Literary Devices: Poem Analysis

Poems have always been works of literature that are expressed through imagination and emotions. These poems have structural patterns called literary devices. These literary devices are used to connect with the reader, by drawing them in, painting a mental picture, and being captured in an emotional level. Here I am going to discuss how Imagery, Line Breaks, and Similes, play a story-telling role emotionally, in both Dunya Mikhail’s “I Was In A Hurray” and my poem “Coding In A Border”.

The poem I chose is based on “I Was In A Hurry” by Dunya Mikhail. It’s a poem about how the writer lost something precious to her. From the very start Mikhail, begins to use descriptive languages like imagery and similes to describe this forgotten object. The story unfolds into a more powerful and haunting tale as she says, “or helplessly forgotten / in Purgatory” (15-16) and “or rising with the smoke of war,” (19). These lines can be interpreted as emotional feelings such as: being vulnerable and fearful. Fear playing the emotional role as she flees her country from imminent war.

I chose this poem at first due to the way it was structured with line breaks. Each line gave off a definition of what she was feeling about her lost. As I read on, I noticed a lot of similes in her examples. One of them being “or engraved on a rock / like a gaping wound,” (9-10), how the words “engraved” and “wound” have a connection of feeling torn apart. Mikhail did serve the reader a point of her main ideas and stylistic choices through three literary devices. With the use of these devices she was able to express her emotions in amore poetic and deeper way.

In my poem the literary devices used were similar to “I Was In A Hurry” by Dunya Mikhail. My poem “Coding In A Border” explains how I interpreted the theme “Border” from my computer/coding background. My examples also use imagery and similes to describe the main points of what I’m trying to say. In my poem I say, “Yesterday my mind went blank. / I was thoughtless,” (1-2), here I’m trying to express the emotions of feeling emptiness. How being empty and not being able to think of just one small word can make up the entire story of my poem.

The first literary device I incorporated from my source poem was Mikhail’s use of Line Breaks. For coding websites or writing programs, line breaks are also an essential part we use for design. Line breaks are supposed to set a rhythm in a poem, they used to pause the final word in one line and the first word in the next. In “I Was In A Hurry” by Dunya Mikhail, lines breaks were used after each descriptive example. After every descriptive image Mikhail, uses a line break to pause and continues by inserting her detailed simile. I also used line breaks after my description and examples like she did.

The second literary device incorporated from my source poem was the use of Imagery. Imagery plays a vital role in her poem “I Was In A Hurry” by using detailed words for a mental image. In my poem “Coding In A Border”, I say, “or solid style / like Trumps Wall,” (13-14) here I’m painting a mental image of what a wall should look like. In each line of my poem there is evidence of imagery describing what a border is.

The last literary device incorporated from my source poem is the use of Similes. Early on I noticed in “I Was In A Hurry” by Dunya Mikhail, she used similes to paint a picture in the readers mind. There were a lot of sentences starting with “like a” which were signs of similes being used. Being that we had to mimic a poem, I also tried to encourage my audience to use their imagination and interpret words in their own way.

In conclusion, poems can be interpreted in different emotional levels with literary devices such as Imagery, Line Breaks, and Similes. Literary devices intertwine with the readers emotions which can lead the poem into a deeper meaning. It shows how they can impact the poem and the reader in different ways.