"Facing It"

The speaker of "Facing It" is Yusef Komunyakaa himself, speaking as the Vietnam war veteran that he is. The poem seems to be very personal to the speaker and the attitude is very serious while also sad/scared as the speaker is transferred back to his memories.

I find the language of this poem to be a rather simple colloquial language. It's very casual. The entire poem is about the Vietnam war and the people who died during it, and my entire focus was on that. I tried looking for allusions while reading it another time, and I couldn't find any, so I don't think this poem really has any allusions.

I think the use of metaphors, similes, analogies, and personification to be very well done in this poem. They add so much to it, giving the reader a glimpse inside the speaker's mind to see the things that still haunt him from his past. They give the poem a very intense feeling.

While I found all those, the things I couldn't find were alliteration, assonance, and consonance repetition. Either there were none, or they just didn't stand out to me in an obvious way, because I really did try to find some. Because of this I didn't notice any effect given to the poem by these, since I couldn't really find any.

"Zimmer in Grade School"

Zimmer in Grade School

by Paul Zimmer

In grade school I wondered

Why I had been born

To wrestle in the ashy puddles

With my square nose

Streaming mucus and blood,

My knuckles puffed from combat

And the old nun's ruler.

I feared everything: God,

Learning, and my schoolmates.

I could not count, spell, or read. 

My report card proclaimed

These scarlet failures. 

My parents wrung their loving hands.

My guardian angel wept constantly.

But I could never hide anything. 

If I peed my pants in class

The puddle was always quickly evident,

My worst mistakes were at

The blackboard for Jesus and all

The saints to see. 

        Even now,

When I hide behind elaborate mask,

It is always known that I am Zimmer,

The one who does the messy papers

And fractures all his crayons,

Who spits upon the radiators

And sits all day in shame

Outside the office of the principal.

It is very evident that the speaker of this poem is Paul Zimmer himself, by the fact that he calls himself by name and the title is "Zimmer in Grade School". While it is easy for me to tell who the speaker of the poem is, trying to tell who he is speaking to, however, has proven more difficult. I find that he could either be speaking to himself or to an audience of everyone. It doesn't seem to be addressed to anyone in particular. I know this because if it was to his parents for example, it would say "you" instead of "my parents", and if it was to his classmates it would be the same thing, as with the principal.

"Metaphors"

Sonnet:

A poem that consists of 14 lines, 

commonly 3 quatrains finished with a 

couplet when in English form.

Metaphor:

Something used to represent something else that it isn't, 

but might share a slight resemblance to.

First of all, I wouldn't call "Metaphors" by Sylvia Plath a sonnet because it is only 9 lines long, and sonnets are supposed to have 14 lines. Also, sonnets typically have 10 syllables in each lines, while this poem has 9 in each.

I tried counting how many metaphors were in this poem, and that proved to be quite the difficult task! I ended up settling on 15 metaphors, though considering what each individual person will call a metaphor, there could be as few as 7.

I went along and chose a metaphor to think through, and the one I selected was:

"This loaf's big with its yeasty rising."

I think the two things that are being compared in this metaphor are the speaker and a baking loaf of bread. The speaker is talking about how she is growing, most likely in the sense that she is pregnant. It's like when someone says they have a bun in the oven. It's exactly the same thing, just with different wording! The big rising loaf in the oven is the baby growing inside the stomach of the speaker.

This is a metaphor because while she calls it a loaf of bread, it's actually a baby.

"Still I Rise"

I really enjoyed reading this poem, I found it very inspirational and motivating. It didn't take me very long to get a fairly clear view of what I think this poem is trying to say. It is my own understanding that "Still I rise" by Maya Angelou is addressing the historical issues of racism and slavery towards the African American people. It shows how, despite the fact that these people were treated so poorly, they didn't let that treatment drag them down.

I agree fully with the marginal notes written on the poem and understand completely how they connect with the poem. If I were to add a marginal note to the poem, however, I would say how the break in the poem (...) signifies a large change in the format of the poem and how it even splits the poem into two parts.

Two similes that I found in this poem were:

"'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells

Pumping in my living room."

and 

"I laugh like I've got gold mines

Diggin' in my back yard"

Two allusions that I found were: 

"Out of the huts of history's shame"

and

 "Up from a past that's rooted in pain"

Two motifs that I found were the use of "I rise" and "You may", as these were repeated multiple times in the poem.