Close reading for George Elliott Clarke’s Negation Essay

The poems heading Negation is rounded closely the fact that the author is taking invigorated path in the poetry description by trying to etch out a new-made identity for oneself but this is continuously difficult for time and again there is a distinction amongst white and blackness commonly referred to as racial gratification. The definition of the word negation also speaks volume about the difficulty being experienced by the author as the inability to accept something that already exists.Ideally, bod is one of the about fundamental aspects that are easily notable about poems. It is evident that the poem is presented as a lyric with fourteen lines but goes against the norm of rhyme schemes and adopts the iambic pentameter blank sonnet vogue where each(prenominal) line of the poem is divided into ten syllablesCITATION Mab00 p 52 l 1033 (Mabillard 52). The syllables in each line are divided into iambic feet which are attuned to the idea that a stressed syllable is followed by a n unstressed syllable for instance Na and Sty to form nasty as expressed in the poem. The initial dozen lines of Negation bring to line the issue of racial identity and prejudice as the dominating factor that George Elliott seeks to look to. He reflects on Shakespeares character Caliban in The Tempest who he describes in rather bitter words as being, (Slick black bastard cannibal-sucking back Licorice-lusty, fifty-proof whisky), this is just representational of the authors disgustCITATION Lan01 p 13 l 1033 (Lancashire 13).However, in the final two lines of Negation i.e. the couplet, the author comes out in support of black revolution by resolving his previous stand a classical representation of couplets where an author resonates on his sentiments in the firstborn three quatrains of the poem. With specific interest is Frantz Fanons work the Black skin, White masks illustrates George Elliotts sentiments in negation as being a global problem with whites continuously despising blac ks in their speech and literacy writings citation can be made to line nine of the negation poem that points out blacks as, Nasty, Nofaskoshan negro, I mean.. and goes on to the next two linesCITATION Cla08 p 33 l 1033 (Clarke 33). The writing Nofaskoshan is in black dialect which generalizes the people of Neva Scotia a province in Canada with inhabitants of African descent. In Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon also mirrors the same but in defense of the black race. He refutes with the lines, Dirty nigger Or simply, Look, a Negro // I came into the universe of discourse imbued with the will to find a meaning in things, my spirit filled with the desire to attain to the man-made lake of the world, and then I found that I was an object in the midst of other objects. // sealed into that annihilating object hoodCITATION Fan52 p 109 l 1033 (Fanon 109).Looking at Fanons sentiments, we see the depiction of blacks as subjects of the whites, most interesting is the inability of blacks to ide ntify themselves as subjects and merely objects of service to the white, they are constantly in press to break away from the old york. Notice in the last two line stanza (couplet), the author is dormant in struggle with where his real stand is, this two-line stanza of a blank sonnet is usually meant to resolve the repeat theme in the previous stanzas but in this case author make a origin to the second person you depicting the debate that even though he agrees to the fact that change in black perception is evident he still has not fully accepted this fact.ReferencesClarke, George Elliott. Blues and triumph . New York Waterloo , 2008.Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks . Atlanta Grove Press , 1952.Lancashire, Ian. Blue . Vancouver Polestar Books , 2001.Mabillard, Amanda. Shakespearean sonnet Basics . New York Barnes & Noble , 2000.Source document