The poem half-caste Essay Example

The poem half The poem half-caste Paper The poem half-caste Paper In the poem half-caste John Agard uses a variety of metaphors. He refers to things that are multicoloured to get his point across yu mean when Picasso mix red an green is a half-caste canvas John Agard is trying to tell his audience that Picasso doesnt just use one colour in his paintings, he uses a variety of colours, which makes the painting more interesting. This relates to John Agard because he is a mixture of two colours, which makes him something beautiful. Another metaphor John Agard uses is yu mean Tchaikovsky sit down at da piano and mix black key wid white Again John Agard is saying that mixing two colours is a wonderful thing. John Agard repeats half 17 times. He is telling the audience that being half-caste doesnt mean that he is half a person. However he refers him self as half when he says I dream half a dream. No one can dream half a dream. He is being ironic. John Agard is making the audience feel sorry for him. This is because dreaming half a dream is kind of sad, as if his multicoloured background prevents him from fulfilling his dream. The language he uses is Caribbean dialect which is patois. But at the beginning and the end of the poem he uses Standard English. In the poem search for my tongue Sujata Bhatt uses a plant as imagery, and as a metaphor. The plant is dying out. She uses the plant to show her mother tongue is dying out of her mouth just like a plant would. Your mother tongue would rot, rot and die in your mouth. If you dont do anything to the plant, the plant would die. This is the same thing for Sujata Bhatt. If she doesnt do anything to do with Gujarati, her mother tongue would be forgotten. However the plant grows back to life, which means her mother tongue, is doing the same. Sujata Bhatt repeats, tongue and you several times. She is trying to get the audience thinking about what they would do if had they had to learn two languages, and how hard it is. Sujata Bhatt starts off with a rhetorical question you ask me what I mean she is trying to get the audience involved at the beginning of the poem. In half-caste John Agards structure is different to Sujata Bhatts structure. John Agards poem is set out in four stanzas. The first stanza and last stanza are the shortest stanzas with only three lines in. These two stanzas are the only lines that are written in Standard English, as the rest is written in Caribbean dialect. The Caribbean dialect is more like slang and they miss some letters out. For example explain yuself wha yu mean when yu say half-caste John Agard has purposely missed out letters to add to the effect that he is not from England. In Standard English we would say these words yuself and wha and yu with added in letters. We would say yourself and what and you this adds to John Agards style of the poem. John Agard also used a lack of punctuation. But John Agard reads the poem slow. However Sujata Bhatt has just spaced her poem on the page in a line. In verse 17 30 she speaks Gujarati which makes the poem eye catching because there is a different language in the poem. It says in the poem munay thoonky kay aakhee jeebh aakhee bhasha she is telling us that her mother tongue is coming back to life in her dream. Towards the end after she speaks Gujarati and she uses a lot of commas. The use of commas she uses is to build the effect of the plant growing back step by step and the commas help create that image. He says it grows back, a stump of a shoot, grows longer, grows moist, grows strong veins the use of commas helps slow down the atmosphere and creates an image that stage by stage its all coming back to her. The plant which was her mother tongue is growing back. John Agard and Sujata Bhatt feel very strongly about there multicultural backgrounds. If someone tries to insult John Agard about being half-caste he would be very questioning. Like in the poem, its like someone had called him half-caste and John Agard takes it the wrong way and thinks he is half a person. I think that John Agard makes his point very clearly in his poem about how he feels about being multicultural. Sujata Bhatt feels sad that she is loosing her mother tongue and wouldnt want anything or anyone to take that away from her. When she feels like she is loosing that language she makes her point how hard it is speaking two different languages. But when the Gujarati comes back I think she still finds it difficult to learn both languages. Sujata Bhatt helps you to feel that confusion when she puts some Gujarati in her poem. Out of those two poems half-caste and search for my tongue I found search for my tongue a better poem. Sujata Bhatt helps you understand how she feels and because I know how hard it is to speak different languages, that poem interested me more.

U.S. Southwests Colorado River (Geography and More)

U.S. Southwest's Colorado River (Geography and More) The Colorado River (map) is a very large river located in the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico. The states it runs through include Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, California, Baja California and Sonora. It is approximately 1,450 miles (2,334 km) in length and it drains an area of about 246,000 square miles (637,000 sq km). The Colorado River is important historically and it is also a major source of water and electrical power for millions of people in the areas in which it drains. Source: La Poudre Pass Lake, Rocky Mountain National Park, ColoradoSource Elevation: 10,175 feet (3,101 m)Mouth: Gulf of California, MexicoLength: 1,450 miles (2,334 km)River Basin Area: 246,000 square miles (637,000 sq km) Course of the Colorado River The headwaters of the Colorado River begin at La Poudre Pass Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. The elevation of this lake is approximately 9,000 feet (2,750 m). This is a significant point in the geography of the United States because it is where the Continental Divide meets the Colorado River drainage basin. As the Colorado River begins to descend in elevation and flow to the west, it flows into Grand Lake in Colorado. After descending further, the river then enters several reservoirs and finally flows out to where it parallels U.S. Highway 40, joins several of its tributaries and then parallels U.S. Interstate 70 for a short time. Once the Colorado River meets the U.S. southwest, it begins to meet several more dams and reservoirs- the first of which is the Glen Canyon Dam which forms Lake Powell in Arizona. From there, the Colorado River begins to flow through massive canyons which it helped carve millions of years ago. Among these is the 217 mile (349 km) long Grand Canyon. After flowing through the Grand Canyon, the Colorado River meets the Virgin River (one of its tributaries) in Nevada and flows into Lake Mead after being blocked by the Hoover Dam at the Nevada/Arizona border. After flowing through the Hoover Dam, the Colorado River continues its course toward the Pacific through several more dams, including the Davis, Parker and Palo Verde Dams. It then flows into the Coachella and Imperial Valleys in California and finally into its delta in Mexico. It should be noted, however, that the Colorado River delta, while once rich marshland, is today mainly dry aside from exceptionally wet years due to the removal of water upstream for irrigation and city uses. Human History of the Colorado River Humans have inhabited the Colorado River basin for thousands of years. Early nomadic hunters and Native Americans have left artifacts throughout the area. For example, the Anasazi began living in Chaco Canyon at around 200 B.C.E. Native American civilizations grew to their peak from 600 to 900 C.E. but they began to decline after that, likely due to drought. The Colorado River was first noted in historic documents in 1539 when Francisco de Ulloa sailed upstream from the Gulf of California. Shortly thereafter, several attempts were made by various explorers to sail farther upstream. Throughout the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, a variety of maps showing the river were drawn but they all had different names and courses for it. The first map using the name Colorado appeared in 1743. Throughout the late 1800s and into the 1900s, several expeditions to explore and accurately map the Colorado River took place. In addition from 1836 to 1921, the Colorado River was called the Grand River from its source in Rocky Mountain National Park to its confluence with the Green River in Utah. In 1859 a U.S. Army topographic expedition led by John Macomb occurred, during which he precisely located the confluence of the Green and Grand Rivers and declared it the source of the Colorado River. In 1921, the Grand River was renamed the Colorado River and since then the river has included all of its present-day area. Dams of the Colorado River The modern history of the Colorado River consists mainly of managing its water for municipal uses and to prevent flooding. This came as a result of a flood in 1904. In that year, the rivers water broke through a diversion canal near Yuma, Arizona. This created the New and Alamo Rivers and eventually flooded the Salton Sink, forming the Coachella Valleys Salton Sea. In 1907 however, a dam was built to return the river to its natural course. Since 1907, several more dams have been constructed along the Colorado River and it has grown into a major source of water for irrigation and municipal uses. In 1922, the states in the Colorado River basin signed the Colorado River Compact which governed each states rights to the rivers water and set specific annual allotments of what could be taken. Shortly after the signing of the Colorado River Compact, the Hoover Dam was constructed to provide water for irrigation, manage flooding and generate electricity. Other large dams along the Colorado River include the Glen Canyon Dam as well as the Parker, Davis, Palo Verde and Imperial Dams. In addition to these large dams, some cities have aqueducts running to the Colorado River to further aid in maintaining their water supplies. These cities include Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona, Las Vegas, Nevada, and Los Angeles, San Bernardino and San Diego California. To learn more about the Colorado River, visit DesertUSA.com and the Lower Colorado River Authority.​