In “Dreams” by Langston Hughes, the poet uses a very short poem to convey the deep-embedded message that, without “dreams,” life can never reach its full potential. I set out to write that poem in a similar style, conveying what is, I hope, a powerful message and using the abstract idea of love in the way Hughes uses the idea of dreams.
I was moved by the vivid metaphors in Hughes’s work, which stresses the consequences of a life without “dreams.” I used a quatrain similar to his—for example, each stanza made up of a single sentence—because this gave the poem the compactness that I found in Hughes’s poem. I also used the same rhyming pattern (ABCB: in both stanzas, the fourth line rhymes with the second) that he used. Furthermore, Hughes starts …show more content…
That way, the reader is not only urged to do a certain thing, but also is given the reason why. I transitioned to the conditional (“if”) while describing love that “disappears” so that love would sound like a living thing (line 2). (However, I decided to use commas after “for” and “disappears”—which Hughes does not do –to offer a break for the reader to think about the consequences when love is lost.) This conditional is used in the second line of the second stanza also, as in Hughes’s poem; similarly, the word choice (“fades”) is used to give a more gentle feeling like the one Hughes gives when he uses “go” (lines 6). Furthermore, since Hughes writes in a rather melancholy and sober way in his metaphors, I did the same. His metaphors occur in the second half of each stanza, and so do mine. I decided to compare love to a “vale of tears,” which is an expression used in the Christian doctrine. I emphasized that, without love, life becomes nothing but a valley of tears. My metaphors indicate sorrowful things—a vale of tears or a battlefield—in order to give life to the rather abstract language of the first two lines in both stanzas. Hughes’s barren field suggested to me the idea of a battlefield, and that worked out well for the meaning of my poem. The “battlefield” is used to suggest the chaos that occurs in one’s mind and life when he is left in desolation. To add detail, I described the battlefield as being “loud with raids” (line 7). This mirrors Hughes’s words “frozen with snow,” which gave of life becoming a kind of winter. That inspired me to use “loud with raids” to extend the inner chaos that a person undergoes when love is lost. Overall, I think I imitated pretty well the figurative comparisons used in Hughes’s poem, and I am happy with the compactness that I feel is present in my own. However, I must admit
I was moved by the vivid metaphors in Hughes’s work, which stresses the consequences of a life without “dreams.” I used a quatrain similar to his—for example, each stanza made up of a single sentence—because this gave the poem the compactness that I found in Hughes’s poem. I also used the same rhyming pattern (ABCB: in both stanzas, the fourth line rhymes with the second) that he used. Furthermore, Hughes starts …show more content…
That way, the reader is not only urged to do a certain thing, but also is given the reason why. I transitioned to the conditional (“if”) while describing love that “disappears” so that love would sound like a living thing (line 2). (However, I decided to use commas after “for” and “disappears”—which Hughes does not do –to offer a break for the reader to think about the consequences when love is lost.) This conditional is used in the second line of the second stanza also, as in Hughes’s poem; similarly, the word choice (“fades”) is used to give a more gentle feeling like the one Hughes gives when he uses “go” (lines 6). Furthermore, since Hughes writes in a rather melancholy and sober way in his metaphors, I did the same. His metaphors occur in the second half of each stanza, and so do mine. I decided to compare love to a “vale of tears,” which is an expression used in the Christian doctrine. I emphasized that, without love, life becomes nothing but a valley of tears. My metaphors indicate sorrowful things—a vale of tears or a battlefield—in order to give life to the rather abstract language of the first two lines in both stanzas. Hughes’s barren field suggested to me the idea of a battlefield, and that worked out well for the meaning of my poem. The “battlefield” is used to suggest the chaos that occurs in one’s mind and life when he is left in desolation. To add detail, I described the battlefield as being “loud with raids” (line 7). This mirrors Hughes’s words “frozen with snow,” which gave of life becoming a kind of winter. That inspired me to use “loud with raids” to extend the inner chaos that a person undergoes when love is lost. Overall, I think I imitated pretty well the figurative comparisons used in Hughes’s poem, and I am happy with the compactness that I feel is present in my own. However, I must admit