The Poet's Occasional Alternative By Grace Paley Summary

Richard Wright’s poem “Between the World and Me” mourns the tragic scene of a gruesome lynching, and expresses its harsh impact on the narrator. Wright depicts this effect through the application of personification, dramatic symbolism, and desperate diction that manifests the narrator’s agony.

Love causes people to do strange things. People either love the idea of love, or desire to run as far away from it as possible. Clarence Hervey is a character that has good intentions to be liked by others and to find this love; however, he is arrogant and easily swayed, causing him to lack moral values and turn away from his true self. This is evident through Edgeworth’s use of contrasting diction, capricious syntax and deceptive imagery.

In his short story “The Pie,” Gary Soto recreates the experience of his guilty six year-old self through the use of cachet word choice and contrasting subtle and stark imagery.

Jane Evershed is one of those people that has the ability to speak through her artwork. This is a wonderful skill to have, as a picture is worth a thousand words. She speaks most openly to women, those who may or may not have endured the discrimination, oppression, sexual assault, and abuse from loved ones or society itself. Society makes it harder for women to accept themselves as they are. They come in all shapes and sizes, ethnicities and backgrounds, religions and sexualities. Evershed realizes this, and uses her personal struggles and the ongoing struggles of women everywhere to get a message across: women are beautiful, powerful, and strong. This is why there have been many women to join together and promote feminism; to stand proud

In “The Trouble with Poetry”, and “Introduction to Poetry” Billy Collins focuses on the issue of forced inspiration, and the lack of appreciation readers, and aspiring poets have for the feel of poetry.

She mingles the personal with the public in order to share the experience with her readers and therefore truly express their feelings. “I think that my putting myself in my poetry is me saying to my readers and my listeners “I’m willing to stand here and be as vulnerable as perhaps I am making others and situations vulnerable in my work. I have to be willing to do that” (Finney, “Interview with: Nikky Finney.”).

The exhibit of the facade Dunbar included in his work, lead to Howell to praise his work for the audience of those that were White and it lead to national attention. Dunbar by no means was able to escape the stereotype for his dialect poetry. As a result, it limited his influence towards the African American community. The final poem to be addressed is Dunbar’s most highly praised dialect poems, “When Malindy Sings.” Keeling suggests that Dunbar’s use of dialect should be defined, “We must show how Dunbar’s mask of dialect can be a powerful active force rather than a self-defeating retreat into a fantasy world”(29). Keeling advises the reader to look at Henry Louis Gates reading of Zora Neal Hurston. According to Keeling, “Gates does not focus on Hurston’s explcit subject matter, nor her social politics.

In WW2 the holocaust clamed 6 million Jews lives, and over 7 million soviets died too and 1.7 million of those soviets were also counted towards the 6 million Jews. The holocaust was a genocide during World War II in when Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany tried to take over then world and also attempted to kill off all the Jews. They would send Jews and people who opposed them to concentration camps where they were either durned or worked till they couldn’t. Night is an autobiography by Elie Wiesel, a holocaust survivor. Auschwitz death camp is a video documentary with oprah winfrey and Elie Wiesel. One thought I had after learning about the holocaust was how crazy to you have to be to try to eliminate an entire religion of people.

Within her poem “On Being Brought from Africa to America,” Phillis Wheatley takes a rather unique stance regarding the concept of slavery, a topic that was controversial during her time. Wheatley begins by stating that it was “mercy” that had brought her from her native “Pagan” land to the world of God and Salvation. With her embedded passion within the poem, a reader can easily infer that Phillis truly appreciates that she was able to learn the notions of Redemption and Heaven from her gruesome travels. This is a rather ironic situation a former slave could be in, for her physical pain would drastically outweigh her spiritual revelation. Later on, Wheatley proceeds to address the racial issue that was prevalent in America. She claims that

In a letter to his brother, the great painter, Vincent Van Gogh, once wrote,“Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it”. In this quote, Van Gogh summarizes a subject great writers like Ralph Waldo Emerson has devoted entire essays to defining and explaining, and that is the subject of poetry. As it can be seen, a poet undertakes that almost impossible job of transposing what he or she sees in Nature on to paper for others to read. Only a true poet can be successful in an attempt. It is not just Nature a poet tries to capture into words, but also social experiences and human truths. Gwendolyn Brooks (1917- 2000) and Robert Hayden (1913-1980) are two Harlem renaissance poets who are experts in writing poems the detail both African American social experiences and universal human emotions. In Gwendolyn Brooks’s poem, The Explorer, the speaker tells the events of an unknown subject walking down a hallway searching for a quiet peaceful room in which to rest. In Frederick Douglass by Robert Hayden, the speaker voicelizes that when everyone receives freedom, then the great, historical figure, Frederick Douglass will be remembered eternally in the lives of everyday people. The Explorer by Gwendolyn Brooks and Frederick Douglass by Robert Hayden can be compared and

Five A.M. is a time in which most people are usually asleep, yet those who are awake get to experience the solemn time of day. Five A.M. by William Stafford and Five Flights Up by Elizabeth Bishop convey different points of view and state of mind during this exclusive time of day. Stafford asks rhetorical questions and ponders in the serenity of Five A.M. Bishop on the other hand expresses her currently disturbed mood, which is affected by her subjective opinions on her surroundings. Both speakers depict a similar scene of morning experience, but both portray different states of mind.

In any given speech, or piece of literature for that matter, there is a certain amount of pathos, logos, and ethos used by the author, a technique that people like to call the “Rhetorical Triangle”. In the thought provoking speech: “Tide of Voices: Why Poetry Matters Now”, the speaker spectacularly uses these tactics to prove the validity, importance, and beauty of poetry. Mark Doty, the author, is a recognized American poet, who was the winner of the National Book Award for Poetry in 2008. This accomplishment on its own establishes ethos, a form of trust and credibility. Obviously, a poet defending poetry is as expected as a mathematician defending mathematics, but still, the reliability and status is there. The article, as aforementioned, is basically a palette of evidence trying to prove why poetry is such a crude and raw form of language and expression, and why it still matters.

The poem that stood out the most while reading this assortment of Emily Dickinson poems, was her poem numbered 656/520. This poem used imagery in numerous ways throughout in order to show the audience the important themes and the overall meaning of this work of literature. The poem’s main theme was about a walk on the beach that the poet encountered in the early morning. Although the poem is about a beach it can also give the audience contextual clues into other aspects of life.

The name Erin Hanson is one many have not heard. The young poets ideas spread confidence, self love, and acceptance. Her young age allows her to connect with her audience in ways many her fellow poets can not. For example in her poem non-officially titled “People are not poetry” Hanson covers the many struggles of being human. However; instead of focusing on the negative, she turns the spotlight on accepting what makes each one of us different. This interesting turn makes for some fascinating works of literature and life lessons. Style and tone, symbolism, and metaphorical language communicate embracing individualism in Erin Hanson's poetry.

“Bishop’s carefully judged use of language aids the reader to uncover the intensity of feeling in her poetry.”