The speaker insisted that his "mistress' eyes" were "noting like the sun. ... He also commented that "if hairs be wires, black wires" grew "on her head." ... In addition, he described that his "mistress, when she" walked, she treaded "on the ground" which indicated his mistress was a real woman but not like the ideal goddess-like or fictional lovers that other poets created. ... The couplet distorted her image by reversing the figure that was already created by the speaker where the readers would be confused what was she really looked like. ... Throughout the poem, the speaker describ...

• Word Count: 591
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

Although the poem does not indicate whether the speaker is male or female, at the time not as many women attended college as they do now, and it seems like Hughes is writing from a somewhat personal experience of what it is like to be a young black male. ... The first place he mentions is Harlem, the borough in which he is staying, and proceeds to say "Harlem, I hear you: hear you, hear me-we two-you, me, talk on this page" (Myers). In saying this it seems that the speaker feels a deep connection to Harlem and feel like he is one with Harlem. ... After that line he proceeds to say "(I hear New...

• Word Count: 1151
• Approx Pages: 5
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

I would like to think that if I had been born anything other than black and other than a black American women, that I had done something wrong in a former life and God was making me pay for it." ... Or stanza four " Shoulder falling down like teardrops. weakened by my soulful cries." ... You may trod me in the very dirt but still like dust I rise." ... Written in stanza six, "You may shoot me with your words, you may cut me with your eyes, you may kill me with your hatefulness, but still, like air, I"ll rise." ... Shoulders falling down like teardrops. ...

• Word Count: 694
• Approx Pages: 3
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

(Revising Life, pg 48) There has been reference made to the black shoe in the first stanza, "Anymore black shoe in which I have lived like a foot" as representing her fathers amputation of his leg from complications of diabetes. ... She mentions it again in the tenth stanza, "The boot in the face, the brute, Brute heart of a brute like you". ... Not "you read to me or held me on your knee". ... "I made a model of you, a man in black with a Meinkampf look", "And I said I do, I do". ... Father, husband, (Daddy, daddy), that is it, I have made my decision, you cannot hurt me anymore because...

• Word Count: 771
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

You make me sleep near the animals You don't respect the pride I may have in myself I'm more alone than the rest of y'all Ain't nobody ever cared 'bout me You isolate me from everyone else You make me feel like my skin color makes me less of a man I'm cast out with not a friend in sight I ain't had nobody for a long time You call me a nigger; heck got me callin' myself that now You let me stay because of my bad back and I've seen them all come and got I see no one cares to say Hi to the lil ole colored man Nobody come in a colored man's room...

• Word Count: 870
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

When he obliged me and died, I imagined that I had killed him." ... (Perkins, 594) The frequent use of the word black throughout the poem also conveys a feeling of gloom and suffocation. ... The first stanza of "Daddy" conveys her feelings of domination by her father: You do not do, you do not do Any more, black shoe In which I have lived like a foot For thirty years, poor and white, Barely daring to breathe or Achoo. Plath uses similes and metaphors to describe herself as a foot being cowed by a black shoe- her father- in which she barely dares to move. Other very intense similes and me...

• Word Count: 1043
• Approx Pages: 4
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

"Between the World and Me", by Richard Wright, is one of those poems that does not have a clear black and white theme, like most poems. ... The title of the poem reflects the fact that there is an area "Between the World and Me," and this is the area where the person of the poem is. ... The speaker describes the event in such vivid detail such that "they had me, stripped me, battering my teeth /l into my throat till I swallowed my own blood." ...

• Word Count: 673
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

Fortunately for me, I was not disappointed with my selection. This poem illuminates the hardships and mental anguish suffered by black people - more specifically, the author, his father, and great-grandfather - at the hands of whites. ... He even manages to incorporate metaphor, simile, and synesthesia into his poem, which also surprised me due to the low diction and simplistic voice in which it was written. ... In the middle of the poem is the simile, in the form of "to scare niggers like crows off a tree." ... We see this initially through the enjambment in line one of the first stanza, ...

• Word Count: 1024
• Approx Pages: 4

This image of isolation is further developed by Hardy's use of the simile "like spectral lyre swept by as spectral hand". ... "A car comes up It has nothing to do with me" The use of the word "nothing" shows that it's not his wife approaching meaning that Hardy is once again left alone awaiting her arrival. ... The stanza develops by using pathetic fallacy, "leaving a blacker", to reinforce his loneliness, "I stand again alone". The use of the word "blacker" symbolises misery as well reflecting Hardy's negative emotions...

• Word Count: 545
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

"You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I'll rise.... "Did you want to see me broken? ... Shoulders falling down like teardrops. ... "I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide"(33) is a metaphor that expresses the theme very effectively. The colour black is often associated to fear and evil. ...

• Word Count: 1250
• Approx Pages: 5
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

In Genesis the way God creates the Heavens and the Earth, differs from the way any other piece of literature. The tone is more serious and deepening. In James Weldon Johnson's "The Creation" his tone is more passionate and emotional than it is deep. This passionate and emotional tone is seen in John...

• Word Count: 356
• Approx Pages: 1
• Grade Level: High School

The first line echoes a nursery rhyme, feeling like a charm against some brooding curse: "You do not do, you do not do/ anymore black shoe" (lines 1-2). ... The adjective "black" suggests the idea of death, thus it can relate to a coffin. ... The next lines: "I began to talk like a Jew/ I think I may well be a Jew" ( line 34-35). ... The next lines: "The boot in the face, the brute/ Brute heart of a brute like you" (line 49-50). ... "At twenty I tried to die/ And get back, back to you/ I thought even the bones would do/ But they pulled me out of th...

• Word Count: 1113
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

The author then introduces the antagonists of the poem, the 'KKK', describing them as pure evil beings with 'hooded sheets, riding black cats'. ... My mother taught me well". ... I have not been with anyone else's husband...I want to squeeze my baby's legs, see her turn into a woman like me" This woman just wants to live her life just like anyone else she dreams of watching her child grow and live carefree, but that never happens. ... The moon hangs from the sky like a swollen fruitMy feet betray me, dance anyway from this killing tree". ... One...

• Word Count: 1038
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

This poem made war real for me. ... Sometimes it takes me nine seconds but sometimes it has taken me longer. ... I too can be "flound"ring like a man in fire or lime". ... These three poems touched me. ... Usually in the back of my mind I think about things but to see your thoughts in black and white from someone other than yourself really puts things into perspective. ...

• Word Count: 1120
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

When I first attended this class, I was eager to have the instructors show me the relationship between science and poetry, as I could not construct a meaningful connection between the two subjects myself. ... Based on her past experiences of cleaning fish, Bishop imagines this fish has "coarse white flesh packed in like feathers, the big bones and little bones, the dramatic reds and blacks of his shiny entrails, and the pink swim bladder like a big peony" (42). ...

• Word Count: 547
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

The coffin is seen passing, the great cloud darkening the land, the cities draped in black, the sea of faces silent and solemn, and the mournful voices of dirges strongly rising. ... "O the black murk that hides the star!" ... The boy was moved, The outsetting bard was thrown into raptures and, in a moment of inspiration, became aware of the mission for which he was born: "Now in a moment I know what I an for, I awake/ A thousand warbling echoes have started to life within me, never to die." He became restless, thirsting to know "the destiny of me", and seeking "the clew" from the waves. ... W...

• Word Count: 1210
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

In the next line, Marks of weakness, marks of woe, there could be a play on words, Mark means both to see or to notice but then again there could be another meaning; like a physical mark upon someone's face like a sign of grief or misery. The use of the word mark I think, is deliberately repeated to sound like the blows of a hammer. ... Also by using the manacle the word sounds heavy, just like their plight. Black"ning Church appalls is a vivid and chilling image. ... Blake's use of Black"ning could be symbolic; the church which should be a source of moral warmth and light, is seen a...

• Word Count: 1175
• Approx Pages: 5

In chapters thirty and thirty two, Steinbeck includes Black Marigolds, a translated extract from the Sanskrit, written by Chauras, a young Kashmiri poet. ... (145 words; 7 sentences) In chapter thirty, Black Marigolds is simply regarded as an enjoyable reading which Doc recounts aloud to his guest. ... In the fifth stanza, he goes on to say, "Death sends me the flickering of powdery lids Over wild eyes and the pity of her slim body All broken up with the weariness of joy; The little red flowers of her breasts to be my comfort" In this way he states how he is mentally tortured ...

• Word Count: 1169
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

Black air just sounds dark and cold. ... They read, "A women like that is not a women, quite./ I have been her kind " (6-7). ... Then in the last two lines of the stanzas she concludes by saying, "a women like that is misunderstood./ I have been her kind " (13-14). ... She compares herself to a witch burning at the stake, like she doesn't have control over her life. ... I wrote about how I interpreted the poem but then once I finish I asked my friend how she did and it was totally different then me. ...

• Word Count: 1020
• Approx Pages: 4
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

In the first stanza, Sylvia Plath refer to herself as a foot when and her father a shoe "you do not anymore, black shoe in which I have lived like a foot.... Yet later she compared both of them to vampire although she loved them both dearly, they only treated her badly and those memories remained; and it was like vampires to suck on her blood were haunting her. ... 'Every woman,' she announces 'loves a Fascist/The boot in the face, the brute/Brute heart of a brute like you. ... " "An engine chuffing me off like. ...

• Word Count: 736
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You- Not God, but a swastika So black no sky could squeak through. ... Like much of Plath's poems, "Daddy" is encased in metaphors and hyperboles. Plath has the orator constantly compare herself to Jewish people in German concentration camps, such as in, An engine, an engine Chuffing me off like a Jew. ... I began to talk like a Jew. ... Plath uses diction like, "Chuffing me off like a Jew/A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, and Belsen," in order to signify the feelings of helplessness and agony that the speaker felt with her father. ...

• Word Count: 994
• Approx Pages: 4
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

The way it was written really gave me a clear picture in my head of what this woman could look like. It even gave me an almost unpleasant picture, because of the way this mistress was described. ... When in the sonnet it reads, " her breasts are dun", and " Black wires grow on her head", these are examples of the metaphors. When it construes the lines such as " My mistress" eyes are nothing like the sun" this is an instance of a simile in this sonnet. ... We also hear the i sound, in words like; it, is, his, lips, admit, and impediments which is assonance. ...

• Word Count: 950
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

John Agard addresses the issue of racism in "Half-Caste," and it is obvious from the beginning line of the opening stanza, "Excuse me," that the narrator in the poem is confronting the audience about being labelled in society as "half-caste." ... The poet then plays with the words "half-caste" and "overcast" to show his anger as "so spiteful dem don't want de sun ah rass/" He is referring to the clouded, ignorant minds of any racist people who prevent him from shining like the Sun. ... The image of Tchaikovsky playing the piano works well as the poet looks at the contrast between the whit...

• Word Count: 881
• Approx Pages: 4

The image created by this contrast is like the color white on the color black. ... Dickinson writes, "I willed my keepsakes, signed away what portion of me be assignable and then it was, there interposed a fly" (888). ... The final stanza of this poem includes the lines, "With blue, uncertain stumbling buzz, between the light and me; and then the windows failed, and then I could not see to see" (888). ... This stanza, like the first two stanzas, possesses a strong rhyme to it that puts an uplifting mood to the idea of death. ...

• Word Count: 949
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

"Blue, glossy green, and velvet black"(string 7), these are examples of all the colours of the terrifying underwater creature living and following their sailing ship. ... "I am not leaving the store until you show me one" (string 9), demonstrates that the girl's madness overtakes her shopping day, and the author is focusing on the emotional break down of the young girl, which in many ways connects to the original routines women shop. ... It was like an outsider compared to the others. ... By mentioning "players"(Page 1), he makes the audience feel like they ...

• Word Count: 1106
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School