Fog

In the poem “Fog” by Carl Sandburg we can identify some literary elements and devices used to fulfill the author’s intent.

We can find literary devices such as enjambment which is the constant in the poem. There is no pause between the lines. Something you can notice about the poem and how it is written is its form. The poem starts “The fog comes” (line 1), making a relationship between the fog and the poem itself. There is a blank line, a break. The top stanza seems to have settled over the bottom stanza. The author uses the physicality of his poem to portray what he means. At the end of the poem we see this strategy again when Sandburg says “and then moves on” (6). He ends the poem there and then moves on, like the poem says. As a reader the effect this has is the same, you move on.

In this poem by Carl Sandburg titled “Fog” we see how the author uses several elements to reveal his intent. He searches through metaphor and form a way to show the reader that the fog he speaks about is the poem he has written.

Acrobat - Poet

In the poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti titled “Constantly Risking Absurdity” we see how the author uses literary elements and devices to give away his tone and intent. The way the poem is written explains the title in a way, for its structure is “absurd”, the title being “Constantly Risking Absurdity”.

The form the poem is written is a literary device that the author uses to portray his message. A poet is “like an acrobat” (line 6) someone who is “Constantly risking absurdity/ and death/ whenever he performs” (1-3). The words used by the author in this poem are constantly describing the physical aspect the poem has. The “absurdity” of the composition of the poem, the using of “tricks” to enchant the reader, are various strategies he uses. The author also uses metaphor, comparing the poet to an acrobat, saying that he “climbs on rime2 to satisfy his audience, like if saying that a poet is putting much at stake when writing a poem to satisfy his audience.

This poem is like a circus act, it’s disorganized, and the poet in this case is the acrobat. The comparison used by the author in this poem works for us to understand the meaning of it.

Timed Writting

In Kevin Young’s poem “The Mission” we see a vivid memory of something that he once lived. The author uses imagery and metaphor to describe death and how it affected him in the past.

Young begins speaking of when he was younger, and lived “across the street from a home for funerals” (lines 2-3). The impact of having to live so near a place were dead people came. Young shows the differences of common neighborhoods with where he lived when he says, “children played tag out front, while the bodies snuck in the back” (18-20). We can see here some irony, for he speaks of “the bodies” as a secondary thing, while we learn that death is a primary thing, important in the lives of the people who lose a loved one. Here it’s portrayed as something “else” that happens while the kids play tag.

The author then begins to write about the funeral place, wondering things about it, remembering things about it. “I wondered who slept there” (38-39), again making reference to the dead who arrived every day, sleep meaning death. Young speaks of his experience with death, how his father died, “He kept everything but alive” (44-45). He then makes a statement that “sorrows not noun but verb” (46-48), he has felt sorrow therefore making it an action, a “verb”. The addition of this to the poem let us see that he did feel sorrow for his father’s death, but we learn later that it short, for “by doing right you do less of”(50-51).

“The Mission” by Kevin Young is a poem in which the author shows his view of death, and how it affects the ones who remain alive. He speaks of “sorrow” when death approaches him.

Time

I continued to read The Farming of Bones, and began to see how Danticat plays with us when she decides to tell the story in a non linear way. She works with the past and the present, and when she goes to the past it’s usually a moment of Amabelle with her family mother and father.

The narration is also interrupted by moments that Amabelle has with Sebastien. She talks about moments, small things she does or speaks with Sebastien, and then goes back to what is going on in that moment. Like in pages 66 and 67, were in one page Amabelle speaks of Kongo’s dead son, and then she talks of a quick anecdote with Sebastien. This strategy used by Danticat is confusing in a way for I lose track of time, or don’t know which the “real” time is. She moves from talking of a current action to a secular moment that till this moment has small or no effect on the novel. The same effect is produced when a flashback to her childhood happens. You lose the track of time, and the events describes in these moments haven’t taken effect on the novels central story, or at least what I think is the central story. Sooner or later they will all unite as one.