Late Coffin

Sadness’ Complexity

Viet

Sadness’ Complexity

“We Real Cool”

Gwendolyn Brooks

We real cool. We

Left school. We

Lurk Late. We

Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We

Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We

Die soon.

Gwendolyn Brooks, an African-American poet who has her first poem published in a children’s magazine when she was thirteen years old. Gwen’s poems are mostly traditional ballads and sonnets; she also uses sonnets and blues rhythms in free verse. “We Real Cool” tell us about the rebellious teenagers and their irresponsible lives which are spent on the streets. The theme portrayed in the poem is the tempting dark side that these teenagers are falling into. The rhythmic structure AA BB CC AA made the poem more interesting to read. The type of poem is lyrical because it rhymes and briefly exposes to us how ignoring these kids are.

The subject matter tells us that the rebellious teenagers who are unaware of their lives and spending them on the streets. They sing, they drink, and the capture of the feeling of ecstasy, but in the end they all have to pay the price of facing death. In line 1 & 2: explaining how troubled teenagers think they are the best and cool that they can just easily quit school. They think cool people don’t ever need school; school is not for them at all. Line 3, 4 & 5: showing the life of the street teenagers, what they usually do in the past. Lurk, strike and sin suggest thieve, rape and kill. These are which all street teens without getting a proper education would end up with. “We thin gin” showing how much they are taking wines in, to them wines and beer are nothing, they need them to be cool and rebellious. Then June is for Jazz music, this slows down all the party time that the teens had and linked to an end “We die soon”.
The idea that is presented in the poem is young teenagers can’t control themselves with the tempting world outside. The lives of them are seriously harmed.

The historical context of this was set in America in the time of 1959, when billiards was famous and the teenagers are described as lazy schoolboys skipping school to go play pool. The writer’s tone for the poem is informative and persuasive as she lets us see the real side of what the characters in the poem have to pay up, with death. There is a rhyme scheme in the poem; it rhymes at the end of two sentences at a time. “We real cool. We left school”, “We Lurk Late. We Strike Straight”, “We Sing Sin. We Thin Gin “, “We jazz June. We die soon.” The rhythmic structure is AA BB CC AA; the rhyming structure keeps the poem interesting for the readers as they can feel the flow in it. The literary device used in the poem is simile, “ We sing sin”, illustrating the sin as a song that these teenagers are singing the badness of them out as they know they are dealing with. Contrast was also used, “We real cool” and “We die soon” demonstrates that they are in a huge contrast of starting off as a very cool group of people living like there is no fear in this world, but ended up with death. The theme of the poem proves as people grow, tempting traps in real world will face them and to avoid these traps is the way to live, but it’s hard because they are so tempting. The writer’s purpose is to persuade all teenagers not to follow the path that is demonstrated in the poem, that skipping school is not a good move and to play billiards or do sins, either of them is cool.

In conclusion, Brooks has used great literary devices such as simile and contrast to show the truth of how living on the streets may have real bad consequences. The heavy mood of the poem makes us feel like making second thoughts on every thing that we are about to do, because it will affect our long lives when we don’t even know. It warns kids that are growing up right now, teenagers that are in the age of deciding what’s good for them and for matures to look back and think and hopefully then can teach their younger relatives to have a real life. These people are also the aimed audience that Brooks wanted to give the poem to.

Funeral Blues

W. H. Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

W. H. Auden was an American poet who was born in Britain. “Funeral Blues” takes us to a sad funeral of the character’s dead lover. W. H. Auden greatly portrayed the sadness that the woman’s powerless feeling when standing in front of the coffin. The writer’s purpose is to give information of how she feels when losing the loved one, who she had had the sense of meaning of life through the relationship with her lover.

The subject matter is the intensity of a woman’s losing her loved one. He was everything to her, “He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;” but suddenly he was completely disappeared from his own life and hers. The woman is attending her long-gone lover’s funeral in an extremely bad mood; she searches for ways of mourning this passing. There are three themes in the poem. The first one is love, this theme illustrates the intense sadness of losing a person who has been the most loved one and meant everything to you. She wants the whole world to come to the funeral because her lover was so special to her. It is sad and crashing feeling that the author put into the main character, she seemed like she can’t continue on to live her life, “for nothing now can ever come to any good.” The second one is meaning of life. Life is full of love and it’s all about how people share it. To some people, life is such a great mystery to explore, but to some, it’s just a big mess and they just want to end it as soon as possible. In the end, all of us will face death, we should all learn how to appreciate it right now or love or anything won’t bring this fragile life back. The character in the poem had previously felt a sense of meaning in life through the relationship with her lover, but after his death, that meaning disappeared. The final theme is Death. Along the poem, Auden makes a forceful statement about the horrible effects that the death of a loved one has on the left behind person. Throughout the poem, the speaker plans a funeral procession, reveals details of the relationship between her and the passed lover, and thinks about the future.

Exaggeration was the literary device that is used in “Funeral Blues”. “Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood”, Auden used the technique to show the hatred of the main character to everything. Nothing was meaningful to her since the only everything that belonged to her has left this world. Another literary device in the poem is personification, “let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead”. Repetition was used in the poem as a literary device, “He was my North, my South, … My working week and my Sunday rest, … my talk, my song”. The author used this particular literary device to emphasize how important was the dead lover to the main character of the poem. He was everything to her, even the smallest thing of her life, her song, her talk, her working week and her Sunday rest. He was her direction, North, South, East and West. The social condition of the poem is the dead one’s lover attending one of the saddest funerals of her life, her lover’s. The poem has been written in an elegy form, it portrays such deep feelings the main character has to fight against looking at her lover, dead and soulless. The rhymes are at the end of two sentences at a time, for example: “telephone, bone; drum, come; overhead, Dead”. The rhyme scheme is interesting that it keeps the readers read it as it flows from the start to the end. The rhythmic structure is as the following: AA BB CC DD EE FF GG HH.

In brief, Auden’s well used of techniques as literary devices as well as choosing the exact themes that made the poem very interesting for all readers. The tone of the author is serious and informative as it reveals as the main character standing at the funeral and realizing that love doesn’t last forever like she thought before. The mood of the poem is intense sad, it sets our minds to think of who we love and if they are still alive, show appreciations from today before they leave us when we don’t even know.

What is Our Life
Sir Walter Raleigh
What is our life? A play of passion,
Our mirth the music of division,
Our mother’s wombs the tiring-houses be,
Where we are dressed for this short comedy.
Heaven the judicious sharp spectator is,
That sits and marks still who doth act amiss.
Our graves that hide us from the setting sun
Are like drawn curtains when the play is done.
Thus march we, playing, to our latest rest,
Only we die in earnest, that’s no jest.

Sir Walter Raleigh was an English poet, who was also a writer, soldier courtier and explorer. “What is our life” tell us the truth about how we as humans are living. As we all know, gods are watching us from above and they decide who will go to heaven or down to hell. Raleigh well uses simile as a literary device to present life as a comedy play. The author’s tone is serious because he puts out the real life of how we are living it, it’s not always happy and smooth as we thought. After leaving the houses, our mother’s wombs, we then join in such a comedy, which our destinies can be set. The writer’s purpose is to give information about how to live our life wisely and worthy as the mighty ones are watching us from above.
The content of the poem is how we actually living our lives. Auden shows humans are born as characters and they play the comedy show for the gods to watch. Then, the lucky chosen ones will be sent to heaven and the unlucky ones will be sent to hell by the gods who judge them, “Where we are dressed for this short comedy. Heaven the judicious sharp spectator is, That sits and marks still who doth act amiss. Our graves that hide us from the setting sun.” The main theme of the poem is cycle of life that every one of the humanity has to go through. Then, sooner or later everybody has to go to hell or heaven and the gods are in control of this life. We are the players who bring the entertainment to them and get return with a decision of spending the next life in heaven or hell. The poem is written in a lyrical type because Raleigh takes us through the story of normal lives, which people are living. We can see the historical context by Raleigh’s expression in the poem. It was set in the Middle Ages in old Britain when Elizabethan was still queen and drama plays were very famous to entertain her. The rhyme scheme is at the end of two sentences each, “passion, division”; “be, comedy”; “is, amiss”; “sun, done”; “rest, jest”. The rhythmic structure is AA BB CC DD EE; it can keep the readers interested easily with the flow and rhymes at the end of sentences.
Simile is the main literary device that Raleigh used for this poem; life and a comedy play is the major simile that Raleigh uses as the theme. The other one is comparing the happiness and smiles on our face with the play’s music, which is used to entertain the gods, “Our mirth the music of division”. Raleigh then takes the image of the mother wombs to compare with safe houses that we stay in, “Our mother’s wombs the tiring-houses be”. “Our graves that hide us from the setting sun Are like drawn curtains when the play is done”, Raleigh uses the graves which we lie under to compare with the stage curtains closing when the play is over and the players take a long rest.

In closing, “What is our life?” shows us the cycle of normal lives and how we are living is being watched from above. The mood of the poem is sad as Raleigh masks off the real face of life. We are just the players who put on a show then go back behind the curtains and die. The audience that Raleigh aimed for is the people who don’t know what this life is all about and to tell them to act good for the gods to decide to heaven or to hell we are heading.

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