Poetry Assessment :: English Literature

Poetry AssessmentNothings Changed is a powerful piece of poetic literature whichportrays in a provoking way, the poverty and apartheid inPost-Nelson Mandela South Africa and how Nothings Changed since hehas been elected as president.It starts in a harsh abrupt way small round hard stones quicklybrings forrad a strong image of a dirty pathway littered with stones,the next few lines cans trodden on, crunch and tall,purple-flowering, amiable weeds add to this picture and describes ingreater particular the untidy, poorly maintained wasteland. Thepurple-flowering weeds border the rocky causeway and give starkcontrast to the ugliness of the area as it has been described insofar.The char modus operandier in the verse goes into a Whites Only area, where hefeels very unwelcome. At first, he seems contented to walk through afamiliar area and revisit the place where he had lived. However, this witticism changes abruptly when he comes across a Whites Only inn whichmakes him feel very angry a nd even violent.The rhythm of this poem is very slow and thoughtful and the stanzasact like paragraphs. This works well because it creates a sense of himcrushing his growing anger and hostility as he remembers hischildhood. There are however some(a) striking short lines for effect,these represent a growing struggle inside him to keep his fury undercontrol. Examples of this are Anger of my eyes brash with glassits in the bone hands burn The poet uses these short linesbecause they are dramatic, elemental but powerful and memorable.There are many examples of poetic devices in Nothings Changed,especially in the third stanza my first choice is line 18, where thepoet describes the name as flaring like a flag. This simile iseffective because flaring suggests a fire and it is a provocativeimage. The restaurant squats in the grass and weeds. I think thepoet compares the restaurant to something lurking and fateful becausethis place represents everything that they are fighting against. Incon clusion, I think that the poem does not really work well, it failsto truly break the surface of thought and although it tries to roamacross the poets thoughts and feelings on racism it fails quitemiserably because of the simple fact that the writing is bound byliterary laws of poetry.In the greyness and drizzle of one brokenhearted dawn, unstirred byharbingers of sun break.Vultures (by Chinua Achebe) opens in a grandiose and portentousfashion that immediately fills the readers mind with a sense of amacabre and dejected morning, the grey skies do not encourage a senseof happiness or contentment nor does it give any indication that this