Poetry Blog Post 1

Poetry blog post #1 due Saturday by midnight -- choose any poem from the ones posted on the class blog (or Seize the Day from the handout) and analyze 1) how it works, and 2) what it means. 500 words.

This poem is very empowering to young people, specifically girls. It reminds me of the Three Tongues poem that we went over in class because it has that more mysterious and open theme for interpretation. This poem uses a lot of repetition with the word 'you' and 'like'. This poem also uses many similes in order to compare the girl the speaker is referring to in order to compare her to powerful things and give confidence. This poem also has 8 stanzas with most of them being rather short except the third to last is the build up. You can tell this because it contrasts greatly with the rest of the poem and refers to why strength is needed.It is also used to stress how wrong these contradictions are and how powerful the 'you' in this poem is. The poem uses it as a moment to draw on the past and use that for strength to push yourself forwards and draw on the 'show them how they were wrong' ideology. Nikita Gill also has each stanza use only one sentence, until the middle long stanza which is broken down into three sentences rather than one. Even after this, she goes back to one sentence per stanza. Nikita also has three lines in every stanza except for one. This draws even more emphasis on what she is trying to say in that stanza. Nikita doesn’t really use rhyme in her poem, that I could really see. Nikita also only uses capital letters at the start of a sentence, most of the time it is in a new stanza but in the longest stanza, she uses capitalization to start her sentences. I also noticed that almost all of her capitalizations start with the letter ‘L” or the word “Like”. The only two times this doesn't happen are the last who stanzas.

2.) This poem is great because it can mean multiple different things to different people. For me, this poem is telling a young girl to lift her chin up, no matter how beaten it may be and to stand with her shoulders square. Nikita is writing this for what I think is almost a younger version of herself. While an older audience would be more likely to read this, it reminds me strongly of a letter that someone would write to a younger self. This poem puts emphasis that the predators inside a person are not always demons but they are sometimes just defenses that you need in order to strengthen yourself. It also focuses on control and not abusing your power. “Only sinking your fangs into those who have wronged you.” This focuses more on showing the people that hurt you how powerful and dangerous, in a good way, you are rather than going around ‘striking’ other people that have not done anything to harm you in the first place. This poem focuses on growing as a person and being strong enough to stand up for yourself and be your own individual rather than sitting by and letting people harm you.