Drum Dream Girl

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2015

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form and Meter

Drum Dream Girl is a narrative poem that describes how a historical figure—Millo Castro Zaldarriaga, a Chinese-African-Cuban drummer—subverts gender roles in Cuban music in the 1920s and 1930s. Engle’s poem is written in free-verse; there is no set meter, line length, or stanza length. Most of the 105 lines are short (contain few syllables); some contain only a single-syllable word. The poem’s 21 stanzas range from two lines to ten lines long.

Formal elements can be seen in the conversation between Engle’s poetry and Rafael López’s illustrations. Words only take up a small portion of the pages in the children’s book. Most stanzas are given two adjacent pages, which are filled with illustrations. The first time two adjacent pages feature two stanzas, one on each page, is the moment in the poem when the girl begins to take music lessons. The text about her finally being able to play music with another person is reflected by two stanzas coming together in the same spread of pages, as well as in López’s illustrations of the teacher and student working together.

On the final page, two stanzas are placed on the same page, creating a visual metaphor where the formal choice to place words more closely together reflects the poem’s content about equality in music: It brings people together. López’s illustrations of dancers and musicians of all genders emphasizes the poem’s overarching message in this final spread.

Kennings

Engle uses kennings, or kenning-like descriptors: Kennings are hyphenated adjectives. Engle repeats the word “bright” in three of her kennings: “moon-bright” (Line 10) describes the sound of timbales, “flower-bright” (Line 30) describes a park, and “dream-bright” (Line 96) describes the girl’s drumming. The last of these is the most significant; the girl combines what she hears from other musicians—their moon-bright drumming—with the sounds of the natural world—the flower-bright park—to create her own sound. Her public performance of this dream-bright music is what convinces her community that girls should be allowed to play drums. Furthermore, her performance is a dream realized that illuminates the future of Cuban music and emphasizes the importance of pursuing one’s dreams despite adversity which may come.

Repetition

Engle uses a lot of repetition in Drum Dream Girl. The title includes words that are repeated many times throughout the poem. “Dream” appears 13 times. To American readers, the word “dream” in conjunction with a theme about equality evokes the famous Martin Luther King, Jr. speech, “I Have a Dream.” Engle focuses on gender equality in Cuban music, but draws from language connoting American civil rights activism.

However, some of Engle’s repetition specifically focuses on Cuban culture. For instance, timbales are a type of drum created in Cuba. Engle repeats the description “big, round, silvery / moon-bright” for timbales in Lines 9-10 and Lines 58-59. This is an extensive description, including a kenning (defined in the previous section), as well as size, shape, and color details. Other drums are accompanied by fewer repeated adjectives, such as “tall” (Lines 5 and 56) and “small” (Lines 6 and 57), that only describe size.

Overall, repetition allows the reader to see the transformation from the practice of drumming as a boys-only club to being inclusive of all genders. The reader can perceive what stays the same, such as the drums’ descriptions, in contrast with what changes—who is playing the drums.

Onomatopoeia

Drumming is also represented through onomatopoeia, or words that imitate sounds. One example of this is the “boom boom booming” (Line 7) of timbales. Musical rhythms are inspired by natural sounds that are also described in onomatopoeia, such as the “clack of woodpecker beaks” (Line 32). The girl lives in a “city of drumbeats” (Line 2), defined not only by bands playing in outdoor venues and the “rattling beat” (Line 39) of stilt-dancers at carnival, but also the sounds of nature.