Literature Reading Poetry Discussion

  For this unit, we have read e.e. cummings's "in Just," Audre Lorde's "Hanging Fire," and Countee Cullen's "Incident." In each of these poems, we see young people who are coming to understand the way that they are being affected by experiences that cause them to lose some aspect of their childhood innocence. Through experience, we each come to understand something new (and not always good) about the people and the world around us. Choose one poem and address the following topics in your original post: Examine the speaker in the poem. Write a brief description of the speaker of the poem, considering the speaker’s voice and tone, his/her mindset, his/her age and maturity level, and the diction and connotative language used. *Remember: the speaker is not always the voice of the poet.* How might this choice of speaker help readers to understand the poem’s message in a particular way? Then, consider how the writer communicates his/her message by examining the use of figurative language, such as images, symbols, metaphor, simile, and irony. How does the author use 1-2 of these methods to create different levels of meaning in the poem? What ideas or concepts does the writer evoke by using language with deeper meaning that is "just below the surface?" Finally, explain the message the speaker is trying to communicate, also known as the theme of the poem. Pay attention to the title of each poem as a first indicator of the theme. What does this poem show us about a particular element of the growing-up experience? As we are growing up, what are the lessons we learn about the ways that youth, gender, and/or race might define us as people?