Melody of Home
To my brother on his departure to college
Cotton candy colored skies
Early to bed, early to rise
Fixin’ to melt into the bay
Suggestin’ the end to yet another day
Forty five minute never ending goodbyes
Chocolate, cherry, chestnut pies
Stretchin’ seas of southern snow
That summer smell of grass just mowed
Friday nights the high school game
Teenage boys and their four year fame
Tractor travelled gravel roads
At 5 AM the rooster crows
Right up the road or just down the street
An hour drive pendin’ on who ya meet
Sippin’ on lemonade, “Well I declare”
Sighs the Old Magnolia in her front porch rockin’ chair
“Ya’ll come back real soon, ya hear”
A friendly neighbor always near
Time to get out, no time to be naïve
Hafta see the world, believe, achieve,
Here comes that chance
To run wild and roam
The future - a dance
Set to the melody of home.
I’m not really sure if I need to explain the above poem. It’s not very difficult. Probably more corny than anything else. Basically, it is a poem mostly describing where I am from. Each line depicts a different detail. The end of the poem is just a suggestion that urges one not to forget his or her roots, no matter where the future takes you. As to some of the particulars, “Right up the road” and “Just down the street” are phrases we use to describe distance when asking directions. They can either mean a few blocks or 15 miles depending on who you talk to and where you are going. “Southern snow” is often what people call cotton fields in fall. An “Old Magnolia” is a very elderly, elegant, well respected southern woman who has been pampered and taken care of with the utmost attention her entire life. The other bold words are simply contractions that I just find myself and the people of my area constantly saying as if the real word doesn’t exist. Also, in case you didn’t catch it – alliteration is my favorite literary device when dealing with poetry, so there’s a little of that thrown in.
To my brother on his departure to college
Cotton candy colored skies
Early to bed, early to rise
Fixin’ to melt into the bay
Suggestin’ the end to yet another day
Forty five minute never ending goodbyes
Chocolate, cherry, chestnut pies
Stretchin’ seas of southern snow
That summer smell of grass just mowed
Friday nights the high school game
Teenage boys and their four year fame
Tractor travelled gravel roads
At 5 AM the rooster crows
Right up the road or just down the street
An hour drive pendin’ on who ya meet
Sippin’ on lemonade, “Well I declare”
Sighs the Old Magnolia in her front porch rockin’ chair
“Ya’ll come back real soon, ya hear”
A friendly neighbor always near
Time to get out, no time to be naïve
Hafta see the world, believe, achieve,
Here comes that chance
To run wild and roam
The future - a dance
Set to the melody of home.
I’m not really sure if I need to explain the above poem. It’s not very difficult. Probably more corny than anything else. Basically, it is a poem mostly describing where I am from. Each line depicts a different detail. The end of the poem is just a suggestion that urges one not to forget his or her roots, no matter where the future takes you. As to some of the particulars, “Right up the road” and “Just down the street” are phrases we use to describe distance when asking directions. They can either mean a few blocks or 15 miles depending on who you talk to and where you are going. “Southern snow” is often what people call cotton fields in fall. An “Old Magnolia” is a very elderly, elegant, well respected southern woman who has been pampered and taken care of with the utmost attention her entire life. The other bold words are simply contractions that I just find myself and the people of my area constantly saying as if the real word doesn’t exist. Also, in case you didn’t catch it – alliteration is my favorite literary device when dealing with poetry, so there’s a little of that thrown in.
I did catch--and really liked--the alliteration! Thanks for being the first to post, Rachel: a great start! :)
ReplyDelete-Laura
I think this poem is the epitome of what all people think when they think of the Deep South! It is really strange to think about the things we say without noticing it (y'all, hafta, etc.). Southerners are often known for their hospitality, easygoing way of life, and pride in their favorite football teams. Even though many Southern cities share these similarities, there are significant differences as well. My hometown in Mississippi is not nearly as big as Baton Rouge, so it is funny to hear people around LSU talk about how small the town is! People could tell from the way I talked that I was not from Louisiana, and now I find myself noticing a strange accent in my friends at home that I had never noticed before! Students at LSU put their books in their "booksacks" (I say bookbag), and they met all their lifelong friends in "grammar school" (I say elementary school). Sometimes, I feel embarrassed to confess I went to a public school because so many of my peers went to private schools. Even though I have accepted these terms and culture, I have also realized that they are particular to a specific region. I guess it just takes getting out of one's hometown to realize just how unique each and every community truly is!
ReplyDeleteI also really connected with this poem. I am from a small town in Louisian where many of these sayings and phrases are heard. I agree with Kelsey about how leaving your hometown can affect your speaking and awareness of dialect. At first, I did not find myself having a distint accent. My college friends disagreed with me and I started to see the differences. Since I have been in college for 3 years now, I catch myself forgetting or not using many sayings from my hometown as often as I used to. I think that dialect does matter when taking regions into consideration. I find myself asking will my dialect change again depending on where I teach and what type of students are there? Does the student's dialect of speaking patterns change due to various teacher's influences? I really liked your poem Rachael and I connected with various concepts and ideas within it.
ReplyDeleteLiving and growing up in St. Bernard, I guess it WAS (that's sad) a medium sized town, I could really relate to this poem too. Like Kelsey and Scott, I definitely notice differences in peoples' dialects and my own dialect. Even going to a high school in an area which was consider the Eastbank changed my dialect. This area was about 20-30 miles from my house, but still my dialect changed dramatically. I started to notice the strong dialects my friends, who lived in St. Bernard and went to high school in the area had. Eventually even our dialects drew us apart because the people on the Eastbank regarded St. Bernard people as trashy and ignorant. Of course, I wanted to fit in and I did not want to get made fun of so I actually worked on changing my dialect.
ReplyDeleteTo your questions, Scott, I think teachers' and students' affect each others dialects. Through my observations, I have even witnessed Mrs. Kaiser saying certain AAVE phrases on accident and having to stop what she was saying and repeat it in Standard English. Location completely influences dialect, and your dialect is changed by your need to communicate with others. So if one area has a certain way of saying something, you would most probably adopt that dialect in order to be understood and/or spoken to.
After reading Rachael's poem, it made me realize that you do not have to be from a small country town to be considered from the South, or country. I am from Houston, which is one of the largest cities in the United States. When I came to Louisiana, I thought Baton Rouge was tiny. It was this small town where everyone knew each other. This was a huge change from Houston. Like Kelsey said, people from Baton Rouge have a different vocabulary than my friends from home do. I refer to a bookbag as a backpack, not a booksack. I also was made fun of my freshman year at LSU for calling the interstate a freeway. Before moving to Baton Rouge, I had never even heard of anyone calling the freeway an interstate! This just goes to show that there is no place like home.
ReplyDelete