Poetry—Meaning
P14 Hyperbole and Understatement and P15 Antithesis
One’s Self, En Masse
One’s self I sing, a simple separate person,
Yet utter the world Democratic, the word En-Masse.
--Walt Whitman
With the above in mind, write a poem in which you describe one particular member or element of a set:
One sparrow in a flock of sparrows
One baby in a nursery of babies
One fish in a barrel of fish
One scream in a stadium of screams
One somersault in a series of somersaults
The challenge is to perceive the qualities of the group, and to distinguish what makes an individual
member of that group both a part of it and apart from it. (Pettit, 1992)
Include examples of hyperbole, understatement, and antithesis.