Speak (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: James Wright
- First Published: 1968
- Type of Work: Lyric
- Genres: Poetry, Lyric poetry
The Poem
James Wright’s poem “Speak” is a lyric lament in five rhyming stanzas. Wright combines a common, colloquial language with an Old Testament rhetoric to describe, through contemporary, personal examples, the state of a lost world. The poem also stands as an imperative plea to the God who is the “you” of the poem to reveal himself. The speaker says, “I have gone every place/ Asking for you.”
Part of the pleasure and the success of the poem depends on the reader not knowing at the beginning that the poem is an address to God. The first stanza begins...
[The entire page is 1432 words long]
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