Facing It by Yusef Komunyakaa

Imagery can be helpful in tapping to the reader's senses so they can further understand the mood of the poem. Yusef Komunyakaa uses Imagery so the reader can understand the isolated and mournful tone of his poem "Facing It." "Facing It" is a poem about a black veteran who visits the Vietnam memorial and finds it hard to cope with the events he had to endure there. Yusef states in one quote "Names shimmer on a woman's blouse but when she walks away the name stays on the wall." Yusef uses this detail to explain that the speaker of the poem feels a special connection with the wall, and in isolation because of it. The people around the narrator can look at the names on the wall mourn for a few moments and then move on with their lives. Since the speaker experienced the war, he can not just move on, when he walks away from the wall the memories of the war will still stick with him forever. This statement expresses a mournful and isolated tone because the speaker feels that he can not relate to the other people who are visiting the wall, and the soldiers who died during the Vietnam war deserve more than a just one moment of mourning.

Not Waving But Drowning

Literature that foreshadows a bleak future for a character often gives off a desperate and/or dreadful feel. From the title alone the reader can see that that "Not Waving But Drowning" by Stevie Smith will be an eerie poem with the mood of despair, because the title suggests that the speaker of the poem is foreshadowing someones death. In the poem the author writes "Oh no no no, It was too cold always, (Still the dead one lay moaning), I was much too far out all my life, Not waving but drowning" (515). This gives off a tone of despair because the speaker of the poem seems to have lost all hope that anyone would come and save the drowning man, or that the drowning man will stay alive. The speaker predicts the worst for the drowning man and blames it on people who are cold and not caring enough to save him which gives the poem an eerie feel.

Langston Hughes, The Weary Blues.

In many cases a person can not rely on one perspective to get the entire story. The "Langston Hughes Weary Blues" video illustrates this idea that there are always two parts to a story. In the clip which takes place during the Harlem Renaissance images are shown of headliners dancing singing and displaying other arts on stage, they appear to be having a good time. The images present just one perspective of the shows that are occurring during the Harlem Renaissance, the audience in the crowd's point of view.

In Langston Hughes poem which is being read in the video, the speaker explains how an artist feels playing the blues one night on on Lennox avenue. The crowd is swaying with him enjoying his music but they are not aware of his genuine emotions. The speaker of the poem states "The singer stopped playing and went to bed. While the weary blues echoed through his head," meaning that the performer was not just putting on a show but truly feels like he is in deep depression. Even though the crowds in these shows see performers dancing and making beautiful music the artist can feel a completely different way. The video shows a double perspective of the Harlem Renaissance.

Rebellious Poems

Poems can be rebellious through the style the author chooses to write the poem, down to the punctuation he or she chooses to leave. The two poems that I thought were rebellious was Williams Carlos Williams' "This Is Just to Say,"and Lucille Clifton's "Homage to my Hips".

Williams Carlos Williams writes a poem where the speaker rebels against what his mother or wife tells him not to eat. The speaker does not feel guilty that he eats plums his wife or mother is saving for breakfast especially since he explains how much he enjoys the plums because they were sweet, delicious and cold. The way Carlos Williams writes "This is Just to say" is also rebellious because it is more straight forward than a lot of poems. There is no underlying message, the reader does not have to read in between the lines to understand the point of the poem.

In "Homage To My Hips," the speaker makes no apologies for the large size of her hips, instead she talks about how she can "put a spell on a man and spin him like a top" with them. The speaker of the poem is basically telling women that they can love and show off their body no matter what shape or size, in a society where the media has a beauty standard for what is acceptable and not acceptable to flaunt.

Dangerous Mind clips

The clips from the movie "Dangerous Minds", and Dylan Thomas' poem "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night", a poem about a man encouraging his dead father to fight for his life, shows that literature and film are often correlated. In the "Dangerous Minds" clips, Ms. Johnson, an English teacher at a high school tries to help save her students from the outside world. Ms. Johnson teaches in an area where it is easy for her students to fall into peer pressure and do the wrong thing. In one instance, while watching the clip, Ms. Johnson breaks off a fight one of her students, Emilio is going to participate in. She tells Emilio that he is smarter than both of the students he is arguing with. In this scene, the audience can see that Ms. Johnson is like the narrator of the poem "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" because she is encouraging her students to stay out of trouble and learn. In return, the students in her classroom are like the dying father in Dylan's poem since they are fighting to learn and succeed in an environment where education is not the main priority and it is the norm to slack off and get into trouble.