Literary Devices and Figurative Language in "I Wrote A Good Omelet"

I found this poem off the website. Before choosing this specific poem, I Wrote a Good Omelet, I had read poems from the same poet. Her name is Nikki Giovanni. I was inspired by all of her poems but this one truly stood out to me. I had to read this poem multiple times because I was very confused at the beginning because all of the words contrasted with each other in each line. For example, “ I wrote a good omelet and ate a hot poem.” This is in reversed order because it should say “ a good poem” and “a hot omelet.”

One of the main reasons I picked this poem was because I was intrigued by the figurative language incorporated throughout the poem and the choice of diction and the order of the words. The figurative language she included in this poem, specifically imagery and repetition, stood out to me. In addition, this poem was very unique in structure and the way it was written in one stanza. I had never seen a poem so unique until reading this one.

Nikki Giovanni wrote this poem to express her feelings towards someone, specifically someone who she is in love with. She is trying to explain how she can not focus on anything else, other than the person she loves/is in love with. This is obvious because the ways she writes her poem is to show how nothing else in life needs to make sense because she loves somebody who is on her mind at every second. Another few examples directly from this poem is “Buttoned my car and drove my coat home.” The words are once again mixed up in the order that would make sense. Since this is a free verse poem, it can be written in any way.

Therefore, it took some time to analyze this poem. Eventually, I knew that this was the message being described due to the tone and diction throughout the poem. In my opinion, the poet wants the reader to think about their feelings towards the concept of love and even the person they love most at the time. Everything else in the world (described in the poem) doesn’t make sense and how everything is twisted around. I felt just as confused while reading this poem for the first time as Nikki was probably feeling towards someone being mentioned in this poem.Clearly, there were many choices being made by Nikki Giovanni while she was writing this poem. First, this poet included imagery throughout the poem. “Buttoned my car...and drove my coat home...in the rain…” is an example of imagery. Nikki Giovanni decided to include this to make the poem feel real by using a description that can be ‘seen’ while reading this poem. Without this description the poem would not be as easy to understand. Using the literary device, imagery, was the poet’s way of sharing her thoughts.

Another literary device used in this poem is repetition. The phrase, “after loving you,” is what is repeated multiple times throughout the poem. Something that stood out to me was that this phrase makes sense and does not have the words rearranged in a different order. My observation is that she can control her mind on her love, but nothing else as shown in previous lines with the mix of words. I think this was the poet’s purpose and a way to get her message across again. Regarding diction, the words are in a different order for a reason. This was stated in my analysis previously.

The reason behind this was to show the confusion of the world, but not with that somebody she loves. Finally, the writer made the choice to make her poem all one stanza with no punctuation. I strongly believe that this was to add to the fact that she can’t think straight with all going on in her life. All of Nikki Giovanni’s goals blend together to show her feelings. Since there is no punctuation I also think that the writer did this to show her confusion and to show that she has so much spinning around her head.

In conclusion, I did really enjoy reading this poem multiple times and once I understood exactly what was occurring. Nikki Giovanni made this poem, I Wrote a Good Omelet, in a very unique way. I was inspired as my own writer and made me think about the poem I wrote for this project. Honestly, I did like everything that the writer included in this poem. There is nothing I do not like. Once I figured out the words and their order, the poem definitely stood out to me.