Poems About Other Cultures

Poems About Other Cultures

  • Submitted By: Monkeyninjah
  • Date Submitted: 11/10/2008 3:09 PM
  • Category: English
  • Words: 533
  • Page: 3
  • Views: 772

Poems From Other Cultures Discuss the problems faced by the persona in each of the poems you have read. Discuss language, tone and structure. In this essay I will discuss the problems that the persona faces in the poems ‘Presents From My Aunts In Pakistan’ and ‘Search For My Tongue’. I will talk about tone, structure and language and how the poets present the problems of the persona through them. In the poem ‘Search For My Tongue’ the persona has moved from a different country and feels she is losing her ‘mother tongue’, it shows the issues that occur when you move from one country to another and cannot fully understand the predominantly spoken language in that country. In the poem the key part is when the author uses the metaphor of a bud to represent her tongue and how she feels about the issue of her losing her ‘mother tongue’. The persona feels as if her ‘mother tongue’ is not being used and will rot and die as she is using her ‘foreign tongue’ more and more and feels that she is going to lose her ‘mother tongue’, this problem is shown in the poem when she says ‘you could not use them both even if you thought that way’ and also ‘your mother tongue would rot and die in your mouth’. Using two languages in the poem presents the problem of the persona because when it uses the foreign language the reader cannot understand what is written on the page and so can see what it like from the personas perspective as they are not using their ‘mother tongue’ but are being forced to use their ‘foreign tongue’ even though it is weak and they cannot understand what is being said. The persona lives in a foreign society and because of this she has to adapt to her surrounding which in this case means learning to speak and fully understand the English language, this results in her ‘foreign tongue’ developing and becoming stronger, this make her feel as if her ‘mother tongue’ is being pushed aside and fading as her foreign tongue grows and becomes stronger. The persona may...

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