Poetry for Students, Volume 31

romances, ‘‘developed a style—turgid and diffi- cult, infuriating his age, which became known as Culteranismo. And inasmuch as G ...

ethical prejudice which characterizedEl Cidand theBook of Good Love. The same power also to make poetry of the here and the now. ...

Lineage Margaret Walker’s poem ‘‘Lineage’’ presents a perfect example of her writing style, demonstrat- ing how well she can tel ...

relate to the emotional content that Walker alludes to in her writing. So in a sense, the poem continues to grow along with read ...

My grandmothers were strong. My grandmothers are full of memories Smelling of soap and onions and wet clay With veins rolling ro ...

them. In a way, this makes the memories even more special. The memories are not just things that the speaker carries in her mind ...

Strength The speaker of this poem mentions the strength of her grandmothers in several different ways. First, she talks about ph ...

inappropriately. It suggests that the grandmothers do not allow themselves to be weighed down by negative thoughts about the dif ...

enoughtosee,protrudingfromthetopoftheir hands due to aging as well as to the coarse treat- ment the hands have recieved. The rea ...

For many years, European slave ships plowed the Atlantic Ocean between West Africa and North America, delivering shiploads of sl ...

to secure successful professional careers. They included now-famous novelists, poets, and short- story authors such as Saul Bell ...

white woman. If black people wanted to buy food at many restaurants, they were not allowed to enter through the front; they had ...

Critics have often written about the univer- sal tone of the poem ‘‘Lineage,’’ as has Walker herself. Critics generally praise W ...

of lineage. It is a topic that many people think about from the time they begin to talk and con- tinue to think about throughout ...

for distortions to occur, making this sort of comparison another universal experience. Walker’s great-grandmother was a slave, s ...

collective characteristics, activities, thoughts, and ideas; she is linking all these signifiers to the notion of a ‘‘people,’’ ...

If history is such a mixed bag, Walker sug- gests that this is due to two parallel, at times contradictory ways of approaching i ...

and full of a hundred unfulfilled dreams of today; our blood eats through our veins with the terrible destruction of radium in o ...

masculine appropriation (‘‘Only the naked arm of Time / can measure the ground we know’’). The following poem, ‘‘Lineage,’’ anno ...

record her thoughts and the images that formed the basis for her poetry. The daybook quickly filled with numerous ‘‘ditties’’ an ...