Saturday, May 11, 2019

Poetry Sample question on Nye poems

Resistance and rebellion at either a personal or a larger, social level, can lead to very interesting poetic explorations. By what means and with what effects have at least two poets you have studied included such impulses and actions in their poetry?
The two poems that I chose are "Blood" and "The Words Under the Words" by Naomi Shihab Nye. In the poem "Blood", it depicts Arab's life in United States. The first three stanzas are the view of Nye when she was a little girl, the fourth and fifth stanza is her view when she grew up.
Firstly, Nye used a flashback in the poem "Blood". The first and second line of the third stanza says that: "Years before, a girl knocked, wanted to see the Arab." She used this to described her view when she was a little girl. At that time she thought "Arab" was a subject so that every neighbor around them is talking about Arab. She does not know that her family is actually the "Arab" that people gossip about. Started from the fourth stanza, the view goes back to the elder her. She grew up in United States and she became a lost soul. Since she is a Palestinian and she lives in United States, she was stuck in the middle of it.  The third line of the last stanza has well explained this: "neither of his two languages can reach it." Even though her father knew both of the language, he still felt excluded by people around him in United States. And this was the main theme of this poem - the issue of race relations. Also, Nye makes a comparison between the real Arab and the Arab that other people described.“A true Arab knows how to catch a fly in his hands,”The very first line shows the characteristics of Arab. Their characteristics are totally different with the words that used to criticize them.
The other poem "The Words Under the Words" also shows the rebellion. The last stanza says that: "Answer, if you hear the words under the words— otherwise it is just a world with a lot of rough edges, difficult to get through, and our pockets full of stones." This tells readers that people should know the deeper meaning of the words. Otherwise, people will just like those fools who keep the stones in their pocket. The poem is saying that people should make a rebellion and dig the deeper meaning.

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