Sherman Alexie's Without Salmon

Improved Essays
If one were to draw a connection between salmon and the corruption of people due to technology, it would sound absurd due to how stretched out it is. Although, in Sherman Alexie’s poem “Without Salmon,” a connection between similar ideas play off of each other in order to transition into how two unusual items are connected. For “Without Salmon” is a simple sonnet written with a simple diction, but the meaning placed behind it is impactful as a result of Alexie employing a tone of questioning mania. Alexie’s poem has a discreet tone in which the protagonist, the author, reflects on past events and draws a dichotomy on them. In the poem, when “The river is empty. Empty of salmon” he means, memories of his grandmother procure due to her death

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    The short story, “The Bass, The River, and Sheila Mant”, is a story written by W.D. Wetherell about a boy having a crush on the girl next door. The young narrator finally takes the action to ask her to a concert at the carnival. He plans to take her by canoe, since he cannot drive. Sheila does not like fish and he accidently catches one and has to decide to let the bass go or to reel it in. The narrator’s actions in this story, such as the narrator asking her out, advance the plot by establishing conflict.…

    • 303 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    No matter the circumstances, the white mentality will always surface. This idea is is explore in Sharon Olds' poem “On the Subway.” In this poem, a character describes her inner thoughts upon meeting a young black man. She exposes the reality of the conditions a young black man faces and the prejudice that renders them powerless against their own ethics and morals. The author uses diction, syntax, and point of view to convey the protagonist's inner thoughts and their reliability.…

    • 198 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In “The Bear”, Galway Kinnell employs the setting of wilderness as well as elaborate metaphors and other figurative language to explore the internal relationship, and sometimes struggle, one has between their instinctive and rational inner selves. Kinnell’s use of figurative language to represent natural phenomena in the poem blurs the line between primitive and rational to produce an introspective exploration of the human experience. Kinnel also highlights how man is both one with nature while also being apart from it. The poem takes a narrative form, which complements the theme of exploration Kinnell presents.…

    • 974 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    ‘The rites of Cousin Vit’ is an elegy in the form of a sonnet. At first the poem seems to simply tell us that it is unbelievable Vit is dead as she was so lively. However upon a closer reading see the voice expressing her displeasure with her place in society through her admiration of Vit. Brooks explores the themes of mortality, vitality and femininity using techniques such as the meter of the poem and even the name of the character alongside the language of the poem in order to convey these themes.…

    • 816 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Fishhawk Poem Analysis

    • 1074 Words
    • 5 Pages

    “Fishhawk” was the first poem of the Classic of Poetry, the earliest poetry collection of East Asia (p.1322). In contrast to many poems in the “Airs of Domain” that propagated Confucianism, “Fishhawk” is a simple love poem. The poem revolves around a young man who was “tormented by his desire for a girl”(p.1322). While this poem is labeled as a “romantic folk song”(p.1322), the good use of literary elements, syntax, and language added a bit of tint to the love story.…

    • 1074 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In Robert Pack’s poem “An Echo Sonnet: To an Empty Page”, the narrator is uncertain about what comes with death. He worries about his future and what may happen to him. As the narrator asks questions into the emptiness, he finds answers in the echoes of his voice. Robert Pack uses literary devices such as rhetorical questions, selection of detail, metaphors, juxtaposition, and connotation to construct the meaning of his poem.…

    • 873 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Kay Ryan's Tightrope Poem

    • 855 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Repetition: A Thing Repeated “Trying to walk the same way to the same store takes high-wire balance: each step not exactly as before risks chasms of flatness. One stumble alone and nothing happens. Few are the willing and fewer the champions.” In just thirty-seven words, Kay Ryan is able to capture a universal truth: beauty will always remain for those who choose a life of depth, for those who choose to live life on the wire, repetitiously retracing their steps on the footpath of life.…

    • 855 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    John Frederick Nims’ “Love Poem” is a poem describing someone he loves. The first line of the poem, “My clumsiest dear, whose hands shipwreck vases”, at first may be interpreted as the start of some form of insult. This line also intrigues the reader to continue and explore what Nims has to say about his “dear”. Though the poem begins by depicting some negative attributes that his love possesses, Nims doesn’t forget to describe her positive attributes, “Only with words and people and love you move at ease”. Overall the poem uses different elements of poetry to portray the idea that although his “dear” has many imperfect qualities, he loves her despite of them all.…

    • 835 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The speaker states "This Christmas Eve I saw that my mother has outdone herself in creating a strange menu. She was pulling black veins out of the backs of fleshy prawns. The kitchen was littered with appalling mounds of raw food: A slimy cod with bulging eyes that pleaded not to be thrown into a pan of hot oil. Tofu, which looked like stacked wedges of rubbery white sponges.…

    • 826 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Beach Burial written by Australian poet Kenneth Slessor is a harrowing elegy which mourns the vast destruction of war. Grasping a thorough understanding of the historical context of the poem is imperative in order to recognize the purpose and impact of the poem. The poem demonstrates a powerful critique of the nature of war through the exploration of ideas such as the anonymity of soldier’s deaths and how it is death that delivers soldier’s from the horrors of war. The success of the poem can be directly affiliated with Slessor’s careful application of various poetic devices and his ability to confront and thus metamorphose the beliefs of patriotic civilians.…

    • 1040 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Parent child relationship is very sensitive. The theme of the two poems “My Father in the Navy: A Childhood Memory” by Judith Ortiz Cofer and “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden shows the ‘Father’ plays an important role in the upbringing of child and sacrifices his days and nights in hard labors or services in order to provide the needs of his beloved children. Similarly a child returns a father’s love and care by showing his/her admiration and affection. . “Those Winter Sundays” is a story of a hardworking father and his son. The son realizes the love that the father bestowed upon him, but too light, still the lines of the poem depicts the appreciation and admiration that the child…

    • 817 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    “For the Anniversary of My Death” and “The Nail” are considered as the main turning point in W.S Merwin’s use of stylistic approach to poetry. In almost all of his poems, he virtually uses no punctuation of any kind as his choices of words are simpler. Still present in these poems are the poet’s fascination with death, the spiritual, ruination, and the natural. These poems capture the facets of Merwin’s 1960s style and the use of imagery. They are also presented in stanzas, which are irregular, but given the link between the stanzas, the poems suggest that an inverted sonnet was used by the poet.…

    • 2326 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    This brings a more modern take on the classical poem showing how the more contemporary free verse can still carry the same meaning now as in the past. This…

    • 950 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Social media has been a controversial debate for several years now, rather it be the topic of violence, brain development, and social skills. A modern day poet, Sherman Alexie gave his point of view on the topic. In the poem “ The Facebook Sonnet” by Alexie there is a strong use of satirical irony or sarcasm, hyperbole, and pathos to empathize how the use of social media is taking over everyday communications between people. When you have a social media page you connect with people of your past and of you present. Whatever you post they see and vise versa.…

    • 546 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Rather than a defined period of someone’s life, childhood is an abstract period created only when one can look back at it. In order to explore themes such as remembrance and childhood, it is crucial to consider linguistic features and the communications of emotions or feelings such as warmth. It is believed that copious poems all portray the subject of innocence of the younger; poems including ‘Prayer Before Birth’, ‘Half Past Two’, ‘Piano’ and ‘Hide And Seek’ are no exception to being exemplars of poems which typify the theme of remembrance and childhood, which could be further supported by the poems ‘Remember’ and ‘Poem at Thirty-Nine’. Seeing as that they all convey their memories in conflicting ways with child-like characteristics, each…

    • 1150 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays