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Imagery In The Protest Song By Timothy Liu

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Poetry is a form of art and expression that is centuries old, yet we still use it today to inform others of current events. With an increasing amount of access to instant global news, why do people turn to poetry to this day? Poetry is still important in relevance to current events because poetry has the power to move people with the fluidity of its words in a way that news articles cannot, it can create vivid imagery with its descriptive language, and it can be interpreted in a countless amount of ways. The poem Protest Song by Timothy Liu is a great portrayal of the three points written above.
Timothy Liu was inspired by the events and protests happening at Standing Rock Reservation and wrote a poem to spread awareness for the events. When comparing Protest Song to a news article about the events at …show more content…

Protest Song speaks of the protests occurring at Standing Rock in a beautiful manner, “The pipeline will not go through, not if any of us can help it. Goddamn the buffalo gathered on the horizon if they aren’t ready to stampede for they know which side we’re taking, water cannon fire be damned, concussion grenades be damned— lobbed across lands we hold most sacred.” (54-78). These lines speak of the violence of the protests in such a powerful way, making a connection between the people, animals, and the reservation. This creates the idea that the protests are so powerful and righteous that the animals of the land have even joined in on the fight, ideas and words like this move people to take part in the protests and unite over the injustice. Comparative to Protest Song, the news article “Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines: How did we get here?” by Darran Simon and Eliott McLaughlin simply states the facts of the protests. The article favors no side and inputs no opinion, it is solely meant to inform the audience of the facts.

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