The Women Of Plums Poem Analysis

Great Essays
For many centuries, poetry has been at the center of communication and expression. Poetry has progressed, and styles have changed. However, there are some concepts in poetry that have not been transformed; every single poem contains a theme that readers can analyze. Authors will use different methods to make sure that their themes are understood. For example, authors could use a variety of imagery, repetition, structure, and history to achieve their theme. One author who exhaustively uses devices to reach her goal is Dolores Kendrick. Kendrick’s renown book of poetry, The Women of Plums: Poems in the Voices of Slave Women, contains a multitude of poems that encapsulate exactly how it felt to be a woman and a slave. Each poem is written by …show more content…
In “Leah: in Freedom,” Kendrick uses basic concepts—imagery, structure, and historical accuracy—to achieve her message of never giving up, even in the hardest of circumstances. Throughout “Leah: in Freedom,” Kendrick uses imagery to enhance the understanding of her theme. In the poem, Kendrick utilizes vivid imagery to show both the chases and the punishments. At the beginning of the poem, Leah attempts her first try at running away: “in moles’ holes and wolves’ caves and blackberry patches with my feet skiddin’ and bleedin’ on the thorns” (Kendrick lines 10-14). Leah took charge of her own life. As a slave, she was not in control, so she decided to run away. While she is running away, she realizes the damage it is putting on her …show more content…
When Kendrick started to write The Women of Plums, she knew she wanted to write it about enslaved women: “She became interested in the stories of Black enslaved women, since most of the slave narratives published were by men” (Ferguson 23). Kendrick knew that her poem would be significant because it was a new point of view. Furthermore, Kendrick used narratives of actual women who were enslaved to help provide her with inspiration. Kendrick explained her motivation for the poem: “‘I relied on the narratives to some extent. I would put the name on the top of the page and the poems began coming’” (Ferguson 23). As a method of creating the theme, Kendrick channeled the experiences of actual people who lived in the past because that made her poems more powerful and realistic. Knowing that Leah was a real person allows for readers to interpret Kendrick’s motive more certainty. Additionally, in a Washington Post article about Kendrick, her teaching side was uncovered: “she taught students not to ‘kill’ poems by over-analyzing them” (Smith). As a teacher, Kendrick believed that poems should not be held to a high-level of scrutiny. She wants the theme to be evident without having to analyze the poem for hours. As a poet, she puts the same belief into use. In “Leah: in Freedom,” the simplified message is about Leah’s continual attempt at freedom, so the theme would be to never give

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Stories such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin, “The Hunters of Men”, and “Civil Disobedience” all have a connection with the fight to gain civil rights and equality. Much of that still carries on into the 21st century we live in today. In Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a woman takes matters into her own hands in order to save her child, showing her strength and bravery that many women in today's time possess as well. “The Hunters of Men”, a short story written by John Greenleaf Whittier, is considered to be a public attack on slave hunters. The public attacks against their government and the way people were treated didn't stop there, in “Civil Disobedience” by Henry David Thoreau, Thoreau made sure to show that the people had more power over the government than they thought.…

    • 884 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Alice Notley’s The Descent of Alette is an epic poem that shows the relationship between gender, sex, and the human body. By doing so, Notley challenges the traditional form of an epic poem through her use of a female hero and a series of lyric poems that create an epic poem. Here, we see two sets of binaries: female hero/male hero and lyric poem/epic poem. Additionally, these binaries are a function of hierarchy. By resisting traditional binaries, Notley shows equality through an open space for equal heterogeneous forms.…

    • 1822 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Analyzing “What It’s Like to Be a Black Girl” Patricia Smith’s poem, “What It’s Like to Be a Black Girl” (for those of you who aren’t) was an extremely emotional and eye opening poem. The poet describes through the eyes of a nine year old, what it’s like growing up in society a black girl, and suffering through life’s changes known as puberty. Society has planted a seed in her young and impressionable mind that being ethnic means nothing about her is right. To fully comprehend her perspective, it helps to analyze the elements of tone, imagery and symbolism. The tone the poet uses in “What It’s Like to Be a Black Girl” is verbal and dramatic irony.…

    • 607 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Joy Harjo’s poem “New Orleans” paints a painted picture of a woman struggling to find the remaining fragments of her culture throughout history and the city where she resides. In her remarks on her memories and stories, Harjo constantly uses images related to progress and analogies involving money and the pursuit of wealth which lead to the ultimate decay of the Creek’s culture and community. Harjo first writes about “a shop with ivory and knives” (13). Perhaps related to a economic analysis to the poem, the ivory represents the European settlers, specifically the white ones, and the violence that seems embedded in them and surfaced with either guns or spears.…

    • 1128 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “What the Mirror Said” by Lucille Clifton (page 202) narrates a girl convincing herself of her own worth. The repeated line, “listen,” indicates that she’s pleading with herself. The final line, “mister with his hands on you / he got his hands on some / damn / body!” concludes that this woman feels like she’s special and complex, and not “anonymous.”…

    • 758 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The United States of America was a nation built upon the notion of freedom and equal opportunity- in which all peoples have impartial opportunities and rights. However, these principles did not always have their right of way. From the first ship of enslaved African Americans to arrive in the early seventeenth century to modern times, discrimination and racial segregation has always been an issue. In both “Sympathy”-- a poem about a caged bird’s fight for freedom after being liberated from slavery-- by Paul Laurence Dunbar and A Voice That Challenged a Nation --a biography which spoke about Marian’s struggle for equal rights after she had experienced the harshness of the South --by Russell Freedman, the two parties faced the challenges of…

    • 996 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Belief and perseverance are the eternal children of struggle, sculpted throughout the ages by poets, poets like Langston Hughes, who wrote “I, Too” and “Refugee in America” from the depths of black discrimination. “I, Too” describes an African American and his reaction towards black oppression, while “Refugee in America” speaks of the African American longing for true freedom. Eugenia W. Collier, like Hughes, captured the essence of black discrimination, through her poem “From the Dark Tower”. Taking a step back, “Courage”, by Anne Sexton, describes the trials of life in general, from birth until death, the hardships and the milestones. While human pain, tribulation, and difficulty are evident within each poem, a common overlying theme exists.…

    • 1001 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Summary In the novel The Book of Negroes, Lawrence Hill uses the silent and afflicted to demonstrate the strength and perseverance of those who are oppressed. Summary of the Novel This novel follows the life of Aminata Diallo who is brought back to London in 1802 to petition against the slave trade. As she waits for the King to make his appearance she begins to recount the astonishing events that took place in her life on paper.…

    • 804 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Slave Spirituals

    • 714 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Marc Brueggemann Dr. Horgan HIST 153 19 September 2015 Primary Source assignment Listen to the following slave spirituals. In a 5-paragraph essay, how do the messages of the songs reflect acts of rebellion against the institution of slavery? These slave spirituals demonstrate belief in God and the temporariness of life on earth. These songs also illustrate the slaves desire to escape from slavery into freedom.…

    • 714 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    I, too, sing America. I am the darker brother. They send me to eat in the kitchen- When company comes, But I laugh, And eat well, And grow strong. Tomorrow, I’ll be at the table-When company comes.…

    • 1003 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Langston Hughes Allusions

    • 687 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Although many of his poems received a massive amount of attention, his poems based on the want, but lack, of the American Dream are heavily impactful due to Hughes’ inputs of allusions, the point of view, and his strong use of imagery. In many of Hughes’ poems, he often includes allusions to past African-American events which led him and others to believe that the American Dream was either out of reach or not fully available for dark colored people. The inclusion of alluding many experiences that African Americans suffered from helps the reader clearly understand the poem’s main message. A perfect example of one of Hughes’ allusions is presented in his poem, Negro. This specific piece has to do with a detailed description of the history of African-Americans or blacks, “I’ve been a slave: Caesar told me to keep his door-step clean.…

    • 687 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    The poem “Theme for English B” by Langston Hughes and the carving Free by Emma Marie Cadwalader-Guild, two different forms of art, both manage to capture the same messages. They were made in different eras, yet showcase the discriminations faced by African Americans. Both Hughes and the slave in the carving overcame an innumerable amount of challenges, their worlds consumed with false freedom. “English B” by Langston Hughes and Free by Cadwalader-Guild share countless commonalities; in both the poem and the carving, the false freedom they experienced, the discrimination they faced, and the challenges they overcame can all be seen and experienced.…

    • 481 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Great Essays

    “A Certain Lady” is a short poem written by Dorothy Parker detailing a woman’s thoughts on her relationship with a mysterious man. The poem is written as a monologue about the woman’s ability to appear happy around the man and his inability to gauge her true feelings. Despite her affection for him, he constantly tells her stories of his exploits with women. While the topic itself seems simple in nature, the relationship in question, as well as the poem itself, is quite complex. Each stanza adds layers of complexity to the poem.…

    • 1142 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the poem,"Minerva Jones" by Edgar Lee Masters ,he writes about the sad life of an old crippled lady who was hated. I learned that this person is a writer of poetry and isn 't very pleasant looking from how Masters describes her. The person she speaks about in the poem are "Butch" Weldy and Doctor Meyers, who have different poems of their own as well. " Butch" Weldy is the one that hunts down Minerva (Goddess of Wisdom) and Doctor Meyers is the one that attempts to save her. The poet lets us know that small-town America is very judgmental because you can say that those who were wise were the ones being judged("hunts") by their appearance and their beliefs.…

    • 1001 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The imagery of where she is forced to be simply describes her journey and feelings. She…

    • 1367 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays