Ode to a Drum Summary & Study Guide

This Study Guide consists of approximately 23 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Ode to a Drum.

Ode to a Drum Summary & Study Guide

This Study Guide consists of approximately 23 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Ode to a Drum.
This section contains 1,103 words
(approx. 3 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy the Ode to a Drum Study Guide

Background

Komunyakaa, the author of "Ode to a Drum," is an African American poet, born to working-class parents in rural Louisiana. A profoundly intellectual man who spent time in Vietnam as a correspondent, Komunyakaa addresses a wide range of social, political, cultural, mythical, and intellectual issues and themes in his poems. His poems are often written in conversational tones and often use jazz-inspired rhythms and diction in some significant ways reminiscent of the poems of Langston Hughes and Amiri Baraka, among many others.

"Ode to a Drum" takes on themes of African music and traditions that are familiar to readers of Komunyakaa's poetry, and, like much of his work, the poem can be read on several levels. On a literal level, the poem is an account, through the eyes of an African drum maker, of the making of a drum: the killing of a gazelle, the stretching of...

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This section contains 1,103 words
(approx. 3 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy the Ode to a Drum Study Guide
Copyrights
Gale
Ode to a Drum from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.