Alice Walker: Poetry Literary Elements

The poems are told from a first person subjective point of view.

Most poems do not have a form and meter because they are modernist poems.

In the poem When you see Water, the main metaphor is the term water. The term is used in connection with various other terms such as streams, oceans, and rivers to make reference to the different types of people that exist in the world and how they are different from one another.

We find alliteration in the line ‘praise, a blurb, a free ride in my rented limousine.’

In the poem Expect Nothing, the narrator claims at one point that we have to wish for nothing larger than our small heart. Ironically, in the next line, she goes to write how we should wish for the stars on the sky, thus contradicting her own point.

Meditative poems

Most of the poems do not have a setting since they are meditative poems.

In most of the poems, the tone used is a neutral one.

Because the poems in the collection are meditative ones, there are no protagonists or antagonists.

In most of the poems, the major conflict is between the author’s desire to do what she wants and her efforts to try and control herself.

Because this is a collection of poems, no climatic moment can be found.

In the poem "Desire," the author mentions how she only wanted to dip her toe in the water but how she ended up getting completely submerged into it. This foreshadows the way in which the author will be unable to control her desires and her impulses.

In the beginning of the poem Expect Nothing, the poet urges her readers to live as if nothing bad will happen and to live without planning for their future. This is however an understatement as the author later tells her readers how they can protect themselves from pain and how they can protect their hearts from disappointment.

In the poem When you see Water, the narrator alludes that just like we as humans cannot see a body of water as just being water and just how we have the tendency to categorize everything and put it in a context, we also do the same things with our fellow humans and we fail to see them as being just human beings and we see them instead as being defined by the context in which we interact with them.

The term "broken things’’ is used in the poem "I Will Keep Broken Things’’ as a general term to make reference to all the things considered useless by many but precious to some because they have a sentimental value.

We find personification in the lines "I will keep/Your/Wild/Free/Laughter’’ from the poem "I Will Keep Broken Things’’.

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