This week, our class had the chance to read four interesting poems of Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, We Real Cool, Mad Girl’s Love Song, and Hanging Fire. Each of these poems highlight the important role that imagery and other poetic devices play into an interpretation of a poem and how crucial it is to understand the perceptive of a poem’s speaker. The poem I enjoyed the most this week was Hanging Fire by Audre Lorde. On the surface, Hanging Fire is about a 14 year-old who struggles with typical adolescent things such as bad skin, boy problems, school dances, and braces. However, once we re-read the poem and took the time to analysis it, it because quite clear that teenaged problems are not the only things troubling the speaker.
