Thursday, April 18, 2013

A poem for my AP language and composition class

Abstruse Oblivion
 

1  My mind roams free


2  Every night,


3  On an adventure,


4  Through the tumult of silence.


5  Everything is loud; everything is silent.


6  My mind out to all of the memories


7  Of the long hard day.


8  All is calm; all is wild.


9  My mind dregs


10  Through the past


11  Reminiscing bittersweet days


12  And mourning the ones wished forgotten.


13  Away slips my mind and my consciousness,


14  Reaching with open arms to the Almighty 


15  And deep down to embrace Lucifer.


16  My mind then forgets


17  The eyes, the ears


18  And sees and listens with the heart. 


19  In this prison


20  I find freedom


21  From everything


22  And from myself.


Self Analysis

Line 3/12:            Personification- “The mind” is said to “roam free.” Minds don’t actually get up and walk around. Minds also don’t mourn, technically.

Line 4:                   Oxymoron- Tumult is defined as disorder or an outbreak of disorder, which contradicts the word describing it, “silence.

Line 5/8:               Parallelism- Everything/all is _______; everything/all is _________ = similar structure
Line 11:                 Paradox- The word bittersweet contradicts itself, but is accurate.
Line 13:                 Zeugma- “Away slips my mind” and “away slips my consciousness” produce different meanings. The latter intends to create the picture of falling asleep and the former illustrates dreaming or the like.
Line 13:                 Inversion- Most would normally say “my mind slips away” or “my consciousness slips away.”
Line 14/15:          Allusion- “The Almighty” refers to God and “Lucifer” is Satan, in case you didn’t know. Referring to God brings to mind heaven and good things, so the mind thinks of good things. Mentioning Satan refers to hell, and thus bad things, and one might make the connection that the mind thinks of bad things.
Line 17:                 Metonymy- By looking at line 18, one can tell that “the eyes” refers to sight and “the ears” refers to hearing
Line 3/9/16:        Anaphora- While not in succession, the repetition of the phrase “my mind” should be evident.  Every other sentence begins with the phrase, emphasizing the subject, the narrator’s mind.


 


4 comments:

  1. Interesting and deep. *finger snaps*

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  2. Very deep, I like how its short but gets to the point. I like line 12, very well written

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  3. I feel like I really know you now. Haha but really your poem is really good :)

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  4. I like your short lines and the way they give this poem a unique shape. You might consider playing around with some inversion and/or creative spacing to add to the poem's sense of obscurity.

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