Poetry Prompt #1
Brainstorm/Outline
“Kenji”
Now that you have read and discussed the poem “Kenji” by Mike Shinoda, write a well-developed introduction in which you commit to analyze how the poet conveys the complex relationship of the protagonist and the United States through the use of literary devices such as point of view and structure.
2) You must analyze how the poetic devices convey the speaker’s complex relationship with the United States.
3) So What? What is the author trying to convey to the reader? What’s the big lesson? What’s the connection to society?
In Mike Shinoda’s narrative poem, “Kenji,” the reader is presented with a speaker that has an extremely complex relationship with the United States. In one respect, the speaker is proud that his family lives and has thrived in the U.S.--“a family who owned a store in L.A…crawl[ing] out of bed [everyday to] bacon and eggs with [a] wife and kids [living] on the second floor of a little store he ran.” This physical manifestation of the “American Dream” no doubt makes the speaker’s heart swell with pride and gratitude—what fortune to live in such a country! Nevertheless, this pride is conflated with indignation towards a government that would have his family pack their belongings in “trash bags” making them “prisoners of war in their own damn country.” Through the motif of biographical interviews and the repetitive diction of “someday,” Mr. Shinoda shines a bright light on the fact that the United States government still has a long way to go when it comes to upholding its end of the bargain as it pertains to promised equality and opportunity for prosperity, and that to lose sight of a sordid portion of our country’s past, we run the risk of interning ourselves once again to the imprisonment of unchecked fear.
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