Morean English 113 SU10 B Term 11 August 2010 Children Remembered The poems “Hope” by Ariel Dorfman and “Ballad of Birmingham” by Dudley Randall display a theme relating to the tremendous love a parent displays for their children and the terrible feeling they experience when they sense their child is in grave danger. In “Hope” the narrator describes the son “missing / since May 8 / of last year” (766). In “Ballad of Birmingham” it describes the story of a mother giving her daughter permission to
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A Historical Look into the “Ballad of Birmingham The “Ballad of Birmingham is a shocking poem that was written by Dudley Randall about a bombing of an African American church in Birmingham‚ Alabama in 1963. The bombing of the church was racially motivated and resulted in the death of four innocent African American girls and was the turning point in the United States 1960s Civil Rights Movement. In Dudley’s poem he has taken such a sad event and turned it into a poem showing the racially motivated
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Ballad of Birmingham 2 Dudley Randall was born 14 January 1914 in Washington‚ D.C. Randall led a life full of intellectual exploration‚ service‚ and literary entrepreneurship. He started writing poetry at an early age‚ and filled notebooks throughout his years‚ drawing on the civil rights movement‚ work experiences‚ travels‚ and personal experiences for inspiration. In addition to serving his country in the Pacific theatre during World War II‚ Randall worked for Ford Motor Company‚ the U.S. Postal
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“Ballad of Birmingham” No‚ baby‚ no you may not go. We’ve all probably heard this once in our life times. Our moms always think they know best and they always say the decisions they make are for our own good. In some cases that’s true but in others it isn’t. In the “Ballad of Birmingham” by Dudley Randal it’s what the mother tried to protect her daughter but it wasn’t what she was expecting. It actually turned out to be a whole different story. This poem has a strong tone to it; it also has a
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Randall’s Ballad of Birmingham Dudley Randall’s Ballad of Birmingham gives a poetic account of the bombing of a Birmingham church in 1963. The poem was written in ballad form to convey the mood of the mother to her daughter. The author also gives a graphic account of what the 1960’s were like. Irony played a part also in the ballad showing the church as the warzone and the freedom march as the safer place to be. Writing the poem in ballad form gave a sense of mood to each paragraph. The poem starts
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The “Ballad Of Birmingham” is a tribute to an earth-shattering historical incident that took place in Birmingham‚ Alabama. The poet’s purpose was to force the readers to empathize with the mothers that lost their children to this incident by providing a more intimate and vicarious perspective. Imagery and diction were two essential elements that allowed the poet to achieve this purpose. These elements enabled the readers to gain a unique understanding that may not have been accessible prior to reading
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The Ballad of Birmingham is a poem about a very tragic story of a young girl who lost her life all because of her skin tone. Something she and nobody else has control of. This young girl was in the sacred place and yet still the devil snuck in. The streets of Birmingham are know as the streets once walked upon in fight for actual equality. The freedom marches were not the safest place to be‚ but that is where everyone went in fight for the freedom we have now. The young girl in the
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"The Ballad of Birmingham"‚ written by Dudley Randall‚ is a poem that commemorates the bombing of a black church in Alabama in 1963‚ at the height of the civil rights movement. The poem is written in a traditional narrative style form of a ballad‚ though the subject matter is far from traditional. The poem tells the story of a woman who doesn’t let her daughter go to play in town because she feels that it is too dangerous‚ but instead sends her to church where she feels that her daughter will be
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Throughout the poem poet Dudley Randall uses stationary irony to show how even the Black Church can turn into a war zone. Initially written in response to the 1963 Alabama church bombing‚ the poet tells a story about a mother and her young daughter having a dispute about whether a freedom march is a place for a child. In the short poem “The Ballad of Birmingham” author Dudley Randall incorporates poetic devices such as Irony to describe the unexpected church bombing that took place in Birmingham‚ Alabama
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In the poem "The Ballad of Birmingham" by Dudley Randall‚the historical events are being used in the poem by talking about racism. In the poem‚ African-American were being bomb by the whites and in the past‚ there were alot of racism. The bombing occurred at the African-American 16th street Baptist church‚ September 15‚ 1965. Four members of the Ku Klux Klan planted at least 15 sticks of dynamite attached to a timing device beneath the front steps of the church. It was an act of white supremacist
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