Jane

Doe
Ms. Kates
English 2-X
3 March 2016
Poetry Annotation

Ugly, Warsan Shire (2013)

Your daughter is ugly.
She knows loss intimately,

A. K. 2/27/2016 9:34 AM
Comment [1]: 2nd Person POV: Narrative
perspective-audience is a character in the
poem

carries whole cities in her belly.

A. K. 2/27/2016 9:15 AM
Comment [2]: End-stopped line

A. K. 2/27/2016 9:17 AM
Comment [3]: Assonance: long e sound
rhymes in intimately, carries, cities,
belly

As a child, relatives wouldnt hold her.

She was splintered wood and sea water.
They said she reminded them of the war.

On her fifteenth birthday you taught her

A. K. 2/27/2016 9:17 AM
Comment [4]: Metaphor: daughter=wood,
water
A. K. 2/27/2016 9:34 AM
Comment [5]: Allusion: Reference to a
particular warwhich one?

how to tie her hair like rope

A. K. 2/27/2016 9:20 AM
Comment [6]: Simile: the hair is like
rope

and smoke it over burning frankincense.

A. K. 2/27/2016 9:21 AM
Comment [7]: Image: Sight is described

You made her gargle rosewater

A. K. 2/27/2016 9:34 AM
Comment [8]: Enjambment: thought
continues over three lines, no stops until the
end

and while she coughed, said

A. K. 2/27/2016 9:33 AM
Comment [9]: Gargle: Onomatopoeia

macaanto girls like you shouldnt smell

of lonely or empty.

You are her mother.

A. K. 2/27/2016 9:29 AM
Comment [10]: Symbol: Perhaps
represents the gender
A. K. 2/27/2016 9:37 AM
Comment [11]: Caesura: Slight pause in
the middle of the line at the comma
A. K. 2/27/2016 9:23 AM
Comment [12]: Synethesia: Smell is
described with emotion, physical state

Why did you not warn her,

hold her like a rotting boat
and tell her that men will not love her
if she is covered in continents,
if her teeth are small colonies,
if her stomach is an island
if her thighs are borders?

A. K. 2/27/2016 9:22 AM
Comment [13]: Anaphora: Repetition of
if/if her/if her/if her

What man wants to lay down

and watch the world burn
in his bedroom?

A. K. 2/27/2016 9:27 AM
Comment [14]: Stanza: Arrangement of
lines into a unit

Your daughters face is a small riot,

her hands are a civil war,
a refugee camp behind each ear,
a body littered with ugly things

but God,
doesnt she wear
the world well.

Response--After annotating your poem, respond in a paragraph: Why
did you select this poem? What do you love about it? What do you think
the author is trying to say, overall? What new understanding of the
poem did you get from annotating it?

A. K. 2/27/2016 9:34 AM
Comment [15]: Motif: There is a
repeating reference to war and its effects on
people and countries
A. K. 2/27/2016 9:39 AM
Comment [16]: Denotation: Littered
means "leave lying untidily in a place"
A. K. 2/27/2016 9:39 AM
Comment [17]: Connotation: Littered has
a negative connotation of trash and waste,
discarded and uncared for
A. K. 2/27/2016 9:36 AM
Comment [18]: Consonance: Repetition
of g sound
A. K. 2/27/2016 9:34 AM
Comment [19]: Alliteration: repetition of
w sound beginning wear, world, well
A. K. 2/27/2016 9:32 AM
Comment [20]: Paradox: How can she be
ugly but also wear the world well at the
same time?