"Ballad of Birmingham": A Poetic Analysis.
Poetry is a form of expression, a way of invoking feelings from a reader as well as expressing one's own. Dudley Randall's, "Ballad of Birmingham" is an ironic poem about a great tragedy in Birmingham, Alabama where a small girl dies as a result of a battle between races. Randall presents his poem as a story complete with dialect between his characters, a narrator, a beginning to establish characters, a middle to build the plot and an end to conclude. Randall uses many different techniques to fill his story with feeling and emotion, but imagery and irony are the most prominent.
Randall most effectively creates emotion in his poem by basing it on an actual event. Although the poem itself is fictional, children truly did die in the bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama. This makes the poem more meaningful than if it never took place. Randall captures the sadness of the tragedy by speculating what may happen between a mother and her daughter shortly before her daughter is killed in a bombing. The poem opens with dialogue between the two and clearly portrays how the daughter regards her mother. When addressing her mother, the daughter uses words like "Mother dear" and "may I." In reply to her daughter, the mother in Randall's poem gives a sense of caring and concern. This conversation between the two characters portrays the relationship that they have and also acts as an introduction to the story.
In addition to establishing a relationship between mother and daughter, the interaction between the characters also gives insight to the environment they are in. The setting of this poem is during controversial time where peace between races is hanging by a thread. The use of words and phrases such as "freedom march", "dogs", "fierce", "wild", "clubs", "hoses", "guns" etc. depict a hostile setting for this poem. The way the setting is portrayed gives the reader a sense of what is going on around the characters at the time the poem is set.
