In chapter 23 I learned the different characteristics of poems and the vocabulary involved to help a explain a poem. Poems are a lot more brief than a form of writing and the words chosen by the author are what makes the poem meaning. A poem has “characters, actions, settings, and symbols” but that is not what makes up the poem, it is used as a foreground unlike in a novel (299). The words chosen by the author “must convey meanings gracefully and economically” (299). Even though poems are shorter I have always found it to be a more difficult to understand the meaning of poems, but this chapter did help me have a better understanding.
In the poem “Hazel Tells LaVerne” by Katharyn Howd Machan uses poetic diction to emphasize that the cleaning lady did not have much education. Poetic diction is when the author uses “elevated language rather than ordinary language” (800).
Musta come from the sewer swimmin aroun an tryin ta climb up the sida the bowl (807)
Machan uses missed spells word like “musta, swimmin, aroun, tryin, ta, and sida” to be more in character for the poem since the narrator is a cleaning lady. This also relates how poems are based more the words that the author uses.
“Marvell Noir” by Ann Lauinger is an example of an allusion in a poem. An allusion “is a brief cultural reference to a person, a place, an event, or an idea in history or literature” (814). “Marvell Noir” has two allusion, one that is refers to one of Marvell's poems and to dark crime films in the 1940s. I also feel like Lauinger tires to create an allusion as if the author were a male. The words she uses in the poem are brash, sexy, and heartbreaking as if a male would have wrote the poem.
Works Cited
Machan, Katharyn Howd. “Hazel Tells LaVerne.” The Bedford Introduction to Literature.
Ed. Michael Meyer. 9th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2011. 807. Print.
Meyer,