Poem Analysis: Dove, Komunyakaa, Sanchez and Collins - Essay Example

Poem Analysis – Dove, Komunyakaa, Sanchez & Collins Rita Dove (1952), Sonia Sanchez (1934), Yusef Komunyakaa (1947), and Billy Collins (1941) are all renowned English poets. Except Billy Collins, the rest three are African Americans. Rita Dove’s “Adolescence II,” Sonia Sanchez’s “The Final Solution”, Yusef Komunyakaa’s “Ode to the Maggot” and Billy Collins’ “Winter Syntax” would be investigated keeping in mind their poetic techniques and uniqueness as modern poets. Rita Dove’s poems concentrate on themes dominant during her earlier days (Dove and Ingersoll). Such recollection might be of her childhood memories with her grandparents, growing up with siblings, or emotions attached with the adolescent days. In the poem “Adolescence II,” Dove narrates under the setting of nighttime what goes into the mind and body of a young, adolescent girl as she matures. Beginning of puberty is a special kind of personal experience for any woman. Dove beautifully connects this experience with nature: “Although it is night, I sit in the bathroom, waiting. Sweat prickles behind my knees, the baby-breasts are alert. Venetian blinds slice up the moon; the tiles quiver in pale strips.” In just three lines above, she has connected the body’s chemistry of a young woman with nature and thought process during these adolescent days. (Dove, 1971) In the poem “The Final Solution,” Sanchez calls America a land of freedom, but with sarcasm. Perhaps for this reason, she separates ‘free’ from ‘dom,’ putting ‘dom’ in the next line (Sanchez, 1971). The whole poem is a brilliant example of free verse. The poet mocks how Blacks are often correlated with ‘hungry,’ ‘illiterates,’ ‘criminals,’ and ‘dropouts’ and manipulated by the state to ‘defend’ America’s free enterprise and democracy. Like ‘freedom,’ few more keywords such as ‘democracy,’ ‘enterprise, and leaders,’ over which Sanchez has a doubt or trouble, appears in strange fashions. They are either broken and carried to the next line or slashed. For example, democracy appears as de/mo/cracy (Sanchez, line 31). Maggot is a central theme in many of Yusef Komunyakaa’s work (Komunyakaa and Gracia). The poem “Ode to the Maggot” can be seen as Komunyakaa’s way of communicating with an unknown extravagant whim (Komunyakaa). In the poem, Komunyakaa expresses anguish with the painful life. But perhaps the poet understands that pain is the only process before attaining happiness. Pain is indirectly referred to as something offered by Lord Jesus Christ. Intriguing is the fact that poet Komunyakaa calls Christ “merciless”. The idea is, perhaps, one cannot have happiness without undergoing pain. So pain has been given the status of supreme ‘Lordship’. Komunyakaa often creates different emotional outbursts with the same statement, outbursts that are often different with the completed remark. For instance, the concluding lines, “no one gets to heaven” (which by itself is one philosophical stance) quickly moderating with “Without going through you first.” (Komunyakaa, lines 15-16) Among the four renowned poets, Billy Collins is only not from the African-American descent. Collins in his poem “Winter Syntax” charms right from the first line with his stimulating setup: "A sentence starts out like a lone traveler / heading into a blizzard at night." (Collins) In the poem “Winter Syntax,” Collins talks about complexities of writing by setting an analogy between “lone traveler” and writer (Collins, line 1). As a proponent of making comedy equally acceptable in serious literature, one can see the effect of humorist like Bob Newhart or the cartoonist like Charles Schultz while reading poems by Billy Collins (Hecht 94). In the first line of the poem, Collins comments that a writer’s work is equivalent to a solitary traveler starting for a tough expedition. He means that writing is related to one’s personal experience. While still connecting the difficulties that any writer faces with that of an adventurous traveler, there are more interesting implications. Thus metaphorical comparisons are made to produce the desired imageries. The blizzard or snow is analogous to a white page. One can find images of freezing weather and the solitary man struggling in snow. Collins’ writing style in “Winter Syntax,” like “Adolescence II” of Dove, does not make use of defined meter or rhyme. This is one of the most important trends in today’s poetry where imagery takes preponderance over defined word/pronunciation rules, such as meter and rhyme. Another notable feature about the poem “Winter Syntax” is use of 30 prepositional phrases. Like Dove, poetic style of Collins is one of personification with similes and metaphors. Instead of any set structure, vivid imageries under nighttime setting take prominence in the poem “Adolescence II” by Dove. One example of auditory imagery is: “Can you feel it yet?" they whisper (Dove, line 8). In Komunyakaa’s poem “Ode to the Maggot,” each line is short, often detached from the next line by muteness. This gives the poem a staccato effect. For instance: Brother of the blowfly And godhead, you work magic Over battlefields, In slabs of bad pork (Komunyakaa, line 1-4) Thus we see that Komunyakaa and Sanchez have been more particular in using permutation and combination of words, syllables etc. in the poems under consideration. For Dove and Collins, imagery took prominence and word structure came naturally. In the last century’s poems, one important trend that started was giving prominence to imagery over formal dictions. The 20th century in US witnessed more awareness regarding racial equity which was also reflected in poems by a new genre of African-American poets. Also, many barriers to women poets because of “masculinity complex”, was removed (Dowson 251). Dove, Sanchez, and Komunyakaa also write about aspirations of Blacks and racial slur they often faced. Also, with the coming up of internet in the last decade or so, anyone can write and distribute poems on World Wide Web easily that is accessible to millions of readers globally. This has made the field of poetry equally open to all creative-minded people. Spotting budding poets is now thus easier and fairer. Globalization has also increased the scope of introduction of newer themes as poets can more freely explore knowledge and resources of other cultures and incorporate in their poems. References 1. Ali, Kazim. Orange Alert: Essays on Poetry, Art, and the Architecture. University of Michigan Press, 2010. 2. Collins, Billy. “Winter Syntax”, In Anthology of American Literature 9th ed Vol II. Pearson Prentice Hall(Publisher),2007 3. Dove, Rita. “Adolescence II”, In Anthology of American Literature. 9th ed. Vol II. Pearson Prentice Hall Publisher,2007, p. 1971 4. Dove, Rita and Ingersoll, Earl G. Conversations with Rita Dove. Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2003. 5. Dowson, Jane. Older Sisters are very Sobering Things. Feminist Review, (1999) 24. 3, 251-271. 6. Hecht, Jennifer Michael. Funny. Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 2005. 7. Komunyakaa, Yusef. “Ode To The Maggot”. Ibiblio. Web. 11 June 2011. . 8. Komunyakaa, Yusef and Gracia, Chad. Gilgamesh: A Verse Play. Wesleyan University Press, 2009. 9. Sanchez, Sonia. “The Final Solution”, In Anthology of American Literature, 9th ed. Vol II. Pearson Prentice Hall Publisher,2007 Read More