Adam CENSORED

Mrs. CENSORED
Poetry CENSORED Split
20 September 2014
I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings is a very serious and powerful poem. When Ms.
Angelou describes the caged bird some very sharp and powerful words, such as shrill or trill,
sometimes pop up. The use of these show the acute pain of the bird going through such intense
suffering. Another aspect of it is that the rhythm is fast and strong, and that makes sense as she
was also a singer of calypso style music, which has very strong rhythms so there might have
been some crossover. Ms. Angelou uses a large amount of repetition in her poem, she describes
the free bird, puts in a few original lines for the caged bird, and then says:
"his wings are clipped and/his feet are tied/so he opens his throat to sing"
She then inserts a final stanza:
The caged bird sings with a fearful trill/of things unknown/but longed for still/and his tune is
heard/on the distant hill/for the caged bird/sings of freedom.
She proceeds to repeat this process and then the poem is finished (The final stanzas in both parts
are identical). This might be, at least in part, to put emphasis on the final stanza which she might
feel is especially powerful or pertinent. Ms. Angelou does use assonance in her poem. A good
example is 3rd/6th stanza. In the 3rd/6th stanza the words trill, hill and shrill which each produce
an sound. (The is part of the International Phonetic Alphabet.)
The imagery in I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings is vivid, powerful and complex.
Phrases such a bars of rage or grave of dreams are complex as they are not literal, but still
have the capability to truly capture the terrible image of a bird in never-ending suffering. For
some readers it may create a powerful emotional effect for some readers which works well for
Ms. Angleou as she tries to use this poem to tell of the evils of slavery. I would say that the poem
also is very economic in conveying feeling because t uses short and extremely powerful words
rather the long, flowing and diluted sentences. This is probably much more effective than prose
such as To Kill a Mockingbird because it is very to the point and easier to get people to listen to
and/or read because there is not a large investment of time. And even so, the clear and powerful
statement is still understood, meaning that this poetry is extremely efficient with its words.This
essay will proceed to discuss a different poem.
This Is Just To Say is an extremely different poem. It is very light hearted, a little slapdash
and quite silly. At first glance, this poem appears to have almost no thought to put into it at all.
There is pretty much no assonance, alliteration, repetition, onomatopoeias or any other literary
device. However the form of the poem could be seen as interesting as the three stanzas are all
visually somewhat similar. This shows that some thought was put into this poem. This is also
supported by the fact that in the first and second stanzas there are 12 syllables, each. In the third
stanza there is 13 syllables. The evenness of the appearance of the stanza and the similar
syllables show that he didn't just write this on a sticky note and then off-handedly publish it,
tucked in the rest of a book; he put work into organizing and
improving it. On that note,it seems to convey a message of humor and lightheartedness by taking
a poem, which, in the context of professional poets tend to be serious commentaries or
outpourings of feeling and he completely flips around so that when viewed from an academic
perspective is so trite and out of place, that some people might find it quite hilarious.

The imagery in this poem seems to have a function of making the poem relatable. It does
this by taking a scene that many people have probably experienced at one point or another,
pilfering a pantry (or something of similar to a pantry) for something yummy and just eating it
all, and he turns it into a poem that people really, personally understand. This is very simple
imagery but the familiarity of it is probably able to awake emotion in people; especially those
who have recently eaten someone elses food. It is an extremely economical poem because in a
mere 37 syllables he composes an interesting, humorous and a now well-known poem (without
removing words that are important for correct grammar. (That can happen a lot in things such as
haikus.)) I think this is much more effective than prose because the reason that it is funny is that
is so very unpoetic. I will now continue to compare the poems.
I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings and This Is Just To Say are very different poems. One
uses extremely powerful vocabulary to convey a strong and important message while the other
uses reasonable language to say something trite. One probably had a large amount of emotional
and time investment, the other could have been written in about ten minutes (Depending on why
he wrote it concepting could have taken a long time). One has complex and slightly sad or maybe
even frightening imagery, the other has very simple and somewhat comical imagery. Along with
that however they do have some similarities; they are both more effective than prose with their
message and they are both very economical however, other than that, they are just very, very
different poems.