Unsettling America (Metaphor)

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In Unsettling America the poetry contained in the book uses many various types of elements of poetry. There are many different elements of poetry, some of which are diction, imagery and metaphor. These poems use these elements to help elicit a type of feeling, visual picture, or understanding of what is trying to be described. The poems paint a picture of an historical event or talks about issues such as classism, racism and sexism, whether through personal experience or as a whole. One of these elements of poetry is very apparent while reading some of these poems and that is element is metaphor. Metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two things that don’t have anything in common in a way that gives it commonality. Many poems throughout the book uses metaphors to help compare complex issues by tying it to an object or something that is very familiar to most people so that the once complex issue can now be understood by most. A poem that stands out a lot through the use of a metaphor is Niggerlips written by Martin Espada. The poem itself is talking about racism and how throughout generations racism has been felt in some way or form. The metaphor used in this poem is “he is still a fly in milk” (page 138). This metaphor is very significant in explaining that a fly being in milk doesn't change that the fly is still a fly. Looking at a fly's characteristics a fly has big eyes, wings and is mostly black in color. How the poet Martin Espada uses the word “he” in the quote is metaphorically relating a black skinned human male with the common characteristics of a fly which is black in
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