Thursday, March 17, 2016

In the poem "Same Song" by Pat Mora, what purpose does the stanza break serve?

Neither the poem nor the author have their own group, so I
will leave this question in the general Literature
group.


In this excellent poem there is a sense of division
and parallelism that is created through the stanza break. I am sure you have worked out
that both stanzas focus on different people. The first stanza focuses on the speaker's
daughter, whereas the second stanza introduces us to the speaker's son. Although they
are obviously very different, both in terms of appearance and what they do, for the girl
applies make-up and the boy exercises rigorously, both are shown through the stanza
break to suffer from the same feelings of inferiority and unhappiness about their
appearance. This is what Mora achieves through the stanza break: she shows how both
genders suffer from the same sense that they are not "good enough" as they are and how
both genders feel the need to improve themselves to be beautiful. Note how this is
achieved with the repetition of the allusion to Snow White with "mirror,
mirror."

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