Poetry Journal Two

Title: Coming Up.
Author: Ani Difranco
Style of Journal: Contemporary Poet
S: People of low class
O: How people of lower classes not being notice.
A: Rich people of high status.
P: To send a message to the people upstairs
S: Earning equality
Tone: Sad, serious

my young daughter down stairs
sitting on the corner with a pot in her hand
thinking life is not fair
you look up and hate me
go ahead, ask if I cared
my life has been all hard work
papers, pens and two cell phones
running from place to place making people happy
im the one with the spray-paint
painting the future
you say I have gone too heavy
but this is my nature
i too am bold in my young age
my future is not yet made
sorry about your rage
you must understand that life is not all about you
you choose to stand on the 1st floor
i worked my way up
i bet you, I won’t stop
i telling you come up, come up!
so you could see how life is
in the penthouse

Reflection:
The poem that I wrote is taking in the position of the man up stairs. I felt compel to write this poem so that the reader could get two sides to the story. The story being the social inequality that Ani Difranco tries to convey. While my side of the same story from the man above is shown through my poem as the man showing the reader how he worked hard for him to be where he is right now. In Ani Difranco ‘s poem I have noticed that she used a lot of end rhythms in her poem to express her point. For me those end rhythms had some effect on me. It is hard to explain, but those end rhythms are those that carry the story along. In my poem I too used some end rhythm, but I don’t think it had the same effect it had on me when I saw her say this poem on Def Jam. My end rhythms are words that I think might have the same emphasis as Ani Difranco’s poems has.


Title: “ I am accused to tending the past”
Author: Lucille Clifton
Style of Journal: Literary Critic
S: History’s Mother
O: How History has the potential to help us.
A: People that want to change the past.
P: To tell how history writes its self.
S: How History was created.
Tone: Calm

What I think Lucille Clifton is trying to convey in the poem is fate. She writes about something that she had done in the past. The only difference is she, in the poem she assumes that she is innocent from her crimes, because she had no control over her own fate. She writes, “this past was waiting for me when I came.” This lyric shows how fate has a big rule in the past. Lucille Clifton goes on to talk about a baby that she named History. Well, within history as we know it in books, once the event took place, its done. There nothing we the people reading about the event that happened in the past could do to change it. Lucille Clifton describes her baby History as a child that grows up and becomes strong enough to travel out on her own. I for one think that Lucille Clifton is sending us, the reader the message that history will forever travel. While traveling and taking down event that’s happens, history has been also able to take down language of the different places it visits. Even dates and time when the events happened. Once history has written down its travels, there is nothing human kind could do to change the event. What we do have control over is reading and learning about the travel that History had taken and learning from them. The materials that we learn from History could help us shape a better future for ourselves. With History always taking down what happened, we could learn what not to do in the future to create more peace for everyone.