Enchanted Air: Two Cultures, Two Wings

Mood is distinct from atmosphere, which represents the approach an author takes to create mood. The mood refers to the emotions a work of poetry or narrative evokes in a reader. For example, the mood of Part 3 reflects the disillusionment of the author’s changing perspective as she witnesses the impact of the war in poems like “Tarantulas and Scorpions” when she wonders about the “many soldiers [who] died / in revolution” (74). As the author’s perception of Cuba becomes more complex, more poems create scenes that evoke a mood of isolation, contrasting with the sense of belonging the author felt when she was younger.

Pastoral poetry is a literary tradition that romanticizes rural life through natural imagery and figurative language. It often evokes a sense of nostalgia and innocence. Engle deconstructs the pastoral elements of her memoir to illustrate changes in perspective. For example, she creates a pastoral atmosphere in “Four Years Before I Existed” by coupling descriptions of the lush, tropical environment with allusions to a forgotten time when “horsemen still galloped / along cobblestone streets” (Lines 7-8). She develops the nostalgia of childhood more fully in Part 2: “Magical Travels.” Finally, she deconstructs the pastoral in Part 3: “Winged Summer” by contrasting her perspective with more matures views of the island. For example, in “Exploration,” the author notes:

Some of the sights

that Mami describes

as dire poverty

look like such

luxurious wealth

to a city girl

who loves

farms (93).

Paratext is the surrounding material in a book that helps frame a story to provide readers with expectations for understanding the narrative. The opening vignette, the Cold War Timeline, and the Author’s Note provide insight for important themes and necessary historical context to understand the narrative. Paratext is especially important in Engle’s verse memoir to help readers identify important parts of the story during poetic interpretation. For example, the Author’s Note identifies Travel as the primary theme, allowing readers to identify the structure of the story as well as the poetic symbolism the author uses throughout to develop the theme.

A stanza is a group of lines that form a poetic unit. Free verse lacks the metrical structure of other poetic forms, and uses imagery, sound, and symbolism to structure the parts of the poem instead. For example, “No Place on the Map” is a poem about the differences between Cuba and America and the two cultures she partakes in through her Mami and Dad. The narrator uses the image of a rolling wave between shores to create a feeling of instability that illustrates how she is caught between two cultures in the third stanza. She begins the stanza by comparing herself to a wave and concludes by comparing the two shores on either side of a sea to Cuba and America. This stanza transitions the focus of the poem away from the differences between the two cultures to the impact of this duality upon the narrator.