On July 27, 1993, Boston’s Celtics player, Reggie Lewis suffered sudden cardiac death on a basketball court at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. The young athlete was only 27 years old. He left behind a legacy averaging 20.8 points per game and 17.6 points per contest. To an average person the loss of life at such a young age would cause discomfort and sorrow, but to A.E Housman, an English acclaimed scholar and poet, he believed dying at the peek of one’s career had its benefits. In 1896, A.E Housman wrote “To An Athlete Dying Young” – a lyric poem and elegy, written in AABB rhyme scheme, which offered the positive attributes of a successful athlete dying young. The poem is written in a basic rhyme in which every two lines rhyme. …show more content…
The example resembles the motions a runner makes while competing in a race. The speaker further labels the athlete “smart” in choosing to depart before his time for within his career-path, he states, “fame and glory do not last”. The author uses a sort of complexity to enhance what seems to be a simple poem in an interesting matter, formulating opposing images and symbols such as the laurel and rose. The speaker uses metaphors and symbolism to compare the athlete’s beginning stages as victorious and dignified like the laurels given to those held to high-esteem, like how the previous Roman Gods used to wear. He uses consonance - “it withers quicker than the rose” - to suggest that had the athlete has not passed away, his talent and the accompanied-glory would have eventually vanished like the withering rose. Throughout these lines and the poem the narrator reacts to the boy as if he was still alive. He looks back on the boy’s life, bolstering him to be happy on what just happened, that it indeed is better to die young. The author talks about the boy’s fondest memory, on how the entire town celebrated his special victory. Today, the boy is joining the likes of many other runners. He can be settled and put at ease in his final stop, the
The poem “American Hero” by Essex Hemphill, is about a competitive match of basketball, however, towards the end the author describes a social denial from other neighborhoods that despise his team. To convey his feelings, the author’s tone in the beginning of the poem is thrilling as it stimulates the feeling of playing competitively in a game of basketball when reading until the game is over when the tone gets wretched as the thought of being denied by the opposing team’s school sinks in to the author’s mind. Furthermore, the tone and the use imagery are used to convey the sense of being in the game and knowing the environment in this tense basketball game. An example of this is on lines 5-9, it states “It’s a shimmering club light and I’m
“To an Athlete Dying Young,” the title is quick to attract the eyes of a person with an athletic interest. However, beneath the title lies a poem that possesses many components of a masterpiece that ultimately attracts more than the previously stated group of human beings. The man behind the “masterpiece,” A.E. Housman, was born in March of 1859. Growing up in England, Housman’s education was the least questionable attribute about him. It was his drive for greater knowledge that led him to seek more and ultimately compose the masterpiece of, “To an Athlete Dying Young,” which is a part of the novel A Shropshire Lad, also by Housman.
Even after he died, he remained an icon in baseball and the whole sports industry. Many young adolescents and even grown adults look at athletes as role models or heroes. Even though some athletes make questionable decisions, people still look up or even follow in the footsteps of the athlete because of their prowess at the sport he/she plays professionally. However, Anthony Smith wrote “For people who turn to athletes as examples of perseverance or strength, I don’t think there is a better example than Gehrig.” With his difficult childhood growing up with a drunk and a mother who worked multiple jobs and his diagnosis with ALS at an early age, Anthony Smith believes that Gehrig is one of the finest role models in the athletic world.
Toward the middle and end of the novel, the boy and his mother had to cope with the loss of their loyal dog, Sounder, and the boy’s father. “The boy was crying now. Not that there was any new or sudden sorrow. There just seemed to be nothing else to fill up the vast lostness of the moment.” This is a quote from Sounder, it expresses the immense pain that the boy felt throughout the novel.
This is the world the children dream of but will not reach until their death. It contrasts with the life the chimney sweepers are currently living, showing how much worse off they are in the present world. “To an Athlete Dying Young” has quite a different perspective. Housman uses imagery to describe the happier days of the athlete, but unlike in “The Chimney Sweeper”, it is not a dream world. It was once the athlete’s life.
John Updike poem “The Ex-Basketball player” is a form free verse poem written in third person narrator about a young man, Flick Webb who still lives in his past rather than moving forward in his life. Flick Webb who was once a great basketball player during his high school years but now he just “sells gas, checks oil, and changes flats.” Flick is an indeed example towards high school students of what not to be. A person should not cling to one important memory in one’s life but should move further and be capable of doing something beyond.
A.E. Housman, usually known for writing about death and young age, uses precise diction, language usage, and style to help the reader know exactly what he is talking about in his works. In order for a poem to make be on point, the word choice needs to be accurate. In the poem “To An Athlete Dying Young”, Housman uses diction, syntax, and tone to perfection. Every poet has his or her own type of work.
“Execution” by Edward Hirsch is about an adult recollecting his thoughts about his high school football career and especially how his coach inspired him because his authoritative role model was battling cancer. The speaker talks about the coach’s goal for “perfect execution” and the infinite strategies the coach would draw up in order to reach his goal. The speaker concludes with their team’s loss against “the downstate team” and how they were ironically defeated by “perfect execution.” A superficial reader might assume that the poem was about the disappointing results that came from his team working hard to reach a goal, but the author’s use of impersonal tone and irony in the fact that their team’s loss is caused by “perfect execution” shows how a strong force can be conquered even when putting your best foot forward when accepting a challenge. Have you ever been a part of a team that seemed invincible and you lost?
In John Updike’s poem “Ex-Basketball Player” the poet uses literary devices to depict the existing way of life of a once-famous sportsperson. Flick Webb was in before times a gifted athlete on his high school basketball team, and he was commendable of much awe. However, Flick never acquired any other skills to prepare him for a future. Accordingly, he now is locked into an unskilled job and his former glories have pale to all but Flick himself. Updike has created a character that is at this point in time going nowhere and spends most of his time thinking about his former days of glory.
The Downfall of Cardinal Wolsey In Cardinal Wolsey’s free-verse speech from Shakespeare’s Henry VIII, Wolsey, a recently dismissed advisor of the king, expresses his frustration and despair toward his ended political career—the pain that will linger for the rest of his life. Through the use of various literary elements, Shakespeare captures Wolsey’s bitterness of losing his career and the agony of falling from all the successes. Over the first fifteen lines of the speech, Wolsey reacts to the sudden loss of his career in a remorseful tone.
Regardless of this, the poem is famous for its unique rhythm and meter of poem. The poem flows very smoothly but does not have a specific poetic foot. Consonances were used to help the rhyme scheme sound more pleasing to readers. The poets diction was exclusive and out of the ordinary.
“To an Athlete Dying Young” is an amazing poem that is an ode to a young athlete that did not get to live out the prime of their life because of an unfortunate event that sadly ended their life early. A. E. Housman, the poet of “To an Athlete Dying Young”, was born on March 26th in 1859, and was a Latin professor at Cambridge University until his death on April 30th in 1936. In “To an Athlete Dying Young”, Housman perfectly uses a different point of view, figurative language, sound devices, and a negative mood to tell the story of the poem. Many assume that the speaker is the poet when reading a poem, but this is not true for “To an Athlete Dying Young”.
Poetry is a piece of literature where the author shares his ideas of a subject or person. He is attempting to allow the reader an understanding of his feelings regarding this subject. Most of the time poetry can be very pleasing to the ear; however, at times it can be written in a manner that is odd. Some poetry is written in a way that the reader can “hear”, “feel”, “see” or “taste” elements in the poem. Some poems may rhyme while others may not need to in order to convey the message.
The Transformation that Changes our Lives The poet Emily Dickinson in her poem, I Felt a Funeral in my Brain that is the first line of the poem, not a special title that Dickinson chose. It tells about the story of the experience of the speaker in the poem who is transforming from place to another. Many readers would take this poem as an explanation of what happens after death, what the dead body feels in the funeral.
The poem has 45 lines but no stanzas with occasional internal rhyming as well as assonance. The poem is said to