Rock It PoetryBy Berenise Hernandez

Yet Do I MarvelCountee Cullen

DIDLS – Diction Diction – The diction in this poem is serious and ponderous.

In the poem , the speaker states what he believes and then goes onto thinking about the way God decided certain things. The line ‘’I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind…’’, shows the speaker’s belief and the line ‘’why flesh that mirrors Him must some day die,’’ is an example of God’s way for deciding why humans must dies.

DIDLS - Images

The images in the poem allow the reader to follow through with what the speaker says. The use of imagery enhances the words of the poem to act as vivid images in the head of the reader. The reader can easily visualize :

‘’God, is good, well-meaning, kind…’’ ‘’to make a poet black ‘’ ‘’the little buried mole continues blind’’

DIDLS- Details The poem is written from the perspective of a black poet who

is surprised to be a poet at all. ‘’Yet do I marvel at this curious thing: / To make a poet black, and bid him sing!’’

The author alludes to two figures from Greek mythology , Tantalus and Sisyphus. These figures were punished forever by the Gods.

DIDLS – Language The language in the poem is figurative and connotative. The

poem uses alliteration with ‘’Tortured Tantalus’’ and ‘’fickle fruit’’.

The poem also uses repetition with the question of ‘’why’’ throughout the poem.

A metaphor, ‘’When flesh that mirrors Him must some day die’’, compares human flesh to a mirror that reflects God’s image.

DIDLS – Structure The structure of the poem is a 14- line sonnet with consistent

rhythm. The poem is arranged in 2 quatrains and one sextet. The last two lines conclude the purpose of the poem which

reveals the poet is black and he is trying to understand why God made him a black poet, something that in the Harlem Renaissance was considered beyond belief.