Hazel Tells Laverne
by Kathryn Howd Machan

I noticed many things about this poem while reading it. First there is no capitalization or punctuation: not even in the contraction "I'm." There are also many words with their endings chopped off or stuck together without spaces. For example, "but sohelpmegod he starts talking."(Machan) These are all examples of dialect and make the speaker seem uneducated and even stupid. An educated person would use things like punctuation and be very deliberate in pronouncing words correctly. In addition, the "sohelpmegod" lends a sense of panic to the speaker. When people panic they often talk really fast. Because the words are strung together it gives the reader the impression of the speaker talking really fast. This along with the frog talking makes it seem like the reader is panicking.