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African American Poetry Essay Research Paper African — страница 2 | Referat.ru

African American Poetry Essay Research Paper African — страница 2

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lifeless clay,Know not the anguish of that heart,Whose loved are rudely torn away.”Harper also does a fantastic job of setting a gloomy tone through his use of diction. He describes “anguish and distress”, “screaming eyes”, and “frail and shrieking children”. How can one help but be affected by such horrifying descriptions. Bury Me in a Free LandThis poem does an outstanding job of getting inside the mind of a slave. One can clearly feel the fear of a slave in this poem. The slave in this poem does not ask for a beautiful and grand grave, but rather simply wants to be out of the bounds of slavery. Slavery has had such a terrible impact on these poor slaves that even their spirits have been affected. Normally a spirit would rest in peace after death, but not in this

situation. This spirit “could not rest” in “a land of slaves”. This is the tremendous impact that slavery has had on these innocent souls. Once again Harper masterly uses diction to portray slavery. He talks of “the mother’s shriek of wild despair” and “drinking her blood at each fearful gash”. These phrases would send quivers up anybody’s spine. TomorrowThis poem is obviously not of the highest quality, but the imagery used is so fabulous that I had to include this too in the anthology. Miller describes the slaves as “packed like spoons” on the boats. This is a perfect metaphor. One can see the slave lying down one beside the next with their knees somewhat bent, just as the bottom of the spoon rounds out. The slave goes on to say that he would rather

return in that horrible boat than “to continue to live among knives and forks”. It is plain to see how this characterizes the Americans “cutting into” their slaves. Still I RiseThis poem symbolizes a change of mentality of the African American race. In this poem, for the first time, one sees a pride that hasn’t been seen before. The poem explains that although everyone has tried to keep the Africans down, they still persevere and “rise”. Angelou uses wonderful imagery for this when she writes, “You may trod me in the very dirt, But still, like dust, I’ll rise”. Angelou also does a terrific job of pacing the poem. When one reads it, one can hear Angelou jumping out of the page at you with these words. It is almost like a sermon. One can hear the anger and also

the confidence in her words. Finally, at the end Angelou declares:”I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise. I rise. I rise.”One can actually feel themselves rising with these words. Phenomenal WomanOnce again Angelou is writing of an inner confidence. But, this time it refers more specifically to women. She describes what it is to be a “Phenomenal Woman”. It is something rather hard to comprehend as “Men themselves have wondered what they see in me.” What it is, is simply an “inner mystery” that women possess. “It’s in the arch of my back,The sun of my smile,The ride of my breasts,The grace of my style.”Once again Angelou uses the perfect word choice and beat to make her words come alive. Picture of a ManThis poem is very unclear, so one can get

imaginative in its meaning. I believe this poem is full of imagery. The poem is about a baby living alone with his mother. This is the reason why he “draws a man”. The tree then represents the stability that a father usually represents in a family. Then he asks “why in his story book the big boats have little boats”? This seems to be asking why do parents have children. Now, this is obviously an abnormal question for a child to ask. I believe he asks this because his mother physically abuses him. We begin seeing that something is wrong when he is so scared of the lights being turned off. Then we get an incite from the mother when she states “maybe I could have loved better but I couldn’t have loved more.” In other words, this could very possibly mean that she

mistreated her son, though from purely good intentions. However, at the end she realizes that “This child is all I have left.”Ballad of BirminghamThis poem does a superb job of showing some modern day racism. Randall writes the first half of the poem in the form of a dialogue. This immediately gets the reader more involved in the story and more attached to the characters. Then Randall shows the reader how ugly the racism is by describing the innocence of the church. The Church is contrasted to the Freedom March through diction. Whereas the march will have “clubs and horses, guns and jail” at the church one may “sing in the children’s choir.” Now, one can truly understand that the racists have attacked the completely innocent instead of those who are rallying (not