Speaker

“we”. This signifies the speaker’s belief in a bigger world power. Him (the speaker) and this higher power are enveloped by the term “we”. The speaker goes on to describe his surroundings, “The view was all in lines/ Straight up and down of tall slim trees/ Too much alike to mark or name a place by/ So as to say for certain I was here/ Or…

Loneliness slowly attacks the speaker at the end of stanza six which the speaker contrasts a bright and songless day which may represent optimism, but the difficulty to move on. Atwood uses a lot of words that are related to fire. As suggested in the previous paragraphs, the fire might be a destructive force…

discoveries: her love for and confidence in reading poetry. The poem begins with the speaker stumbling upon the book, which she says surprised her. The speaker goes in depth to describe the book, noting its “swans gliding on a blueback lake… posed on a placid lake, your name blurred underwater sinking to the bottom.” The use of imagery here is employed to demonstrate how quickly the speaker’s…

threat of an enemy plane dropping bombs from the sky may invade his consciousness, replacing otherwise harmless sights with a living nightmare The speaker is incapable of forgetting his war experience and losing the history of the war. As a survivor, his duty is to pass on his memories to others so that they may know what war is really like. The speaker is finally relieved of his isolation…

love that exists within each past and direct experience. For instance, in Lee’s poem, the speaker initiates his father’s tenderness and love in removing the frightful “splinter” without integrating more pain into his palm and ending his last line with his beloved father. Thus, emotions aren’t revealed in their…

is the writer and the poet and then there is the speaker. The speaker is the persona that communicates for the writer or poet. The speaker sets the tone for the poem and helps the reader to better understand the message or theme that the poet wishes to convey through their lines and stanzas. Poets may create and utilize a speaker when they wish to have their poem expressed from a different view point than their own personal perspective. The speaker in a poem does not necessarily always have to…

This idea is supported by the frequented use of self-address implemented in the second half. The speaker becomes more involved. “I thought,” “I looked,” “I admired,” all produce a more active role on the part of the speaker. The turning point in the poem that triggers this alteration seems to be when the reader realizes that the fish is in fact still alive. “While his gills were breathing” (line 22) is the first action given to the fish and the first time he is addressed as a living thing…

In life, the greatest struggles are what motivates people the most. Despite the violence and discrimination that the speakers faced, they were able to find a moment of understanding within their lives. These two poems work together to help describe that no matter the hardships people face, people can still succeed. Within the poem, “I Go Back to May 1937”, the speaker goes back to the time when her parents were in college. She begins by describing what she sees, her father walking out from…

others stand up for one’s personal interest, one must also defend others. Ogden’s poem was written in 1951, in response to a quote by Martin Niemoller, “First they came… No one left to speak out for me.” To help aid his ideal, Ogden creates a nameless speaker who is focused on self-preservation at the expense of other’s, which leads to his ultimate demise. To foreshadow the speaker’s willingness to turn a blind eye…

“Imagine the Angels of Bread” is a poem where the speaker lists the multiple injustices in the world and levels it out so that those suffering can have either justice or those committing the injustices are punished. In the poem’s multiple directions to “imagine,” Martin Espada presents a call to arms to the reader, encouraging them to imagine the wrongdoings and to hopefully act upon them. By getting the readers to imagine such injustice and by having hope that one day the wrongs will be righted…