Adam by william baer poetry analysis

Essay by jyong98High School, 11th gradeC+, November 2014

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Jean Yong

ENG3U1-02

Mr. Campoli

October 3, 2014

Close Reading of "Adam" by William Baer

William Baer born in Geneva, New York in 1948 grew up to be a successful writer, editor and professor. After attaining his Bachelor of Arts, Masters of Arts and his PhD in English, Baer authored fifteen books. One of which included an award winning, T.S Eliot prize, for The Unfortunates, in 1997. In the results of studying English and cinema, Baer likes to write different themed pieces. His writing style includes two extreme opposites, from love and happiness to dark and evil. He currently teaches creative writing at the University of Evansville, Indiana, where he lives with his wife and children.

Baer's Adam is a well written poem about how jealousy can pressure us into doing bad deeds, and that begging for forgiveness later on, is not easy. He explains in the poem, that envy can cause unintentional harmful acts and uses, brothers, Cain and Abel as an example which is referred to the story in the Old Testament.

However, he certainly believes that there is hope and that people will forgive and forget. He touches upon many themes including jealousy, anger, power, god, hope and forgiveness. Baer excels in using many literary devices to express the poem's main themes. I will be elaborating on the use of Baer's rhyming scheme and syllable patterns, consonance, alliteration in emphasis, metaphor and allusion in the following passages.

An apparent literary device is the rhyme scheme and syllable patterns. In this case, the ABAB rhyme scheme is used. This means that for every four lines, each and every first and third line rhyme and the second and fourth line rhyme with each other. An example from the poem is as follows:

A But now, it's his boy, the...