To demonstrate my understanding of poetry terms from the Poetry Handbook, I'll be discussing irony, metaphor, personification, symbolism and simile as illustrated in Elisabet Velasquez's poetry collection When We Make It. Each term lends a deeper meaning to the five different poems I've selected and thereby imparts a raw, unapologetic glimpse into the author's childhood triumphs and tragedies as a Nuyorican growing up in the Bronx circa 1996.

        As defined in the Poetry Handbook, irony is "a statement that contradicts the actual attitude of the speaker or a situation that contrasts what is expected with what occurs and always having overtones of mockery" (Deutsch 73). Elisabet's poem "Mami" is ripe with such mockery when she questions God's worth and whether he deserves praise given the domestic violence in her household. Her sister insists that their father has changed but Elizabet contradicts this in the following lines:

        She says Papi is also Christian now

        & that God forgave him

        for beating on Mami & so we should too.

        But Mami's eyes never close right during prayer service

        & I wonder what kind of God you have to be

        to receive praise from the hands responsible for that (Velasquez 6).

The juxtaposition of her mother's wounded eye to the image of prayerful, abusive hands interrogates the expected purity of a God who forgives the violence that he allows. 

        Through the use of metaphor, Elisabet also criticizes the favoritism her father bestows upon her sister who is named after her father's mistress. As outlined by Deutsch in the Poetry Handbook, a metaphor has a "vehicle" defined as "the figure that carries the weight of comparison" and a "tenor" that is the subject of comparison (85). In her poem "How We Got Our Names: Estrella," Elisabet pokes at the privilege her sister's name affords her in the following lines:

        On my father's tongue, Estrella matters.

        Her name is a sloooow dance in Brooklyn.

        Her name is a bullet that didn't kill nobody.

        Her name is a beeper alert that gets a call back (Velasquez 7).  

Estrella's name is the tenor that is compared to the vehicles of a slow dance, bullet and beeper alert that denotes affection, power and priority.

        With the use of personification, Elisabet examines her mother's pain and fury that underscores her inability to peacefully co-parent. Deutsch describes personification as "abstract vices and virtues represented as persons" (88). In her poem "Papi," Elisabet describes a scene in which her estranged father shows up to visit her and Estrella. Her mother stays in the house and observes the visit from a window hung with a makeshift curtain made from a blanket bearing the image of a lion's face. Elisabet brings the lion to life as a mouthpiece for her mother in the following lines:

        When I look up at the window

        You can't see Mami peeking but

        the lion's mouth is open

        and roaring for me to come upstairs (Velasquez 10).

The makeshift curtain serves as a representation of her mother's grief as though it is a lion's cry for her cubs.

        Symbolism is also used in Elisabet's poetry to expose the special treatment received by her classmates with anglo surnames vs the heavier, multisyllabic last names of herself and her Nuyorican peers. Deutsch defines symbolism as "a word or an image that signifies something other than what it represents" (178). Elisabet uses symbolism to emphasize the battle of preserving her culture through the correct pronunciation of her name in the poem "Roster." She anticipates the clumsiness of her teacher's tongue during roll call in the following lines:

        Our mouths do not get the luxury of rest.

        Our mouths must always be war-ready,

        which means, sometimes we rip our names 

        from the teacher's mouth

        before she has a chance to kill it,

        but other times we wait (Velasquez 25).  

The mouths of herself and her peers are both weapons and shields against the laziness of an anglo tongue that threatens to erase their identity.

        In her poem "Leaving Gates Avenue," Elisabet uses simile to reveal the dangers of her neighborhood in Bushwick, New York. As defined in the Poetry Handbook, simile "differs from metaphor in that the tenor and vehicle are identified as such and the fact of their resemblance is clearly indicated by 'like' or 'as'" (Deutsch 87). Described as a veritable battlefield, Elisabet uses simile to describe her neighborhood in the following lines:

        All the buildings are built like weapons.

        Even our schools are gated &

        the welfare office is spiked

        as if to let you know 

        that you are entering a war zone (Velasquez 19).

In this comparison, Elisabet is not so subtly hinting at the difference between the conditions of her neighborhood and the more affluent parts of the city.