LADY SINGS THE BLUES
What is a song but a poem set to music? Take away the music from a good song and the rhythm of the words will create its own musical sound. “Songs For a Colored Singer”, a poem written by Elizabeth Bishop, is a song without the music. Bishop’s use of repetitive rhymes creates the lyrical, song like, structure to her poem. The voice of the song belongs to a black woman who encounters adversity throughout the poem. The sum of the elements, a black woman singing about hard times, equal one distinct style of music, namely the blues. Bishop divides the poem into four parts. Through each part the poem, Bishop uncovers different aspects of the colored woman. What Bishop reveals is the difficult situations which face underprivileged black citizens in America. Bishop’s poem has similarities to a song by Billie Holiday, and is linked to a Langston Hughes poem. By using the voice of a colored singer,......
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Approximate Word Count: 1442
Approximate Pages: 6 (260 words per double-spaced page) |