The speaker of "Heritage" expresses deep emotions about an African-American perspective of the homeland. Countee Cullen writes in an irregular meter throughout the piece, consistently using seven syllables in each line. The speaker is effectively stating that the sufferings of the slave trade are harmless to an African American with the perspective of poetry, which is why he is attempting to adopt that perspective. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The poem has a nontraditional structure, but the speaker uses recurrence as an even more important part of the work's form. The first line is a recurring question throughout the work, and as the context of the poem is elaborated more thoroughly, this question acquires different meanings. In this way, the question is used to guide the poem, and each event serves as a sort of checkpoint towards the ultimate goal of understanding the question in depth. In addition to the recurring question, the speaker uses two recurring lines, "From the scenes his fathers loved / Spicy grove, cinnamon tree" (lines 8-9). The speaker also begins several statements with a recurring phrase, "So I lie," which is first used in the eleventh line. It always precedes an account of the speaker's state of mind regarding the recurring question, constantly serving as an indicator of the thought process to follow. The second appearance of the recurring question is juxtaposed with the first use of the recurring phrase to exemplify that the latter is and will consistently be the means by which the speaker attempts to answer the former, and between these two lines is the first question break recurring. poetry. The non-traditional poetics at work in “Heritage” is divided into seven lines of different lines, which later take on greater significance in the form of the poem. In the first verse, the recurring question: "What is Africa to me?" It's as broad as it sounds. The speaker could mean this in many different ways; however, its second occurrence (line 10) comes after eight lines of substance, and the images explored in those eight lines are all in stark contrast. A “copper sun” is a rising sun, denoting a morning hour, and a “scarlet sea” is an oceanic horizon upon which the light of a setting sun is cast, denoting an evening hour; similarly, “jungle star” and “jungle trail” are pairs of words whose last elements present equal contrast in that a star is at an incalculable distance from the earth while a trail (in the sense of a path traveled) is a path dug into the earth itself. “Strong, tanned men” are also contrasted with “royal black women,” and the purpose of these stark contrasts, given that they are in response to the question in the first line (as evidenced by the colon at the end of line 1), is to suggest that the speaker's relationship with Africa could be anything, the possibilities range as far as morning and evening or male and female. The second appearance of the recurring question follows these contrasts to ask what most specific meaning Africa has for the speaker, suggesting that the poem will delve deeper into the answer than just the speaker's initial superficial thoughts. In the second verse, the speaker begins with the words: “So I lie, who all day / want no other sound except the song / sung by wild barbarian birds / goading huge herds in the jungle.” The significance of these four lines is that they tell the reader that the recurring question has kept the speaker thinking about his answer all day; even suggests that the speakeris warning the reader that the thought process - the poem itself - has just begun, which is true at the beginning of the second line. The speaker describes a fantasy of exotic fauna, an imaginary typical of Africa, but in the description there are also “young forest lovers” who get engaged. The common ground is that each of these images shares a carefree life, both for birds and for humans. The speaker considers Africa to be a place of freedom. Halfway through the second verse, the recurring phrase, "So I lie," returns to signify the transition to a new image, but the next image is not actually visual; rather, it stimulates the auditory sense. The speaker claims to inexplicably hear the drums. This image actually foreshadows the rhythm the speaker possesses in his body, as mentioned in lines 63-69 of verse four, “So I lie, that I find no peace / Night or day, no light release / from the ceaseless rhythm / made by cruel padded feet / that walk the way of my body. / They go up and down, and back, / making a path in the jungle this, the speaker creates ambiguity with the word “beat” because its primary denotation in this context is that of rhythm, however follows a secondary denotation since the speaker describes this rhythm as the result of frequent steps along a "road", which is the aforementioned "jungle track". This combines the concepts of rhythm and the proverbial beaten path. The speaker wants the reader to receive both denotations simultaneously so as to evoke the common idea of ​​Africans as rhythmic people. The contextual meaning of this ambiguity is that it occurs in the speaker's blood, which suggests that it is part of who is who speaks. The third verse begins with the idea that the reason the recurring question continues to plague him is primarily because the answer is not simply elusive but, rather, an answer once possessed and then forgotten. The speaker also implies that the search for this answer has, perhaps, always been an ongoing quest that the speaker is only now taking the time to vigorously pursue. "Africa? A book that one leafs through / listlessly, until sleep comes. / Not remembered are its bats / that flutter in the night, its cats, / crouching among the reeds of the river” (lines 31-35). In these lines, the speaker suggests that this is the first time he has spent so much time answering the recurring question The speaker proceeds to say, “[…] no more / roars / shouts the trumpet that the monarch's claws have leapt / come on. scabbards where they slept. / Silver serpents that once a year / take off the beautiful cloaks you wear” (vv. 37-42). more sword-wielding soldiers in Africa. The speaker then says, “What is your nakedness to me?” (line 45), which is the clear indicator of a change in perspective swords do not intimidate and the next lines explain why this is so “Here no leprous flowers bloom / fierce corollas in the air; / here there are no shiny, wet bodies / dripping mixed with rain and sweat” (vv. 46-49). The speaker's perspective is shifting towards an answer to the recurring question. The words “leper” and “ferocious” indicate that these flowers are representative of the white people who the speaker considers a threat. The slave trade is over, as is slavery itself, as evidenced by the fact that the speaker uses lines 46-49 to explain that whites are not in Africa and that blacks do not toil and suffer in Africa either. snowed this year for me, / nothing from last year? The tree / that sprouts every year must forget / how its past has risen and set / branch and bloom, flower, fruit” (lines 52-56). The speaker uses these lines to.