Jim Crow Jim Crow was originally a character in a nineteenth-century minstrel show, played by a white man performing a caricature of a black man, dancing and singing silly songs. The character became standard during that century, and came to represent a stereotypical image of black inferiority. Ultimately, the term became connected to racist laws…
Tag: Poetry
Slam, Dunk & Hook – Literary Devices
Motif In poetry, when critics speak of a motif, they mean a recurring image, subject, symbol, or detail that unifies a creative work. Readers at times confuse theme and motif, although the two can be distinguished easily if one remembers that the theme of an artistic work is not the same as the subject. That…
Slam, Dunk & Hook – Themes
Power Although ‘‘Slam, Dunk, & Hook’’ appears to be a poem about a group of young men playing basketball, it is also a poem about power, both physical and cultural power. The young men described in this poem are at the peak of their physical prowess. The narrator describes difficult maneuvers that the young men…
Slam, Dunk & Hook – Poem Summary
‘‘Slam, Dunk, & Hook’’ is a poem of forty short, unrhymed lines. The poem is overtly about a group of young African American men playing basketball in the Deep South during the 1950s or 1960s. The narrator is a member of the group and includes himself in the descriptions. Lines 1–10 The poem opens with…
The Peace of Wild Things – Analysis
In 1980, Robert Bly, a leading American poet, compiled an unusual poetry anthology titled News of the Universe: Poems of Twofold Consciousness. It is a substantial book comprising over one hundred and fifty poems, ranging from the eighteenth century to the present day and over a number of different cultural traditions. One of the poems…
The Peace of Wild Things – Setting
Social Upheaval and War in the 1960s It is not difficult to understand why someone writing in the late 1960s might express despair about the state of the world. For Americans, this period was fraught with social upheaval and the horror of war. In April 1968, the civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. was…
The Peace of Wild Things – Literary Devices
Allusion An allusion in a work of literature is a reference to another literary work. It can be a reference to a person, an event, or simply a phrase that occurs in another work. When the poet writes in line 8 about his awareness of the body of water that is nearby, he uses words…
The Peace of Wild Things – Themes
The Human World versus the Natural World The poem contrasts the turbulence of the human world, and the workings of the human mind, with the peace of the natural world. Human life is chaotic and dangerous. People are unable to live at peace with one another, and the news always seems to be bad. The…
The Peace of Wild Things – Poem Summary
Lines 1–5 ‘‘The Peace of Wild Things’’ begins with the poet, writing in first person, describing what he likes to do when his mind becomes agitated and he needs to calm down. He presents himself as a man who is concerned about the state of the world. He appears to have no hope that the…
Oranges by Gary Soto – Analysis
The poem ‘‘Oranges’’ by Gary Soto is frequently included in anthologies of literature as a sole example of Soto’s writing. Readers praise it, finding it to be pleasant and unchallenging. The assumption that this poem is about a charming courtship between innocent children may be touching, but it does not really respond to the facts…