Poetry

Poetry

Nahidur Rahman

If you are Over Staying Woke

“If You are Over Staying Woke” is a poem written by Morgan Parker and published in 2015 with Poetry Magazine. The poem identifies as modern and contextual, giving reference to concepts specific to the United States. The poem highlights the stereotypes and social difficulties a modern black person faces in their everyday life. The author has effectively shown the exhaustion the black person goes through in their moments of intense vigilance.

The poem does not have a rhyme scheme and comprises short and simple sentences and lines. The style and arrangement of the poem symbolize life and the life timeline, showing how people undergo emotions with time. Adverbs and verbs are used in the poem to describe what is happening and motivate and impact the reader to seek their freedom. Apart from the structure and syntax, the poem doesn’t contain many other literary devices. The poem has a distinctive structure, with lines that appear to end at random. To make sense of the lines, the reader is required to connect them with the next line. For instance, the world is like/ for white people (Parker 17-18). The sentences are brief and straightforward, laughing at how simple-minded people tend to be.

The poem has a strong and passionate tone to it. The poem’s vocabulary adds to the passion, with the verbs highlighting the poem’s goal. The poem’s form and brief lines are straightforward and get right to the author’s point. The poem’s structure establishes a tempo and shows how quickly life moves. Towards the end, the author uses repetition of the word ‘funeral’ to emphasize where everything in life ends; death.

The author has used an eye-catching title intended to elicit the attention of the reader at first glance. I like how the author has made the poem simple through her word choice and form. She primarily uses verbs and adverbs to describe what is happening throughout the poem. I like how the simplistic nature of the lines reflects the idea that the men and women described are simplistic. At first glance, a reader gets what the poem is about without the need to read between the lines. I feel that the persona seems to be annoyed as if prescribing a specific way the reader is supposed to live their life. While taking a jibe at the privileged white race, the persona seems to be targeting the Black race with pieces of advice, even though some of them appear wild. The voice in the poem appears to be calling on the readers to be true to themselves and make mistakes and learn from them. While I resonate with some lines in the poem, I find it difficult to agree with others. For instance, why would I need to keep a corkscrew in my purse? (Parker 8-9). Nevertheless, I guess that was the author’s intention; to come up with a poem with many verbs and adverbs that reflects the reality of life for many socioeconomic groups. Throughout the poem, the author calls on the reader to be wary of the news out there. The reader is encouraged to refuse to hear the news, see the news, turn off the news and write their news.

Parker’s tendency to use lists as a style for her poems is also seen in the poem “99 problems.” Although the poem takes a narrative style, the events are listed as short lines that make a total of 99 lines. Just like the poem “If you are over Staying Woke,” the poem takes a simplistic approach and is not laden with many stylistic devices, a characteristic of Parker.

Work Cited

Parker, Morgan. “If You are Over Staying Woke.” Poetry Foundation. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/58028/if-you-are-over-staying-woke

Eeasure Poem

Evelyn Garcia

decide delusion I live,

genderless out of sight. I choose

spend what I have. American,

I hear what I want to.

our right—

protect ourselves extreme stress.

times great fear,

do to survive

make it out alive.

one instruction having a body,

punishment  

birds look at me—

Endangered. future earned

or inherited. writes itself.

Poetry Analysis

ronald mei

Ronald Mei
English 201
Professor Perry
25 April 2022

Poetry Analysis
The poem I have chosen to analyze is “Learning to love America” by Shirley Geok-Lin Lim. This poem stood out to me because I feel related to the poem. Lin Lim’s poem starts off the majority of the sentences with the word ‘because’, which made me think that she was going to explain her story as an immigrant. When Lin Lim’s poem talked about the ocean swept along the coastline, it made me visualize why my parent work so hard to get settled in America. The poem “Learning to Love America” brings up my feeling about America and things to look back at in the future.
Lin Lim uses a lot of imagery and identity throughout her poem. An example of imagery used in the poem would be, “because my senses have caught up with my body, my breath with the air it swallows, my hunger with my mouth”. Based on this stanza, we can visualize the feeling of Lin Lim’s current state. When it comes to identity, the title kind of represents it already. Lin Lim expresses how his son struggles to adapt to the American lifestyle. She also describes the imperfections of the United States, which also builds the connection with the reader through relatabilities.
A different poem by Shirley Geok-Lin Lim that grabbed my attention is called ” Mother to Son”. This poem’s aspiring tone was the main reason why it caught my attention. The way Lin Lim writes her poems makes it easy for readers to paint the image in their heads. A great example of this is ” Go now and learn it.” After reading this line, you feel like she’s talking to you and you start imagining it. When rereading the poem, you can get multiple meanings because of previous memories and combine the different elements.
Both poems ” Learning to Love America” and ” Mother to son” by Shirley Geok- Lin Lim show a connection between her and her son. In ” Learning to Love America ” described how his son is having a hard time adapting to being an “American”. Lin Lim wrote a response for her son in ” Mother in son “, where she says ” You must believe me when I tell you there is a deep secret you must learn, a secret that can never be shared.” Based on both these quote it shows that Shirley Geok Lin Lim likes to write about his son.
Shirley Geok Lin Lim’s poems express a message to readers and an experience. The poems Lin Lim writes feel super relatable and her other poems are probably similar. The two peom shows that Lin Lim isn’t afraid to express her feeling about being an immigrant. As an Asian American with immigrant parents, I admire her work.

                Work Cited

Geok-Lin Lim , Shirley. “Learning to Love America.” Poetry Out Loud, https://www.poetryoutloud.org/poem/learning-to-love-america/.

Foust, Rebecca. “Three Poems from Ars Poetica for the Day by Shirley Geok-Lin Lim: ‘The Well,” ‘the Glass of Wine,” and ‘Mother to Son’: Women’s Voices for Change.” Women’s Voices For Change | Redefining Life After 40, 1 Oct. 2017, https://womensvoicesforchange.org/three-poems-from-ars-poetica-for-the-day-by-shirley-geok-lin-lim-the-well-the-glass-of-wine-and-mother-to-son.htm.