Sample Question

Color and sound provide some of the most vivid effects in poetry. How have at least two poems that you have studied used such visual and auditory aspects as these to enrich their poems?

After reading two of Naomi Shihab Nye's poems I noticed that some of the poems talk about the visual details and auditory aspects when describing what is happening in the poem.  In the poem, "My Father and the Fig Tree,"  it talks a lot about the details and how the fig tree is so important to his father.  In the poem it said 
"At age six I ate a dried fig and shrugged.
"That's not what I'm talking about! he said,
"I'm talking about a fig straight from the earth –
gift of Allah! -- on a branch so heavy
it touches the ground." 

This talks about the past making us think what this fig tree looked like.  

"I'm talking about picking the largest, fattest,

sweetest fig."

It goes into detail how great this fig tree is.  The poem says how they have been moving many times but there are no fig trees because it is not like the home fig trees.  They planted many other vegetables but the fig tree is part of their home culture.  The father thinks it is not right to grow a fig tree because the place is not seen as home.  This poem goes into detail and visual how happy his father was to have his own fig tree.  The fig tree seemed to bring happiness into the fathers life and really wanted to teach his son the significance of the fig tree.  

Another poem that talks a lot about visual and auditory aspects is the poem, "Two Countries."  This poem talks a lot about how skin grows over the years and the significance of it.  

"Love means you breathe in two countries.And skin remembers--silk, spiny grass," Skin makes your memories come alive and tell time. "Skin had hope, that’s what skin does." Skin never gives up because skin can rebuild itself when it gets ruined. Skin can never lose hope and a person should never lose hope as well.