Hazel Tells Laverne

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Poetry Essay Rough Draft In the poem “Hazel Tells LaVerne”, by Katharyn Howd Machan, there are a variety of literary devices, the poem itself is written in colloquial language, there are also examples of personification and imagery. The speaker in the poem is Hazel who is speaking to LaVerne in a very comical way about a frog who pops out of a toilet she is cleaning. So first off the poem is written colloquially through Hazel, and when it is read it seems like when you read it you’re supposed to sound like an annoyed woman telling what seems to her as a fascinating story. There are words like “musta, aroun, tryin ta, sida, and sohelpmegod” which, when read aloud, is exactly how most of us speak, not in thought-out grammatically correct sentences, rather in shorter slang words. Colloquial language can help with the tone of the poem, for example, in Machan’s poem it helps by making…show more content…
For example: “last night im cleanin out my howard johnsons ladies room when all of a sudden Maul 3 up pops this frog.” (596) although there are weird line breaks, they kind of organize the poem in a way that emphasizes the way that Hazel is telling the story. It also gives the poem more clarity even though there is no punctuation. This poem is easy to follow and gives off a comical vibe despite the way it is written with the colloquial language and line breaks. The language really shows what Hazel is like, she seems like a woman who doesn’t take crap from anybody and shows her personality through the lack of punctuation and grammatical errors. It follows through with her treatment of the frog where she doesn’t believe that she could ever become a princess and ends up whacking and screaming away at the frog and eventually, flushing him down the toilet several times. This poem was extremely entertaining, easily read, and fun to

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