Last Chance for the Tarzan Holler: Poems Literary Elements

The poem "Lessons from a Mirror" is told from the perspective of a first person subjective narrator, giving the poem an even more personal feeling.

The poem "The Continent of Reena and Marcus' Marriage" has no form and meter since it is written in free form.

In "Lessons from a Mirror", the narrator compares herself with the empty space left by a missing tooth, which everyone feels the need to fill with something as soon as possible. This comparison has the purpose of showing how both her presence and her absence can be seen as a problem and how many people will try to pretend the narrator does not exist at all.

We find an alliteration in the poem "The Continent of Reena and Marcus' Marriage" in the line "aging milk, and shredded pumpkin to be silk".

We find an ironic element in the poem "The Culture of Near Miss" in which the narrator continues to claim she wants to get back with her former lover even though he was the one who hurt her and who abandoned in the first place.

The poem "Botanical Fanaticism" is a meditative poem.

The action described in the poem "The Best of the Body" takes place inside a person's body during an unspecified period of time.

The tone used in "Botanical Fanaticism" is a negative one addressed towards the white racist people the narrator had to live near with.

In "Lessons from a Mirror" the narrator is the protagonist and the antagonist is Snow White.

The major conflict in the poem "The Culture of Near Miss" is between the narrator's desire to acquire the attention of her lover and the narrator's lover's inability to see the narrator's affections.

The poem "The Culture of Near Miss" reaches its climax when the photograph of the narrator's former lover started to fade, thus symbolizing the idea that the narrator started to forget her former lover.

The absence of the father in "Botanical Fanaticism" is foreshadowed by the narrator's description of "free love" a form of sexual promiscuity from which resulted many illegitimate children and many one-parent households.

In "Botanical Fanaticism", the narrator claims the whites and the blacks were equal during the time when her mother got pregnant with her. This if however an understatement as in the later parts of the poem the narrator describes the appalling way in which her mother was treated by her white employees.

In the poem "The Best of the Body", the narrator claims the spleen is the most important and most powerful organ inside a person' body. Its power is the result of the bile it produces which is then identified as being depression. Through this, the narrator alludes the idea that depression can be so powerful a person can feel overpowered by it to the point where nothing else seem to matter anymore.

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The line "coriander cutting a trench into his mouth" from the poem "The Continent of Reena and Marcus' Marriage" contains a personification.

We have a hyperbole at the end of the poem "The Best of the Body" in the lines "I believe that came from/ the bottom of your heart, close to the dregs/ the liver and spleen, not the creamy brain".

We find an onomatopoeia in the line "his name screamed at me" in the poem "The Culture of Near Miss".