"Hazel Tells Laverne" by Kathryn Howd Machan

     The poem "Hazel Tells Laverne" by Kathryn Howd Machan demonstrates colloquialism throughout the entire poem.  The use of colloquialism creates an informal scene in the "Princess and the Frog" scene.  Nothing in the poem is capitalized making the speaker lower class and uneducated.  The lack of punctuation in the poem allows the reader to see where the natural pauses are and the way that the reader, Hazel, talks to her friend Laverne.  One place that the colloquialism is especially prominent is when Hazel says, "sohelpmegod," (Machan).  Here she is referring to the fact that the frog told her she could be a princess.  The slur of words exhibits the slang Hazel uses in her daily life.  At the beginning of the poem Hazel indirectly says that she is a maid of some kind.  Maids are sometimes not as educated as the rest of the general public.  In this case the use of the colloquialism, lack of punctuation, and slang contribute to the background of the speaker being uneducated.