On August 24, 1955, Emmett Till was visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi. He reportedly flirted with a white cashier women at a grocery store. Four days later, two white men kidnapped Till, beat him and shot him in the head. With the current events in the media today regarding racial profiling and police brutality it is only fit to choose, A Wreath for Emmett Till, by Marilyn Nelson’s. On August 9, 2014, Michael Brown, an African American man, was shot and killed in Ferguson, Missouri after an exchange of words and confrontation with police officers. In A Wreath for Emmett Till, Nelson explores victimhood and justice through remembrance and forgetfulness. Asserting classic poems of witness and the symbol of flowers to paint a vivid picture
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This creates an opportunity to discover a different kind of sorrow. Nelson evokes the heroic crown of sonnets, a form in which 14 sonnets are closely linked. A sequence of sonnets, usually addressed to one person, and/or concerned with a single theme. The last lines of individual sonnets become the first lines of the sequential poems, concluding in a 15th sonnet using all 14 of those first lines in order. The crown is a perfect instrument for modeling overpowering content, as its complex thoroughness enables Nelson to consider and vividly conduct events in history that would otherwise swallow or flatten speech. Nelson’s verses are unmistakably clear and unwavering depictions of Shakespearean references and classic elements of imagery. The verses are akin to flowers and plants for a wreath that she weaves for Till’s killing through transparent portrayal of the murder in its very personal feeling and unrelenting …show more content…
The tree has seen hundreds of natural deaths in the development of its life, but Emmett Till is different. It not only troubled a summer night, but it made the stars tremble. Nelson reminds likely images from that night, again playing with ideas of light and dark, hopefulness and remorse: Emmett hunted by men whose white faces are made even whiter by moonbeams. The sonnet proposes images of the men applauding each other after killing Till, patting each other on the backs and smoking cigars. By contrast, for the tree and the narrator, what happened to Emmett Till remains dreadful, so much so that it's hard to speak his name without pure feelings. “Emmett Till’s Name still catches in the
This creates an opportunity to discover a different kind of sorrow. Nelson evokes the heroic crown of sonnets, a form in which 14 sonnets are closely linked. A sequence of sonnets, usually addressed to one person, and/or concerned with a single theme. The last lines of individual sonnets become the first lines of the sequential poems, concluding in a 15th sonnet using all 14 of those first lines in order. The crown is a perfect instrument for modeling overpowering content, as its complex thoroughness enables Nelson to consider and vividly conduct events in history that would otherwise swallow or flatten speech. Nelson’s verses are unmistakably clear and unwavering depictions of Shakespearean references and classic elements of imagery. The verses are akin to flowers and plants for a wreath that she weaves for Till’s killing through transparent portrayal of the murder in its very personal feeling and unrelenting …show more content…
The tree has seen hundreds of natural deaths in the development of its life, but Emmett Till is different. It not only troubled a summer night, but it made the stars tremble. Nelson reminds likely images from that night, again playing with ideas of light and dark, hopefulness and remorse: Emmett hunted by men whose white faces are made even whiter by moonbeams. The sonnet proposes images of the men applauding each other after killing Till, patting each other on the backs and smoking cigars. By contrast, for the tree and the narrator, what happened to Emmett Till remains dreadful, so much so that it's hard to speak his name without pure feelings. “Emmett Till’s Name still catches in the