When poetry and prose are compared, it is sometimes difficult to find common ground in tone, theme, and syntax. However, for Ashley Hope Perez’s “What Home Is” and Alice Walk’s “The Flowers,” which are a poem and short story, respectively, the connection can be built in terms of these three criteria. Although the story is about a girl who loses her virginity and the poem describes the meaning of home, both use a repetitive tone, simple syntax, and a complex thematic choice.
Every line in Perez’s “What Home Is” starts with “home,” and each tells a unique story of what that word means to the author. The whole theme of this poem is about a person’s life starting with childhood to the point of separation from one’s parents and entering adult life with its responsibilities, difficulties, excitements, and disappointments. Even though the syntax remains the same, the tone of writing varies between different periods of life described. For example, “home is your father’s beard against your check and your mother pulling the center cinnamon” represents warm childhood memories (Perez 118). When the author concludes that “home is you,” she seems to have transitioned to adulthood and met the person she wanted to spend her entire life with (Perez 128). Perez maintains a poem’s narrative structure, allowing the reader to enjoy the poetic syntax and learn a story.
In Walk’s “Flowers,” the theme is mysterious and dark closer to the end. Indeed, the author uses allegory to show that the girl loses her innocence. Myop seemed to be a careless child who was only concerned about singing and exploring the woods (Walker 1). As she approaches a man in the forest, the theme is represented as more dangerous. This man’s age and likely nature are shown through his “large white teeth, … cracked or broken” and rotted clothes as an allegory for his intentions (Walker 2). The ending tells that the summer is over and the flowers are laid down, which suggests that the girl had sexual intercourse with this man.
In conclusion, “Flowers” and “What Home Is” seem to have radically different themes. Still, they utilize similar alterations of the tone and structure to represent the transition that happens in the lives of their characters. However, Perez’s poem is more about various situations that shape a person’s life, while Walker’s short story talks about one specific event, the loss of a girl’s innocence with an older man.
Works Cited
Perez, Ashley Hope. “What Home Is.” Rural Voices: 15 Authors Challenge Assumptions About Small-Town America, edited by Nora Shalaway Carpenter, Candlewick Press, 2020, pp. 117-128.
Walker, Jane. Flowers. Gloucester, 1993.