I chose to read the poem called "Fifth Grade Autobiography" by Rita Dove in the "Poems of Childhood" section of the poetry book. When I first saw the poem’s title, I thought this poem is about her experience in fifth grade and is a narrative poem. After I read the poem, I found out that I was right about the type of the poem but this poem is actually about a picture.
I found a lot of imageries used at the end of the first and second stanza. For example, “the raccoon tail flounces down the back of his sailor suit” and “sun though the trees printing her dress with soft luminous paws”. At the beginning of the third stanza, there’s a word “jealously”, it showed the author’s feeling towards her brother. There are also many enjambments in this poem. This poem seems to be a poem about the authors good memories with her family, but at the end of the poem the author says
“He smelled of lemons. He’s died—
But I remembered his hands.” This made the poem a little sad
Hey Alice thats cool how expected what the poem was going to be and it was. It sounds like a sad poem.
ReplyDeleteAlice, I see you paying attention to imagery, diction, enjambment, and tone here. Try to go further into detail with each. When you say you see enjambment, give an example, and describe what effect it creates. Say more about the images you point out ("images" or "imagery" rather than "imageries") - what role do these vivid visual images have in the poem? What do you think Dove is doing with this poem about a photograph? What does the photograph mean to the speaker?
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