Natasha Trethewey's 'Photograph: Ice Storm, 1971'

The amnesia suggests she could be a very old woman. Now with most of her life gone, she is to spend the rest of it all alone with no one but the rain that taps and sighs at her window. In line six thru she says, “And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain for unremembered lads that not again will turn to me at midnight with a cry. ”(Page 440 line 6-8)

Natasha Trethewey, undoubtedly one of the most well-known southern modern contemporary poets often expresses her feelings of poetry stating, “I think there is a poem out there for everyone, to be an entrance into the poetry and a relationship with it” (CITE). Trethewey was born on April 26, 1966 in Gulfport, Mississippi. Her parents, Gwendolyn Ann Turnbough and Eric Trethewey, were both prestigious workers in the community as a biracial couple. Trethewey’s childhood during the twentieth century was unlike any childhood during the twenty-first century. Growing up as a biracial child, during the Civil Rights Movement drove Trethewey to silence her judgements towards societies view of her.

The authors words give a feeling of looming death in this scene, and puts that in a brutally cold winter

The author’s use of imagery in the short story, “One Mile of Ice” conveys the relentless struggle between the protagonists and their environment. Hugh Garner uses imagery to convey how the protagonists feel during their struggle with the environment. The environment around them is quite frigid. Pete becomes extremely cold, but “[h]e [is] not only cold in a sensory way, his face, legs, and hands, but deep inside him the freezing wind seemed to . . . [penetrate] and [reduce] the temperature of his whole body” (Garner 21).

“Although they’d been traveling all night and the chill had reached deep.” (32-33) The cold weather causes the children to be drained of their color and refer to their coats for

The poem begins by the speaker telling the reader that the story that would now be told is told annually, emphasizing the significance of the story to “we”, presumably a family, based on clues given later in the poem. Then, using the verse “how we peered from the windows, shades drawn” (Trethewey 2), it immediately puts us in the place of the figures in the poem, by the usage of the imagery about the shades being drawn, as if hiding from something to be scared of, and by the careful choice of the word “peering”, instead of simply “looking” or “staring”, which gives us the sense that the figures are afraid of being seen. Then, despite having set up this mood of fear, the speaker takes a step back, and seems to be trying to calm us, the readers, down by reminding us that nothing really happened and that even the environment around the incident has now returned to its original, vivid colors. Following that, however, we are put back into the mood of fear by the repetition of the verse about peering, which is a benefit the form of a pantoum provides to the poem. Writing the

The theme of grief is shown throughout the poem Morning in the Burned House , which is set in post-apocalyptic times. Margaret Atwood visits the themes grief and loss of innocence in her poem. The poem starts off "In the burned house I am eating breakfast. You understand: there is no house, there is no breakfast" Repetition is seen here using the word breakfast, as she is emphasising no one is around and there is no routine as the lady is out of place and is confused. With the first couple of lines the poet is telling us that she is a liar.

The poem begins with the speaker looking at a photograph of herself on a beach where the “sun cuts the rippling Gulf in flashes with each tidal rush” (Trethewey l. 5-7). The beach is an area where two separate elements meet, earth and water, which can represent the separation of the different races that is described during the time that her grandmother was alive and it can also represent the two races that are able to live in harmony in the present day. The clothing that the two women wear not only represent how people dressed during the different time periods, but in both the photographs of the speaker and her grandmother, they are seen standing in a superman-like pose with their hands on “flowered hips” (Trethewey l. 3,16). The flowers on the “bright bikini” (Trethewey l. 4) are used to represent the death of segregation, similar to how one would put flowers on a loved one’s grave, and on the “cotton meal sack dress” (Trethewey l. 17) it is used to symbolize love and peace in a troubled society.

In the poem “Treblinka Gas Chamber”, by Phyllis Webb and in the TRC’s “The History”, both texts share a common theme of inhumane treatment towards children within certain cultural and ethnical groups. While the two authors explore distinct historical contexts, both texts are centred on racial segregation with nationalistic motives. Phyllis Webb appeals to a logos strategy through the use of allusion. In her poem, “Treblinka Gas Chamber”, Webb presents fictional and historical examples to display her knowledge and establish her credibility.

In the story “Time of Wonder” the writer and illustrator Robert McCloskey creates a mesmerizing picture book. Throughout the book he relates his message to the reader of taking time to enjoy the weather and nature. Likewise, the reader is able to experience these events directly with phrases such as “IT’S RAINING ON YOU” (McCloskey 10). One event the reader is able to conjure up is the ocean in Maine with the taste of salt on their tongue. Moreover, the reader visualizes the calm sea on a sunny day and fears the roaring wind before a hurricane.

Raymond Carver’s short story “Popular Mechanics” was written in the minimalist style, but that didn’t stop him from using rich and full uses of imagery, symbolism and irony. Carver begins the story up by giving details on the weather outside than slowly comparing it to the drama going on inside his story. By using a mix of imagery and symbolism, the day gets darker as well as the story and gives off a feeling of melancholy. Though the communication is brief, Carver makes every word said important and meaningful. He uses irony throughout the entirety of “Popular Mechanics” and gets the purpose of the writing across while still adding emotion to the argument.

Overall the terrible storm, which Alcee deems a cyclone, not only helps to show the theme of the story but helps to reveal the emotions of a character. Because of the repression of women in the time period the risqué details which are enhanced or represented by the storm serve to give detail to the life of

The poem “History Lesson” written by Natasha Trethewey has a unique form of style and rhythm that causes the reader to rely more on their comprehension of the story than the presented facts. Specifically, in the beginning of the poem the writer describes herself standing, with her hands on her hips in a flowered bikini while her grandmother, beaming, takes a photograph of her. In the middle of the poem she states that the beach has recently been opened to people like her and her grandmother. Finally, at the very end of the poem she says “Forty years since the photograph where she stood on a narrow plot of sand marked colored, smiling, her hands on the flowered hips of a cotton meal-sack dress.” The writer formatted this poem in a way where she did not put the information together in order to create ambiguity.

Rich 's "Storm Warnings" has more than one meaning. One being literal, and another being metaphorical. The literal meaning of the poem is that there is an impending storm, and the author is anticipating and preparing for the storm to come. The metaphorical meaning of the poem is the author is suffering from an emotional storm. The literal and metaphorical meanings of the poem are shown to be similar when Rich writes, "Weather abroad and weather in the heart alike come on regardless of prediction.

The gender of the speaker cannot be defined since there are no indications to suggest the speaker’s gender. The main idea of the poem is the integral part of music in African American culture as a “hypodermic needle / to [the] soul” soothing the weariness and pain from the “smoldering memor[ies]” of “slave ships” (6). In stanza 1, the larger theme of social inequality is addressed through the allusion of the slave trade by trumpet player’s memory “of slave ships / Blazed to the crack of whips,” (6-7).