According to Culler, poetry is related to rhetoric in which poetry is the language that makes abundant use of figures of speech and language that aim to be powerfully persuasive.  In Derek Walcott’s poem “The Sea is History”, he uses unique rhetorical figures at the beginning of the poem “in that grey vault. The sea. The sea has locked them up. The sea is History”  to show the charm of the poem. As Culler mentioned in the  chapter, Metaphor has been treated as basic language and the imagination because it is cognitively respectable, not inherently frivolous or ornamental,  it is the part which I am interested in. Literature depends on rhetorical figures but also on larger structures, particularly literary genres, genres are sets of conventions and expectations. poetry as word and act, the relative importance of different ways of viewing poems is that a poem is both a structure made of words and an event which is an act of the poet, an experience of the reader, an event in literary history. The extravagance of the lyric is another factor of rhetoric, lyric shows us the meaning of the story emerging from verbal patterning. You repeat words that echo in a rhythmical structure and see if a story or sense won’t emerge. Rhythmic words are the scandal of poetry that ‘contingent’ features of sound and rhythm systematically infect and affect thought. Interpreting the poem is the last rhetoric which Culler mentioned in chapter five, don’t treat the poem as we might a bit of conversation, a fragment that needs a larger context to explain it, but assume that it has a structure of its own.

One of the techniques that culler has described in chapter 5 about rhetoric that I find most interesting is the metaphor. As culler discussed, “A metaphor treats something as something else.” Trough metaphors, we have the opportunity to describe something by comparing it with “similar things” and make the text more intriguing and more interesting. Sometimes, it can be hard to understand a metaphor, but that is also one of the things that make us be a critical thinker and exercise our brains. Another thing I also like is that metaphor is related to the language and imagination as culler says. That is to say, the metaphor is also based on the understanding and learning of something. I see metaphor I both poems, “The sea is history” and “Diving into the wreck.” Derek Walcott used metaphor multiple times in his poem, The Sea is History. For instance, “The sea is history.” He is making a comparison. History means past, and in this context, the sea contains the tribal memory and other things he is talking about in the previous line. As the sea contains these things that are part of history, the sea itself become history. Adrienne Rich also used metaphor when she said, “The words are purposes.” “The words are maps,” meaning that words are no just “letters.” Words are everywhere, and behind them, there are meanings and objectives to meet.

In Chapter 5 of Rhetoric, Poetics, and Poetry by Culler, Culler claims that there are four master tropes as rhetorical figures mostly used in poems that are metonymy. metaphor, synecdoche, and irony. Metaphor is comparing something to something, I think it is the most important technique in language usage in both poems and modern words. It can provide readers a better and easier understanding so that more effective information exchange can be achieved. In the poem of “The sea is history”, Derek Walcott uses metaphor a lot all over the poem, he compares the sea to history, compares emancipation jubilation to the faith, and almost finished the whole poem with metaphor figure. It is hard to understand what he really wants to utter without cultural and religious knowledge background, but viewers still can get the feelings through the metaphor based on the most basic knowledge.

In Chapter 5 “Rhetoric, Poetics and Poetry” by Jonathan Culler, Culler has discussed the relationship between rhetoric, poetic and poetry, and introduced various poetic and rhetoric techniques. In the very beginning of the chapter, Culler mentions that poetics has effects on literary works by explaining the conventions and reading operations that make them possible. On the contrary, rhetoric is considered as the technique which is able to construct the effective discourses on literary works. Culler introduces four master tropes which are metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche and irony. By reading the poem called “Diving into the wreck” by Adrienne Rich, the predominant rhetoric used across the poem is metaphor. According to Culler, “Metaphor treats something as something else.”, it functions powerfully and succeed in conveying the author’s emotions and meanings. Take the title as the example. Rich compares the difficulties for fighting for women’s rights to wreck, which catches reader’s attention to wonder what exactly the wreck is, what does it represent for. It provides imaginations to readers and impresses them with various vivid pictures in their mind. But at the same time, it also express the feeling to readers. The second paragraph of this poem, “There is a ladder. The ladder is always there. hanging innocently. close to the side of the schooner.”, Rich compares the ladder to the silence and the failure for fighting for their rights. It signifies helplessness. They tried so many times in order to change the situation, however, it failed. There is noting  they can do, only be silent.

In the chapter 5, Cullar states the usage of rhetoric on literacy and some different kinds of rhetorical figures. The four master tropes are metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, irony. I think writers use rhetorical figures in their work, which can express their thoughts profoundly. The metaphor don’t express original meaning, it treats something as something else. I think the aim of metaphor is to grab readers’ attention, then the readers want to know why the author use a metaphor and what the author express. Cullar writes “my love is rose” in this chapter, this is a metaphor. The use of the rose to mean “love” can indicate that someone’s love is so precious. Derek Walcott uses a metaphor in the first part of “The sea is history”, “Where are your monuments, your battles, martyrs? Where is your tribal memory? Sirs, in that grey vault. The sea. The sea has locked them up. The sea is History.” Derek expresses that the tribal history is not existing,  and it may not record. All monuments, battles and martyrs have disappeared, but the sea is not. The sea is always seen, then the sea is history. 

A poetic technique mentioned by Culler in Chapter 5 of Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction that I was able to identify in “Diving into the Wreck” by Adrienne Rich was the use of metaphors. Culler states, “because a metaphor can carry an elaborate proposition, even a theory, it is the rhetorical figure most easily justified (72).” I believe Rich uses metaphor in comparing her exploration of the wreck to self-discovery. Rich states, “I came to explore the wreck. The words are purposes. The words are maps. I came to see the damage that was done and the treasures that prevail (52).” Rich displays metaphor in her use of the texts wreck, damage and treasures. Rich signifies throughout the poem that although she endured abuse from the patriarchal society, she was able to gain a sense of identity and self-discovery through diving into the events that led her to herself. I believe the authors use of metaphor was important because this set the theme for the reader. Readers are able to identify that by diving into the wreck, the author was able to reflect how patriarchy has built her identity. This helps shape the meaning of the poem because the reader is able to grasp through the metaphors that although the author experienced wreckage and despair in her life, it served as a significant experience for the authors journey to self-discovery.

In Chapter 5 of Literary Theory, introduces poetic and rhetorical techniques and investigates the effects they have on literature. For example, poetry targets strong emotions and has the ability to persuade the reader while at first it was seen as an art of imitation or representation. Eventually poetry came to be seen as related to rhetoric due to both being similar in being viewed as persuasive tools. The author makes several mentions of rhetorical figures in this chapter, two of which I would like to identify in “The Sea is History” by Derek Walcott. Towards the start it is written: “First, there was the heaving oil, heavy as chaos; then, like a light at the end of a tunnel,” makes use of metaphor to give a very heavy atmospheric feeling as if something was brooding. This is abruptly followed by a juxtaposition of the light at the end of a tunnel, perhaps making usage of irony as one would not expect to see light in oil. He uses a clever comparison of darkness to oil to give it a tangible feeling since we can refer to what we know of oil and then uses irony to create an immediate contrast to this. The contrast undoes the effect he created with the metaphor in a manner I find suiting of a release of intense emotions. I believe this helped shape the meaning of the poem by creating a strong introduction and atmosphere for the rest of the poem to follow.

In the poem “The Sea is History” by Derek Walcott, we can identify poetic technique that Culler describes in chapter 5 and the first four lines in this poem illustrate that fact. in the first line he asks, “where are your monuments, your battles, martyrs?” He wants to attire our attentions by expressing an emotion that push us to think and develop our knowledge about the past events. In the second line he also asks, “where is your tribal memory?”, he uses convention of unity to give correlation between these two lines and he ends the second line by using the world “sirs” that is an important feeling of responsibility. In the third line, he says all these things are “in that grey vault”. He employs the words “grey” to express the color that is more perceptible by the readers and use “that” to show the closeness of the vault. Also, he repeats two times the words “sea” to be understood by the readers and we can interpret the “sea” as equal to the time, the past and the history where everything is consumed and would finally disappear. In the fourth line he writes that “has locked them up” by making allusion to the sea. At the end, he writes that “The sea is History”, he uses metaphor to compare the sea to the history that can be considered as a place where everything is stocked and finally would disappear. In this part of the poem, the author doesn’t use contrast but use a logical continuity to express his ideas. This procedure creates meaning of the poem and let readers follows the flow of the rhyme.

   In the chapter 4, Jonathan Culler mentions to characterize both poetry and rhetoric referring to both their disparities and the manners by which they are associated. He starts by acknowledging Aristotle as the person who originally isolated the two, rhetoric being the craft of influence and poetry being the specialty of impersonation. Culler proceeds the four most significant that scholars: metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony. There are clearly a lot more interesting expressions that are significant in both poetry and rhetoric, however these four are important to understand the poem. In the poem “Diving into the Wreck” by Adrienne Rich, the rhetoric technique used. In the seventh paragraph, the speaker clarifies that what she truly needs is to discover the genuine state of the boat, which may not be equivalent to what she has perused or found out about it. The tried and true way of thinking about the boat may just be a legend. Not long before she shows up at the disaster area, she pictures to herself the likeness of a female face that was cut on the fore of the old cruising transport, which consistently looked upward, and she thinks about the harm the disaster area has gone through in all the years it has spent submerged, with only a skeleton of its structure remaining. As recently expressed, rhetoric is firmly connected to poetry. In poetry, rhetorical are utilized to misrepresent and in some cases hyperbolize the human experience. Culler intends to treat poems on an unexpected level in comparison to different types of rhetoric.