows. A unique union of diction, symbolism, and metaphors are structured by author Biele to pronounce the action of a fourteen-month baby Katharine. The poems title “To Katherine at fourteen months is structured in such a manner that allows it to be read in two parts. The first part, …show more content…
Only a mother could take a child throwing a plate and relate it to the laws of motion as the author did in lines 3-4 “the dynamics of the occasional plates observed the principles governing object in motion an object at rest”. This maternal tone that the author creates from the very beginning influences other elements within the poem. The setting of the poem is very multidimensional. The setting could be perceived to be in the present or could be the reader’s childhood. The imagery built by the setting, however does force reader to look at the curiosity that they held in their childhood. We as readers are forced to think of the expectations and curiosity we had for objects because itmust react to our touch which is idea we as reader share with Katharine in lines 7-9 " ". The further displays the setting and imagery in lines 5-7. These lines show of the author flavorful diction “Chinese Hong" " rage like a penny" furthermore these adjectives and verbs show the authors progression in describing Katherine's actions. The reader and Katherine I no longer dealing with spoons and plates we are now dealing with Chinese gong.the author progression in word choice and setting go even farther in the last sentences we move from metaphor to describe sound to metaphor that compare
Few relationships are as deep as those between child and parent. While circumstance and biology can shape the exact nature of the bond, a child’s caretaker is the first to introduce them to the world. And as they grow and begin to branch out, children look to their parents as a model for how to interact with the various new situations. Through allusion, potent imagery, and nostalgic diction, Natasha Trethewey constructs an idolized image of a father guiding their child through life’s challenges only to convey the speaker’s despair when they are faced with their father’s mortality in “Mythmaker.”
Throughout the poem, a young boy's curiosity takes control of a relationship with his father, as it reveals his regretful combative past. The boy asks questions repeatedly from many different aspects including, “why we dropped the bomb on those two towns in Japan” “where is Saipan” “Where is Okinawa” “where is the pacific” (Fairchild 5-16). The questions stand as the absences of order and by all means, progress, no answers mean no progress. As the questions continue the speaker describes the father and says “the palm of his hand slowly tapping the arm of a lawn chair,” (Fairchild 7-8). The slow tapping equivalent the slow buildup of anger and fear. Following, the speaker's description of the father’s face as his son continues mindlessly is “wooden” as his eyes freeze “like rabbits in headlights” (Fairchild 6-7). So small and helpless
The author starts by describing old memories as a child she has of the table itself. Lyon tells us of the countless family games nights and discussions that have taken place there. George Ella speaks of the family recipes and hard work both of her parents did at the kitchen table. Lyon tells us about her mom's time working for the chamber and making calls for the march of dimes. Lyon brings the poem full circle by talking about her adult memories she has at the kitchen table. George Ella talks about the time where she first had to tell her mother that she need help and couldn’t live on her own. Her mom responds by telling Lyon she is babying her. This part of the book is very personal to me. My grandmother has just recently gone through this exact hardship. It is incredibly hard to see your parent move out of your childhood home and realizing they are no longer able to live on their own. Although I haven’t had to experience it for myself, I am sure it will be hard when it happens. Lyon also speaks of stories she has heard about the kitchen table. In the past her mother mixed her formula at the same table where she later told her she needed to move back in. It is interesting to see how the role of caregiver has switched from her mom to her over time. This role reversal, although unfortunate, is necessary. The kitchen table has stood steadfast through
From the moment they are born, children are wondering about their world. Parents often enjoy watching their children grow up and reflect upon what they discovered and what they have yet to discover. In “The Alien”, Greg Delanty is describing expecting parents’ questions while awaiting a child. Similarly, in “Forgotten Planet”, Doug Dorph describes children’s imagination and compares it to adulthood. The parents in these poems are able to rely upon space or visualize it as to having an important role in the life of a child. Both “The Alien” by Greg Delanty and “Forgotten Planet” by Doug Dorph use a motif of space as parents search to understand children; however, the parent figures in the poems view space in different ways.
The early learning processes of the young are potrayed more adequately in the poem Father and Child where an older child, this time a girl at a rebellious age, experiments with the constraints of authority in an attempt to seek control for herself. This experimentation leads to an important discovery in her life; death is real and unclean. Just like The Glass Jar, the allusions to nature show the certainly of change and setting the tone for the events.
The author uses imagery in the poem to make the experience of this one woman stand out vividly. The first lines of the poem say "she saw diapers steaming on the line / a doll slumped behind the door." The phrase "steaming on the line" is especially strong, making me
In this stylistic analysis of the lost baby poem written by Lucille Clifton I will deal mainly with two aspects of stylistic: derivation and parallelism features present in the poem. However I will first give a general interpretation of the poem to link more easily the stylistic features with the meaning of the poem itself.
Edna St. Vincent Millay’s sonnet, “I, Being Born a Woman and Distressed,” serves as an excellent example of a multi-faceted piece. From one angle, it is simply a Petrarchan sonnet, written with a slight variation on rhyme scheme – but that variation, taken deeper, reveals new layers of meaning. Added to Millay’s choice of meter and end-stop, along with a background of Millay’s person, this sonnet seems not so “simple” after all.
Cousin Kate is written in the form of three and four foot iambic trimesters, which allows the poem to be read at speed and enables a more
The passage is written in first-person narrative, providing the reader with meaningful insights from the boy who has lost his mother. The author makes use of varying sentence styles. Simple sentences are used to merely narrate the event - ‘Mr. Chin was shouting instructions. Mrs. Chin called my name.’ These simple sentences help maintain a slow pace of the text, and create a dull tone to commemorate the death. Some sentences like the ones in Lines 3-5 are fragmented, revealing the incident one step at a time.
Some discoveries may be the result of significant experiences that one undergoes. In moving on from these experiences, the discoveries can be provoked and have the ability to open the eyes of individuals. Gwen Harwood’s “Father and Child” explores the growth and maturation of a child. Harwood shows the juxtaposition between innocence and maturity and the way that discovering this deepens the perception one has of the world. The
Within stanzas one and two the poet uses imagery and word choice to convey that the narrator is thinking about new life, pregnancy and babies.
In the third stanza there is heavy personification of the objects in her room and the moon. The room ‘it seemed, had missed her’ (10), by bringing inanimate objects to life the author draws parallels to the child missing her parent silently, silent like the items in her room. The moon has also begun to become characterized and has been framed as inconsiderate, ‘she pretended an interest in the bookcase’. This metaphor conveys how the child feels: overlooked, as if items in her room are more fascinating.
The author uses the poems structure and stanzas to help get her point across. The poem is composed of four stanzas with a total of 25 lines. Each stanza signifies a different part of the child’s life. The stanzas have irregular lengths and structures. The numbers of lines in each stanza vary from five to seven. Piercy separates the pieces of the story by stanzas to tell the girls story so the audience could see how she was treated since birth. For instance the first stanza talks about her birth and adolescent years, while the third and forth stanzas talk about the end of her life.
An essential step in analyzing a poem is to provide a structural outline of the poem. Anne Bradstreet’s poem, “The Author to Her Book,” can be divided into seven sections. First, line one provides the general description of how she views her creation. She repeatedly speaks directly to her work in apostrophe, as if it were her own child. Second, lines two through five depict how she feels embarrassed that her private