Destiny Washington Essays (1531 words) - Poetic Form, Stanza

Destiny Washington Professor Hart Eng 380 2 April 2017 Forbidden Fruit: Gwendolyn Brooks's "A song in the front yard" I've stayed in the front yard all my life. I want a peek at the back Where it's rough and untended and hungry weed grow's . A girl gets sick of a rose. I want to go in the back yard now And maybe down the alley, To where the charity children play. I want a good time today. They do some wonderful things. They have some wonderful fun. My mother sneers, but I say it's fine How they don't have to go in at quarter to nine. My mother, she tells me that Johnnie Mae Will grow up to be a bad woman. That George'll be taken to Jail soon or late (On account of last winter he sold our back gate.) But I say it's fine. Honest, I do. And I'd like to be a bad woman, too, And wear the brave stockings of night-black lace And strut down the streets with paint on my face When restricted from something, one naturally becomes fascinated with the very thing, they are restricted from. "A song in the front yard," by Gwendolyn Brooks, creates an analogy of the difference between the poor and wealthy. She ope ns the poem with intensity, making the reader eager to read the next line. The format of the poem is broken into four stanzas. Brooks opens the poem with the metaphor of a luminous life in the backyard and a boring life in the front. There are couplets present at the end of each stanza. Brook's incorporates alliteration, hyperbole and personification and repetition to develop a deeper meaning and purpose of the poem .. In regard to poetic feet, Brook's presents a combination of iambic and anapestic feel. The poem was written in the 1940's at a time when segregation was still legal in specific parts of the United States. This texts connects with social issues that occurred during the time in which it was written. With the black commu nity already having gone through the New negro movement in the 1920's, leading up to new issues with social class, and even the Great depression. Some African Americans were able to relocate and better the lives for themselves and their families, while others weren't able to. Even in the midst of the African American community being less than; inside their own community there was division. The intended audience of the poem is for both the youth and parents. It emphasized in youth nothing is ever enough. Young people always yearn for what they do not have. Brook's comes from an educated background, and displays this with her choice of diction throughout the poem. The words she chooses to vividly describe each action, person, place and thing was carefully crafted. She encourages her readers to dig deep to fully grasp the message. She isn't speaking to the community. She is speaking for and with the community with this poem. She is the voice of the young girls who steadily rema in hungry for more in life, and not allow themselves to be caged off or segregated by social class. Brook's writes the poem for a first person point of view. The narrator appears to be a naive child, who is unaware of the inappropriate actions she eagerly wants to engage in. "Stayed" , implies that she has not been given the opportunity to go elsewhere besides where her feet are already planted. In the first stanza Brook's uses the word "Peek" When a person wants to peek at something, it's something of interest. The female narrator is in desperate need of a small glimpse of the life she's been kept from. This particular word "Peek" hints to the readers, that she has seen the backyard against the better judgment of her mother. Because she has peeked, she is very aware of the forbidden life in the backyard. The stanza does shift to the usage of strong adjectives such as "rough" and "untended". The phraseology of these words is used to describe the backyard. They also suggest that the life in the backyard, that's yearned for, is also not a