The poem that I decided to analyze was Incident By Countee Cullen.
Once riding in old Baltimore,
Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,
I saw a Baltimorean
Keep looking straight at me.
Now I was eight and very small,
And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
His tongue, and called me, 'Nigger.'
I saw the whole of Baltimore
From May until December;
Of all the things that happened there
That's all that I remember.
This poem stood out to me right away. It's great imagery tells the story very well, and shows what the poet was trying to tell. The imagery that really stood out to me was in the second stanza. " And so I smiled, but he poked out His tongue, and called me, "Nigger". I feel like this is the heart of the poem. When I first read this poem, that line stood out to me. I really imagined the boy sticking his tongue out and then I just thought how that little boy must have felt. Reading the rest of the poem you realize how this incident really affected him and stuck with him for life. He was just a small helpless boy trying to have a nice ride in Baltimore.
In this poem there are a few sound devices. In all of the three stanzas the second and fourth lines have end rhymes. For example, December and remember in the last stanza. I can figure, that there was racism going on, it didn't matter if it were summer or winter, you're someone else, in somebody's eyes. Another sound device that I found was a consonance. In the second line when they mentioned " Heart-filled, head-filled". These two words, in my opinion, got together well and make a harmony of sounds.
The sound devices I found throughout this poem were an exaggeration and a metaphor. The exaggeration I found was " I saw the whole of Baltimore from May until December. This is an exaggeration because did he really see all of Baltimore and was he really there from May to December? We honestly don't know what was actually true. The metaphor that I found was " Now I was eight and very small and he was no whit bigger". I thought this was a great example because he was giving a comparison of himself and the other boy in a comical way almost. He was trying to prove that the one that was " no whit bigger" was the just like him, even though the other boy thought he was better then him anyways.
