Month: November 2016

From the 1920s until the 1980s, a very specific approach to evaluating, appreciating, and interpreting poetry dominated high school and university literature classes. That approach, called “New Criticism,” focused on the “formal” elements of a poem that made it a self-contained art form, like rhyme, meter, metaphor, alliteration, assonance, irony, and symmetry.

t attempted to be objective and scientific but could all too often come off as stuffy, emotionally barren, and profoundly exclusionary. Interestingly, about the time The Sugar Hill Gang busted out with “Rapper’s Delight” in the early 80s, New Criticism started going the way of the 8-Track. The super sleek CDs of post structuralism, postmodernism, and multiculturalism made poetry sound much clearer and much more human.

Which is why it is so interesting that Bradley adopts the tool-kit and terminology of New Criticism to argue that rap lyrics are poetry. One of the criticisms of the book is that Bradley ignores the violence and sexist content of rap and focuses solely on technique–the very strategy that so many writers and scholars of color fought against.

It is, fun, however, to see Biggie lyrics dissected in the same space and in the same way as Robert Frost poems. One wonders what Frost would have thought of Too Short’s “Don’t Fight the Feeling” as poetry. For better or worse, Bradley doesn’t go there; rather, he highlights KRS-One’s onomotopoeias: “Woop! Woop!”

Personification: the attribution characteristics to something

Personification e.g

The pipe swatted him

The pipe tolded him

The pipe crumpled the man’s ribs

Cat/hat Monosyllabic rhyme : a rhyme with just one syllable

My cat/ hit-hat Disyllabic rhyme : a rhyme with two syllables

Bit my cat/hit the hit-hat Multisyllabic rhyme : a rhyme with multiple ( more than two) syllables

2… 14
3.. 14
4…. 11
5…. 10
6…. 12
7…..

How does Eminem use syllables in Lose Yourself to describe his character feelings?

The 9th line shows us that when he was on the stage in ran away because he was completely lost or he forgotten the lines

Those last days. No way of wrapping it pretty or pretending otherwise: Rafa was dying…
He was on his dusty chair looking at himself at the fracture mirror. He didn’t wanted to speak
to anyone so my madre had to guess what food he wanted.
she left it on the right side of the table and when madre came back the plate was on the right side of the table on the same spot with food that left with it.

Rafa’s room looked like if it was abandoned everything was dark, shoes, clothes, medicine
and his red brownish hair on the cold floor. Rafa used to be moreno but when he got sick
his skin turned to blanquito real quick.

Since that happend Madre started to go to church and she got her own
prayer grupo so they could come to our house and pray for my brother.
On the other hand, I was the one who were the most worried.
When my gente started to talk about my brother I used to say
“No hables tanto sapo, that mouth will get you into trouble”.

Laura was the one who gave me the yerba, but on the other hand
she was the one who supported me at all times when I was trying
to forget that my hermano was sick.

She was the one who gave me money so I could go to the hospital and buy Rafa’s medicine and help madre with the rent.
Where did Laura get the money?
Easy,
She seald all the yerba that she had so she could give it to me

When I got back home, I felt that that somethin wasn’t right, that something faltaba en mi vida.
I walked up the corridor that had dust on it.

Then i looked at my brother’s room and it had a letter on his bed so despacito I went to get and it said :

Bebe, I’m with your brother in the hospital, lo estan operando, I will call you later, and remember si no me arreglas la casa cuando llegue te dare tu chancletso. Besos
Madre

Aftee 3 hours she came back home, but the strange thing was that she wasn’t with Rafa. I saw her crying but I predented that I didn’t see her.

Madre’s face looked likr she was in melancholia, her atmosphere was worse than when dad left her and went with the costa riqueña girl. She was destrozada,
She looked like a skeleton.
She didn’t ate anything, there were no feelings anymore and her body looked like she didn’t have a soul anymore.

Well, I’m guessing that this had to happend. Pensaba que mi hermano was going to be with me para siempre but el destino cambio, at least he left me with memories when we were little. Thanks Rafa…
Thanks por aguantarme todos estos años, gracias por enseñarme how to talk with girls and that shit. Thanks for be there when no one else was and thanks for being my brother.
Well I think que estaras mas feliz in heaven than you were in here. But the one thing that I know is that siempre me estaras viendo desde arriba..