Jaki Green: Poetry Literary Elements

The poem ‘’Who will be the Messenger of this Land’’ is told from the perspective of a third person objective point of view. This narration style allows the reader to identify with the narrator and to become a part of the movement.

The poem ‘’Wishing’’ is written in an iambic pentameter.

In the poem ‘’Paper Dolls’’, the narrator compares the way in which she remembers her childhood with a beautiful doll house. This comparison has the purpose of transmitting the idea that while the image the narrator grew up with was an almost perfect one that was not the truth but rather just an illusion.

We find alliteration in the lines ‘’but they were always in bowls/folding, pinching, rolling the dough’’ in the poem ‘’I know the Grandmother one had Hands’’.

No irony can be found in any of the poems.

The poem ‘’Wishing’’ is a meditative poem through which the narrator expresses his own personal feelings and ideas.

The action of the poem ‘’I know the Grandmother one had hands’’ is set in the grandmother’s kitchen. The time when the action took place remains undetermined.

The tone used in the poem ‘’Who will be the Messenger of this Land’' is an accusatory one.

The protagonist in the poem ‘’I know the Grandmother one had Hands’’ is the grandmother while the antagonist is the busy lifestyle she has and which does not allow her to be free and to do what she wants.

The major conflict in the poem ‘’Paper Dolls’’ is between reality and perception.

The poem ‘’Wishing’’ reaches its climax when the narrator assures the reader that happiness will not be destroyed, no matter time.

The title of the poem ‘’Who will be the Messenger of this Land’’ is presented in such a way it appears to be a question addressed not to the reader but rather to a higher power. The title of the poem foreshadows the later questions which will appear in the poem and the inquisitive nature of the narrator in the poem.

In the poem ‘’Paper Dolls’’, the narrator tries to convince the reader that the world in which she lived in was a perfect one. This is however an understatement as the narrator later admits how this perfect image hid many wounds which never healed.

An idea alluded in the poem ‘’Wishing’’ is that humans do not have the power to destroy what is good in this world. The narrator alludes this by claiming a person will never have the power to destroy rainbows or to steal light, used here as a way of symbolizing everything that is good in the world.

The term ‘’land’’ is used in the poem ‘’Who will be the Messenger of this Land’’ as a general term to make reference both to the people who were born, raised and who continued to live in a certain geographical area and to the natural environment in general.

We find a personification in the poem ‘’Paper Dolls’’ in the lines ‘’in vintage memory/ cut carefully’’.

We find a hyperbole in the lines ‘’shackled, folded,/ bent, layered in its/ bowels’’ in the poem entitled ‘’Who will be the Messenger of this Land’’.

We find onomatopoeia in the lines ‘’with singing hoes/and dancing plows /with fingers that snap’’.