Rotation 5 blog 1

Poem 1

“Recuerdo” – Edna St. Vincent Millay

The poem is written in 3 six line stanzas – the rhyme scheme is regular – aabbcc, aaddee, aaffgg. There is a definite rhythmic quality to “Recuedo.” The poet strings together actions with the use of “and.” The first two lines of the poem are repeated in all three verses, emphasizing the emotions of the two lovers and the night they had spent together, absorbed in their happiness. “We were very tired, we were very merry – we had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.” Millay uses alliteration and a simile to describe the ferry: “bare and bright,” and “smelled like a stable.” The young couple, however, was caught up in each other, as shown by the metaphor “we looked into a fire.” Millay uses many sensory words to describe what is going on around the two: “the whistles kept blowing,” “you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,” and “the wind came cold.” The metaphor of the sun rising as “a bucketful of gold” shows how the morning reflects their joy in each other. In the third stanza, the lovers share their joy by sharing their food and money with a young mother they meet. The mood of the poem is joyful as the poet recalls a happy memory. The tone is mellow and conversational and the language is straightforward.

Poem 2

“The One Girl at the Boy’s Party” – Sharon Olds

The poem is written as one stanza with no rhyme scheme. Olds paints an image of her daughter the “One” girl, because she does not fit the little girl stereotype. Olds’s descriptions of a swimming party show her daughter totally uninterested in the boys who “bristle” and “tower” around her, while she only thinks of them in terms of numbers. She is the math geek, the role usually thought of as a guy’s role. The author uses words to show typical boy actions – they “strip to their suits,” and “plunge in the deep end.” Her daughter’s only interest is watching “math scores unfold in the air around her.” Olds uses similes such as “her body was indivisible as a prime number” and she would only see “number bouncing … like molecules.” She continues the math comparison when she says her daughter’s ponytail “will hang its pencil lead down her back.” The poet also says her daughter’s face is closed to what is going on around her “solemn and sealed,” and “a factor of one.” The girl even views the boys as numbers: “eyes, two each, their legs. Two each, and the curve of their sexes one each.” To her, boys are only parts she can “multiply.” The poet sees her daughter as beautiful and a source of pride. Her body is “smooth and sleek,” her face is “sweet,” but she is different.

Poem 3

“A Different Image” – Dudley Randall

This poem is written in two stanzas of six lines each. The line lengths vary but are mostly short and to the point. In each stanza, there is a different rhyme scheme. In the first, the rhyme is abcacb. In the second it is dedeff. “A Different Image” expresses Dudley’s feelings about how the image of the Black man should be changed today from one of a slave or black-faced minstrel to that of a proud African. The poet uses strong verbs to emphasize the changes he wants to see take place. He also speaks directly to the Black man himself when he uses the imperative forms to command him to change his image: “create,” “re-animate,” “shatter,’ and “replace.” It seems as if he is talking to the Black man and to the White man at the same time, letting the White man know that he must change his image of the Black man as well. When he says, “The age requires this task,” Randall stresses that the laws have changed giving Blacks equal rights. The “icons of slavery and fear” were the way Black men saw themselves and Whites saw them. The phrase “the leer of the minstrel’s burnt-cork face” showed another way that whites made fun of blacks, when they put on black face and acted as fools. The way he calls Blacks to see themselves now and for Whites to see them is as “proud, serene and classic.”