Exploring Poetic Style Devices in "Speech to the Young: Speech to the Progress-Toward" by Gwendolyn Brooks
What poetic style device is represented in the highlighted portion of "Speech to the Young: Speech to the Progress-Toward" by Gwendolyn Brooks?
Say to them,
say to the down-keepers,
the self-soilers,
the harmony-hushers,
"even if you are not ready
for day
it cannot always be night."
You will be right.
sun-slappers,
- Anaphora
- Metonymy
- End-stopped lines
Answer:
The highlighted portion of the poem represents the poetic style device of anaphora.
Explanation: The poetic style device represented in the highlighted portion of the poem is anaphora. Anaphora is the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses or phrases. In this excerpt, the phrase 'say to' is repeated to emphasize the message to different groups of people. Another example of anaphora in the poem is the repetition of the word 'the' at the beginning of each noun phrase.