Tuesday, March 17, 2015

Trees by Angelina W. Grimke

The poem Trees by Angelina W. Grimke had many different aspects that stood out towards me. I had many different interpretations about this poem. This poem , to Me, has a religious view towards it. But this is understandable because Angelina wrote this during the time of the Harlem Renisancee.
The Harlem Renaissance was a time period were African Americans boomed and flourished in many arts. Such as poetry, music, stage acts, writing books, etc. Many African Americans were also big on Religion. Angelina's poem Trees stood out to me because it rhymed. Another thing that stopped out to me were the references she made towards the bible. She starts off her poem bu stating that God created trees. She used the phase "He spoke" which instantly reminded me of the story of the creation in the Bible, where God spoke many things into existence. And she ended her poem with the phase, "Was Christ himself not nailed to a tree?". This indicated Christ dying on the cross to save us from our sins. Angelina also gave the tree human characteristics by saying "laughter it knew and joy in little things". We learned in class that many poets use this technique in there poem to make it more relative to the reader.

1 comment:

  1. i feel like Grimke showed some of the same themes as most of her poems written during the Harlem Renaissance. Her poem is saying that God created everything, and everything was happy. Grimke writes that how God gave them things that made them happy. He wanted them to be equal. In this poem,Grimke compares all of the people to different trees that God created.

    ReplyDelete