Welcome to my blog! Here I will be discussing different types of literature for my AP Literature class, enjoy!
http://www.bartleby.com/358/796.html In the poem, "Sonnet 30" by Edmund Spenser, the author uses simile and word connotation to communicate his thoughts about love. Spenser compares himself to fire and his lover to ice, creating an image of clear opposites. The author talks about how he and his love should not go together, saying "How comes it then that this her cold so great / Is not dissolv'd through my so hot desire" which reveals his confusion over how he and his lover can not only coexist, but how they can love. This love is shown when Spenser furthers the simile stating "I burn much more in boiling sweat" showing that not only does she not diminish his flame, but she makes it burn stronger. This reveals the authors idea that love does not make sense, but it will always prevail, even if it has to defy the laws of nature. Spenser also uses word connotation to convey his message. The word "boiling" signified the intensity of his passion for his lover.
Likewise, the use of words with a strong positive connation such as "wondeful" and "miraculous" communicate the authors admiration for love and its inexplainable nature. Through the literary manipulation of simile and word connotation in this poem, the author revealed his thoughts on love and the meaning of his poem as a whole. The simile of the speaker being fire and his lover being ice carries throughout the poem, and the author elaborates on the idea that even though they should destroy eachother, her ice only makes his fire stronger, which reveals his confused yet appreciative attitude toward love. Furthermore, the word connotation in the poem symbolized the speaker's intense love for his lover, as well as an overall positive outlook in the poem. The use of these literary elements in the poem, "Sonnet 30" by Edmund Spenser, convey the overall theme of the poem that love is something that we will never understand, yet it knows no bounds, not even the laws of nature can limit it, but it is beautiful and we should be grateful for it.
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https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/details/5296 Young writes about the funeral home the speaker used to live across the street from. He compares the expirience of living by the funeral home to the graveyard Emily Dickinson had behind her house. I felt the author included this allusion to Dickinson to give the poem an added feeling of sophistication and importance by linking it to an author with considerable literary merit. Young goes on to explore death and funerals and their role in our society. In the first section of the poem, Young conveys a theme that life goes on even in the midst of death. The theme is revealed through the incorporation of details that show how unaffected life truly was by death. "The only hint of death those clusters of cars" reveals that death hadn't dominated the atmosphere, and thad there been no cars, the speaker would've been oblivious to the death around him. Furthermore, the inclusion of the line "Most laughed despite themselves, shook hands & grew hungry out of habit, evening coming on again" truly presents the idea that after a death the speaker felt that virtually nothing in life changed. However, the speaker's attitude toward death and its affect on us shifts near the end of the poem. The speaker encounters the death of his father, making hime claim "I have come to know sorrow's." I interpreted this shift in viewpoint acts to show that even though others appear unaffected by death, it does still change a person, even if it is just internally. The poem continues and the speaker speaks using imagery instead of describing what is happening like he had previously done in the poem. The poem then comes to an abrupt end, closing with the line, "I could not see to see-" The unexpected end of the poem seemed as if it were intended to represent the speaker's death, bringing the poem in full circle. Overall, Young took the reader through different stages of understanding death, from being completely unfazed by death, to feeling the pain of losing someone, to he himself facing death, and shaped the changing views on death through his use of details and shift in outlook in the poem. The poem "The Living," by Kevin Young, tells the story of a poor black child who's family works in the cotton fields to scrape by. I inferred that from the lack of slavery, and the speaker saying "weeds piled useless as Confederate bills" that the poem is set shortly after the Civil War. In this poem, Young speaks of the struggles the speaker and his family went through, from having no plumbing or heat in their house, to getting paid next to nothing for labor intensive work, Young truly captured the essence of the lives of not only the speaker's family, but a majority of black familys in that time. Young conveyed the struggles of this boy and his family through the use of figurative language. He primarily used similes and imagery to develop the speakers life further. For example, when he was talking about picking cotton, he said that he had "hands swollen like unpicked fruit" which simply worked to add more depth to the idea that the speaker had swollen hands. Overall, the marriage of the events potrayed in the book and Young's use of figurative language resulted in a poem that showcases the struggles of the speaker and his family, and reveals an underlying theme of the oppression a majority of blacks faced in the period. Upon reading the poem "Early Show" by Kevin Young, it unraveled itself as an ode of sorts to the flaws in humans. Young potrayed several flaws through setting the poem in what is said to be a hotel. He wrote of flawed people inside of this hotel, namely those who commit "adultery." Younh exposed these people as being "doctors" "secretaries" and several other professionals. I believe that Young wrote them with respectable careers to show that anyone can be flawed.
In the poem, Young conveyed a message of human nature and its flaws through what the speaker saw while living in the hotel. Young furthered this message through his use of literary description and details. In the poem, he wrote about humans and their flaws, as well regret. Young wrote about regret because it goes hand and hand with adultery and other human flaws. He even depicted regret as something we maintain and help grow, writing "Regret a green thing all morning I been watering." Throughout the poem Young hints at the regret that goes along with the flaws of humans, as well as revealing that anyone and everyone is flawed in some way. The clear connection between everyone being flawed and those flaws fueling regret was made by Young in this poem. Young's message was clear, we all have flaws and we all have regrets, regardless of our story. The poem, "Bling Bling Blues," by Kevin Young is about a man who used to live in poverty but ended up becoming very wealthy. The speaker characterizes himself as being so poor he was starving, and then ending up so rich he could buy anything he wanted. Upon reading the poem I felt as if this man was not truly happy in life, and the title "Bling Bling Blues" furthered my inference that the speaker wasn't fulfilled in life. This plays into the motif that money cannot buy you happiness. While it wasn't blatantly stated, we see that Kevin Young's underlying message in this poem is that the speaker was not truly satisfied or happy with his life even though he had enough money to buy his mother a house of gold, presenting the moral concept that you can have all the money in the world and still be miserable and sad.
This well written literary work by Kevin Young is about a girl that stirs a deep burning passion within him. He characterizes the object of his affections as a smoking flame, a flame so powerful that she could burn down a brick house. I interpreted the brick house as symbolizing Young and conveying that his lust for her could bring him to his end. He was so intrigued and enchanted by her that he did not care if it would bring his downfall. He didn't want to extinguish her smoldering flame, and doubted he could even if he wanted to. Young also implies that she is where his world starts with the the quote "To watch you walk cross the room in your black corduroys is to see civilization start" (Young). This girl is the center of Young's existence, he is endlessly enticed by her metaphorical flame. The story in this poem also closely follows the motif in human nature of a fatal love. The idea of loving someone that will only bring their bitter demise, but they are willing to make the sacrifice for love. Overall Young carefully constructed a poem about a girl so captivating and beautiful that she brings life to his world and also has the power to send it crumbling to the ground. |