Nighttime Fires and Snapping Beans Essay Example

Lisa Parker of the "snapping beans" and Regina Barecca in "nighttime fires" show the art of poetry where they use human language for its aesthetic qualities in addition to the semantic content. These two poems have their similarities and differences ranging from the plot of the story they try to bring out to the relationship they portray with the people around them. These two poems have relied more on the effect of imagery, word association and the aspect of the persona to bring out a good story of the life they live.

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The poems are perfect examples of good poetry which is said to be held in its images. In this case, as the reader, one considers these poems great because they stir some feelings in them which is the main quality of a poem. The poems contain different plots of the story but the relationship is with the family members. Lisa and Regina show their creative writing in poems where they express the ideas, thoughts, feelings as well as emotions with a unique style of presentation and they make the poems simple for the reader to take note of the points they are trying to put across and the use of basic features of poetry.

Lisa and Regina make use of imagery in their poems as a form of figurative language to present the objects, actions and the ideas they have which appeal to the physical senses of the reader. There is the use of particular words in the poem that tend to create a kind of visual representation in the mind of the readers. The imagery use is effective in appealing to the sense of sight, sound, particular scent and thoughts among others. Lisa in the "spanning beans" describes the story of the speaker and her grandmother. When the speaker is asked about the state of the college, she says that "its fine" even though she is aware that it is a lie.

The speaker is a girl and she is in her first stages of college where she is trying her best to get used but there are nightmares, she finds hard to deal with and her description to the grandmother makes the story more informal. The girl has just returned from her first semester at college. She is engaging in the homely task of snapping beans with her grandmother when the grandmother poses the question about college. The speaker talks about what she wanted to tell the grandmother stating that she wanted to say that her stomach burned at the thought of speaking in class which depicted her homesick.

Readers are presented with imagery of how the speaker feels while in class especially the fear that she would have the accent. The description helps the reader to note that the first semester had not been good for her at all. The speaker shows that she truly has problems adjusting to the requirements of the school and speaks about crying at night in the line where the author says "I wanted to tell her about the nights I cried into the familiar". The reader gets to know that the relationship between the speaker and the grandmother is interesting because they both love each other however much the speaker lies and hides the pain of college. However, just like other people, she needs to persevere so that she grows up on her own. In the conversation between these two individuals, imagery is also seen where the speaker does not want to upset the grandma by bringing up things that will upset her. She shows that staying by her grandma is relaxing and calming as she is away from the stresses that college life gives to her.

Regina in "nighttime fires" depicts how the speaker uses imagery to describe the strange behaviours that her father shows when he lost his job as seen in the first stanza where it says "it was after my father lost his job". The imagery in the poem strategically helps the reader to put themselves in the shoes of the speaker and the memories she had of the strange adventures.

The poem shows a good description of a man who in this case is the father to the speaker and is lost in his anger. However, he does not think about the impressions of the scenes he makes and the impact they have on the children. It makes the reader not to understand why the mother allows for weird experiences like the children being taken out in the night even when they have running noses. The mother must be afraid of this man. The anger of this man makes the entire family suffer for the adult problems that they are not able to fix.

In the incident where the father shows the children the fiery and destructive scenes, it is evident that he is extremely unemotional. He is not aware of the future impacts of the scenery to the children in the future. The mother is aware that what he did was not a good thing but because she is too afraid of him, she says nothing. She is happy when the time comes for them to return home. It is a good way to create mental pictures in the reader of how the scenes must have been extremely fearful and how they would also react if they were children. Similarly, there is imagery created in the readers showing the behaviour of the mother towards the father but can say nothing because of the anger.

Line four also shows imagery where it says "we drove fast toward smoke" and the description of the father's smile also creates imagery in the poem, the speaker says that "my father smiled a smile from a secret, brittle heart" which she meant that the smile was malicious. The fact that this man likes to see fires in the rich neighbourhoods helps the readers to conclude that he finds pleasure in seeing people from upper-class burn probably because he is less fortunate now that he lost his job as described in the second stanza, "his face lit up in the heat given off by destruction". The reader is made to see this in the real-life situation showing how jealously builds when other succeed.

The persona in the poem "snapping beans" is a girl who is finding it difficult to manoeuvre through college even though it is the first time they are being there and she has only completed the first semester. The personality of this young girl is that she is a shy young woman who does not want to reveal her confusion and homesickness to her grandmother who in the poem happens to be her best friend. The persona shows that she feels incredibly out of place in college as it is revealed in the thoughts that run through her head before she could answer her grandmother, she posed a question.

All that the girl needs are to open her mouth and talk without fear how college is going on and what she is finding difficult to do. The grandmother would remind her of her origin and the reason she is different from the rest of the students. This is causing massive stress concerning the aspect of identity but more stress is that even with the feeling that she is different, she is still enjoying college. The persona thus needs to endure growing up on her own in college. The grandma finishes by saying "Its funny how things blow loose like that" to show the change that the girl is to undergo.

Conclusion

The persona in the poem "nighttime fires" is a child to the man who lost his job. As an adult, she tries to understand the adventures during their childhood times with the father and how he behaved after losing the job. The author uses the first-person unnamed narrator who recalls that part of their life when the father shows his bitterness towards the rich. The impact of the scenes that the father made them watch make the narrator confused and tries to comprehend why he developed anger and was happy when houses of the rich got burned. This has affected the persona's life. These poems reach a common conclusion from the themes they portray. The two personas try to understand their lives through events that happen. "Snapping beans" shows that being different affects an individual's stay in an area since it is difficult to get along with the rest of members. In Nighttime fires, there is the impact of the people close to someone where they could adopt such mannerism later in life. It is hard to understand why an individual behaves the way they do at some point in life until the same happens so that they start to relate.