What Is The Theme Of English By Yusef Komunyakaa

Nevertheless, in the poem ‘Nesting time’, Stewart interprets a personal experience in first person of the appearance of a bird that lands upon his daughter and forgets the thought of the harsh world. Stewart’s descriptive language repeatedly explains the poem as if seen in his viewpoint, beginning with an interjection, ‘oh’ communicating of his incredulity of an ‘absurd’ bird. Symbolizing the bird with strong coloured imagery its ‘mossy green, sunlit’, described to be bright and joyful, with sweetness shown with the type of bird, ‘honey-eater’, Douglas Stewart takes the time to describe its admiration juxtaposed to the dangerous world surrounding it. While visualizing the birds actions, ‘pick-pick-pick’ of alliteration and repetition of its

The children are unnoticed by others and the mother is the only one that is protecting them. This poem shows the hard times that the mother must face because her children have died. However the mother is coping with them while still protecting her children after they have died, This is the mother's way of coping because she is not yet ready to let go of her children and still wants to care for them. This poem shows this through nature by portraying the mother as a bird who is protecting her nest. Also the poem uses nature by describing the harsh times as a winter wind that has caused harm to the mother and her children.

The young man in the poem loses his identity as he develops into the ruthless world of adulthood with its dehumanizing competition of ‘money-hungry, back-stabbing’ and ‘so-and-so.’ These exaggerated words and clichés

Remembering memories is preferred, rather than living in reality. In the poem, we witness a woman remembering her high school idol, and she decides in the end to not go and talk to him. It is evident that the woman in the poem prefers her memory rather than the view that reality is showing her, this is shown when the woman refuses to go and meet the “hero she had as a girl”, despite giving herself a realistic reason why she should go and greet him, “you think how easy it would be to walk right over and tap him on the shoulder[, and] say hello” but she doesn’t. She doesn’t go and greet him because her memory remembers him as someone amazing, and admirable, “taller than the boys in your own class[,] taller even than your brothers”; where height is a reflection of her admiration. But her hero is now “fat and balding”, and to go greet him now would warp her perspective of her hero, from someone to idolise, to someone pathetic. In the end, she chooses to just remember him just the way she wants to, rather than remembering him the way reality does, showing that memories are preferred over reality. The woman also chooses not to talk to him because of her personal desire to retain her views and opinions of not only how she sees her hero, but also how

The speaker is the voice of the poem, since “I” is used alot in this poem, it is in first person. I imagined the speaker’s

Throughout the poem, the speaker uses specific details that show the conflict between the speaker’s son and his parents. In the first stanza, the speaker recalls exchanges of dialogue between the speaker and his or her son. For example, the speaker’s son exclaims, “I did the problem / and my teacher said I was right!” (Nye 3-4). The child validated his teacher’s opinion but ridiculed his parents’ opinion. This is further explained through more details in a later part of the same stanza. The mother explains how the son believed his parents were “idiots / without worksheets to back us up” (Nye 9-10). The speaker’s son had entrusted his teacher and thought of his teacher as highly intelligent, but believed that way because of foolish reasoning. In addition, the speaker lists examples of minor mistakes the parents made that caused the son to be embarrassed of them. Through distinct details, the speaker describes how the son’s “mother never remembers / what a megabyte means and his dad fainted on an airplane once / and smashed his head on the drinks cart” (Nye 10-12). By choosing to include these particular details, the poet outlines the foundation of the conflict between the son and his parents.

In the middle of the poem, the speaker arrives at the number of casualties from the war. When he reads this number he can’t believe that he is still alive. As he reads down the names he uses the visual imagery and simile to describe how he expected to find his own name in “letters like smoke” (line 16). This helps the reader understand how lucky the speaker felt about somehow escaping the war still alive. As he goes

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.

The little child “she”who is in vague identity runs through this poem. From the poem “but I was talking

This is shown by the silhouette in paint of a man, woman, and two children whose images were burned on wood. Bradbury describes the house as, “An altar with ten thousand attendants, big, small, servicing, attending, in choirs. But the gods had gone away, and the ritual of the religion continued senselessly, uselessly” (68). Despite the family being no longer alive, the house seems to remain and continues on doing it’s job by cleaning and cooking. When the house sings the poem, the poem states, “Not one will care at last when it is done. Not one would mine, neither bird nor tree” (69). Meaning that once humans are gone, not even nature would care or notice. And this is shown in the scene when the house is being burnt down, the animals in the nursery ran off to the steaming river. Meaning that the animals were going back to the nature

The speaker of the poem is a grown man reminiscing because he is describing things from a different perspective than a twelve year old would. When the speaker asks the girl what she wants at the drugstore, the speaker describes the girl as having “...Light in her eyes, a smile starting at the corners of her mouth.” The speaker now reminisces all the details of the girl’s face. This event had a big impact on him, resulting in him remembering such small details. He now has a mature and observant perspective. The original twelve year old would have just been delighted to see that he has made a girl happy and would not care about the details, as he overjoyed with the girl’s happiness. The speaker is definitely a grown man reminiscing his time as a twelve year old because he states “...I was

Somewhere in the world, a war is being fought. Blood is being spilled, screams and gunshots are filling up the sky as lives are being taken. This brutal, violent, and horrific experience is separated from society by a wall of ignorance and misconception. In “Chickamauga”, Ambrose Bierce breaks down this barrier by using the deaf mute child as a way to symbolize society’s ignorance and misconception towards war.

There is an abrupt change of tone from despair to optimism. The ‘Strand’ (81) becomes a turning point in her life, which changes for good when she luckily meets the ‘English Missionary’ (82) . There is an underlying irony in the word ‘good’ (82) as she has an aversion towards Englishmen for destroying her life and addresses them as ‘savage’ (37) and ‘tyrants’ (55) earlier. The poet uses ‘colloquial’ dialect like ‘Bible book’ (83) . Yamba lacks knowledge of grammar and speaks in ‘broken syntax’ like ‘me no understood’ (84) . The subject ‘I’ (81) changes into the object ‘me’ (84) .

Loss of Innocence At the first glance at the poem, The Chimney Sweeper by William Blake, it seems to be about the mistreatment of children, owever, after more in depth reading it proves to show much more than that. Blake’s poem is about loss of innocence, death, exploitation, and oppression for unwanted children (Heath, S, 2011). By cleverly describing the deplorable livings conditions, the horrible treatment, the dreams of a better life with a father who loves them and the fear of an inevitable death, Blake masterfully allows the reader to see through the sad eyes of a chimney sweep child.

The poem opens with a child in the industrial period describing how his mother had died when he was very young, showing the readers that he started sweeping chimneys and being forced into labor at a young age. In the quote, “And my father sold me while yet my tongue” letting readers know that he was sold before he could even speak. In the third line he states that actually it was before he could even really cry because he, “could scarcely cry weep weep weep weep” the reader can also pick up on the fact that “weep” and “sweep” rhyme giving subtle hints. There was a big class distinction back in the industrial period since the poor children are sweeping the higher-class people’s chimneys. The distinction is shown when the poem says, “So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep”. The words your and I really show the class distinction. It emphasizes the words so that we know that the children have to do the upper-class people’s dirty work.