Your world is as big as you make it.
I know, for I used to abide
In the narrowest nest in a corner,
My wings pressing close to my side.
But I sighted the distant horizon
Where the skyline encircled the sea
And I throbbed with a burning desire
To travel this immensity.
I battered the cordons around me
And cradled my wings on the breeze,
Then soared to the uttermost reaches
With rapture, with power, with ease!
This would be a fun poem for students. You can discuss a lot of literary devices and it sends a positive message for a growth mindset.
ReplyDeleteBut as a pessimist, I think this poem over looks how difficult it might be for many of its readers to take advantage of their desire and soar with ease. I'm sure the narrator had a decent amount of luck and or privilege. Still the growth mindset I mentioned is always the best mindset. I prefer the Satan approach of making a Heaven of Hell.
I like to think that there is a time for everything. A time to have our wings close to our sides, taking in the comforts and the quiet and almost bidding our time behind the cordons...but in this poem she views soaring and reaching further as the ultimate quest. At first I thought this poem must have been written through the American mindset...and it was after I looked up the author, but Johnson is also an African American which I found interesting. Poems all depend on where we are...the perspective and through this light there was a line needing to be crossed, conquered and soared beyond. I have been engulfed in the eastern philosophies lately where life is all about the quiet moments, the present, now, so I did not relate to this poem of yearning for this freedom of breakthrough as much.
ReplyDeleteYes, I think high school students could absolutely relate because it seems we all have lines to soar above at that age and the burning desire to do it!