Examine poetry

Name

4 August 2008

Title of Assignment

Four Poems of Modern Times

The four poems analyzed in this all reflect the modernity of our times . The themes they present , style , and tone give a gist of modern human behavior and characteristics . Importantly , studying them helps in understanding more the human psyche , and obtaining an overview of how people live in our times

In the poem , To a Daughter ' by Carole Oles , the author succeeds in expressing sentiment rather than sentimentality . She does this by carefully using a time line

expressing events in the present past , and future . Vividly , she expresses the pain a mother feels as she frees her child , giving readers a glimpse of a mother 's feelings without outpouring emotions that could weaken the logic in the situation

Presenting sentiment in a poem is different from expressing sentimentality . Sentimentality is expressed when an author merely outbursts feelings , making the poem express a blunt appeal to the emotions of pity or love (Minot , as stated in Ziehl , 2000 ' In the poem , the author avoids sentimentality by not zeroing on the feelings of the persona , rather by citing the experience she encounters with her daughter

The first six lines of the poem are devoted to presenting the present truth . As implied , there seems to be a growing distance between the mother and daughter as the latter favors rock punk reggae ' and being in her room while the persona sandbagged [their] shore and swore to keep the house dry (lines 5-6 . In other words , while the mother tried her best to be a good housekeeper and mom , the daughter to stay in her room and listened to music

In the next lines , the author presents a glimpse of the past . The persona mentions that the daughter gave up playing her violin . Using this , the mother reminisces the time when her daughter did a recital and she sat in the audience with pride . In this particular scenario , the author could have chosen to be overly sentimental by describing how proud she was during her daughter 's recital . However , instead of dwelling purely on emotions , the persona deviates from it with unfriendly comments like virtuosos who could not tie their shoes (lines 10-11 . Also , instead of remembering how proud she was as a mom during her daughter 's recital , the author cuts the thought with an anticlimactic statement , If I had those fingers (line 16 . This serves as a rhetorical device that deviates readers ' attention from melancholy

After presenting a glimpse of the past and the present , the author gives a mirror of the future in lines 19-23 . She mentions her expectations of her daughter when her daughter grows up . Unlike mothers in other poems , the persona does not express sadness in what could happen , rather she anticipates the negative things that her daughter might end up with in the future such as holding cigarettes , making obscene gestures , etc . This makes the persona sound mature and realistic more than being plainly...