Juxtaposition is used often in Louise Erdrich's poem
"Jacklight." One very useful web site defines juxtaposition as
follows:
readability="16">The arrangement of two or more
ideas, characters, actions, settings, phrases, or words side-by-side or in similar
narrative moments for the purpose of comparison, contrast, rhetorical effect, suspense,
or character development.
(http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/lit_terms_J.html)Juxtaposition
appears, for instance, in some of the following places in Erdrich's
poem:
- In the juxtaposition of the prose of the
opening epigraph with the verse of the succeeding
poem.- In the sudden shift from active to passive phrasing
in the transition from line 5 and line 6.- In the sudden
shift from plural in the lines 1-7 to singular in lines 8-9.
- In the sudden shift back to plural from singular that
occurs in line 10.- In the phrase "night sun" (line
11).- In the sudden shift from an emphasis on "we" in the
first three stanzas to an emphasis on "they" in stanza
four.- In the shift from the largely attractive imagery of
the first three stanzas to the largely unattractive imagery of stanza
four.- In the abrupt shift that occurs midway through line
18: "We smell their mothers buried chin-deep in wet dirt." (A similar shift occurs in
line 21.)- In the sudden shift back to an emphasis on "we"
that occurs in line 28.- In the sudden shift back to
"they" that occurs in the final
stanza.
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