Every reader wants to see the true meaning of each poem that they read. Despite of all the metaphors, ironies, imageries, and elements used within the whole poem, readers wanted to reveal its imagination and creation to become intimate with the author’s attack. However, not all poems are easy to understand. Earle Birney’s poem is one of those. That is why readers of this poem need to read and understand the verse thoroughly. From this case, analysis of the text will be discuss in terms of its attack, relativizations to the reality, it social context, and terms used to show the symbolisms and meaning of the text.
Earle Birney’s poem entitled “Appeal to a Lady with a Diaper” is a confusing verse. If the reader reads the poem once, he or she would not understand the meaning and essence of what the narrator and authors is trying to convey. After reading Birney’s poem, my first reaction as a reader is puzzled. The whole poem contains complex terms and arguments that the narrator discussed. There are different imageries hide from the words and construction of the poem. The first thing that will make a reader mystified is because of the physical construction of the verse. I asked myself as a reader why the author needs to curve the syllables. Why did he use big and small letters? What does he wanted to illustrate?
The whole poem showed different forms of images as what the words and terms tried to convey. The music and image of the whole situation in the past is a kind of descriptive because by using curve words, it means that the bus passed through a hump. When capital letters exist, it shows that other people or the baby in the bus are yelling that made the narrator confused and tend to shout. In terms of producing sounds, the author used distinctive elements to depict the occurrence or event in the bus. It can be said that while the author is writing the poem, he is on the bus experiencing the scenario that he went through.
Personally speaking, I am saying that I did not understand the whole poem because I could not perceive the main point or claim of the author. By using curve words, capital, and small letters, I tend to focus on its structure alone without analyzing the main text or what the author is trying to convey. However, I did my best to understand the narrator’s point of view; it is just that I could not able to define some terms used to identify the essence of the poem.
Works Cited
- Birney, Earle. Appeal to a Lady with a Diaper. Ontario and Illinois 1956/1971. pp. 61-62.
