Question

How does the speaker’s personification of learning in lines 14-16 contribute to the poem?
THIS IS NOT A SMALL VOICE

Answer 1

Answer:

Sonia Sanchez is an award-winning poet who has authored over a dozen books of poetry, as well as short stories, essays, plays, and children books. In this poem, a speaker asserts the strength and love of a collective set of people. As you read, take notes on the imagery that the author uses to describe voice and love.

This is not a small voice

you hear this is a large

voice coming out of these cities.

This is the voice of LaTanya.

Kadesha. Shaniqua. This

is the voice of Antoine.

Darryl. Shaquille.

Running over waters

navigating the hallways

of our schools spilling out

on the corners of our cities and

no epitaphs spill out of their river mouths.

This is not a small love

you hear this is a large

love, a passion for kissing learning

on its face.

This is a love that crowns the feet with hands

that nourishes, conceives, feels the water sails

mends the children,

folds them inside our history where they

toast more than the flesh

where they suck the bones of the alphabet

and spit out closed vowels.

This is a love colored with iron and lace.

This is a love initialed Black Genius.

This is not a small voice

you hear.

From “Wounded in the House of a Friend” by Sonia Sanchez. Copyright © 1995 by Sonia Sanchez. Reprinted by permission of Beacon Press, Boston.

Notes

1. a phrase or statement written in memory a person who has died