Laurence Dunbar

At first I was disappointed that I wasn't put into group one. I had spent so much time comparing and contrasting Dunbar's text to earlier texts from the semester. But, I realized that my assigned group (question 4) was not all that bad when I got to pick my favorite poem and then analyze it. I began to look at it this way; I'll be able to take part in group 1 during class discussion because I answered that question on my own, and I will take part in group 4!
However, when I was told to blog about our thoughts from our individual groups and that we won't have time in class to talk about it, I was disappointed again. Yet, somehow I got over it and here I am trying to blog about my favorite poem by Laurence Dunbar. So, here I go...
I found the second poem to be my favorite, Worn Out. The imagery and the rhyme scheme give the poem a sing-songy feel to it. The cheeriness in the flow of the poem directs my attention away from the actual tone, which is tired and a sad frustration. The images the poets enunciates in each stanza portrays a person who seems to have been twisted and turn beyond any one's belief and that the speaker is at a loss of words (I am not saying this literally because he is obviously not, I am saying this hypothetically). So, basically with the sing-songy feel and the cheery rhyme scheme, the poem made me want to interpret a happy image, setting, or feeling, but instead the speaker's tone is well done and Worn Out. The unexpected tone made me go back and reread the poem several times and the more I read it, the more powerful I found it to be.