"Hazel Tells LaVerne" Katharyn Howd Machan

"well i screams / ya little green pervert / an i hitsm with my mop / an has ta flush / the toilet down three time" (Lines 19 - 23)

     The diction in Machan's poem is quite colloquial and informal. The speaker chooses words like "flushm" instead of "flush him" and "sida" instead of "side of." This use of words that would not normally be accepted in a formal writing assignment makes the poem easier to read and more fun too. When I initially read this poem, I thought of the movie, Princess and the Frog that came out a few years ago. The main female character, Tiana, speaks somewhat like the speaker of this poem, and she too was skeptical when the frog asked to kiss her. Here's a clip that accurately porttrays the reaction the speaker in the poem has to the frog from one of the best Disney movies to grace theater screens in a while. (Aside from, of course, Lion King 3D that was absolutely incredible!!)

     I find it ironic that this poem was written in 1976, and The Princess and the Frog came out in the last two years. They have such similar storylines: an African American girl with an accent meets a talking frog and is skeptical. The most important difference; however, is that the movie was written by Disney and has a happy ending whereas the poem was written by Machan and did not end beautifully.

       

The Panther - Diction (Question 9)

"As he paces in in cramped circles, over and over, / ...is like a ritual dance..."  (lines 5 and 7)

    Stephen Mitchell chose his words precisely, but a significant amount of them have a methodical connotation attached to them. In the first line, he uses the word "constantly" which almost directly transposes into the word methodical. The first stanza left me with a sense containment. The "thousand bars" practically hold me in too as they do this panther that could represent an actual panther or a prisoner on death row. Mitchell moves on to include even more words that exude an air of a roundabout life. This panther "paces," "circles," and "is like a ritual dance." Each one of these words or phrases refers to a constant movement. As everyone knows, pacing is a consistent walking motion that ends up being like a circle, which Mitchell references next. This circle embodies the never-ending track that this panther's life now travels "over and over." The author adds in the reference to a ritual dance as another successful attempt at forcing an image of continual movement into the reader's mind, and it leaves me with a picture of a wheel in my mind.
           I can only envision this powerful water wheel like the one pictured below just churning along. Of course, the poem ends with what I suspect is the death of the prisoner that this panther represents, but that does not detract from the image of continuous movement. If anything, it adds to the movement because now the panther has moved on to a different state of being.