Final Analysis and Critique
The purpose of this paper is to take two different pieces, of my choice, and analyze them. The works could have been written or spoken based, but I chose to do mine on two poems. Research was done to discover what exactly makes the poem what is. I had to figure out things such as the dialect and the register of the poems.
The two pieces I have chosen to do my final project on are “Mad Girl’s Love Song” by Sylvia Plath and “Balances” by Nikki Giovanni. The poem “Mad Girl’s Love Song” is about a girl that feels like the man she fell in love with isn’t real, but just something she created in her own head. If he truly loved her he wouldn’t have left, or he would have at least come back so she tells herself she’s …show more content…
She says “I think I made you up inside my head” several times, which suggests she’s talking to him (Plath, Sylvia). The way that she speaks in the text suggests that they are both from a high social class. She speaks very formally, uses no slang and there are no grammatical errors in the text. She uses words such as seraphim and thunderbird, which means she is educated in religions as well as other things because seraphim refers to Christianity and thunderbirds refers to native culture (Thunderbird). There are many people that Nikki Giovanni is talking to in the poem “Balances”. In the fifth stanza of the poem she says “our sweet black essence or the funky honkies down the street” (Giovanni, Nikki). In that line she is talking to black people addressing the Caucasian people or as she says “funky honkies,” which is a derogatory term for Caucasian people. In the last four stanzas she is talking to her significant other. This is obvious because she says “we used to talk all night and do things together along and I’ve begun, as a reaction to a feeling, to balance the pleasure of loneliness against the pain of loving you” (Giovanni, Nikki). The way that she speaks suggests she is very educated, but when talking with other black people she isn’t afraid to add in a slang word such as …show more content…
There also aren’t any clues as to when the setting is. Sylvia Plath was living in Northampton, Massachusetts before and at the time she wrote the poem (Steinberg, Peter K.). “Mad Girl’s Love Song” was written in the year 1951 (Mad girl’s love song). During that time Plath was attending school at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, on a scholarship (Steinberg, Peter k.). There is nothing in “Balances” that gives any clues as to where the setting is either. This poem also doesn’t give clues as to when the setting is. It was written in 1997 and included in her book “Love Poems.” I’m not really sure if I can say where the author was living before or during the time she wrote this piece. All that I know is when it was
The purpose of this paper is to take two different pieces, of my choice, and analyze them. The works could have been written or spoken based, but I chose to do mine on two poems. Research was done to discover what exactly makes the poem what is. I had to figure out things such as the dialect and the register of the poems.
The two pieces I have chosen to do my final project on are “Mad Girl’s Love Song” by Sylvia Plath and “Balances” by Nikki Giovanni. The poem “Mad Girl’s Love Song” is about a girl that feels like the man she fell in love with isn’t real, but just something she created in her own head. If he truly loved her he wouldn’t have left, or he would have at least come back so she tells herself she’s …show more content…
She says “I think I made you up inside my head” several times, which suggests she’s talking to him (Plath, Sylvia). The way that she speaks in the text suggests that they are both from a high social class. She speaks very formally, uses no slang and there are no grammatical errors in the text. She uses words such as seraphim and thunderbird, which means she is educated in religions as well as other things because seraphim refers to Christianity and thunderbirds refers to native culture (Thunderbird). There are many people that Nikki Giovanni is talking to in the poem “Balances”. In the fifth stanza of the poem she says “our sweet black essence or the funky honkies down the street” (Giovanni, Nikki). In that line she is talking to black people addressing the Caucasian people or as she says “funky honkies,” which is a derogatory term for Caucasian people. In the last four stanzas she is talking to her significant other. This is obvious because she says “we used to talk all night and do things together along and I’ve begun, as a reaction to a feeling, to balance the pleasure of loneliness against the pain of loving you” (Giovanni, Nikki). The way that she speaks suggests she is very educated, but when talking with other black people she isn’t afraid to add in a slang word such as …show more content…
There also aren’t any clues as to when the setting is. Sylvia Plath was living in Northampton, Massachusetts before and at the time she wrote the poem (Steinberg, Peter K.). “Mad Girl’s Love Song” was written in the year 1951 (Mad girl’s love song). During that time Plath was attending school at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, on a scholarship (Steinberg, Peter k.). There is nothing in “Balances” that gives any clues as to where the setting is either. This poem also doesn’t give clues as to when the setting is. It was written in 1997 and included in her book “Love Poems.” I’m not really sure if I can say where the author was living before or during the time she wrote this piece. All that I know is when it was