Tercet

In poems “The Lighters” and “Nursing,” Rennie McQuilkin articulates the variety and complexity of his feelings towards the sickening and passing of his mother. To vividly illustrate his sentimental attachments, McQuilkin extensively and effectively utilizes literary techniques such as contrasts, diction, and allusions in these two poems, leaving an accessible yet woeful depiction of his desperation and resignation in response to his mother’s suffering. McQuilkin frequently employs sharp…

The theme of Sacrifices between the families is portrayed in the texts. Written text ‘My Sister’s Keeper’ by Jodi Picoult and short story ‘The Gift of the Magi’ by O’ Henry. Media text ‘Mamma Mia’ directed by Phyllida Lloyd and Script ‘Billy Elliot’ by Stephen Daldry. These texts introduce a range of sacrifice that can occur in family relationship; married couple, mother and child, father and child and between siblings. All of these texts are connected sacrificing their most valuable. The Gift…

Blackberry picking This report examines the connections of growing up is painful but inevitable. The texts I have used are Blackberry-Picking and Death of a Naturalist both poems by Seamus Heaney, the Way Way Back, directed by Nat Faxton and Jim Rash, and The Boy in Striped Pyjamas directed by Mark Herman. I believe that all the texts I’ve studied comment on the idea of growing up being a struggle. The struggle is mad worse because the children haven’t been exposed to disappointment whilst…

Remembrance and Recognition. As Camara Laye once said “all dancers have a cumulative tendency because each beat of the Tom-Tom has an almost irresistible appeal. Soon those who were just spectators would dance too.” People enjoy learning about others and even expressing what their own lives are like. All of the stories, which take place in Senegal and Guinea. Given the region, the writing is different than America’s poetry. The poems in question are “Prayer to the Mask, Letter to a Poet,…

In “Still I Rise” by Maya Angelou, the speaker’s identity is slowly developed throughout the poem so that we are not completely sure of the speaker’s identity. The speaker is a black female that while she is speaking for herself, she is also speaking for an entire population of people just like her. People like her who are determined to rise above the historical oppression saying, “Leaving behind nights of terror and fear/ I rise/ Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear/ I rise…” (lines 35-38).…

Among the Red Guns is a poem written by Carl Sandburg that portrays a speaker describing details of war. However, who the speaker is and what gender they are is made unclear throughout the poem. Notable in this poem is that the speaker continues to use the phrase, “dreams go on.” Sandburg uses literary devices such as imagery, tone, and repetition to help illustrate and provide information about war and its difficult aspects. Most importantly, Sandburg utilizes these literary devices in order…

When I first saw the title of this poem, I automatically knew it was going to be about someone that use to play basketball, but I never knew the guy in the poem would end up the way he did. This poem is about an ex-basketball player, named Flick Webb, who use to be the best in his town. The third stanza talks about how he was an outstanding player and some of his accomplishments. However, the two stanzas at the beginning and the two stanzas at the end tells the life of the basketball player…

The connotation of a word is the meaning that is implied and suggested by the word rather than the literal definition. Many words have emotional, personal and cultural associations to it, which allow us to have our own interpretation to what is being shown. The prefix con- is a Latin word and it means “together, with”, telling us that connotations of words work with the literal definition. In Dorothy Porter’s ‘Not the Same’, the poet’s clever use of connotation and imagery helps shape the…

“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. The author used a series…

The poems Africa and Flying Man by Rabindranath Tagore show the negative effects of man-made destruction. The destruction is the way they have mistreated the people of Africa, as well as changing the way nature used to be, from the peaceful harmonious nature to inventing more modernised technologies, making man seem more arrogant. The focus of the two poems is how man has destroyed the earth with their actions, and the poet does this by using imagery and figurative language. In Africa, Tagore…