Welcome back! I am throwing a twist to Poetry Night tonight. I want to share an imitation poem I wrote. You can read the original poem at http://poemhunter.com/poem/if-we-must-die/ After the poem, I share some history of the original to have you establish a further understanding of the poem in its entirety. I then describe the changes I made and why. I hope you take interest and I encourage you to write your own imitation poem. They can be fun if you can’t seem to get your own started quickly. Enjoy.
If We Must Die
If we must die, let it not be like chickens
Crammed and cornered in a humiliating spot,
While round us argue the fuming and power-hungry politicians,
Making their progress with disregard to our doomed lot.
If we must die, O let us virtuously die,
So that our unnoticed ideation may not be bled
In vain; then even the giants we defy
Shall be forced to admire us though dead!
Brotherin! We must not let our enemies grow!
Though the splinter group let us put them in the grave!
And for their million overthrows let us deal one show!
What other fight then to death for us pave?
Like bulls we’ll face the destructive, spineless pack,
Pressed to the dirt, dying, but fighting back!
If You Must Read This
We are all familiar with bullying, overbearing people who intimidate people that are weaker. The real question is if you have ever been part of racial bullying, and to what extent was the bullying? During the 1990s, white folk were harassing and torturing blacks. They would riot against the black people of the area and set attack dogs after them, they would whip them and brutally torture them. A common person these days would wonder why they did not all just get together and fight back? The answer is… they tried. The goal of Claude McKay’s “If We Must Die” was to use various metaphors and analogies to persuade the blacks to come together and fight the whites (Hunter 440). McKay, in this poem, used a very honorable, dignified, and respectful tone. This is necessary to persuade the minority to come together and fight off the oppressors. The choice of words to build up ones dignity and the use of metaphors are the two most distinguishing characteristics of the original poem.
I had various specific objectives, in addition to loose ones, in creating my own imitation poem. I wanted to turn this historical and cultural poem into one of a modern perspective. My inspiration is how oppressive society is to the “common Joe” of America. My first objective was to keep the rhyming scheme, tone, and the theme of the original poem, with the exception of the modern switch. I kept the tone, by using forceful words such as “fuming” and “power-hungry” (Line 3). Extreme words such as these, I thought of when I read intense words from the original poem such as “constrained” ( Line 8 ) and “accursed” (Line 4). The tone also had to do with the rhyming scheme. Roughly half of the rhyming scheme in my poem was made up of the ending words that created the original poem’s rhyming scheme. Though I kept some of the original works words, I did change some of the word endings, still keeping the rhyme. For example, originally line 6 used the end rhyme word “Shed”, wherein I used the word “Bled”. This also took place in lines, one, three, nine, ten, eleven and twelve. Lastly, when all of this is put together and looked at as a whole, one can see the theme of the poem to be the same: to not die with nothing but a bad image to our names, we must die for something meaningful.
I believe my poem has met my various objectives very well. When my poem is read after reading the original, one can see the “similarities of the strong tone of the speaker by the choice of words” says an anonymous friend who read them. Since I blatantly pointed out that “Politicians” ( Line 3 ) were the source of the oppression, I think I met my goal of creating a modern atmosphere. The majority of Americans declare the mass of politicians to be corrupted. In the original poem the oppressor’s were the whites. In my poem it still stands true, but it has now become more of a specific. Throughout the original poem, McKay uses metaphors such as themselves being killed like “hogs” (Line 1) and labeling the oppressors as “hungry dogs” (Line 3). In my poem I used metaphors such as us being killed like “chickens” (Line 1). I used this because it is common knowledge that the chickens we buy and consume are not raised well and are brutally slaughtered. I kept the same animal metaphor but made it to an up to date metaphor. Next, I thought it would be easier for the reader to understand the subject of the matter by clearly stating “Politicians” (Line 3) instead of making another animal metaphor like McKay did. Overall I believe my poem has met my various objectives being; keeping the tone, theme, and rhyming scheme of the original, along with making it refer to current circumstances.
I made sure there were a variety of notable literary characteristics in my poem. I believe that the more noticeable characteristics, the better. I used metaphors and imagery together to provide the best possible picture in the readers mind. Such as in line 13 when I say we (the oppressed) will act as bulls and have the reader imagine the stature and strength of a bull. This also occurs in line 7 when the pressuring societal members are declared “Giants”. This allows the image of large powerful people to pop into the readers mind as they read the poem. Another literary characteristic is word choice. As stated earlier, it was a goal to maintain the forceful dignified tone in the poem. The only way to do this was to make sure my word choice was familiar, yet allowed strong particular feelings into the reader of this poem. For example, “Crammed and cornered in a humiliating spot” (Line 2). Crammed and cornered would be perceived as very oppressive words. Humiliating, is a very decent representative word that may touch the readers emotion since it is very likely we have all felt humiliated at one point or another. The next literary term which I have already pointed out is the metaphor. Instead of giving more examples in my poem, I would like to just note that the metaphors were vital to maintain the image of the original poem since it was basically created out of various metaphors. Now, other various literary terms that you may question when reading the poem, is if there is alliteration, a protagonist, antagonist, and if you had to label the kind of poem what would it be? Well, I did not use alliteration in my replica because I thought it would take the focus away from the theme which we know to be dying for a worthy reason. Next, we can see the Shakespearian theme of the iambic pentameter, count the number of lines, and note that it is a Shakespearian sonnet. In this sonnet you will find an antagonist. The antagonist broadly speaking is society, specifically speaking, it would be politicians. As for the protagonist, we can all agree it is us! You can see the modernization through these two literary terms, with the original works protagonist being blacks, and antagonist’s whites.
As for the attitude, tone, and theme of the poem in relation to the original, after reading both poems, you can see the correlation is dead on except for the timeline. The theme stood very strong for the blacks against the whites in the original poem. The historical theme was to not die for nothing at the hands of the white people, but to die nobly and for reason. In my poem, the theme is the same, but the context is different. It has been brought into a modern perspective saying that we should not die at the hands of society, that we must make something of ourselves and fight back and if we must die, let us nobly die. The tone and attitude of each poem are exactly the same, strong, powerful, honorably, dignified. Overall, the poems are one in the same, an imitation. When each is read, the reader can have the same feeling for each and can say the theme is the same, but notice one little change; that the original poem has been brought to a modern perspective.
Stay Positive and Stand Your Ground
Garth E. Beyer
Works Cited
Hunter, J. Paul, Alison Booth, and Kelly J. Mays. The Norton Introduction to Poetry. 9th ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 2007. Print.
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