Question

PLEASE HELP ASAP, DUE SOON, SPENT 100 POINTS!!!

Identify two poetic devices, give examples of the devices, AND explain the impact/significance of the devices.

POETIC DEVICES TO CHOOSE FROM: Alliteration, repetition, rhyme, assonance, metaphor, personification, imagery, form.

#1:


#2:


Poem: “Say Thank You Say I’m Sorry” by Jericho Brown

I don’t know whose side you’re on,
But I am here for the people
Who work in grocery stores that glow in the morning
And close down for deep cleaning at night
Right up the street and in cities I mispronounce,
In towns too tiny for my big black
Car to quit, and in every wide corner
Of Kansas where going to school means
At least one field trip
To a slaughterhouse. I want so little: another leather bound
Book, a gimlet with a lavender gin, bread
So good when I taste it I can tell you
How it’s made. I’d like us to rethink
What it is to be a nation. I’m in a mood about America
Today. I have PTSD
About the Lord. God save the people who work
In grocery stores. They know a bit of glamour
Is a lot of glamour. They know how much
It costs for the eldest of us to eat. Save
My loves and not my sentences. Before I see them,
I draw a mole near my left dimple,
Add flair to the smile they can’t see
Behind my mask. I grin or lie or maybe
I wear the mouth of a beast. I eat wild animals
While some of us grow up knowing
What gnocchi is. The people who work at the grocery don’t care.
They say, Thank you. They say, Sorry,
We don’t sell motor oil anymore with a grief so thick
You could touch it. Go on. Touch it.
It is early. It is late. They have washed their hands.
They have washed their hands for you.
And they take the bus home.

Answer 1

Answer: Alliteration: In towns too tiny for my big black

Car to quit...

Metaphor: They say, Sorry,

We don’t sell motor oil anymore with a grief so thick

You could touch it. Go on. Touch it.

It is early. It is late. They have washed their hands.

They have washed their hands for you.

Explanation: alliteration provides an alternative to formal rhyme - it creates a melodic and/or rhythmic touch to the poem. Here, the repetition of the t sound and the b sound give the poem a poetic feel as it were, contrasting the t of tiny with the b of big and black, adjective - noun, adjective - noun

The second quote is much more complex. The juxtaposition of oil and grief both linked by the adjective thick, which we often associate with oil here extended to the grief of the grocery store workers. The repetition of the word touch - touch the grief, touch the oil - which one are we touching? There is also a religious or at least spiritual metaphor here, with oil having a significant part to play in Christian religious rituals. There is no oil now and the grocery store workers have washed their hands, washed their hands for you, another religious metaphor. It shows that the grocery workers care but they also perform simple religious rituals. This is a kind of secular prayer, honouring the humble grocery store workers and the simplicity of their lives and of their beliefs, compared to the more complex issues that the poet is concerned with:

' I’d like us to rethink //What it is to be a nation'. and his PTSD with God. Perhaps the poet is/was a soldier who has had his faith challenged.