Poetry. Short Essay

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Poetry
Poetry is one of the oldest forms of expression. It is an imaginative awareness of experience that is passed through meaning, rhythmic language choices and sound to induce an emotional response from the audience. However, as old as it is, many people are afraid of reading them because they are hard to understand their meaning. They are vital in our lives since they can sooth a broken heart, interlink historical facts and even give a melody to a love affair. In this short essay I have chosen deal with the poems titled, “My Papa’s Waltz” (1948) by Theodore Roethke, “Photograph of my Father in his Twenty-Second Year” (1983) by Raymond Carver and “The courage that my mother had” (1954) by Edna St. Vincent Millay. This is because they have similar themes, are short and precise.
My Papa’s Waltz main idea is to reflect to the audience on the different moments of affection the boy underwent with his father. His father according to the poetry had different traits which reflect why he behaved differently in different occasions. The main themes of the poem are power, child abuse and affection. “Photograph of my Father in his Twenty-Second Year” (1983) by Raymond Carver is poem that reflects a boy’s disappointment of his father for not mentoring him. His bitterness is reflected in when he records "Father, I love you, yet how can I say thank you, I who cannot hold my liquor either, and do not even know the places to fish." And finally, in the poem “The courage that my mother had” (1954) by Edna St. Vincent Millay, we see also the child’s frustration as a result of her mother’s actions. The girl is not happy because her mother failed to train her on how to be courageous; a character her mother had and the daughter valued it very much. These three poems have a central theme of a feeling of disappointment of the children towards their parent’s different failures.
Writing of poems is actually very different from the ordinary writings. Poets use different techniques in order to pass over their intended messages to the audience, mostly indirect. Therefore, for people to understand a particular poem they have to be aware some of the following terms; allegory, imagery, tone, diction, symbol, simile and many others. ...