Week 5 - Two Poems

Li-Young Lee's "The Gift" relies heavily on rhetoric and imagery. The poem begins with rhetoric that reminds us of the tone in which one speaks to a child when putting him to sleep, telling him a story, helping him say his prayers. The rhetoric of the final stanza alludes to the sentiments of the first, where the child fears he will die of this splinter. However, this echo is reduced with the final sentiment of a kiss from child to father. The use of imagery in the poem is both literal and figurative. In the second stanza, the lines alternate from literal to figurative: "And I recall his hands / two measures of tenderness / he laid against my face, / the flames of discipline / he raised above my head" (9-13). Two hands, laid against my face, and raised above my head are literal, while equating them to two measures of tenderness and flames of discipline bring in metaphor. I think where the poem works best for me is in the imagery, particularly lines like "silver tear, tiny flame" (17). They are simple and tangible, but lovely, just like the act that is being described in the poem.

Philip Levine's "You Can Have It" melds all elements. There are aspects of diction that strike me, particularly the colloquial "Am I gonna make it?" (16). The narrative quality of the poem applies a heavily weighted rhetorical element. The imagery is particularly strong, however. I think the repetition of moon in the second stanza is a little lazy, personally, but hands yellowed and cracked, gasping for breath, chute its silvery blocks, bright grass between cracks dying... It are these aspects of the poem that really have a lasting affect for me, as opposed to the elements of diction and rhetoric, no matter how well-executed or strong they may be.