American Literature II

As a confessional poet whose writing style is straightforward and easy to understand, I found myself enjoying Ada Limón’s work. To say I was elated with having to analyze her poems is an understatement because picking apart poetry and analyzing it is usually a daunting task as majority of the time it is hard to read and leaves me feeling confused, but that was not the case this time around. So, when reading the poem above several times, the first thing I noticed was how her choice of words played a significant role in making the reader feel a part of the conversation. You see her inclusion of the reader when she says, “Don’t you believe it?” because it is here where she captivates the reader and leaves them thinking of how to answer her question. This type of writing style plays in her favor because it makes her poetry more relatable especially in this instance, as she is conveying hope through this poem. The way in which she successfully depicts strength and fierceness is through female horses as they naturally hold those traits and can be looked upon as symbols of female empowerment. When Limón says, “they make it all look easy, / like running 40  miles per hour / is as fun as taking a nap, or grass” when referring to the female horses, she is shedding light on how they are capable of making the most difficult things look easy. Thus, bringing up how human females should learn from female horses because we need to learn how to push forward and take on the the animalistic strength and fierceness that these horses posses in order to push forward and ignite the fire to bettering ourselves. Therefore, Limón is bringing forth the hope needed to empower females by making both animal and human relatable in the sense that if a female horse is capable of doing such amazing things, then why can’t a female human do it too.