1. What can knowing about her help you to predict about her poem, before you even read it?
Knowing more about the author’s past experiences can help us understand what the author’s biases are. In the poem “How I Learned to Sweep” written by Alvarez, we can understand what her mood is and why she is writing in this particular style. The biography explains that Alvarez had a hard time growing up, facing the death of close family, and a hard time fitting in with New York City’s public school system. This shows me that she went trough hard times, which one can see in her writing.
2. Where and why does the author use rhyme?
The authors rhymes throughout her poem. You can find some rhymes on lines 3-4, 5-6, 9-10, and 27-29 . As I see it the author rhymes because of two reasons. One, the author wants to express her thoughts and expressions boldly. To me when an author rhymes it helps me understand and analyze the poem. Two, the author makes it easier for a person to remember the poem and to personally connect to the poem. The lyricism of a poem helps people to have a flow while reading the rhythmic words. When there is a poem that connects with my personality and rhymes it gives me this feeling that no other poems do.
3. Sweeping is a metaphor, because it can mean, literally "to sweep," but can also mean trying to push something unpleasant away. In this poem, what does sweeping mean? Explore the different connotations of the word
In the poems “to sweep,” meant to get rid of. When the authors combines war and sweeping, what I think she means is that she wants to sweep away the war, she wants to get rid of all the dead bodies. I believe this because it read. “I got up and swept again as they fell out of the sly.”
I would suggest that the mother had no idea what was going on the TV. The reason the mother said that the desk is beautiful is because it was. The girl saw as dust being death, and to clean death of the table you would have to do a pretty good job